Two Jewish graves from the late 19th and early 20th centuries were uncovered at Borella Cemetery in the heart of Colombo, Sri Lanka, a rare surviving trace of a once-existing Jewish presence on the island. The cemetery is one of Colombo’s main burial grounds, with thousands of tombstones, and the two Jewish markers had long been nearly invisible and neglected among them.
The older stone dates to 1899 and bears the name Joseph Ben Boim. Hebrew inscription indicates he was Yosef ben Rabbi Gershom, who died on the 20th of Iyar, 5659 in the Hebrew calendar. Although darkened and stained with age, it remained relatively legible after being cleaned.
The second grave, erected nine years later, is a white marble monument shaped like a broken column, a traditional symbol of a life cut short, with a Star of David above it. It had been buried under sand for years and its inscription was almost erased. From what remains, it can be identified as Leah Feinstein, daughter of Leib Feinstein, born in 1901 and died in 1908 at age seven.
Chabad emissary in Colombo, Yosef Yitzchak Becher, recently came to the site and recited prayers for the dead. He told Behadrei Haredim that he first searched on his own, then asked the cemetery office for help. “After I couldn’t find them, I went to the office. A worker joined me, and fairly quickly we managed to locate the Jewish graves, to my surprise,” he said. After a maintenance worker cleaned the stones, Becher said it was moving to see them reappear. “Before I read what was written, I said several chapters of Psalms for their souls,” he said.
Becher concluded that the story of the buried Jews remains unknown. “What happened to them, we do not know. Perhaps we will never know,” he said, adding that he placed a stone on each grave and continued on his way, thinking of Jews buried in a foreign and distant land.
