December 2020

Page A19 DECEMBER 2020 FUNERAL HOME & CEMETERY NEWS Se c t i on A 1-800-868-9950 Experience MobileFH ® Texting T H E A N S W E R I N G S E R V I C E I N A C L A S S O F I T S O W N Garden of Remembrance Memorial Park Continued from Page A18 rectors and small, dedicated staff, is fulfilling its mission of “Kavod Hamet,” honoring the deceased, a most important and valued “mitzvah” (commandment) in Jewish law en- abling and requiring one to perform an obligation for which they cannot be thanked or repaid. “The Garden of Remembrance (Gan Zikaron)Memorial Park enables the Jewish community to honor loved ones, respect the bereaved, and preserve the legacy of generations of Jewish life,” explains Hank Levine, president of the nonprofit cemetery. “We serve the Greater Washington Jewish community and its Congregations one family at a time,” concludes Levine. For nearly twenty years, Sheldon Grosberg served as the founding Executive Director of the Garden of Remembrance until his passing in late 2019. He was a guiding hand and in- fluence on the cemetery’s design, development, and operation. In January 2020, Glenn Easton, a 35 year Jewish communal professional and synagogue administrator with extensive cem- etery and bereavement experience was hired as new executive director to manage, expand, and sustain the memorial park. “I feel blessed to have been given the opportunity to build upon the strong foundation and most meaningful mission of Gan Zikaron,” shares Easton who previously served as exec- utive director of both B’nai Israel and Adas Israel congrega- tions. “It is inspiring to work with a board of directors and a 27-congregation advisory committee that are always looking for ways to expand our service to the commu- nity and sustain that service for generations to come,” he concludes. One way that the Gar- den of Remembrance plans on expanding its service to the community is by build- ing a memorial chapel on the premises. In the plan- ning and fundraising stages for nearly twenty years, the memorial park has plans to break ground on the 150- seat chapel and memori- al center in the spring. The new memorial chapel will be located across from the beautiful gazebo that has hosted memorial services, musical programs, and fam- ily gatherings for over a de- cade at the memorial park. Another service to the Jew- ish community, in accor- dance with Jewish tradition, the Garden of Remembrance accepts and buries worn prayerbooks, Torah scrolls, and other sacred texts con- taining the Hebrew name for God in its “genizah” of six burial sites. As a nonprofit, Jewish orga- nization, the Garden of Re- membrance is committed to supporting the larger Jewish community and has awarded small grants and contributed thousands of dollars to many Jewish educational, religious, and social service organiza- tions throughout the com- munity. It is an Agency of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and invests part of its Endowed Care Trust in the federation’s United Jew- ish Endowment Fund. The Board and Partner Congregations of Gan Zi- karon highly value the “mitz- vah” (commandment) of “bal tashchit,” the commandment to preserve the environment. As the first cemetery inMary- land to be certified as a hybrid Green Burial Cemetery by the Green Burial Council of North America, the Garden of Remem- brance recently opened a Green Burial Gardens section of the cemetery which prohibits the use of concrete liners and limits memorial markers. In addition, the memorial park is work- ing with Montgomery County Department of Environmen- tal Protection and the Chesapeake Bay Trust on creating Rain Gardens throughout the property to support county watershed restoration, sustain native plantings, and serve as an education- al center for the preservation of the local environment. Like most organizations and family activities, the Garden of Remembrance has been deeply affected by the onset of the coronavirus. Funeral services have been limited in size, require masks and social distancing, and have been held graveside rath- er than at synagogues or funeral home chapels. Through the use of staff assisted live video streaming, small funeral atten- dance has been magnified to include a large number of fam- ily and friends from throughout the world. A recent “Zoom” funeral service included family from Australia, England, Is- rael, and Southern California – an opportunity to electroni- cally participate and embrace the bereaved previously unused prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. The cemetery has also had to request families to bring their own shovels and suspended its practice of distributing umbrellas in the rain and blankets in cold weather to avoid spreading the virus. The Garden of Remembrance (Gan Zikaron) Memorial Park begins its third decade of service to the Greater Wash- ington Jewish community, honoring the deceased and caring for the living with devotion, passion, dignity, and respect as tradition wishes, “for 120 years” other synagogues and frater- nal organizations. Later, a few commercial, for-profit Jewish cemeteries were established.