As Philip Weiss, president of Rosenbloom Monument Company, and his crew worked last Wednesday (Feb. 22) to reset most of the 154 headstones at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery that had been toppled, he and I got to talking. Weiss said it would take five guys of average height and weight about 15 minutes to push over 150 headstones. 

Resetting the stones, however, takes much more time and effort, he noted.

The desecrated stones were located in the southeast area of the 129-year-old Orthodox cemetery, which is one of its oldest sections. Most were originally set in the 1930s or earlier; Weiss explained that the sealant between the headstone and the base had deteriorated, likely due to weather and the elements, so they were easier to upset. 

“Many were tall and the taller they are, the easier they are to push down because you have more leverage,” Weiss said, noting that the stones weighed between 400 and 1,000 pounds. 

After learning of the cemetery attack, Weiss said he contacted its executive director, Anita Feigenbaum.  “I said, ‘Look, there is a job that needs to be done and we want to do this,’” said Weiss, 62, who is not Jewish but has long worked with local Jewish cemeteries. “We are doing this gratis — there was no mention of money. I went to Anita at 7:30 Tuesday morning (Feb. 21) and said, ‘We are ready, willing and able to start work on this. I’m not pushing, I’m not telling you what to do. But I’m here and if you say go, I’ll call my guys.’ She said go and I called my guys and they were (at the cemetery) by 9 a.m.”

By the end of the day, Weiss and company had reset 100 or so of the disturbed stones. By 2 p.m. the next day, an hour before Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens and Vice President Mike Pence were set to spearhead the cemetery cleanup, nearly all of the stones had been repositioned and resealed.

Sixteen had been too damaged to reset — many of these were made out of more porous materials like marble and limestone — so new granite stones will need to be made to replace the broken ones, running anywhere between $1,000 and $5,000, Weiss estimated.

“My main intent in asking Anita to get started right away was so that all the stones could be picked up and family members wouldn’t have to see their family monuments laying on the ground and feel all this anxiety,” Weiss said.

He and others who work in local cemeteries said that sometimes when the weather gets warm, as it was the weekend that the Chesed Shel Emeth vandalism occurred, youngsters will trespass when it is dark outside and knock over a few headstones, just because they can. However, none could remember an attack on a Jewish cemetery this large in scope in recent years.

Then, just a few days later, another one occurred at the Jewish Mount Carmel Cemetery in northeast Philadelphia, where roughly 100 gravestones were toppled last weekend.

“Typically, we don’t see much of this kind of vandalism nationwide, and certainly not in Canada,” said Dan Brodsky, chairman of the Jewish Cemetery Association of North America and director of New Mt. Sinai Cemetery. “In the United States, we see three or four a year at Jewish cemeteries. That’s accounting for situations where there might be some stones toppled and we’re not sure whether it was natural, because of their age, or if someone pushed them over.” 

University City Police are investigating the vandalism at Chesed Shel Emeth but as of Tuesday, no arrests had been made. The same is true in Philadelphia. The two attacks, along with nearly 90 bomb threats made against 70-plus Jewish Community Centers and institutions over the last two months, have stoked fears of rising anti-Semitism and hate nationwide. 

Paul Goldenberg, director of the Secure Community Network, which advises Jewish groups and institutions on security, told JTA that he fears cemetery attacks could become a trend like the wave of JCC bomb threats, the latest of which came Monday.

“There’s a feeling that the cemeteries may become a place where vandals may become more proactive,” he told JTA. “Right now we’re concerned about copycats.”

While law enforcement is mindful that these attacks could qualify as a hate crime, to prosecute them as such, they must understand the intent of those committing the crime. Without any suspects, intent cannot be determined. No anti-Semitic grafitti was found at either Jewish cemetery. 

Nevertheless, say security experts, cemeteries are particularly vulnerable because they are large, sparsely staffed and generally easy to penetrate at night.

Chesed Shel Emeth has two locations — the one in University City with more than 20,000 grave plots and another in Chesterfield, with roughly 5,000. Together, it has seven paid staff, including four groundskeepers and a supervisor. The University City location has a fence of varying heights running around its perimeter as well as security cameras at its front gate. While surveillance footage is being examined, so far it hasn’t produced any leads.  

Mount Carmel in Philly has 5,000 graves, no paid staff, and only a sidewalk separating it from the street, according to JTA. It also has no security cameras.

On Tuesday, security experts visited Chesed Shel Emeth to see what measures could be taken to make it less penetrable. Financial assistance has been streaming in to help the cemetery, including more than $142,000 raised by Muslim activists. Feigenbaum said that while security assessment has begun, “we haven’t discussed cost yet because we don’t know what all our options are.”

Feigenbaum said the only donations she has seen thus far have been the ones made through the cemetery’s website. She also isn’t sure what, if anything, insurance will cover as a result of the attack.

One thing she does know is that she has no interest in making the cemetery at either location, University City or Chesterfield, a fortress. 

“These are residential communities and we want the community at large to be comfortable with us,” she said. “We want our cemeteries to be safe and welcoming at both locations.”