Longmont's Jewish community has a new home for eternal rest

On the edge of Longmont, north of Colo. 66 on Colo. 287, Foothills Gardens of Memory is a family-owned cemetery with a focus on natural and ecologically-friendly burials, according to owner Wes Hood. This year, the cemetery added a section dedicated to those connected to the Jewish faith.

Hood said that Foothills Garden of Memory is young as far as cemeteries go, a little over 65 years old now. Because the cemetery is young, it takes hundreds of years to get full and there is plenty of space to expand on its 42 acres, he explained.

The Jewish section of Foothills Gardens of Memory, called the King David Memorial Garden, came about through Hood’s experience working with the Jewish community in his career as a funeral director before he took ownership of the cemetery.

Hood saw a need for the Jewish community in the area to hold their burial traditions near where they lived so their families could visit. Some families were buying plots in other states because cemeteries in Colorado with Jewish sections that allowed for necessary traditions were already full, he said. According to the International Jewish Cemetery Project, there are only a few dozen cemeteries in the state with dedicated Jewish sections. 

“I learned a lot working through the rabbis and saw just how meaningful it is to them to be buried this way,” Hood said.

Cemeteries or graveyards are places to honor and bury the dead. Burial traditions vary widely across cultures and religious faiths, but most Abrahamic religions require burials in sanctified ground. In Jewish culture, the traditions vary heavily depending on individual synagogues and the owners or managers of a cemetery, said Susan Scruggs of the Longmont Shabbat Group. Some Jewish cemeteries won’t allow individuals with tattoos or non-Jewish family members sharing plots or cremation, she explained.

“When (Hood) and I started looking into rules, I thought we didn’t need to follow so many rules because we aren’t conservative or Orthodox, we’re just Jewish,” Scruggs said.

Scruggs worked with the rabbi from Congregation B’Nai Torah in Westminster to develop a simple set of rules that would keep with Jewish memorial traditions without being too restrictive to families. 

Hood’s only requirement was that the plots kept up the natural prairie and the burials were environmentally conscious.

“It turned out traditional Jewish burials were already very green,” Scruggs laughed. “Environmentally we were ahead of our time.”

There is no embalming or preservation of the body in Jewish culture, Scruggs said. The body can be buried in a plain pine casket with holes in the bottom, wicker baskets or shrouds so the body can return to the earth, she explained. 

King David Memorial Garden was consecrated on Oct. 24, Scruggs said, and as of yet nobody has been buried in the section of cemetery. However, at least a half-dozen plots have been sold. Hood said the cemetery has six acres set aside for the Jewish community but can expand as needed.