Jewish Community Will Open 400-Acre Simi Valley Cemetery With Celebration

To some, opening a new cemetery would seem a somber affair.

But hundreds of Jewish people plan to throng 400 acres of Simi Valley foothills Sunday to celebrate the dedication of a vast new burial ground that is expected to serve the Jewish communities of Southern California for nearly 250 years.

Jews from Orthodox, Conservative and Reform communities around Southern California are expected to mark the opening of the Mount Sinai Memorial Park with a religious ceremony, music and a free kosher feast.

“From our point of view, it’s called a mitzvah, a divine commandment, so it’s not a downer,” said Rabbi Zvi Dershowitz of Sinai Temple in Westwood, one of several rabbis who will help consecrate the cemetery. “It’s almost a celebratory thing.”

Rabbi Shimon Paskow of Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks welcomed news of the cemetery’s opening.

After working with cemetery owners in Ventura County to stake out small specially consecrated Jewish burial sites more than 20 years ago, he is glad there will soon be a primarily Jewish cemetery to serve his congregation, he said.

“From a Jewish point of view, we want to have Jewish symbols, and in most cemeteries they have a lot of Christian symbols,” said Paskow, who will take part in the consecration ceremony.

And he looks forward to seeing the biblical mosaics and other Jewish artwork that the cemetery operators plan to install, as they did at Mount Sinai cemetery in Los Angeles County.

“You want something that looks good, that makes you feel good, not just some place you’re dumping someone who dies,” he said.

The cemetery opening also comes at a welcome time for Los Angeles County’s Jewish community, said Dershowitz. Many Jewish cemeteries are running out of room, such as Mount Sinai in Los Angeles, which can stay open for only 17 more years, he said.

With 600,000 members, the Jewish community in Los Angeles County is one of the world’s largest, second in the U.S. only to New York City, Dershowitz said.

The Talmud, or Jewish law, decrees that Jews perform a special ceremony to consecrate ground for burial, he said.

“When Abraham came to the Promised Land . . . the Torah specifically says he walked the length and breadth of the land to indicate possession,” he said.

So throughout the day Sunday, rabbis and cantors from Ventura County and Los Angeles County congregations will walk the rugged perimeter of the park in shifts.

Each group will carry Torah scrolls, chanting psalms and reading scripture as they go, and congregants will scatter soil from Israel on the grounds.

“And when they reach the end of their particular segment, they’ll blow the shofar,” a ceremonial ram’s horn used primarily on Jewish High Holy Days, Dershowitz said. “It should be a very dramatic event.”

Mount Sinai’s operators say they hope it will serve the Jewish communities of Southern California from this year--5757 on the Jewish calendar--to the Jewish year 6000, when the Messiah’s coming is foretold in Jewish scripture.

Mount Sinai Memorial Park is to become the largest Jewish cemetery in the U.S. west of the Mississippi, said Fred Ellsberg, its marketing spokesman.

Added Arnold Saltzman, the cemetery’s general manager, “What we’re really trying to underscore is this is an event and service for the entire Jewish community.”

Sunday’s celebration will include music by a klezmer band during a kosher luncheon, which the cemetery operators are serving free of charge. And after lunch, the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony is to play the music of George Gershwin.

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FYI

FYI: Festivities begin at 9:30 a.m. Sunday. To reach the cemetery site, take the Yosemite Avenue exit off the Ronald Reagan Freeway (California 118). Turn south (downhill) to Cochran Street, turn west (right) on Cochran Street and drive to Simi Valley High School, 5400 Cochran. There is parking at the high school and free shuttle-bus service to the site. For information, call (800) 600-0076 or (213) 469-6000.