Jane Snaider Created a Legacy for the Jewish Cemetery Association of Greater New Haven
“My grandparents immigrated to New Haven from Vienna and Russia in the early 1900s. They joined and helped to establish synagogues and cemeteries and all four stayed and raised their families here. When I was a child, my father and I would visit his dad at a cemetery on Fitch Street. I remember it well—it all seemed pretty normal. But as the years passed and my other three grandparents died, I noticed that the cemeteries were in disarray: the stairs were crumbling, the iron gates broken, gravestones overturned, graffiti on gravestones, trash all around, and weeds instead of grass. It was very disturbing to me, so unsettling, so unfair that this sacred resting place became so dreary and run-down, making the visit to my grandparents’ graves so sad. I always brought the most colorful flowers I found to lay on their graves, hoping that would put a smile on their faces.
Additionally, my parents and several aunts and uncles are buried in New Haven/West Haven, and I will be laid to rest there, too.
The thousands of people that found their final resting place in these cemeteries deserved better. Over the years I wondered what I could do to improve the conditions of these cemeteries, but truthfully, nothing came to me.
I did notice in recent years that the cemeteries were looking so much better. I inquired and learned about the Jewish Cemetery Association of Greater New Haven: a group of caring, compassionate people who came together in 2007 to discuss the problem and find solutions to restore and maintain these abandoned cemeteries. I was delighted to join the Board and volunteer in 2020, and I accepted the Board’s request to Chair the Create a Jewish Legacy program, a fundraising project that would create an endowment large enough to care for these cemeteries for years to come. I take my volunteer commitments very seriously. Not only do I give my time and expertise, but I give financial support as well. I was excited to leave a bequest to the JCAGNH in honor of my family and all those laid to rest, especially the pioneers that founded the early synagogues, lodges, and cemeteries.” –— Jane