As a little girl, Janet and her grandmother took street car rides to the Lansing Cemetery in Cleveland where they cleaned the graves and maintained the surroundings, ensuring the dignity of the departed. Janet Ghiandoni grew up in Cleveland Heights and visited Lansing with her grandmother several times a year. She distinctly remembers visiting the graves of many relatives she hardly knew anything about.

Please join us as we say thank you to our Legacy Society donors, who enjoyed a Special Evening of Thanks, at our Roe Green Gallery exhibit, “One Hour a Day,” with a curator talk by Clevelander Trudy Wiesenberger.

Imagine how dispiriting it would be to visit the grave of a relative only to find the gravestone toppled and engulfed in grass so tall that the name on the stone is barely legible.

Many of Cleveland’s older Jewish cemeteries are located in areas where the Jewish community no longer lives and synagogues no longer exist. Without an organized effort, these cemeteries have fallen into disrepair and the Jewish Federation of Cleveland has stepped in to help. With unanimous Board approval, the 112 year old non-profit organization has launched a Cemetery Preservation Campaign with the goal of raising $3.5 million to honor the deceased.

When I first came to work at the Jewish Federation of Cleveland more than 25 years ago, I was given a daunting task: managing the care and preservation of our community’s Jewish cemeteries. Even though I have lived in Cleveland my entire life, it was not until I began my work at the Federation that I heard others mentioning local cemeteries that I never knew about. I later realized that many of our older Jewish cemeteries depict the history and movement of our community.

As you all are aware, in the past two days heavy rain has contributed to wide-spread flooding in Houston. Inundating hundreds of homes in high-density Jewish neighborhoods, the situation is a nightmare for thousands of people who have been shut off from municipal services, highways and schools.

So there I was, uncomfortably staring down a plate of cheez-it dusted tostadas with a garlic spinach remoulade and spicy mustard emulsion. Grandma’s brisket and matzah ball soup this was not.