Members of the community are being faced with fees of thousands of pounds to switch burial schemes after moving synagogue, a JC investigation has found.
In some cases, congregants are unable to join the shul of their choice because the transfer charge is so high.
Others claim that effectively they are being forced to pay twice over for burial rights.
Yet religious bodies point out that the upkeep of cemeteries involves an enormous cost that is continually rising, with burial societies having a responsibility to ensure they are financially viable far into the future.
Some synagogue leaders have recognised the complications of the situation, and are committed to finding remedies where possible.
The issue affects what is believed to be an increasing number of community members who are switching synagogue for a variety of reasons, be it moving home, changing denomination, divorce or wanting to attend the same services as their grown-up children and grandchildren.
At the United Synagogue (US) cemeteries in Bushey – which operates separately to the shul – the meticulously kept grounds where thousands of graves are maintained requires constant investment. The Bushey New Jewish Cemetery cost almost £10 million when it opened in 2017.
The prayer hall at Bushey New Cemetery[Missing Credit]
When retired hairdresser Barry, 83 and his wife moved down from Newcastle to the area to be closer to their grandchildren, they wanted to join the local synagogue, Bushey United Synagogue.
But they discovered the membership fees they had paid for decades at their independent synagogue in the North East were not transferable. Instead, they were faced with a “later joiner” combined fee of £14,000, plus annual membership for the couple of around £2,000, adding up to a total sum the couple were unable to afford. Barry and his wife found themselves left with no choice but to join another shul.
The Jewish Joint Burial Society (JJBS), which serves Masorti and Progressive communities and the United Synagogue’s Funeral Expenses Scheme (FES), operate on a sliding-scale model.
The annual FES fee for a US member is £100, which is reduced to £55 after 50 years of membership.
There is no late joining fee for the US scheme before the age of 40. At 41, it starts at £175, remains relatively low until 50, then rises through successive bands to £9,000 for new nonagenarian members.
Children are covered by their parents’ scheme until 21 – after that at the US members pay £10 a year until they turn 30, while at JJBS members pay the full annual fee of £58.
JJBS operates a sliding late joining fee from 50 to 81, rising to £4,600 outside London and £3,300 in London, where the scale continues to a max of £6,700 for those aged 91.
At most burial grounds, headstones are provided by a handful of stonemasons costing roughly £4,000, an extra expense not covered by the burial society fees.
The sums of money involved may have a significant impact, even resulting in some members of the community feeling excluded from the community they wish to join.
Sasha (not her real name), 75, grew up going to United Synagogue services before spending her adult life moving between Masorti and Reform communities.
Now, with children and grandchildren at a US synagogue connected to their London primary school, she has gravitated back.
However, although she now attends US services, she continues to pay for membership at her old Masorti synagogue, where membership of JJBS is required, in order to retain her burial rights.
She could pay fees at her new shul without joining the burial scheme, but cannot pay for the scheme at JJBS without being a member of a corresponding shul.
Sasha said: “I feel trapped. I don’t want to leave uncertainty for my children. I don’t know exactly what my burial rights are at Masorti or US, and I’m not prepared to take that risk.”
Her new US synagogue has welcomed her, but she says that without being a bona fide member, she feels limited in her involvement.
At her Masorti community, she served on the committee and organised the kiddush rota. At the US she is much less engaged in communal life, albeit she has been there for less time.
“I can’t join the United Synagogue without paying for burial, and I can’t stay with Masorti and just pay for an independent burial scheme,” says Sasha. “So I stay where I am, even though I’m no longer fully involved.”
She acknowledges: “Different types of shuls suit you for different times in your life. When you suddenly have grandchildren nearby, the dynamic changes.
“Masorti doesn’t quite give me what I want now, and that’s no criticism of them.” According to Sasha, the situation in Britain isn’t necessarily replicated abroad: “My mother was Australian. Synagogues there aren’t linked to burial in the same way. People move between communities much more freely.”
She says: “The way people live today isn’t the way they lived 100 years ago.”
For Lucy (not her real name) and her husband, the cost of maintaining burial rights has accumulated into a six-figure sum.
She is adamant she has no interest in where she is buried, saying: “They can throw me in the sea for all I care.” However, her husband wants a plot for himself alongside his parents in Bushey.
Lucy and her family were members of the US when their son celebrated his barmitzvah.
They later decided to move to Masorti so that their daughter could have a more progressive simchah, paying the fees for the new shul while continuing with US membership.
She estimates the cost over the decades run to around £100,000.
“You don’t notice each payment so much but added up we must have bought more than a plot or two,” says Lucy. She added: “I can’t argue about it. We knew what we were getting into.”
For Stuart (not his real name), 76, the change of synagogue was the eventual result of tragic life circumstances.
He was a member of an independent Orthodox synagogue outside London during his first marriage. When his wife died, she was buried in the local plot he had reserved, and there is a space next to her waiting for him. Stuart remarried and now attends Reform services.
His second wife knows he will be buried beside his first wife, and he continues paying membership for the shul he attends, and the one he does not.
Marilyn, who attends a Reform synagogue outside London, encountered the system while helping to organise the funeral of a fellow congregant whose children live overseas.
Her friend had belonged to the US for more than four decades before moving away from the capital following a divorce and joining the Reform congregation. Marilyn knew her friend wanted to be buried alongside her parents in the US cemetery and offered to help organise the funeral.
But when she called up the burial office, she discovered that because her friend’s contributions had ceased when she left London, there would be a large shortfall.
“I was expecting a cost – I knew she had stopped being a member – but I thought as she had been for 47 years, it would not be too high.”
She was quoted £17,000.
After further discussion, she says the US agreed to deduct £1,000 to reflect her friend’s previous contributions.
“But I thought she should only have to make up the years she’d missed. They said those were the rules. They were completely inflexible,” Marilyn said.
She notes that members who reach 50 years in the scheme receive a reduction in burial costs.
“She would have qualified if she’d stayed where she was.”
Her friend was buried through the local Reform burial arrangements rather than alongside her parents.
David Collins, chief operating officer of the US, says the charity’s model allows it to respond compassionately to different circumstances.
“Every year we conduct charity funerals. Where people genuinely have nothing, we will always bury them. It is our honour and mitzvah to do so,” he said, noting this was part of the founding purpose of the institution.
But burial is only one element of what the US provides.
“From cradle to grave,” Collins says, “we are not just a burial society. We are a family of communities.”
That is why burial rights cannot be detached from synagogue membership, he explains. Members cannot keep their burial entitlement while leaving for another synagogue because the US sees membership as a package that funds the communal infrastructure, which burial is just one part.
Surplus from the burial society supports other parts of the US operation.
“It’s not a secret in our accounts that the burial society generates surplus which is used elsewhere in the US,” says Collins, “Everything is for the good of the community.”
The US has reciprocal arrangements with a small number of Orthodox synagogues under the Office of the Chief Rabbi, but those remain limited.
“There is much more movement from regional communities into London than the other way round,” Collins says.
“Census data shows the decline of Jewish communities outside London, and that creates challenges.”
And while he noted “relations are good” between societies, fundamental differences between denominations mean cooperation is necessarily limited.
“From a religious perspective, we have a different ethos,” he said, pointing to cemeteries that permit cremated remains. “We do everything we can to avoid Jewish people being cremated.”
The JC spoke to communal figures who have been trying to improve the system. Tony Bogod, former treasurer of New North London Masorti, first became aware of the problem while dealing with prospective members.
“The phone would ring with people asking to move from their existing non-Masorti shul,” he said.
“Having paid into their shul’s burial scheme for 35 years, they wanted to retain their existing burial rights, but had been told that they would still have to pay full membership fees, even if not attending.”
Bogod thought the arrangement was unfair.
“The situation struck me as unethical. Why wouldn’t the existing shul just let them pay their annual burial cost to retain their burial rights? Then I realised that the same problem existed for movers in the opposite direction.”
He saw it as a communal issue, and raised it with Simon Samuels, former co-chair of Masorti Judaism and treasurer of St Albans Masorti, who had received similar approaches, and the pair brought together representatives from different parts of the community to explore a solution to the status quo.
“We wanted to improve the burial landscape so that Jews could pray at and belong to the synagogue of their choice,” Samuels said.
The group developed proposals to address concerns about people joining a synagogue shortly before death or abusing the system, but the discussions have yet to bear fruit.
For burial societies, the concern is that greater flexibility could threaten the financial model that allows them to provide funerals – and a change to the system could have far reaching consequences.
Cheryl Petar, chair of the Jewish Joint Burial Society (JJBS), opposes unrestricted movement between schemes.
“If someone were to move at the age of 90, we would then bury them, and it would be at a loss.
“There would be a financial implication. It can’t be free movement across, because it could be an avalanche. You can’t risk saying yes to one because that one could become one thousand,” Petar said.
Outgoing JJBS chair Steve Wynne said the organisation would be willing to discuss the issue with other burial societies.”Never say never,” he said.
The societies worked together after major tragedies such as the 7/7 London bombings to ensure Jewish victims receive a Jewish burial, and Petar and Wynne both think more cooperation could be possible.
Mitzi Kalinsky, senior sexton at JJBS since 2015, says there are quarterly meetings between the societies.
She notes that no two schemes operate alike. JJBS subscriptions cover both burial land and funeral costs, while the Liberal scheme covers land only, and other schemes involve reserving a plot but paying funeral costs separately.
“All the societies have evolved differently. There are ideological differences and financial differences.”
Discussions about transfers have continued throughout Kalinsky’s two decades working at JJBS, but no model has emerged.
“We would have liked it, but realistically, how would it work?”
Like Collins, she has observed a shift from the regions to London and notes that JJBS and the US increasingly support smaller communities with taharah as local chevra kadisha disappear.
“Everything is becoming more London and Manchester-centric.”
The new Holocaust memorial at Woodland Cemetery (Photo: Progressive Judaism)[Missing Credit]
For Barry, the question of burial came into focus just a few years after leaving Newcastle.
Before he and his wife joined the Masorti synagogue they had chosen, she asked to visit Western Cemetery in Cheshunt. “I asked why. I said: ‘You’ll be dead when you’re there.’
“But she wanted to see it.”
He remembers the willow trees. “My wife loved willow trees.”
Soon afterwards she was diagnosed with cancer, spending her final months at Hammerson House nursing home before dying on erev Rosh Hashanah.
After her death, Barry and his children returned to Western Cemetery.
“We walked into the woodland section. It is like being buried in a garden.
“We saw the plot and all three of us burst into tears.”
He adds: “I don’t regret it. It’s beautiful, and I go every week to chat to her.
“Just before spring, everyone can come and plant flowers on the graves.”
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