Hicks Street Cemeteries - Mt. Sinai & Mt. Carmel

149 Hicks Street

smjca.org/

Mt. Sinai

In 1894, the Portland Hebrew Benevolent Association purchased these one and a half acres off Warren Avenue, sandwiched between Capisic Brook and Hicks Street, to use as a cemetery. The first burials here took place later that same year.

Later, a Hebrew Synagogue Society was established, and it held title to this same plot of land jointly with the older burial association. In 1920, the two organizations merged to form the Mount Sinai Cemetery Association, with Morris Sacknoff as president, Joseph Mack as vice-president, David Schwartz as treasurer, and Julius Comeras as secretary. The small brick chapel you see here was built in 1931 and renovated in 2012. The road into the cemetery is open to the public.

Mount Sinai is one of two historic cemeteries maintained by the Southern Maine Jewish Cemetery Association (SMJCA); the other one is Smith Street in South Portland (Stop C03).

The headstones at Mount Sinai are searchable by name on Documenting Maine Jewry.

Mt. Carmel

Right next to Mount Sinai is another Jewish cemetery named Mount Carmel. This burial ground, however, was established by Anshe Sfard, an Orthodox congregation made up originally of Chassidic Jews from Poland, Belarus, and other nearby countries. Anshe Sfard’s members built their own synagogue on Cumberland Avenue in Portland’s Bayside neighborhood in 1917, and purchased this plot of land on Hicks Street from Howard Reiche in 1924.

Unlike most cemeteries, burial plots in Mount Carmel are numbered in the sequence that they were purchased. Many headstones here are marked simply with English and/or Hebrew names; numeric dates were introduced in 1926. Between then and the start of World War II, there were at least 39 burials. Though Anshe Sfard’s arc was rather brief—the synagogue closed in less than 50 years and the building was demolished in 1983— its members and their descendants continue to use Mount Carmel. Overall, the cemetery has approximately 350 burials; the latest was in 2013.

The headstones in Mount Carmel are searchable by name on Documenting Maine Jewry.