Jewish Cemetery in Simi Aims to Serve for Centuries

Mount Sinai Memorial Park, which has been running out of burial space at its hillside site across the Los Angeles River from Burbank, on Sunday will dedicate the largest Jewish cemetery west of the Mississippi at a new location in Simi Valley.

The location presents a study in contrasts: Although Simi Valley has a population of more than 100,000, so few of them are Jews that the city has only one synagogue, a 100-family Reform temple.

But it is also estimated that nearly 100,000 Jews live in the nearby western San Fernando Valley and Conejo Valley to the south, said Jack Mayer, executive director of the Valley Jewish Alliance, based in West Hills.

“I think it was very farsighted on the part of Mount Sinai to recognize an essential need,” Mayer said. “We’ve been experiencing a flow of young families into these areas.”

The new, 160-acre Mount Sinai site in Simi Valley is off the Ronald Reagan Freeway five miles west of the Los Angeles-Ventura county line.

The cemetery is being touted as an extension of Los Angeles Jewish institutions, which were mostly centered in Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles early in the 20th century and later moved west and north with the Jewish population and its descendants.

Daylong dedication ceremonies Sunday will feature rabbis from Beverly Hills, Westwood, Bel-Air and Encino.

Mount Sinai began in the 1950s as a part of Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills. In 1964, Sinai Temple in Westwood bought the property.

Like most other Jewish cemeteries, Mount Sinai serves the entire community, regardless of religious affiliation. In addition, many Jews choose to be buried in non-Jewish cemeteries such as Forest Lawn.

Diminishing space has been a general concern for cemetery officials in the Los Angeles area, including Mount Sinai, which has only 15 acres of grave sites left on its 82 acres nestled against Griffith Park, according to General Manager Arnold R. Saltzman.

The acquisition in Simi Valley solved Mount Sinai’s problems, Saltzman said.

Although the first burials there will probably not occur for 12 to 18 months, Saltzman said that the new cemetery at that point should not run out of space for 250 years.

“That development will extend the life, if I may use that term, of this property,” Saltzman said, referring to the original site near Burbank. “Sales will slow down [at the original site] because people have a choice of another site.”

Saltzman said that Mount Sinai purchased, for an undisclosed price, a total of 380 acres.

“Almost half of that was conveyed back to the city because the terrain was too rough,” he said. “The city will maintain that land for hiking and biking trails.” In addition, three small parcels will be sold for housing development, he said.

“We’ve been working for about five years with the city of Simi Valley on zoning and environmental issues,” he said.

Rabbis carrying Torah scrolls will walk the perimeter of the cemetery at 9:30 a.m., 1 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. Sunday, cantors will chant psalms, the shofar--ram’s horn--will be sounded and dirt from Israel will be scattered on the grounds.

The Los Angeles Jewish Symphony Orchestra will perform at 2 p.m. under a large tent.

Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Encino’s Valley Beth Shalom and Orthodox Rabbi Abner Weiss of Beverly Hills, who is president of the Southern California Board of Rabbis, will be among speakers at the 10:30 a.m. dedication.

Not forgotten in the crowd will be Rabbi Michele Paskow and members of Simi Valley’s lone synagogue, Congregation B’nai Emet.

The synagogue started as a small fellowship about 15 years ago. Its membership--now the highest in its history--is also reflected in the enrollment of 140 children in religious school and attendance at services of 60 to 200 people, Paskow said.

The congregation, after meeting for years in the social hall of a Lutheran church, now assembles in an industrial park in a space sandwiched between a grass company a youth dance studio.

“There is not a large Jewish population in Simi Valley, but we draw a handful of families from Chatsworth and many from Moorpark,” said Paskow, who has been the congregation’s part-time rabbi for five years.

Her father is Rabbi Shimon Paskow of Temple Etz Chaim, a Conservative synagogue in Thousand Oaks. Michele Paskow studied for the rabbinate at Hebrew Union College, the Reform Judaism seminary, and was ordained at the New York school in 1991.

But because the Simi Valley temple tries to serve families with backgrounds ranging from nonreligious to Orthodox, the younger Paskow quipped:

“We are ‘Re-conserva-dox.’ We try to be respectful of tradition and yet attend to what happens in this day and age--with a lot of focus on school-age kids.”

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Expanding Mt. Sinai

Concerned about limited burial space and the northwesterly shift of Los Angeles’ Jewish population, officials of Mt. Sinai Memorial Park have acquired land for a new cemetery in Simi Valley. The 162 acres to be used for a cemetery and mortuary in Simi Valley is twice Mt. Sinai’s acreage near Burbank.