Barnett Brickner

Rabbi Barnett R. Brickner was the rabbi of Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple, the oldest Jewish congregation in Cleveland, from 1925 until his death in 1958. Brickner was a prominent figure in not only in the Cleveland Jewish community, but in national and sometimes international affairs. During his tenure as the rabbi of Anshe Chesed, he increased its membership to the point that it became the largest Reform Judaism congregation in the world. He founded a Zionist organization called Young Judea, was a founder of the National Jewish Education Association, and was a labor arbiter in addition to a rabbi. He served as president of the Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education and the Cleveland Zionist Association. During World War II, he served as the chairman of the committee that oversaw Jewish chaplains and toured the war front to report on the troops and chaplains for the president, duties for which he became the first rabbi to receive the Medal of Merit. At the age of 65, Rabbi Brickner died of injuries sustained in car accident in Spain. The epitaph in English reads “Thou hast made him little less than God, thou hast crowned him with glory and honor.”

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To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die

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A Grave Concern: Cenotaphs

I found some cenotaphs while looking through my photos from Mayfield Cemetery.  A cenotaph is a memorial for someone who is interred elsewhere.

On the front of Soloman Skall’s stone is a small marker for his wife Lottie, whose body rests in a mausoleum in New York.

It’s a little hard to read, but Tsiviah and Abraham Coopersmith died and were buried in Europe.

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An eternal flame?

I think most people who have visited cemeteries with larger, more elaborate monuments and particularly mausoleums are familiar with the funerary symbol of the inverted torch. You can see the torches descending from the wreaths on the Winslow mausoleum at Lake View Cemetery, their fires still burning despite their unnatural position.

But I did have to read Stories in Stone before I realized that you will see two varieties of the inverted torch in cemeteries, one extinguished and one still aflame. Both symbolize death, but the inverted burning torch alludes to eternal life.

Both the monuments for D. S. Possons and the Cottingham family have burning inverted torches on them.

There are a few more examples from Mayfield Cemetery on mausoleum doors for the Sampliner and Fisher families.

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