Jewish Rest Magnolia Cemetery

Jewish Rest Magnolia Cemetery. Mobile County. , Jewish Rest, also known as the Old Hebrew Burial Ground, is the oldest Jewish cemetery in Alabama. The land was purchased on June 22, 1841 by the congregation of Sha'arai Shomayim Umaskil el Dol of the Needy), Alabama's first and longest continuously organized Jewish congregation. The congregation's official status was formalized on January 25, 1844. In 1848, Pres. Israel Jones petitioned the City of Mobile on behalf of the "Hebrew Congregation" for twelve more burial plots adjacent to their existing plots. The city accepted and the area formally became known as Jewish Rest. Three years later, the congregation erected a cast iron fence to delineate their portion of Magnolia Cemetery. Many of the markers within Jewish Rest feature Hebrew inscriptions, and several stones exhibit a bas-relief cloth draped pitcher in a basin, symbolic of the interred Levites. There are 177 burials in Jewish Rest, including Rabbi Abraham Laser, who died in 1870 while ministering to yellow fever victims, and four Jewish Confederate soldiers. Jewish Rest is affiliated with the Congregation of the Springhill Avenue Temple, the present day form of the Sha'arai Shomayim Congregation., Listed in the National Register of Historic Places on June 13, 1986.