Showing posts with label Parma Jewish Cemetery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Parma Jewish Cemetery. Show all posts

Saturday, March 23, 2013

stoned under

In Parma Ohio, Workmen's Circle (Ashkenazic fraternal) has a cemetery, and parts of it have sections for separate Jewish organisations and congregations. The most separate, and smallest, is the Berger. At the time of the photo, this section was accessible though a ripped part of the chain link fence. 

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Lions of Judah

When people came to America they still knew the ways of the old country and followed their natural cultural. This extended to burial practices. These graves are tight together, and one can not step on the ground proper.

On many of the stones there are enamel photographs (a good number have been broken). The script is English, and Yiddish in Hebraic letters. The stele are all thick.
This section of the cemetery is that of an Orthodox congregation. This stone has two lions of Judah, here that are standing, on some they are resting. The almost universal appearance of the Magen (Star) David is here too. The third element is the tablets of the Law, the Decalogue, Ten Commandments.
different presentation of the same symbols

Friday, June 1, 2012

Workmen's Circle

The globe is the Workmen's Circle emblem. The letters 'A', 'R' stand for Arbeter Ring, the Yiddish for the former. Workmen's Circle was a secular Jewish fraternal for the Yiddish speaking Ashkenazi immigrants and their children. A 'fraternal' is a mutual aid society.

Workmen's Circle was founded in 1900 in New York City. It was part of labor, socialism, and the social justice movements. Since its peak influence, it has dwindled, and has moved toward the political center. It's paper, Forverts (the Forward), was the largest non-English paper in the country, for a time.

In 1920 the Cleveland lodges bought land for a cemetery in Parma, Ohio. The labor Jews were, at that time, living around Kinsman, and Woodland on the east side of Cleveland. Parma is on the [south] west side. The Workmen's Circle graveyard has separate section for other Jewish groups.