As soon as I saw your title for this piece, I was immediately intrigued! It's so interesting and cool that there would be special graves/gravesites to accommodate Jewish burial practices. Having never visited New Orleans, I always forget that it has a higher water level compared to other places. So fascinating how it affects burial practices.
I also really love the connection you made between these graveyards and our death-denying culture! Another place where the dead and graveyards are more openly regarded is Edinburgh, Scotland! I visited last year and got to tour some of the graveyards. Such a cool place with an interesting (but dark) history!
Have you read Jack by Marilynne Robinson? The opening scene is in Bellefontaine cemetery (the site of an interracial romance between a white apostate stewbum son of a minister and a lovely upstanding young Black woman, a new teacher at Sumner and the daughter of a Baptist minister herself. Robinson did an excellent job researching St. Louis history.
As soon as I saw your title for this piece, I was immediately intrigued! It's so interesting and cool that there would be special graves/gravesites to accommodate Jewish burial practices. Having never visited New Orleans, I always forget that it has a higher water level compared to other places. So fascinating how it affects burial practices.
I also really love the connection you made between these graveyards and our death-denying culture! Another place where the dead and graveyards are more openly regarded is Edinburgh, Scotland! I visited last year and got to tour some of the graveyards. Such a cool place with an interesting (but dark) history!
This morning’s New York Times has a opinion piece that can be read as a comment to this Historiola.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/13/opinion/rosh-hashana-death.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Have you read Jack by Marilynne Robinson? The opening scene is in Bellefontaine cemetery (the site of an interracial romance between a white apostate stewbum son of a minister and a lovely upstanding young Black woman, a new teacher at Sumner and the daughter of a Baptist minister herself. Robinson did an excellent job researching St. Louis history.