Making Arrangements: Tools and Resources

Cemeteries Owned and Managed by Sinai Memorial Chapel

Eternal Home Cemetery

Options for Families

Eternal Home Cemetery provides a variety of options for families. These include traditional burial to alternative type interments for those choosing cremation. The cemetery provides single grave locations, companion and double-depth interments, and—in designated areas—family sections and estates.

The renovation of our Historic Sections allows for single or double interments among the majestic memorials and monuments of generations past.

Eternal Home Cemetery and Sinai provide a selection of memorials and monuments for each type of interment, from flush marker locations to larger family sections and estates.

There is an on-site chapel at Eternal Home that can accommodate 40 guests.

Special Sections

Congregational sections within the cemetery include Congregation Adath Israel (San Francisco - Orthodox), Congregation Chevra Thilim (San Francisco - Orthodox), and Congregation Beth Sholom (San Francisco - Conservative). Currently, there are very few plots remaining in the sections for Congretation Chevra Thilim and Congregation Beth Sholom.

The section associated with Congregation Adath Israel is exclusively for Orthodox Jews, both members of this congregation and others who wish to be buried there. The families of non-members must make arrangements with the congregation in order to purchase a plot.

In addition Eternal Home Cemetery has created a special section, the Memory Garden, to honor and remember perinatal and infant losses.

Holocaust Memorials

Eternal Home contains two Holocaust Memorials. One was created by members of Congregation Adath Israel who formed the Bikur Cholim Society, consisting of survivors of the Holocaust and their children. The purpose of the memorial is to give families who lost relatives during the Holocaust a place to memorialize them and to provide a focal point for anyone who wishes to mourn people who did not receive a burial when they perished.

On the Sunday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the community gathers at this memorial to take part in Kever Avot .

The Odessa Memorial was established by Russian Jewish immigrants from that area as a place where members of that community can come together to mourn the loss of Jews who perished there.

History

Eternal Home Cemetery, located in Colma, CA, was founded in 1901 by Rabbi Isador Meyers of Congregation Ohabi Shalome in San Francisco. The original purchase consisted of two acres and served the needs of the congregation and the Jewish community of San Francisco. At that time, the cemetery was known as the Chevra Kadisha Cemetery and was referred to as “The gate to the eternal home.”

The first recorded interments took place in early 1903 within what is now known as our Historic Sections. In 1926 Sinai Memorial Chapel, then known as the Hebrew Funeral Parlor (Chevra Kadisha) obtained the cemetery and began to operate and maintain it under the leadership of Sinai. It was then that it became permanently known as Eternal Home Cemetery.

Contact Information and Details

Cemetery:
1051 El Camino Real
Colma, CA 94014

Contact:
Daniel Villa, Managing Director Eternal Home Cemetery and Sinai Memorial Chapel
(415) 921-3636
Lisa Matson, Cemetery Office Manager
(650) 755-5236

Hours:
8:30 am – 4:15 pm
Closed Saturdays and Jewish and secular holidays

Gan Shalom Cemetery

Options for Families

Gan Shalom Cemetery is an all-Jewish cemetery in the East Bay, welcoming all members of the Jewish community, including members of interfaith families and those who are unaffiliated. It is nestled on 82 acres among the regional parklands and ranches surrounding the Briones area. In addition to gardens for the community at large, the cemetery has separate gardens for members of local Jewish congregations, as well as for people who identify with specific branches of Judaism. Individual family sections, consisting of multiple adjacent graves, are available throughout the cemetery. Gan Shalom also offers a garden for infants, as well as a section for those who have chosen cremation.

Gan Shalom Cemetery’s chapel is available for funeral and memorial services, seating 70 people. To ensure the grace and simplicity of the cemetery, only markers that are flush with the ground are used to identify grave locations.

Special Gardens

• Orthodox (Gan Emunah)
• Conservative (Gan Rachamim)
• Reform & Interfaith (Gan Olam)
• Members of Temple Isaiah, a Reform synagogue in Lafayette
• Members of B’nai Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in Walnut Creek
• Tel Shalom Burial Society, which represents congregations in Western Alameda and Contra Costa Counties
• Members of Congregation B’nai Tikvah, a Reform synagogue in Walnut Creek
• Members of Beth Chaim Congregation, an independent synagogue in Danville
• Family estates
• Infant garden
• Cremation garden

History

Gan Shalom was created by representatives of several East Bay congregations and consecrated in 2008. The cemetery is a nonprofit religious organization, managed and operated by Sinai Memorial Chapel Chevra Kadisha.

Contact Information and Details