A Visit to the Jewish Cemetery in Lubaczów, May 2002
Eva Floersheim Shadmot Dvorah, Israel
July 14th 2002
Lubaczów Jewish Cemetery Panorama seen from the present entrance, May 2002 (click to enlarge)
Introduction
Thanks to the initiative of Bogdan Lisze and the great amount of work carried out by him and a group of friends (Footnote #1), the Jewish cemetery in Lubaczow has during the last year emerged from a jungle of trees and bushes. The work is still not over, but so much has been done that probably most of those living in Lubaczow have noticed the great changes.
After many years of documenting Jewish life in Lubaczow long distance from Israel, I was fortunate to visit Lubaczow for the first time in the end of April 2002. My main purpose was to register the graves in the Jewish cemetery. I had five days at my disposal, so it was clear from the beginning that I would be able to register only part of what was then estimated as thousand gravestones (Footnote #2) still standing in the cemetery.
During my years of researching our own family history, I have visited many different Jewish cemeteries in Germany, Austria, Poland, Sweden and Norway. The decorations, the texts, the glimpse into lives lived long ago - these subjects have always fascinated me. Even before coming to Lubaczow, from photos I had received from Wieslaw Huk, Bogdan Lisze and Howard Bodenstein, I felt that the Jewish cemetery in Lubaczow was something special. This impression was strengthened during my visit.
For those of you who have watched the cleaning up of the cemetery from a distance, and perhaps wondered what can be learnt from the registration, I invite you to visit the Jewish cemetery and look at some of the gravestones in the part closest to the Catholic cemetery.
The gravestones are all written in Hebrew and have no recognizable Roman numbers to indicate when those buried were born and died. Their date of death is recorded according to the Hebrew calendar - in Hebrew letters.
My hope is that by presenting to you a series of gravestones, you will understand a little bit about the history and culture of those buried here. Hopefully in the future I will be able to tell you more about this cemetery.
Two practical notes:
1. When I started documenting the cemetery, I decided that the row closest to the little road that separates the Catholic and Jewish cemeteries, should be Row 1.
Row 20 is the row starting at the western corner of the little building built over the original entrance to the Jewish cemetery.
The numbering of graves in each row starts from the cemetery wall, going to the right.
The numbering also covers those graves where only the base can be seen.
2. The dates of death have been "translated" from the Hebrew calendar to the Christian calendar. According to the Hebrew calendar the date goes from the beginning of one evening till the next evening, and not from midnight to midnight. This is the reason I write two possible dates of death.
Levi
You may remember from the Old Testament that Jakob was the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham, the father of the Jewish people.
Jakob had twelve sons. These twelve sons became, with a minor change, the twelve tribes. Each Jew at that time identified himself according to the tribe he belonged to.
One of the sons of Jakob was Levi, so his descendants became the tribe of Levi.
A famous member of the Levi tribe from the time the Jews lived in exile in Ancient Egypt, was Moses. When the Jewish people reentered the Holy Land after walking through the desert for forty years and having been in exile in Egypt for four hundred years, each tribe was given a piece of land. Only one tribe, the Levi tribe, was not given any specific piece of land, because they would work as religious leaders and teachers and move between the other tribes.
In the desert when the Jews used a temporary enclosure for the covenant and later, after King Salomon built the First Temple in Jerusalem around 1000 BC, members of the Levi tribe also worked as temple servants.
The Second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE, and the Jewish people was scattered all over the world. Members of the Levi tribe continued some of their religious functions in the synagogues wherever a Jewish community grew up. The status of Levi passes on from father to son. All these years and today this is noted in different religious ceremonies by adding Ha-Levi (Translated from Hebrew - the Levite) to the name of the baby boy being circumcised, the thirteen year old boy doing his Bar Mitzva , the man getting married and the man being buried. F.ex. Moshe Ha-Levi - Moses the Levite.
Because one of the Levi's tasks in the synagogue is to help the priests with their ritual washing of the hands, a pitcher and a basin have become a well-known symbol for the Levi tribe.
Among the Jews who once lived in Lubaczow there were several descendants of Levi.
Row 4, Grave 7: The grave of Mordechai Selig Ha-Levi, the son of Zeev Ha-Levi.
He died on January 6th or 7th 1933.
For other Levi graves see Footnote #3.
Kohen
At the time the Jewish people lived in the Sinai desert on their way back from Egypt to the Holy Land, Moses received the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments at the Sinai Mountain. After this crucial event in Jewish history, many religious laws for how the covenant should be kept and for how the religious rituals should be performed were written down, as can be seen in the Old Testament. In these new regulations, Moses' brother Aron, a member of the Levi tribe by birth, was chosen by God to become the priest, Kohen in Hebrew, and his descendants would also carry this title.
A special blessing was made for the Kohen to bless the congregation - a blessing that is still performed today - and while reciting this blessing, the Kohen hold his hands in a special way. The two hands have therefore become a symbol of those who have inherited the Kohen status from their fathers.
In Lubaczow there were also descendants from Aron Ha-Kohen.
Row 2, Grave 4:
The grave of Mendel Elijahu Ha-Kohen, son of Shama Ha-Kohen. He died on June 23rd or 24th 1938.
For more descendants of Aron Ha-Kohen, see Footnote #4
The Lion
Originally there were twelve tribes, but Jewish history was cruel and already two thousand years ago ten of the tribes were lost. Some researchers are still looking for traces of those ten lost tribes.
The two tribes that are still with us are the Levi tribe already mentioned and the tribe of Jehuda (Juda). The Jehuda tribe had a lion as their symbol. Jerusalem was part of their land. It is interesting to note that the lion is also the present day symbol of the city of Jerusalem. Jews who are not Kohen or Levi, are considered to be descendants of the tribe of Jehuda, though they are often called Israel or Israelites.
The lion as a symbol on male graves can be seen on several graves in Lubaczow.
Row 4, Grave 5:
The grave of Shmuel, son of Abraham, who died on July 23rd or 24th 1939.
The Crown
The study of religion was always an important part of Judaism, and through studying the Holy Bible (The Old Testament) and many other important books in Judaism, the Jews managed to keep their religion alive and build active communities with synagogues and other religious institutions all over the world, even in the smallest places.
To pray, you need a "minyan" (an assembly of at least ten Jewish men) and as any community grew, it would pride itself if some of their members could devote themselves to fulltime religious studies. There were also Yeshivas - institutions of religious learning. Studying the Torah, having extensive knowledge about the Torah gave that person an important standing in the community. The Torah is sometimes symbolized by a crown - the Crown of the Torah. We must therefore assume that a grave with a crown is the grave of a man with great knowledge and standing as a Bible scholar.
Row 2, Grave 6:
The grave of Gershon Ornstein, son of Reuven Selig. He probably died in November 1936.
See Footnote #5.
The Bookcase
As mentioned earlier, the study of religion was a very important part of Jewish life, so another symbol that could show that this was a man of religious learning, was an open bookcase. This would of course be a bookcase full of religious books.
In Lubaczow there are several gravestones with bookcases, mostly in the part of the cemetery still not documented.
One such grave is from the western part of the cemetery and is the grave of Elijahu David son of Jakob Zvi. He died on Feb 1st or 2nd 1925.
