A Connecticut woman has agreed to settle her lawsuit against her Jewish congregation over the burial of a black woman in the synagogue’s cemetery.
Maria Balaban’s lawyer says he and an attorney for the Congregation Ahavath Achim in Colchester reached a tentative deal Wednesday, in the middle of the trial. Terms aren’t being disclosed. The congregation’s board and members must approve the agreement.
The 73-year-old Balaban sued the congregation last year over the burial of Juliet Steer in 2010, saying the synagogue broke its own rules against burial of non-Jews at the cemetery. Balaban initially wanted Steer’s body exhumed and relocated, but later dropped that request.
The congregation’s lawyer didn’t immediately return a message Wednesday. He had said that Balaban was suing only because Steer was black, which Balaban denied.
(Source: ABC News)
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4 Responses
Why even mention that the dead woman is black? How is it relevant, except to raise emotions in a case that should be about a lechol-hade’os shiktza being buried in what was an Orthodox Jewish beis hachayim. She should be exhumed and buried elsewhere; she had no business being buried there in the first place. But if the settlement is to build a proper fence around the new “interfaith” chelkah, to separate it from the consecrated Jewish cemetery, so be it.
Congregation Ahavath Achim is a Conservative temple and has nothing to do with Yiddishkeit.
Why YWN publishes article about man made religion?
Milhouse,
If you had read the original article concerning this lawsuit, you would have known that the argument was about a portion of the cemetary that is designated as “non-sectarian.”
How this section is separated from the rest of the cemetary was never an issue.
#2, Ahavas Achim is a Conservative congregation, but the Colchester cemetery is Orthodox. The conservatives “inherited” it when they merged with the Orthodox shul, and they agreed that no goyim would ever be buried there.
#3, What right did they have to make an “interfaith” chelka in a Jewish cemetery in the first place? Their merger agreement with the Colchester shul said that they would not bury goyim on any cemetery land that had belonged to the Colchester shul. And yes, how the new chelka is separated from the rest of the cemetery was very much an issue; Mrs Balaban was complaining about the chelka’s existence at all, but also about the lack of a proper fence.