14th August 2013
by Harry Walton
PROMINENT local Jewish community member Lord Morris Mendoza has reacted with “deep sadness” to a council decision not to grant Portland Cemetery space for Jewish faith burials.
Members of Weymouth and Portland’s management committee felt so strongly that cemeteries should not have areas specifically relating to religion or a religious body that they voted 7-1 against their own officers’ advice recommending approval for the idea.
Lord Mendoza, of Dorchester Road, Weymouth, said: “I have never heard of a group of people with such a misunderstanding of a situation.
“Our whole Jewish community is shocked at the decision and so are outsiders including a bishop. It was very strange bearing in mind the council’s own officers supported the idea and I query the true nature of the refusal.
“I certainly don’t accept the generalisation that a Jewish cemetery for a Jewish community could be devisive.”
Lord Mendoza had asked the council for a separate burial area because their faith requires that they are buried in faith grouping and council officers said an area sufficient for 23 plots had been identified at Portland cemetery. The nearest current location for Jewish faith burials is Bournemouth.
Community facilities spokesman Councillor Andy Blackwood, who supported the request, told management committee colleagues that the issue had come forward after Lord Mendoza asked that “urgent attention” be given for such a burial facility for the Weymouth and Portland Jewish community because of concerns over several elderly members.
But committee vice-chairman Councillor Peter Chapman said Weymouth and Portland cemeteries “should remain strictly secular” while chairman, Councillor Mike Goodman, said he had personal experience of apartheid in South Africa and he was “vehemently opposed” to any form of segregation.
He added: “I do believe that our burial grounds should remain unconsecrated, unblessed and open to all. I don’t believe they should have segregated areas.”
Councillor Ian Bruce said he was reminded of war cemeteries where all graves were laid out side by side.
He added: “If the Jewish faith wants something different it should make its own arrangements. I just don’t feel we should offer separate sections within a municipal cemetery.”
But Lord Mendoza said military graves had tombstones but not necessarily a body and having a Jewish cemetery on Portland had nothing to with exclusivity “but it is an important part of our religion.”
He added that the decision had already cost the area dear because a Jewish businessman planning to bring a factory to the area because its facilities would now have included a Jewish cemetery has changed his mind because of the council’s decision and elected to go to Romsey instead which has two such cemeteries.
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Article source: http://www.viewfrompublishing.co.uk/news_view/27540/11/1/portland-jewish-community-shocked-as-burial