The Old Jewish Cemetery (also known as the Chestnut Street Cemetery and Bene Israel Burying Ground) in Cincinnati, Ohio, is the oldest Jewish cemetery west of the Allegheny Mountains.[1] Opened in 1821, it is located just northwest of Downtown Cincinnati in the Betts-Longworth Historic District. It is situated just west of Central Avenue on the north side of Chestnut Street, in the historic West End. The cemetery is sited on a tiny plot enclosed by high walls and a locked gate.
In 1821, when Benjamin Lieb was dying, he begged to be buried as a Jew. Morris Moses and Joseph Jonas, two of Cincinnati's six Jews, purchased the lot for Cincinnati's first Jewish cemetery from Nicholas Longworth for $75.00, and then buried Lieb there.
The cemetery has 85 graves and has been closed since 1849 after the cholera epidemic filled the cemetery.[2]
This cemetery is now part of Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati (JCGC), a non-profit organization that resulted in the merger of almost all of the 26 Jewish cemeteries in the area. JCGC is governed by a board which began as representatives of the former cemetery owners, but is morphing into a pure community-based board, on the recognition by its founders that the care of the graves of ancestors should be a function of the entire Jewish community. This merger solved the problem of caring for cemeteries created by synagogues and other organizations that no longer exist.
