The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has gotten involved in a “shaimos” site—a burial site for Jewish religious artifacts—on private property, which contravenes state law.
The state’s environmental regulators ordered the site to be cleaned up, following complaints by area residents, but it will allow the nearly 2,000 trash bags of religious texts and ritual clothing to be buried, according to the Asbury Park Press. The Jewish religious texts and clothing, called shaimos, was collected from Jewish residents of Lakewood for burial in the days leading up to Passover, according to the newspaper.
Wolf Skacel, the department’s assistant commissioner of compliance and enforcement, told the newspaper that the burial is a temporary solution until the department identifies a more “proper location.”
Creating a landfill requires a public hearing, county planning and a permit application to the Department of Environmental Protection.
