Cemeteries

The nine cemeteries under the Jewish Cemetery Association of Greater Waterbury's care reflect the fractured, fraternal nature of early 20th-century Jewish immigrant life in the Naugatuck Valley. Rather than one central Jewish cemetery, Waterbury's Eastern European Jewish community organized around a patchwork of independent lodges, benefit societies, and congregations — groups like Brass City Lodge, Star Lodge, Sharis Israel, and the Workmen's Circle — each of which purchased and consecrated its own small burial ground to serve its members. The oldest of these, Melchi Zedek, dates to 1879 and sits on Plank Rd, once part of the old Cheshire Turnpike. By the turn of the century, a second wave of Russian immigrants established burial grounds about a mile and a half north, along what are now Frost Rd and Stillson Rd — and six of the association's cemeteries (Brass City Lodge, Farband Waterbury, Hebrew Benefit, Sharis Israel, Star Lodge, and Workmen's Circle) remain clustered there today, within a few hundred yards of one another. Beth El, founded by a separate congregation, sits apart from that cluster on Boyden St, several miles to the north. By the 1980s, demographic shifts meant these small, independently run cemeteries could no longer sustain themselves individually. Longtime Waterbury resident Leo Goldberg brought them under one umbrella in the early 2000s, forming the Jewish Cemetery Association of Greater Waterbury to preserve their grounds and archives collectively. The association's ninth cemetery, Farband Morris, is the outlier both geographically and administratively: located in Morris, CT — roughly 13 miles northwest of the Frost Rd/Stillson Rd cluster — it was founded by a different organization than its Waterbury namesake and remains the only one of the nine outside city limits. Together, the nine sites trace the story of a community that once organized its afterlife the way it organized its daily life: through mutual aid societies, fraternal lodges, and congregations, each caring for its own.

Below please find the different practices for each cemetery.

Click here for an interactive map of all cemeteries