WITH spaces fast running out to bury Sydney’s dead, the Jewish faith community has been handed a four-year reprieve by Rookwood General Cemeteries Reserve Trust.
The trust has agreed to transfer a portion of Jewish burial land at Rookwood Cemetery near Granville to the Muslims. It follows negotiations with the Jewish Board of Deputies and the Lebanese Muslim Association.
“The Muslim community already had the other part of Lot 10; it made sense for them to have all of it,” Vic Alhadeff, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive, said.
The RGCRT has allocated Lot 27 to the Jewish community in exchange.
“For the first time in Rookwood’s history, these two communities have had the opportunity to work together to create two distinct interment grounds that reflect their end-of-life values,” the RGCRT’s chief executive, George Simpson, said.
Religion forbids both the Jewish and Muslim faith communities to cremate.
But even with the new arrangement the Jewish and Muslim communities have only eight to 10 years of burial space for their families at Rookwood, Mr Simpson said. Last year they had two and six years apiece left in NSW.
Read the article in The Daily Telegraph (Northern District Times).