REAL CEMETERY TOURS AT ALL OF OUR CEMETERIES

Many of you have enjoyed the virtual tours on this website and have returned often to these virtual tours to visit your ancestors' graves when you can't visit in person. In response to your excellent suggestions, we began a series of real Cemetery Tours in March 2006 to provide an opportunity for us to visit the graves of our loved ones in person. Because of the popularity of these real tours, we have continued and expanded them to include all of our cemeteries.

These tours provided an excellent opportunity to honor the memory of the New Jersey Jewish Communities of yesteryear; learn interesting historical information about these cemeteries, those interred there, and the communities in which they lived; locate the graves of your relatives (if you don't already know where they are); and observe the current condition of the cemeteries and our progress in restoring them. In addition, we often included a few prayers and poems to enhance the memorial tribute.  Some families arranged in advance to attend these tours as a group, and this enabled many attendees to enhance their experience by seeing cousins they hadn't seen for a long time and, in some cases, meeting cousins they had never met before. We always tried to select dates that we hoped would be both attractive and convenient for as many people as possible. We regret that we had to postpone our cemetery tours during 2020 and 2021, but it was necessary to do so because of the pandemic. We resumed our cemetery tours in 2022 and have had a full schedule of cemetery tours since then. As a result, we have been able to visit all of our cemeteries. We were glad so many of you were able to join us at these events, and we all learned a great deal about the histories of the communities interred at these cemeteries. Our 2024 tours took place on the following Sundays in the locations indicated:

• June 2 (12 noon - 2 pm) - Shaarey Tefiloh Cemeteries (in Perth Amboy and Woodbridge)

• June 9 (12 noon - 2 pm) - McClellan Street section of Newark Jewish Cemeteries (in Newark)

• June 23 (12 noon - 2 pm) - Beth David Memorial Park (in Kenilworth)

• August 4 (12 noon - 2 pm) - Samptown Jewish Cemeteries (in South Plainfield) - weather cancellation

• August 11 (12 noon - 2 pm) - North Arlington Jewish Cemeteries (in North Arlington)

• October 6 (10 am - 1pm) - Newark Jewish Cemeteries (in Newark)
  
  The Community Relations Committee of Greater MetroWest NJ has sponsored Newark Cemetery Visiting Day annually, and we joined them at this year’s event on Sunday, October 6, 2024 (10 am - 1 pm).

Although all Cemetery Tours are free, we request advance registration for all tours, so that we can provide registrants with all details (including the street address at which we plan to meet) and can notify them about any weather-related cancellations. We provide more information about these tours by email to those who register for the tours and to all those on our emailing list.

We plan to continue our Cemetery Tours in 2025 and will announce the schedule early in 2025. We hope you will be able to join us at one or more of our tours, and we hope you will invite your friends and relatives to come too. The tours are free, and all are welcome and invited to attend. Please check back frequently for more information.