05/20/2025
Cleveland Jewish Community Cleans Up Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery
Ella Marton, 4, and her grandmother, Marlene Gross of South Euclid, were among 80 volunteers cleaning Chesed El Emeth Cemetery in Cleveland on May 18. CJN Photo / Abigail Preiszig
Article reprinted with permission from Cleveland Jewish News
by Abigail Preiszig
More than 80 volunteers of all ages raked, pruned and beautified Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery on Ridge Road in Cleveland on May 18.
The name of the historic cemetery – founded to make sure all Jews could be buried with dignity whether they could pay for a burial or not – translates to “true kindness,” Howard Wolf of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland told the Cleveland Jewish News.
“There is no truer kindness than doing the mitzvah of helping someone with no expectation that it’s going to be repaid,” he said. “… We’re doing for our ancestors what others have done before us.”
Organized by the Federation, the spring cemetery cleanup brings the community together and prepares the graves for families visiting during nicer weather, Alan Yanowitz, chair on the commission on sanitary preservation, a supporting foundation of the Federation, told the CJN.
The Federation maintains more than 10,000 graves across 10 cemeteries in Greater Cleveland, he said.
“It brings people from all parts of the community, it doesn’t matter if you’re Orthodox or Reform, observant or not observant,” Yanowitz said. “I think one of Cleveland’s attributes is there’s a lot of multi-multi-generation people in Cleveland who people go, ‘Oh yeah, my grandparents or my great-grandparents are at one of those cemeteries.’”
