Beyond the Grave: The Birthplace of Judaism in Charleston

Growing up, the only religion I really knew about was Christianity, until a few weeks ago when my class members and I took a trip to a Jewish cemetery on Coming St. here in Charleston. I learned all about this religion and how unique it is from the help of our two tour guides, who are loyal members to the Jewish Synagogue a few blocks down. "The cemetery was established in 1764." We were told when how long ago it was built.

One thing that really surprised me is that their cemeteries and Synagogues aren't connected, something very different from what I've grown up knowing. Any time I passed a church, there was a cemetery either behind it or beside it.

In this particular cemetery, there is 800 people buried but there's only 500 headstones. Another thing I learned on this field trip was that "South Carolina is the birthplace for reformed Judaism" we were told from one of our tour guides.

Here are several headstones that I discovered in the cemetery:

Headstone

Theodore Besitzer

Confederate soldier

My tour guide mentioned that one day (in the past few years) when they hired a man to come cut down a large tree in the back of the cemetery, he took a picture while he was raised a few feet above the cemetery and later discovered a shadow of a soldier around this area. They believed it was Theodore, and assumed he was upset over not having a headstone next to his friends so a family donated money for him to be given one right in the very spot he was seen!)