H eadlines
Cemetery Restoration Pilot Project Underway
L OCA L
ANDY GOTLIEB | JE MANAGING EDITOR
EFFORTS ARE underway
to organize a pilot project
aimed at improving a small
portion of run-down Har Nebo
Cemetery — and organizer
Rich Blumberg is optimistic
that the project can not only
succeed but grow in scope.

Blumberg said his impetus
came when he wrote a history
of his family, which has 10
members buried at Har Nebo.

“I visited with my son and
was astonished by the number
of fallen stones and disrepair,”
he said. “It just doesn’t sit right
for us living descendants, and
it won’t be any better 20 or 30
years from now.”
Blumberg, who is the founder
of business development and
technolog y col laboration
consulting company World Sales
Solution, LLC, hopes to raise
$10,000-$20,000 and identify
an accessible 10-foot-by-20-foot
location at Har Nebo to restore
10 to 18 gravestones.

The project would include
lifting fallen headstones, filling
in uneven ground, removing
overgrown vegetation and
Rich Blumberg’s ancestors, including great-grandparents Herschel and
Rebecca Blumberg (seated adults), are buried in Har Nebo Cemetery.

 Courtesy of Rich Blumberg
cleaning the stones, Blumberg
said. Blumberg realizes he’s
starting small, considering the
size of the distressed cemetery,
but figures the general interest
in genealogy these days may
spur others into partici-
pating. He hopes to encourage
synagogues to join in, as well as
college fraternities and sorori-
ties looking for service projects
and even kindergartners to
paint decorative rocks.

“Even if I could do one plot
a year, it’s better than nothing,”
he said. “We want to create a
template kit that can be used by
other Jewish cemeteries.”
Har Nebo owner Richard
Levy said he’d be amenable to
a well-organized project under
certain conditions.

“I’d have to think about this
some more,” he said. “We’d
always have to think of safety
and that sort of stuff.”
Levy, who also owns Mount
Carmel Cemetery, said in the
past he has made volunteers sign
waivers before cleanup projects.

Cemetery problems are a
frequent complaint received by
the Jewish Federation of Greater
Philadelphia, according to
Addie Lewis Klein, director of
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JANUARY 14, 2021
 
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JEWISH EXPONENT
Har Nebo Cemetery disrepair in the summer of 2020
community engagement. She
said they receive half a dozen
calls every week.

“A number of us from
the Jewish Federation are in
support of this and giving
advice and helping to get this
off the ground,” she said.

Other organized and
informal efforts have been
made to restore local cemeteries
in recent years.

The Friends of the Gladwyne
Jewish Memorial Cemetery
has worked for several years
to restore a once-largely
forgotten cemetery owned by
adjacent Beth David Reform
Congregation. And a 2015 Jewish Exponent
article about rundown condi-
tions at Har Zion Cemetery in
Darby refers to a woman identi-
fied only as Rivka, who said she
had been visiting and repairing
parts of the cemetery for 42
years. She did the same at Mount
Sharon Cemetery in Springfield.

The Exponent
has documented complaints about
several area cemeteries in
recent years.

In 2020, both Har Nebo and
Mount Carmel were criticized
because of poor conditions and
closed gates. Levy attributed
the problems then to the
pandemic, but has since cited
the difficulties of running
cemeteries in an era when
cremations are on the rise.

Photo by M.B. Kanis
Levy was pushed by
Jewish Federation of Greater
Philadelphia and state Rep. Jared
Solomon, among others, to take
care of the cemeteries. Jewish
Federation helped arrange for
a landscaping crew to cut the
grass over the summer.

Mount Carmel was exten-
sively vandalized in February
2017, prompting a large-scale
restoration effort.

And as reported Jan. 7,
complaints have increased
about Har Jehuda Cemetery in
Upper Darby in recent years.

President Larry Moskowitz
attributed part of the problem
to declining revenues.

Older cemeteries with few
new burials have less money
coming in and tend to exhaust
their perpetual care funds.

Those trends may worsen,
according to the National
Funeral Directors Association
Cremation and Burial Report.

The 2020 cremation rate was
56%, up 8% from 2015, and the
organization projects that by
2035 nearly 80% of Americans
will be cremated.

Klein noted that maintaining
Jewish cemeteries can be
especially difficult because they
are more tightly packed, making
mowing and landscaping more
problematic. l
agotlieb@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0797
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM