Cemetery History
Tucked behind a wrought iron fence on M-50 lies the modest one-acre parcel of land that has served as the final resting place for Temple Beth Israel’s Jewish congregants since 1859. The first of Jackson’s Jewish citizens to be buried there in May 1859 was Rosa Hirsch, the young wife of merchant and tailor Jacob Hirsch, a German Jewish immigrant who arrived in Jackson in 1845. Rabbi Leibman Adler of Detroit’s Temple Beth El consecrated the burial ground and conducted the funeral rites, which, according to reports in The Israelite, were preceded by a funeral procession not often witnessed in a country place. Rosa’s husband, Jacob, was buried next to her upon his death in 1871. Since Rosa Hirsch’s interment, the cemetery has housed prominent Temple members and Jackson citizens, such as Temple founder Bernhard Wolff, the Temple’s first president Henry Lang, nineteenth-century international financier Joseph Hannaw, scrap metal and steel manufacturer Louis Glick, and Temple benefactor and corset manufacturer I. M. Dach. The cemetery also serves as the final resting place of veterans of World War I, World War II, and the first Gulf War. Two plots contain worn siddurs.
Temple Beth Israel’s cemetery takes a prominent place among Michigan’s oldest Jewish congregations. Traverse City boasts the state’s oldest synagogue in continuous use. Lumber baron Perry Hannah donated land for the city’s Congregation Beth El synagogue, and the congregation’s modest wood frame building was formally dedicated in March 1886. Detroit’s Temple Beth El claims Michigan’s oldest Jewish cemetery still in existence, which was established in 1851 and is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Eastside Historic Cemetery District. The cemetery accepted its last burial in 1953. Although Jackson’s Temple Beth Israel cemetery took its first burial eight years following the founding of Beth El’s cemetery, the Temple Beth Israel cemetery continues to accept burials, making it Michigan’s oldest Jewish cemetery in continuous use.
Collage of photos from services at our Jewish cemetery on September 13th, 2009:
