Misguided To Mt. Sinai In Fairview

In 2000, when I was looking for the burial place of a Jewish woman who died in 1918,  I ended up searching the Jewish orphan cemeteries. An orphan cemetery is one that is no longer actively maintained by a congregation, usually because the congregation no longer exists. Mt. Sinai was begun by an association of early Allentown Jews in 1875.  Eventually, the group established a synagogue, which in turn started its own cemetery in 1928 on Walbert Avenue.  After that time mostly only spouses of earlier burials were interred in Mt. Sinai.  The last such funeral had occurred in 1976.

I was intrigued by the new Levine marker, near the front of the Mt. Sinai section.  A few years later I took it upon myself to locate any remaining family members.  Joseph was 103 when he passed away, so when I met his son at a local diner for coffee,  he himself was an elderly man.  Years earlier the family had moved from Brooklyn to the Pennsylvania countryside.  When Joseph's wife died in 2000, he contacted Boyko's Funeral Home in Macungie.  When he asked Boyko about a Jewish cemetery, Boyko guided, or misguided him to one that he owned in Fairview.  Boyko did not mention that the cemetery was no longer affiliated with a congregation, or that there hadn't been a Jewish funeral there in twenty four years. Six years later Joseph joined his wife at Mt. Sinai.

A few years ago Boyko also buried another Jew, a hispanic man, in Mt. Sinai.  These burials are assuredly taking place in plots that long ago belonged to other families. However,  at this point in time I don't think that anybody will know or care. Several years ago I asked a local woman about a very prominent marker at Mt Sinai with her family name. She told me that her parents and grandparents are buried in the Walbert Avenue cemetery, but she recalled that her great-grandfather was buried somewhere else.  She didn't know about Mt. Sinai at Fairview, nor was she ever there. When Jews visit a cemetery they leave a pebble on the gravestone.  There are no visitors to Mt. Sinai.