The first Passover Seder in Melrose

Why is this house different from all other houses? This house, 62 West Emerson Street, is quite possibly where the first Passover seder in Melrose history was celebrated.

In 1870, a clothing store owner named Jacob Bornstein and his wife Minnie, immigrants from Prussia, moved here from Boston with Jacob’s brother Henry, their four children, and two domestic servants. They rented their home, and Melrose did not have street numbers at the time, so identifying the house involves a degree of uncertainty. An 1870 directory lists Jacob and Henry at “Emerson, corner Myrtle,” and as you can see by the 1875 map image, the other corners did not contain residences, making 62 West Emerson the best candidate for their home. The Bornsteins did not stay long in Melrose, no more than a couple of years, before they moved back to Boston; the next identifiably Jewish families in Melrose would not arrive until the 1890s. The lack of a Jewish community in Melrose was likely a major reason for the Bornsteins’ early departure.

Starting in 1860, a Jewish community could occasionally be found gathered at 38 Linwood Avenue for funeral services. In that year, Congregation Beth Eil purchased land for a cemetery there. Now known as Netherlands Cemetery, it was only the third Jewish cemetery in Massachusetts. As the name implies, the congregation was made up of a tightknit community of Dutch Jews who hailed mainly from Amsterdam. Their synagogue was located in the South End. Newspapers reported that in 1890 over 500 people came to this cemetery to pay their respects to Mark J. Hamburger, the congregation’s longtime rabbi.

Not everyone who has come to this cemetery has shown respect. In 1943, as Melrose was awash with news of Nazi atrocities against Jews, numerous headstones were toppled by unknown vandals. In 1996, a teenager toppled about twenty headstones here; in 2017, a group of three teenagers toppled a half-dozen more. This history of vandalism and the sign by the cemetery gate make clear that, 150 years after the Bornsteins first moved here, an undercurrent of Antisemitism remains in Melrose.