Following the closure of its First, Second and Third cemeteries in Manhattan during the first half of the 19th century, in 1851 Congregation Shearith Israel established a seven-acre cemetery in the Cypress Hills area that straddles the Brooklyn-Queens border. The Fourth Shearith Israel Cemetery is one of three burial grounds that form Beth Olam Cemetery, … Continue reading Fourth Shearith Israel Cemetery / Beth Olam Cemetery
West of the Sixth Avenue is a large open space which testifies silently yet strongly to the time when all this part of the island was quiet country side and the city still was very far away. It is the Jewish graveyard—the Beth Haim, or Place of Rest . . . the Beth Haim was … Continue reading Third Shearith Israel Cemetery
Among the more notable of the remnants of the time when the Greenwich region for the most part was open country are those at the southeast corner of Eleventh Street and Sixth Avenue: the little triangular graveyard and the two old framed dwellings which now rest on the lines of the street and the avenue, … Continue reading Second Shearith Israel Cemetery
This small graveyard, on St. James Place near Chatham Square in present-day Chinatown, is the oldest surviving Jewish burial ground in New York City. It was used by Congregation Shearith Israel, the first Jewish congregation in North America. Shearith Israel was formed in 1654 in New Amsterdam by Sephardic Jews from Brazil and was the … Continue reading First Shearith Israel Cemetery
In 1825, a group of members of Shearith Israel—the only Jewish congregation in New York City at that time—broke off to form B’nai Jeshurun (Sons of Israel). Most of the 32 founding members of B’nai Jeshurun were immigrants from England, Holland, Germany and Poland, and they incorporated as New York’s first Ashkenazic congregation, holding services … Continue reading B’nai Jeshurun Cemetery, 32nd Street
