Who’s Buried in Snake Hill?

Here is my re-typed version of a typewritten letter from Carol Bates, of New Windsor, which was received at TBJ on or about April 29, 2009. It includes the title: “Inscriptions on stones in a Hebrew Cemetery located on west side of Snake Hill, near Crystal Lake in the city of Newburgh, N.Y.”

 Adelberg, Sophie, b. 1870, d. Sept. 16, 1895 (NOTE: In the first version of this document, I typed that Ms. Adelberg died in “1918.” This was the year printed on the typewritten letter I have from Mrs. Bates. But today my husband and I visited the cemetery and saw that on her headstone it clearly gives Ms. Adelberg’s date of death as Sept. 16, 1895. This revision is important, because it means that as far as we know at this moment, no one was ever buried in Snake Hill Cemetery after it was bought by Temple Beth Jacob in 1916. In fact, only 3 people had been buried there in the previous 10 years — one in 1907, one in 1908 and one in 1909. There was also a person, Lena Friedman, buried there in March 1906.)

Applebaum, Morris, d. Nov. 1, 1892, age 3

Blechman, Minnie, d. April 27, 1900, age 56 years

Friedman, Lena, wife of Hyman Hoffman, d. March 19, 1906, age 52 years

Hoffman, Heyman, son of Herman Hoffman, b. 1899, d. 1900

Hoffman, Rebecca, daughter of Herman Hoffman, b. Aug. 2, 1876, d. May 15, 1897

Koplan, Abraham, son of Simon Koplan, b. Sept. 9, 1896, d. Oct. 19, 1899

Levey, Abraham, b. Feb. 21, 1897, d. Dec. 4, 1901

Levey, Ruth, b. Oct. 11, 1898, d. Dec. 14, 1901

Pinckes, Blanche, b. March 29, 1897, d. Dec. 19, 1903

Pinckes, Nathan, b. Oct. 6, 1871, d. Jan. 10, 1904 (NOTE: This name was not among those on Ms. Bates’ list, but Tim and I added it when we saw this headstone during our tour of the cemetery today.)

Rehr, Sam, d. Jan. 10, 1909, age 41 years

Rider, Abraham, b. Dec. 7, 1900, d. April 9, 1907

Singer, Ignatz, b. 1865, d. 1908

Zimmerman, Rosie, d. Jan. 6, 1900, age 47

In addition to the above, the 8^th and 9^th-graders of TBJ, during a cleanup of the cemetery on April 26, 2009, also saw the “double headstone” of two “kohens,” a father and son whose inscription indicated they might have “fallen” together in some kind of disaster that might have involved a physical attack on them. Rabbi Freedman believed the stone indicates that they were “martyrs” in some way. Last week, however, Simon Rottenberg of Kiryas Joel visited the cemetery with me (see recent post about it) and said he believes this father and son were merely in an “accident” together.

The kids also saw the relatively well-kept stone of Thelma Dorothy Levinson, mother of Newburgh’s famous “Broadway” Sam Levinson, owner of a popular dry-goods store on B’way and president in the 1950s of the Broadway Businessmen’s Association. But dammit, i sit here at the moment unable to find any record in my files of her date of death. i’ll have to remember to look that up on my next trip out there.

If anybody “Out There” has any info on any of these people or their descendants, feel free to forward it to me, hey?

i know what you’re saying: You’re saying, “Abrams, what did you do for Tisha B’Av?” i’ll tell you.

i spent a lovely hour with a Simon … i believe his last name was … Rottenberg? Honest.

A Kiryas Joel resident, he had read my blog — the very favorite blog of the good people of Kiryas Joel, apparently  (hello, Hasidim! Hello!) — and called me to say he’d like to visit the Snake Hill Cemetery. Since i have the key now, i said sure, i’d be glad to let him in. He showed up at my house as promised, in the standard-issue KJ van with his 3 adorable sons (one tall one, one middle-sized one and one little one), and off we went in two cars, as i had to come back home afterwards to change for work, and they were going straight back to KJ.

This turns out to be one knowledgeable guy. He not only KNEW that Joshua ben Mordecai Falk was Temple Beth Jacob‘s (and therefore Newburgh’s) first rabbi, and that Falk had written the first Hebrew book (other than the Bible or prayerbooks) published in the U.S., but he had actually READ it. All i ever knew about it was that it was a commentary on the Talmud’s “Ethics of the Fathers,” and that he’d come to the U.S. to get it published. Simon asked me why Falk needed to come here from Poland to publish his book,  and I had to tell him I had no idea why. By 1854, wasn’t there  a large Jewish population in Poland, and wouldn’t it have been much easier to publish a book in Hebrew there? That’s a good question for me to look into. He also told me that Falk also had written that he had a disagreement with the TBJ congregation over their interpretation of Judaism — i guess he had never heard of Reform in the Old Country and disapproved of it. After all, in that year, there was still no organization to ordain Reform rabbis. And yet he agreed to serve, albeit very briefly, as rabbi of our Reform congregation. Why, Simon asked? My small knowledge of the history of Judaism in the U.S. comes almost exclusively from Nathan Glazer’s classic “American Judaism,” but i was proud to impart to my new pal one fact i am sure of: In the mid-1800s, the great majority of German-Jewish immigrants to this country were rationalistic, intellectual Reform Jews by nature and philosophy, though there was no “certified Reform” process yet, and the Orthodox came only later, in the great wave of immigration from Eastern Europe of the 1880s and beyond.

Anyhoo, once past the absolutely perfect sign i’d recently purchased from my friend Sue Young at Design by Sue on Liberty Street (“This historic Jewish cemetery, consecrated in the late 1800s, has been the property of Temple Beth Jacob in the City of Newburgh since 1916″) and inside the cemetery gate, now secured by the lovely red padlock i’d bought from Liberty Locksmith, Simon and his sons got to work, lifting up the overturned headstones, digging lichen out of some of the letters, and quickly and surely reading the names and — most impressively — the dates of birth and death of the folks buried there. LIKE A COMPLETE DOPE, i had brought along neither my camera nor, more outrageously, even a pad and pen. And he gave me so much info! i never asked his occupation but he seemed to know everything about cemeteries: He instantly recognized the remnants of a small chain hooked to one, barely-protruding obelisk-type stone as being part of the boundary of a marked-off section that was meant for one family. i hardly thought that THAT was conclusive evidence, so he lifted up a few of the nearby, tumbled-down headstones and, sure enough, they were all from the same family. And he said that the cemetery had been cared for by SOMEONE through about 1900, because he noticed a stone with that date had been once broken, but then repaired with caulk. We now could, if we wanted to at great expense, send off a piece of the caulk (he said, peeling off a piece of it) for analysis and find out in exactly what year it was manufactured.

Simon also, noting the large percentage of infants and young kids buried there (in one family, a sister had died on Dec. 4 of one year, and her brother 10 days later), came up with a novel theory: That perhaps Big Rock Cemetery Association, which conveyed the property to Bikur Cholim Benevolent Society on Feb. 1, 1890, did so because there was some kind of rampant illness (flu-like?) killing so many children that they wanted to create a special area to bury their remains and a special group to handle them. It was already known, i guess, that you can get sick from handling dead bodies of people who died of illness, and maybe most folks didn’t want their loved ones buried near these “Plague People,” either??

An intriguing theory, but it doesn’t explain why the father and son who died in some kind of “disaster” (Simon translated it, “accident”) together, are buried there, too. i’d originally thought maybe it was a cemetery for the very poorest Jews, who couldn’t afford a plot, but i think Rabbi Freedman told me the father and son were “Cohanim” so that idea might not work, either.

So i’m sticking with my fantasy that it was simply a case of, back in the late 1800s, old Moishe decided he hated his former partner Murray, who’d been the firm’s accountant but turned out to be a crook, so he went around the congregation saying, “Hey! You don’t want to lie forever next to that crook Murray in Big Rock Cemetery, do ya? Let’s buy some land in the nice, peaceful woods on the southwest part of the city, and make a cemetery for ourselves out of that!” And he succeeded in getting a few families to go along with that.

What? You got a better idea? Let’s hear it!

The time seemed to fly by, during which Simon advised me, among other things,  that almost ANY foam-type cleanser (“like mousse,” he said, but he couldn’t have meant hair mousse, could he?), sprayed onto headstones, will take the dirt off of them. So now, i’m off to Target to buy some foaming hand soap, and see what happens!

i know you’re not supposed to be happy on Tisha B’Av, but for me, a cooler Tisha B’Av had never happened.

From the inside of a Snapple cap comes a message that should be conveyed ASAP to the Technion Institute in Israel:

“Penguins have an organ above their eyes that converts sea water to fresh water.”

Here’s what to do, guys: Round up some penguin volunteers (maybe by promising them some warm weather, for a change?), and extract a few ounces of that “converter” stuff from their “organs.” See what it’s made of; try to synthesize it in the lab. And when you do indeed duplicate the penguins’ trick of converting sea water to fresh water, be sure to thank me.

There you have it. No charge. You’re welcome.

Today I did something different: I saw a dead white guy floating face-down in Crystal Lake. I mean, usually i don’t.

Tim and i were out there because we’d just visited the Snake Hill Cemetery where, i’m proud to say, i put the padlock on the newly-built gate last week. When we pulled up in my car, there was a white city police SUV parked at the trailhead on Temple Ave., and another, unmarked, car next to it. I parked behind them. We only spent a few minutes there because Tim had to get back to Long Island, but on the way back to the car, right about in the middle of the path to the cemetery (in other words, at just about the middle of the long shore of the lake), there were two tall young men wearing black T-shirts and jeans. They were just hanging out, no fishing poles or anything, and the wording on the T-shirt one was wearing was very juvenile and 8th-grader-ish (something about, “Your girlfriend told me to tell you…”) and i figured they were just two hoods from the ‘hood, enjoying the sunny afternoon. We all said hello to one another, and one very pleasantly asked us how far up the trail we’d gone, and i said, “Just to the cemetery,” and he said he didn’t even know there was a cemetery there, but the other one did. So i started telling him all about our Jewish cemetery that we had finally cleaned up and fenced off, and they seemed greatly interested in it, its age, etc.

Then i asked them what they were doing there and Tim, always observant, said, “Genie, they’re policemen! Don’t you see their guns?!” And only then did i notice that they had police pistols on their hips. They looked at each other and one said to the other, “Is it OK if i tell them?” And the other one just shrugged and smiled and said, “OK, sure,” and so the first one said, “Well, look over there: There’s a man in the lake.”

Sure enough: There was a dead white guy with no shirt, floating face-down, near the opposite shore, and on that shore stood about 5 uniformed officers and three guys dressed in regular clothes. Then our two cops asked us if our car was the blue Civic at the trailhead, and i said yeah, and one said, “You probably better move it, because there’s gonna be a lot more cars parking there in a few minutes.”

So we ran the remaining 30 yards or so to the trailhead, but: Too late! We’d been hemmed in by about 8 cop cars, marked and unmarked. So i ran back to them again to ask them to move a car or two so we could get out, which one of them very quickly did.

Of course, i asked Tim to drive home, so i could call Doyle, the Record’s ace Newburgh reporter. Doyle thought it was very cool, and I’m sure he’ll have the whole story by the time i get to the office tonight.

For a moment there, the idea crossed my mind to not brag about how i’d seen a dead body, but that idea was – much like the white guy — dead in the water.

I have recently taken up again with an old love, Snapple.

I first tried it because I liked its ads in the 1970s and early 80s: “Made from the Best Stuff on Earth.” It seemed to be appealing to environmentalists, and touting the fact that it was healthful, in some way. And its bottles – its very heavy bottles – were made of thick glass, with pretty leaves embossed on them.

And it tasted good. I liked it.

Then in the ’90s, I guess it became a bit passé, and, not being a really big tea-drinker anyway, I sort of forgot about Snapple. In recent years I have been keen to try cool new “hip and healthy” drinks like those made by Harney & Sons, Honest Tea, Tazo, Fuze and other “green” companies. They’re all so darned expensive, though! Meanwhile, I’ve been buying Arizona-brand tea in those tall, 20-oz. cans with “99 cents” printed near the top of them. They have very pretty artwork, and flavors like “ginseng and honey.” How healthy-sounding can you get?! So I figured: Good deal, right?

Then the other day I read a report about new research on BPA, the crap they incorporate into a lot of plastics. Seems BPA-infused plastic bottles can cause cancer. This was pretty well-known; that’s why we all switched to stainless-steel water bottles a year or so ago, and are using our plastic ones as planters.

But the new research showed, depressingly, that BPA is also in most CANS, as well! Like, canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, tuna fish … you name something in my pantry, and it’s in a BPA-riddled can. Most horrifyingly, it’s also in cans of infant formula! I guess BPA in the lining of cans prevents them from rusting, thereby dramatically prolonging shelf-life, and that’s why most food companies use it. There’s one, called Eden Foods, out of Ann Arbor, Mich., that uses some kind of wax-based alternative to BPA. But other than Eden Foods products, lots of luck finding any kind of foods OR drinks that won’t kill you, on your grocers’ shelves.

So I’m listlessly gazing at the refrigerated section of my favorite gas-station/convenience store a week ago, when I notice my old pal Snapple! They still sell them in those heavy, ornate glass bottles. I hoist one out of its row and inspect the ingredients, sure I’ll see corn syrup or its high-fructose cousin. But – YAY! – I’m wrong. It’s got just filtered water, cane sugar, tea leaves, and citric acid (which I think is a good thing).

Best of all, their caps still have “Real Facts” printed on them! Among the things I have learned lately, thanks to my re-acquaintance with Snapple: Neither emus nor kangaroos can walk backwards; and Tennessee was once called “Franklin.”

Snapple: BPA-free, corn syrup-free, a wealth of information and Made from the Best Stuff on Earth.

At my local Price Chopper yesterday, i saw a “shower cleanser” that’s for, it says on the label, all bathtubs, showerheads, tub enclosures and, get this: shower curtains, too. I thought, “Oh, goodie! Now i can cleanse my shower!”

Then i read on to the instructions, where Step One (of 3) says, i swear to God: “Start with a clean, dry tub enclosure.” (Yoohoo: If my tub enclosure were clean and dry …)

i also saw a bottle of lemon juice whose list of ingredients included “artificial lemon flavoring” and, two aisles over, a bottle of dish detergent whose ingredient list included “real lemon juice.” Memo to dish-detergent manufacturer and lemon-juice bottler: Maybe you folks could profitably get together? Just saying.

Things i’ve been meaning to look up when I get a minute but always forget when I’m in front of my computer:

1. difference between “sewage” and “sewerage,” so I can show colleague I was right in changing her headline when I put it on the Web
2. whatever happened to Fred Savage, the cutie from “The Wonder Years”
3. Is Nikki Yanofsky, my new favorite jazz singer, Jewish, or what? And how can I get my younger son to marry her? He’s creeped out by the fact that she’s only 16, but I’m trying to convince him that she’s not stuck at that age, and that by the time he meets her (she’s from Montreal) and learns French so he can speak with her, she might be, like, 21. (At which point, Sam would be 26. Not a bad age difference, I say!)
4. Why do they say it’s good for the stock market when there’s high unemployment?
5. Why can’t we outlaw the buying and selling of loans? When somebody lends you money, they should not be allowed to exchange that loan for dough, nor for other people’s debts, nor to “bundle” it with other debts and sell them all together, etc. If you have a loan, the only thing you should be allowed to do is pay it off; if you don’t, the lender should be allowed to own part of any money you make for the rest of your life till you do pay it off. How is that not fair?
6. True or false: The US can “denaturalize” a naturalized citizen.

7. Whatever happened to Dion’s Belmonts, Gladys Knight’s Pips, Herman’s Hermits, Freddie’s Dreamers, Maurice Williams’ Zodiacs, Smokey Robinson’s Miracles? Did their 1960s songs make them enough money to live on? Did “oldies radio” rescue them?

8. Where is the guy who sang “Wooden Heart,” who fascinated and enchanted me by breaking out into German in the middle of the song?

9. Do we want the dollar to be “strong” or “weak” against the yen, euro, yuan, etc., and why?

10. Whatever happened to the disk jockey Lee Gray, who worked at the Albany, N.Y.-area WTRY (980 AM) in the 1960s and called himself “Beatle-Buddy” Lee Gray? He looms large in my legend because it was by calling his show within the allotted 98 seconds that I won a ticket to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium on Aug. 23, 1966 – the highlight of my life so far (no offense to my husband and offspring, whom it was a thrill marrying/delivering).

Now that, thank the good Lord, the FBI, the ATF, the state police, the Regional Gang Task Force, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and the Newburgh City Police have captured 78 drug dealers in Thursday’s raids, i wonder what happens to all their pit bulls.

These doggies loyally guarded their drug-dens day and night, and you could see young black men walking their pit bulls on the bluff (how sweet!) while arranging deals on their cell-phones 24/7. But when they busted into 44 homes at 6 a.m. Thursday, did they take the dogs, too? The SPCA should have been part of the sweep, pulling up right behind the paddy-wagons.

(Do they have the right to stop barking ’til they hire a pit-bull lawyer? i know a few they could call.)

i just realized why G-d made St. Patrick’s Day be right before Passover:

So you can get rid of all your beer.

Among the bits of paper piled in loose heaps on my desk, which i’ve been trying to organize for months, i find a headline ripped from the Oct. 4 paper that drew attention from the boss as a Bad Example. Needless to say, i wrote it. But i’m keeping it in case i ever get a teaching job again, because i think it’s very instructive.

The head reads, “Italy mudslide toll climbs.” There was a horrible mudslide in Italy with loss of life; this was the “second-day” story, in which rescuers had found even more bodies. The boss insisted that that headline never should have made the paper — instead, he claimed, it should have said, “Italian mudslide …”

Somebody on the desk agreed with him (there’s always one of those), saying, “Yeah, like you don’t say, ‘France soldiers’; you say, ‘FRENCH soldiers.’” The truth is, and when i run a paper, i’ll tell all the copy-editors this: It’s a matter of ear. No, you DON’T say, ‘France soldiers.’ But you DO say, ‘U.S. soldiers’; in fact, we say it all the time. And G-d knows we say, ‘Newburgh police,’ ‘Middletown festival,’ ‘Ulster officials,’ etc., multiple times in every paper.

i say — and i say it often, with thanks to John Lennon each time – ’Whatever gets you through the night.’ i would have had to come up with, in 5 7/8 inches, another way to say the same thing, or reduce the headline by about 5 points (the designers would have bounced that right back to me) to get ‘Italian’ in the place of ‘Italy.’ On deadline.

To me, an “Italian mudslide” is a dessert you’d order at a TGIFriday’s, or a drink at some bar in an Italian neighborhood in Syracuse. It would have espresso coffee in it, and Kahlua, and vanilla ice cream and brandy, and blackberry liqueur. (Wait here a minute while i retch, will you?)

There. All better. Anyway: ‘Italian mudslide’ just didn’t sound right to me, and it still doesn’t. What do you think?