September 2024
Wendy Schneider

Beth Jacob Synagogue has joined the ranks of a growing number of Conservative synagogues across North America by opening a new interfaith section at its Stanley Sobol Cemetery on Snake Road. 

Dan Levy was the driving force behind the synagogue’s long-time effort to accommodate Beth Jacob’s intermarried couples who wish to be buried together.  “Over the last number of years, with the number of Jewish men and women who marry out running as high as 60 per cent in some areas of North America, we felt it was better to include somebody rather than exclude them,” he told the HJN.

Discussions with the City of Burlington about the synagogue’s fencing off a section of its Stanley Sobel cemetery began in earnest four years ago, but were held up by the COVID-19 pandemic. Once the project was approved, third-generation Beth Jacob member Larry Rosenberg stepped up with a generous donation that allowed the synagogue to develop the new section, which contains 60 plots.

Rosenberg’s motivation for making the donation was personal.

“We’re an interfaith family,” he told the HJN. “I thought it was a worthwhile thing to do and made the commitment.” Rosenberg was also behind the decision to name the new section “Shalom Rav” — or “abundant peace,” explaining that he’d always found special meaning in the section of the siddur’s Amidah prayer that asks for “abundant peace” not only to the children of Israel, but “to all who dwell on this earth.” 

“How can a family be granted peace,” Rosenberg asked, “if one person is in one place and {the other} in another and they want to be together?” 

Now, they can be. Whereas in the past, Beth Jacob’s intermarried families were forced to choose between being buried separately in a Conservative Jewish cemetery or be buried with their partners elsewhere, as of August 25, the date the new section was consecrated in a ceremony officiated by Beth Jacob’s Rabbi Beni Wajnberg, they can now be buried side by side.