New Jewish cemetery in St. Charles, Missouri, marks important milestone

By Ellen Braunstein, Chabad.org

Published March 21, 2025

Colleen Smyth for Chabad

Rabbi Chaim Landa, co-director of the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish Center of St. Charles County, and Colby Hitchcock, director of operations at Baue Funeral Homes, unveil plans for the new Jewish cemetery in St. Charles, Missouri.

A new Jewish cemetery will soon be consecrated in St. Charles County, Missouri, under the rabbinic leadership of Rabbi Chaim Landa, co-director of the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish Center of St. Charles County.

The plans for the cemetery, which will be owned and operated by Baue Funeral Homes, were unveiled at this morning’s Gala Breakfast held at the Bogey Hills Country Club, celebrating five years of a “St. Charles Jewish Revival.”

“This is such an important milestone for our St. Charles Jewish Community,” said Landa, who moved to St. Charles County with his wife, Bassy, in 2019. “It will ensure that every Jew in this County can receive a Jewish burial with dignity.”

Rabbi Landa was spurred to action when a regular member of a Torah study group he led passed away. The man, a longtime Jewish native of St. Charles, had been unwell for some time. Landa noted that he was spiritually-inclined and often asked questions about the Jewish perspective on the afterlife. After learning that the man had died, the rabbi found out that the family wasn’t planning on giving him a traditional Jewish burial. Not realizing h ow important such a burial is according to Jewish law, they’d donated his body to the Washington University School of Medicine.

“Right away, I thought, ‘I wish I had had a conversation with him,’” Landa recalled. Then he realized that perhaps it wasn’t too late, afterall.

With the support of the deceased’s wife, the rabbi worked hard to get through to someone at the Body Donor Program at WashU Med. “We’ve never gotten a request like this,” they told him.

The importance of a proper burial in Jewish law and tradition cannot be underestimated. “For dust you are, and to dust you will return,” G‑d told Adam, the first human being. Chabad.org’s extensive section on Death and Mourning quotes King Solomon, who said: “And the earth returns to the land as it was, and the spirit returns to G‑d, who gave it.” The article explains that “the next stage in the continuing saga of a human life is that the body should return to the earth, the source of all physical life, and be reunited with it, just as the soul returns to its Divine root.”

Taking part in the proper burial of a Jewish person is considered a mitzvah of the highest order. Maimonides explains that even the High Priest, who was prohibited from attending his own family’s funerals, was required to take it upon himself to personally bury a met mitzvah, an abandoned Jewish body that had no one to attend to its proper burial.

With the university’s cooperation and the help of donors, Landa was able to halt cremation and bring the Jewish man to a traditional burial.

Rabbi Chaim Landa speaks at the Gala Breakfast. - Colleen Smyth for Chabad — Rabbi Chaim Landa speaks at the Gala Breakfast. Colleen Smyth for Chabad

Bucking national trends

Based on the most recent demographic study, it is estimated that 5,800 Jews live in St. Charles County. That represents 10 percent of the Jewish community in the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area.

“I did not realize the extent of the community in St. Charles,” explained Colby Hitchcock, director of operations at Baue Funeral Homes – who since 1935 has been a proud community supporter – in a video presented at the Gala Breakfast. “I realized very quickly … that the Jewish community in St. Charles County really didn’t have a very welcoming situation in dealing with end of life care. I realized we had unknowingly marginalized a significant segment of our community.”

Through Landa, Hitchcock learned about the intricate laws that surround death and burial in Jewish tradition. “How can I make this a place where our Jewish fellows can gather and feel comfortable knowing they have that sacred place right in our county?” Hitchcock asked himself. “So, I’m happy to announce that … St. Charles Memorial Gardens will have the first Jewish cemetery in St. Charles County. And with that we are very proud.”

Landa said that the new Jewish cemetery is a concrete step towards bucking the alarming trend toward cremation within the Jewish community.

Some 60 percent of Jewish deaths in North America are followed by cremations, according to the National Association of Chevra Kadisha, and unfortunately that percentage seems to be rising—unless something is done about it.

“The Torah teaches us to take care of someone who died—it’s an issue of respect,” said Rabbi Elchonon Zohn, founding president of the National Association of Chevra Kadisha (NASCK). Zohn and Rabbi Jay Lyons, assistant director of NASCK, were instrumental in guiding the St. Charles Jewish community through the many intricacies involved to consecrate a Jewish cemetery. “This has been the tradition for thousands of years, and I’m very happy that St. Charles County is getting this as well.”

Having recognized the cremation crisis in the Jewish community, Landa believes that the way forward is not for rabbis and community leaders to throw up their hands, but to do something. He’s done so by being proactive and educating Jewish people about proper burials and creating viable alternatives to cremation.

“Having these conversations within the community led directly to a local funeral home going all in to consecrate a Jewish cemetery,” he said. “Aiding a Jew in burial is referred to as a ‘Chesed Shel Emet,’ ‘a true act of kindness.’ This is a kindness we owe every single Jew, no matter where they are.”