I planned to visit a cemetery this morning on the north side of Chicago, situated less than six miles from my house. On Thursday I called the office to obtain lot information. However, as I drove amidst the works of art, aka grave markers, I realized my incomplete coordinate was no reason to search endlessly. I drove to the office, but could not be assisted because staff were helping a family. So I decided to drive a few blocks north since I had noticed the cemetery gates had been opened. I have driven past my secondary choice, Temple Beth-El, and its locked gate countless times for over a decade as it appears at the intersection where I would head east to play Ultimate Frisbee in Peterson Park most Monday evenings when the sun and lack of snow permitted.
The original Temple Beth-El House of Worship established a permanent building in 1873 in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago. In 1957 the congregation moved to Skokie, which made national headlines in the late 1970s when a Neo-Nazi group wanted to march. The marchers chose Skokie due to the near-north suburb having the highest concentration of Holocaust survivors per capita in the nation and their right to test the 1st Amendment. Court motions immediately ensued; the ACLU represented the marchers.
https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-0941-3.html
Temple Beth-El eventually moved to another northern suburb where it remains today and probably started a new cemetery, given the neglected state of the one I was about to enter.
Star of David Cemetery, the first Jewish one I have ever visited, is small – less than one block wide and approximately four blocks deep and located two blocks south of Peterson on the west side of Pulaski. It is surrounded by a warehouse, Restaurant Depot (a supplier), a behemoth Asian food distributor, Joong Boo, and the public park where I launched many wicked hammer throws. Levin, Finkel, Kraus, Gladkaya, Goldwater, Spitzer, Goodfrend, Aaron, Naftali, Roykman, Herzman, Kitz, Zahler, Shcherbakova, and Weisz have barbed wire on three sides of them.
I witnessed plenty of leaning gravemarkers, a pile of broken ones, too many fallen, unrepaired memorials, and only one other set of footprints in the snow. Of course, memories of the dead can be a simple rectangle placed on the ground, narcissistic mausoleums, large and modest monuments decorated with plastic flowers, symbols of valor or religion; all were present. I chose three markers due to uniqueness. The words “Descendants of Levi” appear underneath the lion, a lion! (see Genesis 49:9). A HUGE phallus, and Asian writing in background (though one cannot see the barbed wire…drat…between the headstone). I did not see any symbols of the Holocaust though my search was not exhaustive.
- Mark Erickson
