Learning Jewish History at Charlotte's Hebrew Cemetery

Charlotte Jewish News April 2022

By Sara Schreibman

As the oldest organization in our Jewish community, the Hebrew Cemetery is the final resting place for so many who shaped the community we enjoy today. Completing our digital records so that future generations will learn who the families were and how the families were connected is important. All the agencies in our community have documented our community’s history in different ways — books, documents, videos, and visual displays tell our story. As a longtime resident of Charlotte, I know many of the families and much of the history of our Jewish community.

A little more than two years ago, I began working with Sandra Goldman at the Hebrew Cemetery Association of Charlotte. Retirement wasn’t for me, so this part-time position seemed like a perfect fit. I would support Sandra, keep all the records in order, and fill in gaps in our information.

As I began learning the system that houses all the records of our cemetery, not only did I realize how many families I know who have loved ones buried at the Hebrew Cemetery, but also I felt I could add a great deal of information. Just as I began to feel comfortable with the software that houses the Hebrew Cemetery database, we went into lockdown because of COVID. I loaded all the files and documents into bankers’ boxes and headed home.

One of the projects I began working on was reviewing graves that were sold years ago, sometimes back to the 1920s and 1930s, which had no designation for use and no family members living in Charlotte. My research resulted in some wonderful conversations with families all over the U.S. who talked about their parents, grandparents, sometime great-grandparents, and their history in our Jewish community.

Some of my discussions were with friends who talked about their families and how large their family trees were. There are so many connections and interwoven relationships. It was important to determine whether there were family wishes that we could document so that our records could be more complete.

There were several families for whom I could find no relatives. I called on Margie Goldstein, Betty Rosenbaum, Geri Gertzman, and others to ask about old Charlotte families but still have gaps. These are the families for whom we say Kaddish at our annual memorial service, families whose headstones are in the historical section of the cemetery — some barely legible, belong to families with no known living Charlotte relatives.

One of the other parts in our database I’ve worked on is family relationships. We have many large, connected families, and adding one person’s relationship often led to another entire family tree. We are in awe of the Levinson, Jaffa, Silverstein, Levine, and Segal families, among so many other large family branches.

In the Hebrew Cemetery Association office are small binders with the records from the 1930s and 40s, paper ledger sheets with handwritten notes from the 50s through the 80s, and old QuickBooks spreadsheets contain much information from the 90s and early 2000s. Now we have all our information “in the cloud.” I’m not sure what the format will be in 40 or 50 years, but I hope that all the records we’ve so carefully preserved will always be an important piece of Jewish Charlotte’s history.

After conducting the research over the past two years, I find it is even more important to me that our records reflect the Hebrew Cemetery’s historic importance in our community. Knowing the families, memorializing their wishes, understanding the relationships, and documenting the history of those whose final resting place is our cemetery is critical for the future of our Jewish community. And for those with no family here, saying Kaddish at our annual memorial service honors their memories.