Seattle Jewish Cemeteries Desecrated By Homeless
(JTA) — The managers of two historic Jewish cemeteries in Seattle are asking for the city’s help in preventing desecration and vandalism at the sites.
The Jewish community says the issue is groups of homeless people who have set up camp in and around the cemeteries.
Ari Hoffman, a vice president of Seattle’s Bikur Cholim Machzikay Hadath Synagogue and a member of its cemetery committee, told the local media that headstones have been defaced and that needles and other discarded drug paraphernalia, as well as human feces, have been found on and among the tombstones. Hoffman also said that prostitutes use the woods behind the cemetery for their clients.
The Bikur Cholim cemetery has gravesites going back to the Civil War as well as recent burials.
Across the street, the Historic Sephardic Jewish Cemetery is experiencing similar vandalism.
A spokesman for Seattle’s Homelessness Emergency Response said Friday that the city was aware of the concerns near the cemeteries.
“The Navigation Team, which is the city’s homelessness response team that connects vulnerable people to shelter and services, inspected the site earlier today and is assessing site conditions,” the spokesman said.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO