Community Alliance for Jewish-Affiliated Cemeteries
CAJAC
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COMMUNITY ALLIANCE
FOR JEWISH-AFFILIATED
CEMETERIES
Link to: Restoration Project Highlights

RESTORE

Link to: SECURE

SECURE

Link to: SUSTAIN

SUSTAIN

WELCOME TO CAJAC

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In keeping with the Jewish tradition to honor the dead, CAJAC represents the organized Jewish community’s consolidated efforts to preserve Jewish cemeteries and to create permanent solutions for ensuring their long-term sustainability. Through a collaboration of volunteers, community leaders and local agencies, CAJAC actively addresses the decline of Jewish cemeteries, frequently spearheading rehabilitation efforts to restore dignity and respect to distressed burial grounds.

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ABOUT US

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OUR MISSION

In accordance with Jewish tradition, the Community Alliance for Jewish-Affiliated Cemeteries (CAJAC) acts to assist the living in honoring their departed ancestors, who can no longer speak for themselves.

CAJAC provides the critical link in setting standards, developing strategies, and assisting those tasked as fiduciaries for Jewish cemeteries.  These standards help to fulfill the sacred task of preserving sanctity, ensuring physical well-being, and providing for financial stability into perpetuity.

CAJAC’s Core Objectives

  • Partner with the broader Jewish community to support and sustain a centralized model of cemetery management, through creating economies of scale and systems for sound fiscal management.
  • Provide day-to-day management and oversight of Jewish cemeteries, in accordance with best practices.
  • Raise awareness within the broader Jewish community about the vitality of Jewish cemeteries and their systemic challenges.
  • Emphasize education and volunteerism as the primary vehicles to make kavod ha-met, respect for the deceased, a core concern to all Jewish people.
  • Provide guidance, resources, and training to Jewish organizations who manage and/or operate Jewish cemeteries.  This includes synagogues, burial societies, and cemetery administrators.
  • Rehabilitate abandoned and distressed Jewish cemeteries.
  • Maintain liaison relationships with relevant governmental and regulatory authorities.  These relationships will serve as the Jewish community’s principal resource, and the secular community’s key partner, in securing the future of Jewish cemeteries.

CAJAC can advise Jewish cemeteries on:

  • Financial analysis and risk assessment
  • Physical well-being and infrastructure
  • Indexing of graves and recording genealogy
  • Adhering to matters pertaining to Jewish law (Halacha)
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“When you mention Jewish cemeteries in America, the interest is not always there. My feeling is, Jewish history is Jewish history and how could you allow Jewish cemeteries to fall into disrepair and be overgrown? CAJAC represents the Jewish community’s collective response to cemetery preservation and it is continuing to become backstop to take care of Jewish cemeteries in Metropolitan New York.”

Richard FishmanFormer Director of the New York State Division of Cemeteries.

CAJAC shares with the National Association of Chevros Kadisha (NASCK) a commitment to highlighting the Jewish community’s sacred duty towards end-of-life issues. I am pleased CAJAC continues to address the systemic challenges facing Jewish cemeteries,simultaneously sensitizing the Jewish community as it relates to its obligation to care for its cemeteries.

Rabbi Elchonon ZohnExecutive Director, NASCK
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WAYS TO HELP

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DONATE NOW
VOLUNTEER

Our Affiliate Organizations

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UJA
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CAJAC New York Office:  171 Madison Avenue, #1602, New York, NY  10016

CAJAC New Jersey Office:  9-20 12th Street, Fair Lawn, NJ  07410

Email:  info@cajac.org      Phone:  (914) 574 7057

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Executive Director’s Message

It is the sacred duty of every Jewish person – and the Jewish community as a whole – to preserve Jewish cemeteries. In Jewish tradition, a cemetery is referred to as a Beit haChaim, a house of life. Maybe this seems a little ironic. However, this underscores the concept that physical life is finite but spiritual life is eternal. Cemeteries represent the transition between these two dimensions of existence.

Jewish cemeteries also remind us of the equality with which every Jew was created. Cemeteries emphasize the tremendous value we place on respecting life. Preserving a person’s burial place emphasizes Rashi’s concept of chesed shel emes, the truest form of kindness.

The Community Alliance for Jewish Cemeteries (“CAJAC”) was formed in 2010 to address the physical and financial decline of Jewish cemeteries in the Tri-State Area. Since its inception, CAJAC has seen the results of historic – and continuing – shifts in community dynamics which have resulted in the consolidation and shuttering of synagogues and burial societies. As a result, the Jewish community has inherited a burden.

CAJAC is committed to forming lasting solutions for the permanent preservation Jewish cemeteries, promoting best practices for their physical and financial management. Consistent with this principal and utilizing economies of scale, CAJAC promotes a model of community-based, centralized management of Jewish cemeteries. CAJAC has also spearheaded large-scale cemetery restoration projects throughout Metropolitan New York. You can learn more by clicking here.

We have been blessed with support generous from UJA-Federation of New York, individual donors, government grants, and charitable foundations. CAJAC has also been the beneficiary of tens of thousands of volunteer hours. As a result, CAJAC has reclaimed abandoned/orphaned burial grounds at several cemeteries in varying states of decline.

I invite you to join us in solidarity to make sure memories are never erased. Partner with us make sure final resting places are preserved with dignity. And most of all, support CAJAC’s efforts to make sure no cemetery in our community is forgotten.

With blessing,
Andrew E. Schultz
Executive Director