baysidecemeterylitigation.com

For quite some time, I’ve made it clear what the reasons are for my lawsuit against Congregation Shaare Zedek and Bayside Cemetery.  My website at www.baysidecemeterylitigation.com is the official record of my pursuit of justice and remediation for Bayside Cemetery in Ozone Park Queens.  I want Bayside Cemetery restored to a respectful and dignified condition and I want the perpetual care contracts that have been entered into with Congregation Shaare Zedek by thousands of now deceased individuals and burial societies representing some of those individuals to be honored.

My lawsuit complaint makes the facts and demands quite clear.  I want nothing of monetary value for me personally.  I am pursuing this matter on my own time and expense with the talents and the tremendous devotion of time, advice and counsel of my dedicated pro-bono attorney Michael Buchman who is also donating his time to this cause.

Recently I have noticed that an offshoot of Congregation Shaare Zedek has been littering the Internet with their version of the truth which is, in my opinion, distorted and revisionist.  This organization called Community for Jewish At-Risk Cemeteries (CAJAC) communicates a noble mission, a mission that few would say isn’t worthwhile if it were what they really intend to do.  However it is my belief that there is much more to CAJAC than meets the eye.  In a prior posting I revealed some facts about CAJAC.  In this posting I will reveal a few more.  I will leave it to you, the reader of this blog, to decide for yourself what might be going on here.

What I think is that CAJAC may be an attempt by Congregation Shaare Zedek to separate and transfer the liability and ownership for Bayside Cemetery to an entity with limited or zero assets.  Now that Congregation Shaare Zedek has publicly admitted to misappropriating the cemetery’s trust fund monies and has allowed the cemetery to fall into an unarguable and horrible state of disrepair, the Congregation seems to be looking for a way to wipe the slate clean and have this new organization called CAJAC take responsibility for the entire situation.  What the people behind CAJAC’s motives are, I don’t know.  What the true relationship between CAJAC and the Hebrew Free Burial Society are, I don’t know.

But rather than the Jewish community, via the UJA Federation, spending a nominal amount of money to write this wrong, I would like to see law enforcement and the courts and the Jewish community and the UJA Federation work to recover any and all monies taken by Congregation Shaare Zedek from Bayside Cemetery and add whatever monies need to be augmented.  The monies should be returned to Bayside Cemetery’s trust funds and a proper annual and perpetual care plan and process should be created and managed.  The plan needs to be extensive and it will be expensive because forever and perpetuity are a very long time - because that’s how long Bayside Cemetery needs to be managed respectfully – forever.

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So what’s this blog entry about?  After my last blog entry on June 10^th I received a comment posting on the blog from someone named Howard S. Feinberg who I assume is the same person who is listed as the Consulting Executive Director of CAJAC.  I could have ignored this posting and blocked it from my blog, but that would be censorship and withholding information from you, the supporters of the Bayside Cemetery Litigation cause.  So here is what Mr. Feinberg said.  My comments will follow after his posting… please read on.

Howard S. Feinberg Comment – June 10, 2009 4:41 PM

Sometimes coincidence (synagogue members feeling they need to do more than watch a cemetery continue to decline) and opportunity (UJA-Federation's willingness to help) drive solutions. In this case, the creation of CAJAC. Rather than cast aspersions and intimate ulterior motives, you and your readers should know the truth which follows.  I hope you will post it.

---My Great-grandparents and other relatives are interred in the cemetery. I was asked by UJA-Federation in summer of 2008 to assist CAJAC in achieving its organizational mandate – to identify and help rescue and maintain Jewish cemeteries. I was honored to get involved in helping CAJAC develop a long-term solution for Bayside Cemetery and others in the future. CAJAC is a totally independent effort motivated by the desire to do Chesed Shel Emes. In 2006, after consulting Shaare Zedek’s leadership, the Hebrew Free Burial Association, The Jewish Community Relations Council and the UJA-Federation of NY, the volunteers determined that Bayside Cemetery might be the tip of the iceberg. Therefore, they incorporate CAJAC to be the address for rescuing and maintaining Jewish cemeteries. Its goal was simple – identify and address the problem cemeteries and get them cleaned and maintained properly while building Jewish community recognition of its responsibilities to honor our dead in a proper fashion. In 2006, the congregation allowed CAJAC to use its address when the organization was formed, as CAJAC had no funds or office and clearly, Bayside Cemetery was to be the first cemetery crying for CAJAC’s attention. Currently, CAJAC’s offices are at One Barker Ave., Suite 260, White Plains, NY 10601. CAJAC and its Bayside Cemetery cleanup are funded with seed grants from the UJA-Federation of New York. We invite you to visit the CAJAC page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/CAJAC-The-Community-Association-for-Jewish-At-Risk-Cemeteries/76314438341?sid=89048bfe40bdbd6dff3ad593cf29a0aa&ref=search) where you will find accurate material on CAJAC & the Bayside Cemetery cleanup. The CAJAC website is in development and should be fully functional soon. CAJAC is seeking additional funds to establish the long-term permanent maintenance endowment needed to continue the maintenance of Bayside Cemetery after the cleanup is finished (projected by the end of calendar year 2009) and the other cemeteries that CAJAC will address over the years. To donate, until CAJAC’s 501c3 is approved, all donations can be sent through the Hebrew Free Burial Association. CAJAC is a totally independent organization and the Bayside Cemetery clean up effort is being supervised under the strict rabbinical supervision of CAJAC’s Rabbinic supervisor, Rav Elchanon Zohn of the Vaad Harobonim of Queens. For additional information, please feel free to contact me directly at howard.s.feinberg@gmail.com or 201-647-7560. Howard S. Feinberg, Consulting Executive Director, CAJAC

John Lucker Comments

Sometimes coincidence can be a figment of one’s imagination.  I’m a pretty black and white thinker and I take the factual, ethical, moral and public policy aspects of the Bayside Cemetery and Congregation Shaare Zedek matter very seriously.  And since CAJAC has recently weighed in here so heavily, I guess I will now consider CAJAC to be in the fray and part of the mix too.  So here are some thoughts about what Mr. Feinberg says and some additional thoughts:

* Mr. Feinberg writes about synagogue members feeling they need to do more than watch a cemetery continue to decline.  Clearly synagogue members have been watching Bayside Cemetery decline for a very long time.  I have over the past 1-2 years received numerous emails from people who grew up in Ozone Park or live there now and they all say that Bayside Cemetery has been a mess for as long as they can remember.  While it’s hard to imagine how Bayside could decline more than it already has, I do note with interest that congregation members have been repeatedly absent, non-participatory and unhelpful on numerous occasions when people volunteered to do cleanups in the cemetery.  There have been several newspaper articles where volunteers have complained that the synagogue and its members did nothing to help, didn’t provide dumpsters for trash and debris gathered in the cemetery to be disposed of, didn’t personally come out to the cemetery (their cemetery) to contribute their time and energies, etc.  I note with interest the several congregation bulletins on the www.sznyc.org website which speak of numerous volunteer efforts being hosted and organized for a variety of community and charitable causes and none ever mention any work to help out Bayside Cemetery.  Also, there is really no mention at all of the cemetery on the entire congregation website other than naming Ethan Klingsberg as the Cemetery Chairman.  If you go to the Internet web “time machine” at www.archive.org you can see the congregation’s website from years past too – and again, no mention of Bayside Cemetery.  So while Mr. Feinberg’s words sound soulful, the many years of the synagogue members’ inactions and neglect of Bayside Cemetery, lack soul.

* As an example of the lack of caring that the synagogue has demonstrated, look at the February-March 2007 edition of the Congregation Shaare Zedek newsletter on their website.  In it they outline 8 different ways people can financially help by giving to the synagogue or the Jewish community.  Things like naming opportunities, Yizkor/Yahrzeit, S’machot, memorials, Kiiddush, Mishloach Manot, Matzah Fund, and the Rabbi’s Discretionary Fund.  Hmm… seems like something is missing from this list.  How about giving money to help cleanup up and restore the perpetual care monies taken by the synagogue from the cemetery’s trust funds?!  Money that they admitted to using to fix the synagogue’s roof.

* As another example of the ways Congregation Shaare Zedek has tried to avoid liability and avoided taking meaningful action to remediate the problems at Bayside Cemetery, a few years ago I was working with another individual to try and organize a cleanup at the cemetery.  I was going to bring a bunch of Boy Scouts down to the cemetery for an all day cleanup.  The fellow that I was working with to organize this was presented, by the synagogue, with a contract for us to sign.  If you open the contract in Microsoft Word and go to FILE PROPERTIES, the contract was created by “CGSH” which I presume stands for the law firm of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP which happens to be the law firm where Ethan Klingsberg is a partner (as I mention above, Mr. Klingsberg is the the congregation’s Cemetery Chairman).  This contract has typical blah blah stuff about not holding them libel if someone gets hurt, etc but it also had a clause that reads “The undersigned shall not make any reference to Congregation Shaare Zedek or Bayside Cemetery in any written or oral statements to the press or other media or posted on the internet”.  Needless to say, I wasn’t going to sign this as I had no idea where this issue and situation might have needed to go at that time.  I certainly wouldn’t sign such a document now!  Given the cleanup that CAJAC is working on at Bayside Cemetery currently, I wonder if CAJAC had to sign this agreement with Congregation Shaare Zedek?  If so, how come CAJAC and Mr. Feinberg can be so vocal about what they are doing on the Internet?  It seems that Congregation Shaare Zedek wants cheerleaders but not critics!

* Mr. Feinberg says that some synagogue members felt the need to do something.  Why then did it take the creation of CAJAC and funding from the UJA and help from Hebrew Free Burial for something to start being done?  The synagogue repeatedly said that no synagogue member had family buried there.  However recently I published in a prior blog posting the fact that a gentleman named Robert Pollack died and was buried at Bayside Cemetery a year or two ago.  Mr. Pollack was the former president of Congregation Shaare Zedek.  I also proved in an earlier blog posting that the congregation said again that no relatives of congregation members were buried at Bayside Cemetery right around when Mr. Pollack passed away - it was all black & white in his obituary in the NY Times.  It’s hard to know what to believe from Congregation Shaare Zedek because much of what they say and do is distorted and embellished.

* Mr. Feinberg states in his comment that he was “asked by UJA-Federation in Summer 2008 to assist in CAJAC in achieving its organizational mandate”.  In UJA Federation’s tax return (which are available on the Internet because they are a non-profit organization) I see an entry for $40,000 to “Hire Consultant for the Community Association for Jewish At-Risk Cemeteries”.  Is Mr. Feinberg this consultant?  His self-reported title is “Consulting Executive Director”.  The synagogue’s lawyer, Mr. Stephen Axinn, also wrote to the court in a letter dated Aug 22, 2008 that the UJA has funded $40,000 “towards the salary of the CAJAC fundraiser for two years”.  If this is all so and Mr. Feinberg is this paid consultant, then being “asked” by the UJA Federation to do this (as he states in his blog comment) versus being hired by UJA to do the work are two different things to me.  Volunteered vs Paid….  Clearly these are different things.  One is selflessly giving of one’s time and energy.  One is being hired for work to be done.  I think we all understand the difference between the two.

* Mr. Feinberg says he has great-grandparents and other relatives buried at Bayside Cemetery.  My grandparents are buried there too.  I understand the emotion of what that means every time I walk through the gates of the cemetery and fight my way through the garbage, destroyed headstones, vandalized mausoleums, weeds, overgrowth, wild trees and the like just to get a glimpse of the headstone for my grandparents whose burial society PAID CONGREGATION SHAARE ZEDEK FOR PERPETUAL CARE.  So when I hear that Mr. Feinberg has relatives there, I ask myself a few questions.  I ask, where has he been all this time?  Has he known about the problems at the cemetery?  Is he a member of Congregation Shaare Zedek?  If so, why didn’t he do something?  If he isn’t a member of the congregation, why didn’t he contact them and try to get them to do something?  I’ve never heard of Mr. Feinberg before and I think I’ve communicated with many dozens of people who have tried to effect some kind of change and remedy at Bayside Cemetery over the years.  And, at the risk of seeming crass in my next comment, why does it take Mr. Feinberg to get paid to get involved in trying to fix the problems at Bayside Cemetery (assuming he is getting paid as I pondered in the point above)?

*  Mr. Feinberg says that CAJAC was formed in 2006 to address the rescuing of and maintenance of Jewish cemeteries.  This isn’t quite true.  On September 22, 2006 an organization was created called “Friends of Bayside Cemetery, Inc” with the address of Congregation Shaare Zedek.  Clearly this was a Bayside Cemetery centric organization at the time.  Then on April 13, 2007, the organizations name was changed to “Community Association for Jewish At-Risk Cemeteries”.  Again, the address is the same as Congregation Shaare Zedek.  I wonder why the name was changed and the implicit mission broadened?  What was the reason for this?

* Mr. Feinberg says that the current address for CAJAC is One Barker Avenue, Suite 260, White Plains NY 10601.  That’s very interesting.  Another organization registered at that address is  the “Rosalie Katz Family Foundation”.  When I go to the non-profit organization tax returns for the Rosalie Katz Family Foundation (again available on the Internet) I find a few other interesting things.  The CFO of the Rosalie Katz Family Foundation appears to be Gary Katz.  I presume this is the same Gary Katz who is the President of CAJAC and is on the board of the Hebrew Free Burial Society?

* At the risk of mentioning something that may be obtuse but struck me as very amusing and frankly disturbing, another thing I noticed from the tax returns of the Rosalie Katz Family Foundation was a $500 donation they made in 2006 to the “Friends of Bayside Cemetery” at “Outer Clarkson Avenue, Potsdam NY”.  Now if you go to Google and search for Bayside Cemetery, you will see there is a Bayside Cemetery in Potsdam NY also (Potsdam is way upstate NY).  While it may be true that the Rosalie Katz Family Foundation wanted to support the Potsdam NY Bayside Cemetery, I kind of think that they made a mistake and sent money to the wrong Bayside Cemetery!  Why is this funny?  I don’t know, it just struck me as funny in this crazy mess.  But keep in mind that this is the same address location where CAJAC lists their address.  Are these the same people that are going to manage and administer CAJAC’s money?  Are they the same people who potentially sent a 2006 donation to the WRONG BAYSIDE CEMETERY?  How is CAJAC’s money going to be managed?

* Mr. Feinberg wants people to give money to CAJAC.  That is presumably what he was hired to do as a fundraiser.  But in order to do that he wants people to funnel the money through another tax exempt organization (Hebrew Free Burial Association) because CAJAC is not a 501(c)(3).  He says CAJAC will become a tax exempt non-profit but he doesn’t say when.  And what assurance do people have that the money they give instead to the Hebrew Free Burial Society will end up where it was intended by the donor?  How will a donor get a receipt from CAJAC?  How is this different than people giving money to Congregation Shaare Zedek in the past and the synagogue doing what they wanted with the money versus ensuring that it was kept for the cemetery in the legal cemetery trust funds?  Again, how is CAJAC’s money going to be managed?

* And what’s with Mr. Feinberg’s statement about CAJAC seeking funds for the “long-term permanent maintenance endowment needed to continue maintenance of Bayside Cemetery after the cleanup is finished”?  Congregation Shaare Zedek owns Bayside Cemetery.  Thousands of people and burial societies (including my grandparents) contracted with Congregation Shaare Zedek for perpetual care, not CAJAC.  The congregation is supposed to be responsible, not CAJAC.  How is CAJAC assuming legal and financial responsibility for Bayside Cemetery?  What happened to the cemetery’s money?  Congregation Shaare Zedek can’t be allowed to get away with taking all the money and not returning it!!!  This is why I suspect that CAJAC has other missions and motives that we may not yet be aware of.

That’s about all I can think of for now to reply to Mr. Feinberg’s comments.  Thanks for hanging in there and reading my long comments.

Thanks for your interest and support.
John Lucker
Plaintiff - Lucker et al vs. Bayside Cemetery and Congregation Shaare Zedek
www.baysidecemeterylitigation.com