About Us: Tools and Resources

Sinai K’vod Hamet Endowment Fund

Since it was established over 100 years ago, Sinai Memorial Chapel has provided dignified funerals and burials for Jewish families that are unable to afford them. This commitment continues the role of old-style burial societies, which were formed in local communities to honor the dead.

No one is ever turned away from Sinai for lack of means. In addition, when a family loses an infant or a child, Sinai bears the entire expense, as the family’s loss is regarded as our community’s loss of potential as well.

With shifting demographic and economic conditions, the use of our services by families in need is expected to rise rapidly over the next 20 years, with the number of these funerals increasing from 40 to about 80 per year. Increasingly, we realize that:

• The population is aging. We are at the beginning of baby boomers entering their final years, with the expectation that more are depleting their savings as they age.
• Unique to San Francisco, we have a large émigré population that traditionally has not had the tradition of personal savings.
• The Jewish community’s poorest members are no different than any other community’s – they are largely invisible and are growing in number.
• Burial costs are rising at a rate of about seven percent a year.

To address these needs, Sinai has created the Sinai K’vod Hamet Endowment Fund, with the goal of raising at least $5 million to assure we have the ability to continue to provide dignified funeral and burial services for those in need for decades to come.

By contributing to this fund, either through an outright gift or through your estate, you will sustain a sacred tradition in the San Francisco Bay Area of taking care of those unable to do so by themselves. And you will enable Sinai to fulfill a mission that goes back over 100 years.

You can make a donation on our website using a credit card.

If you would like to speak with someone in person about the endowment fund and how you can support it, please contact Sinai’s Executive Director, Samuel J. Salkin, at ssalkin@sinaichapel.org or (415) 921-3636.