“‘We just can’t keep accepting donations,’” Rabbi Uri Topolosky recalled being told by a staff member of the Garden of Remembrance Memorial Park in 2022.
Topolosky had collected worn Jewish texts and materials throughout the school year from Berman Hebrew Academy and Kehilat Pardes – The Rock Creek Synagogue, where he works.
He had taken a truckload of these materials for burial at the Clarksburg cemetery, something he had done every June for years to honor the Jewish ritual of burying damaged prayer books and Torah scrolls.
But so had many others in the community for years, often with disregard to what qualifies for burial under Jewish law, creating a large backlog. According to Jewish law, the only materials that require ritual burial are those that contain God’s name.
“People were dropping off anything and everything that had a Hebrew letter on it, like a Hebrew school workbook or Jewish calendar, or computer discs or the kippot from every bar mitzvah or wedding they ever went to, that are not really appropriate or necessary to be buried,” Glenn Easton, the executive director of Garden of Remembrance Memorial Park, said.
“We were being overwhelmed by boxes and boxes of things that didn’t need to be ritually buried,” he said, adding that the cemetery’s first decade, from 2000 to 2010, saw a “huge backlog” of near constant drop-offs.
Topolosky said these texts filled a “massive pit” in the cemetery, but that half of the material wasn’t sacred, thus unnecessary to be buried.
Topolosky was asked to turn the truck around and come back in the spring once another plot had been dug. Then he had an idea.
“I said to Glenn, ‘What if I organize a campaign to collect the entire community’s genizah — all their items that need to be buried — then I organize a team to sort it all? And then I make sure we only bring you what’s appropriate on one particular day?’” Topolosky recalled.
Easton agreed, adding that he would volunteer part of the cemetery’s property and the burial service for what became the biannual Garden of Remembrance Genizah Day. The cemetery designated two days of the year for community members to drop off their genizah items. The second Genizah Day each year is before Passover; the next one is on March 30, 2025.
On Dec. 8, Topolosky and the Berman/Kehilat Pardes community attended their second Genizah Day, named for the storage space in a synagogue or cemetery where old religious items are collected for burial.
Community members brought their genizah items to the cemetery, and the Garden of Remembrance staff used the following days to assess the materials and dig a burial plot of appropriate size.
“We have limited space,” Easton said of the Garden of Remembrance. “So [Genizah Day] really focuses the space that we’re using to bury religious articles and books in a more manageable way.”
Throughout November, Topolosky facilitated the book drive, a partnership between the Washington Board of Rabbis, the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, and the Garden of Remembrance Memorial Park, hosted at Kehilat Pardes and Berman Hebrew Academy.
He and fellow local rabbis and their congregants sorted the content into three categories: books to be recycled since they were so old or damaged, books to be buried because they’re sacred text, and books that were still in good condition for resale.
Topolosky said he sold thousands of these usable books for one dollar apiece in the Berman lobby and adjacent hallways. The books, written in English and Hebrew, covered Judaism, Israel, or Jewish history. “I was able to find homes for so many new books,” Topolosky said. “So many [Berman] students saw all these books come in and got to appreciate the value of our rich textual tradition and get books themselves.”
He added that he invited prospective converts and “beginners to Judaism” to fill a bag with the gently used books for the “first start of their Jewish library.”
The materials for burial filled around 550 boxes, Topolosky said, which he loaded onto a truck on Dec. 4. The first Genizah Day book drive, in 2022, saw about 300 boxes of material.
“It was a great idea, good partnership, a nice mitzvah project that [Topolosky] and his students are doing, and it certainly helps the entire community,” Easton said.
Topolosky said he is grateful for the space dedicated to genizah in the Garden of Remembrance, the only nonprofit, multicongregational Jewish cemetery in the Washington, D.C., area.
“They’re offering this as a kindness to the community, and as a servant, we should all feel really indebted to them for prioritizing this type of sacred act,” Topolosky said. “The fact that they are dedicating space — which, as you know, is not a small thing in a sanctuary — and manpower and signaling that they share these values is a wonderful thing on their part.”
Easton is not aware of any other Jewish cemetery in the Greater Washington area that offers a genizah at no cost to the community.
“So we take the obligation seriously, and we’re honored that we’re able to provide the service to the Jewish community,” Easton said.
Topolosky said he plans to organize another community book drive two years from now in partnership with the Garden of Remembrance.
“I think we’re all in this together, recognizing the need to take care of our sacred text,” Topolosky said.
