Obj. ID: 40060
Jewish Funerary Art Jewish Cemetery in Astrakhan, Russia
The Jewish cemetery in Astrakhan is the oldest preserved Jewish cemetery along the Volga; it contains about 900 tombstones, starting from the 1840s until today. The majority of old tombstones were vandalized in 1993 and are broken or fallen. The cemetery is surrounded by a fence with an impressive gate, which is partly preserved from the late nineteenth century . A cemetery chapel was burnt in 1983 and later dismantled completely Although the Russian-Jewish Encyclopedia states that the oldest tombstone in the cemetery was dated 1845,98 the earliest tombstone that we succeeded to find dates back to 1856 Epitaphs on some tombstones say “Soldier” thus testifying to the occupation 98 Gessen, “Astrakhan’, 360. of the significant part of the community. The existence of Hasidic Chabad community in Astrakhan found its expression in the epitaph of Meir Zalman Zeligson (d. 1889), which says that he was a Hasid of the Tzemach Tzedek of Lubavitch and later joined the Chabad branch in Liady (Fig. 186). While the tombstones of the nineteenth century are mostly traditional in their form, language, and the text of epitaphs, this mode changed in the early twentieth century, expressing acculturation and social advancement. Among numerous sandstone obelisks, our attention was drawn by the granite headstone of Mark Sokolskii with art nouveau decoration. This stone of 1908 is an exact copy of the tombstones of the Golant brothers in St. Petersburg, produced by G. Brakhman in 1907 and 1908 Even the epitaphs in Astrakhan and St. Petersburg are similar: instead of the traditional beginning po hitman, they read po manual, and all three of them use the phrase Yakar rush, “dear spirit.” All this allows us to conclude that the tombstone of Sokolskii was also made in St. Petersburg by G. Brakhman and brought to Astrakhan from there. Many tombstones of the 1940s and 1950s are prerevolutionary marbles from demolished cemeteries in secondary use. While in other cities their origins are usually well concealed, in Astrakhan dozens of stones have clear signs of removed original epitaphs , while several stones have the original epitaphs preserved, including epitaphs in Armenian.
sub-set tree:
Levin, Vladimir and Anna Berezin, Jewish Material Culture along the Volga
Preliminary. Expedition Report (The Center for Jewish Art, 2021), https://cja.huji.ac.il/home/pics/projects/CJA_Report_on_the_Volga_expedition_2021.pdf (accessed June 6, 2023)