Jewish Cemeteries and Tourism: Integrating Visitors but Preserving the Sanctity

Jewish cemeteries range from sprawling urban expanses with scores of thousands of burials to tiny eroded graveyards abandoned and lost amid rampant woodland. Grave markers range from simple matzevot, to slabs of stone decorated with intricate carved iconography and epitaphs, to imposing family tombs, sometimes designed by leading architects, to the venerated graves of both religious sages and noted secular personalities. An estimated 20,000 Jewish cemeteries existed in Europe before World War II. Only around half of them are believed to survive today. Opening cemeteries and other heritage sites to tourists and other visitors is a key way of putting them on the cultural (and physical) map, keeping them in the public eye, protecting them, and in some cases earning income. But what kind of tourism? Encouraging tourism and other visits involves management, promotion, logistics, and continuing conservation strategies: Potential visitors need to know about the site – but they need to be able to see it. Moreover, Jewish cemetery tourism cannot be divorced from Jewish heritage tourism as a whole. Nor, importantly, can it ignore the sacred role of Jewish cemeteries in Jewish religious tradition: Cemeteries are sacred places but also cultural heritage sites. This talk will explore some of the ways that Jewish cemeteries can be integrated into tourism (and other visits by the public) while respecting the sanctity of the place, setting out background and elaborating on several specific examples.