http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/11096/unveiling/#5 There are photos – you should go look.
Unveiling
A photographer discovers Jewish gravestones at a tony golf courseBy Ahron D. Weiner | 7:00 am July 21, 2009
As a photographer who spent years documenting Jewish sites throughout Eastern Europe, I have a perhaps heightened sensitivity to the use and misuse of Judaica. In town after town from—Prague, Czech Republic, to Uman, Ukraine, with plenty of small villages in between—I’ve found and photographed Jewish gravestones used as walls, as chimneys, and roads. So when I was walking with my 7-year-old son past the 17th hole of the Woodmere Club’s golf course, on Long Island, I was surprised to find a Star of David carved into a stone used as part of a retaining wall, protecting the course from the Reynolds Channel. I looked closer, and discovered hundreds of gravestones, many carved with Jewish names, used as embankment material. The New York Post reported on this yesterday; the club insists the stones—none of which seem to contain dates, only names and symbols—were extra granite, donated many years ago by long-dead club members. Here, for the first time, is a collection of my photos.
I am not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, they are grave markers. They aren’t housing the dead. They aren’t spiritually linked to anything. It’s a slab of engraved marble (or concrete or whatever). On the other hand, someone was loved enough that someone else purchased, and had engraved, this slab of rock.
Were they really donated? Were they stolen? Was the golf course built on an old abandoned cemetery and they repurposed the headstones but made up this cock & bull story about them being donated? If they were donated, how on earth do you convince such a large populous to donate, at the same time, (unused?) gravestones? It’s just weird.
