In the Borella cemetery in central Colombo, Sri Lanka, two rare Jewish graves were found among thousands of local burial plots, preserving a nearly forgotten Jewish presence on the island south of India. The gravestones have stood there for more than a century. Chabad emissary Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Becher visited the cemetery, prayed for the souls of the two buried there, and later described the discovery in an interview with Behadrei Haredim.
Becher said he first searched for the Jewish graves on his own but could not find them. After a long search, he went to the cemetery office, where a staff member joined him and quickly located the stones. He said the memorials were old, worn and covered with dust, and that the office manager asked a maintenance worker to clean them. Before reading the inscriptions, Becher recited several chapters of Psalms in their memory.
The older gravestone dates to 1899. Its English inscription identifies the deceased as Joseph ben Boim, while the Hebrew text names him as Yosef son of Rabbi Gershom and gives his date of death as 20 Iyar 5659. The stone is made of dark stone, and despite the dust, its inscription remained legible.
The second grave, erected nine years later, is a double monument made of white marble in the shape of a broken column, a symbol of a life cut short. A Star of David appears above the inscription, and the upper part still shows the name. The lower section is badly damaged and buried in sand, but it can still be identified as the grave of a Jewish girl, Leah Feinstein, daughter of Leib Feinstein, who was born in 5661 and died in 5668 at age seven. Becher said, “What happened to her? It is impossible to know.” He added that the two Jews now lie side by side in a foreign, distant cemetery, and said he placed a stone on each grave before leaving.
