Your Email:

Friend's Email:

Note: (optional)

Subject:

Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/35155/full/35155/nothing-spooky-about-cemetery-photo-exhibit-at-marin-jcc/ <br /><br /> <b>Nothing spooky about cemetery photo exhibit at Marin JCC</b> <br /> Friday, June 13, 2008 | by <p>greg m. schwartz </p> <br /><br /><p>Most people don’t like to spend much time in cemeteries. But cultural historian Marilyn Yalom and her photographer son Reid became so interested in American cemeteries that they spent three years crisscrossing the country to document them in their new book, “The American Resting Place.”<br /><br /> The 330-page tome provides the source material for a current gallery exhibit at the Osher Marin JCC in San Rafael, running through July 1. The exhibit features about a dozen black-and-white photos — all of them enlarged and museum-quality — of Jewish cemeteries. <br /><br /> “These are handmade silver prints, not digital ones,” says Reid, a full-time professional photographer who grew up in Palo Alto, was bar mitzvahed at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills and now lives in Mill Valley.<br /><br /> Included in the JCC exhibit are photos from the Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I., the oldest synagogue in the U.S., with a cemetery dating to 1677; a Jewish cemetery in California’s Gold Rush Country dating back 150 years; and the Congregation Beth Elohim Burial Ground in Charleston, S.C., which dates to 1764.<br /><br /> “It’s so revealing, not only of Jewish history, but the in-fighting that goes on in all religions,” Marilyn says. “You end up having three cemeteries side by side.”<br /><br /> For example, at the Beth Elohim site in Charleston, there’s an Orthodox section, a breakaway Reform group and even a small addition for a Jewish man who was married to a Christian woman.<br /><br /> The book includes 64 photos and presents an examination of graveyards that illuminates the religious and ethnic history of Americans.<br /><br /> “Looking at cemeteries is a look at how our culture deals with death,” Reid says. “[Cemeteries are] not a monoculture ... the history of the country is multiple cultures coming and each one leaving its mark [in its burial practices].”<br /><br /> Marilyn, a senior scholar at the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, came up with the idea for the project while making visits to her mother’s grave at the Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto.<br /><br /> A former professor of French and comparative literature, she had already written books on literature and women’s history, but something caught her attention at Alta Mesa.<br /><br /> As she wrote in the book, she noticed an “eye-catching array of tombstones” representing “a diversity of religions and ethnicities.” As a cultural historian, she was inspired to document it.<br /><br /> The mother-son team spent three years visiting about 250 cemeteries and burial grounds across the country, covering 400 years of history. The oldest site they visited was in Jamestown, Va., dating back to 1607.<br /><br /> Reid says they sought out the gravesites of various cultures, sites that showed cultural diversity and also sites that were historically significant.<br /><br /> The search led them to Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass., which was founded in 1831 as America’s first landscaped/ garden cemetery; to ancient burial grounds in Hawaii; and even to a pet cemetery at the Presidio military base in San Francisco.<br /><br /> “[The book] really explores a lot of ethnic issues,” says Reid. “We didn’t set out to do that ... but it became apparent that so many different cultural groups had come to America ... and brought their own cultural traditions.”<br /><br /> A further explanation for the mother and son’s interest in the topic comes from a sentiment in the book’s preface, where Marilyn writes, “We like to think that visitors [to the cemeteries] help rescue the dead from oblivion.”<br /><br /> <br><br /><br /> <b>“The American Resting Place,”</b. an exhibit of photos and text, will be on display through July 1 at the Osher Marin JCC, 200 N. San Pedro Road, San Rafael. Free, with donations to help support gallery exhibits and programs. For more information, visit <a href="http://www.marinjcc.org">http://www.marinjcc.org</a> or call (415) 444-8000. </p> <p> <b>“The American Resting Place”</b> by Marilyn Yalom, with photographs by Reid S. Yalom (363 pages, Houghton Mifflin Co., $30)<br /><br /> </p> <p> </p>

Please enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below: