Jews, Cemeteries, and the City: a Perspective from Antwerp

My first reaction to this quote was: how will we explain to the outside world that discus- sion of “Jews in the City” morphed into “Jews, Cemeteries, and the City?” “Jews and the City” seemed to me such a lively theme, evoking busy streets with shops, cafés, and the vibrant buzz of a city center. On the other hand, death and cemeteries are very much part of high Jews, Cemeteries, concentrations of people, so talking of a beth hachayim (a house of the living) may be less and the City: awkward than it might appear. It certainly brings to the fore “markers” and “borders A Perspective from and boundaries” of Jewish life central to my Antwerp research, which I had previously ignored. I had been thinking about Jewish markers “in” the city, whereas in Antwerp, Jews are not buried Veerle VandenDaelen anywhere near the city. Schoonselhof (Antwerp’s so-called Père-Lachaise) is a “cemetery park” (parkbe- graafplaats) located in the Antwerp suburb of Wilrijk and Hoboken. It includes a “Jewish section,” but none of the graves is recent. Some were actually transferred to Schoonselhof when the Kielbegraafplaats cemetery, where Jews had been buried since 1828, was emptied for other use. Antwerp burials are in cemeteries in the suburbs. Unless one pays a “rent,” it is only guaranteed that the grave will remain for ten years. Payment extends the guaranteed time to 25 or 50 years, and then relatives or friends must pay another rent extension. The fact that Belgian law does not protect the perpetuity of gravesites poses a major problem for religious Jews, as the eternity of the grave is of utmost importance in Judaism. The Antwerp Jewish community includes a remarkable Or- thodox population with many Hasidic groups. Jewish burial societies and religious communities would face huge payments if they wished to extend the burial “rents” of every Jew who died in Antwerp and who (at the time of burial or later) did not have means to pay posthumous burial fees. Checking which graves had to be 16 “renewed” and contacting relatives of the exist, indicating the importance of observing deceased would alone be non-stop and highly communal rites pertaining to burying the time-intensive work. deceased. Therefore, Jews in Antwerp sought Another example of the importance an alternative solution, which they found by of burial rituals is the speed with which Or- crossing a border. In 1908 one of the Jewish thodox Jews in Antwerp restarted their hevra burial societies in Antwerp purchased a plot kadisha after World War II. Almost immediately of land in the small Dutch town of Putte, just after the city’s liberation on September 4, 1944, over the Holland/Belgium border and about a Jews reorganized a burial society. The first thirty-minute drive from Antwerp. The other Jewish funeral was held on September 24, 1944. Jewish burial societies in Antwerp followed Even before the end of 1944, Antwerp’s Jewish this example. Thus almost every Antwerp Jew community had begun preparations for ritual who has since died rests today in the Nether- reburials of Jews who had been buried during lands. The residential clustering of Antwerp’s the war, in gardens and elsewhere, without Jewish community continues even posthu- coffins and/or without religious rites. That this mously. Indeed, the Jewish cemetery in Putte happened during a time of extreme scarcity, is completely Jewish, something that does not in the midst of terrible misery and uncertainty exist in Antwerp itself, where even the “Jewish regarding the conclusion of the war, demon- neighborhood” is not entirely Jewish. Every strates how burying the dead according to Antwerp hevra kadisha (burial society) has its the tenets of religious law is a cornerstone of own division within the Putte cemetery, main- religious Judaism. This attention to having taining the diversity and variety of Antwerp’s and maintaining a grave into perpetuity also religious Jewish life even after burial. In the illuminates another dimension of the already Jewish cemetery in Putte there is full segrega- unspeakable loss of so many during the war, tion from non-Jews and clear division between since so many of the surviving families and different religious interpretations of Jewishness. friends had no graves to visit for many of their This last form of “internal segregation” loved ones. or “clustering” reflects specificities of Jewish- So examining cemeteries offers a ness: different groups of Jews hold firmly to provocative starting-point for grasping Jewish their own rites. We see this even in the Antwerp life in modern towns. The places where Jews Jewish community in exile in New York during are buried and the rites observed during World War II. After the arrival of one of Jewish burials offer meaningful information Antwerp’s leading rabbis in the spring of 1943, about Jewish life “in” the city. They provide a the Kehillath Morya religious Jewish community first impression about which communities/ was formed that August. The congregation congregations there are (or were) in a city and aimed to be a social and spiritual center for the how they function(ed). Such cemeteries serve “Antwerp colony” and to preserve the traditional as a stable source of information, neither as Orthodox rites they had observed in Antwerp. fugitive nor constantly changing as daily life. In May 1947, they established a burial society The graves and the cemetery tell a story about with a burial site at the Beth Israel Cemetery Jews and the city, even though, in my Antwerp in Woodbridge, New Jersey. The congregation case, visiting the cemetery of Antwerp’s Jewish slowly faded and was dissolved in 1987. The community requires not only leaving the city hevra kadisha and the cemetery, however, still but going to another country. 17.

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