The Day of Atonement, which begins at sundown tonight, is a 24-plus hour period of intense reflection, prayer and soul-searching that is the culmination of the annual Ten Days of Repentance that usher in the Jewish New Year. It can be a difficult time for many reasons, not the least of which is that one of the long-held rituals of the holiday season calls for visiting the gravesites of your loved ones.

The annual visit that I make to the graves of my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and my great uncles and aunts, can trigger sadness, but the visits do recharge the soul. The graves are located about 45 minutes from the Attleboros, at one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in the state, the Baker Street Cemetery, which is actually a collection of about two dozen cemeteries along a large stretch of land in the West Roxbury section of Boston. Many of the cemeteries are named after synagogues that no longer exist, but which had been a part of many generations until neighborhoods changed - and the houses of worship vanished into history.

Thankfully, that has not happened in Attleboro, where the cemetery and synagogue have been able to co-exist, and flourish, for nearly a century. On Sunday, the local Jewish community marked the rededication of the Congregation Agduas Achim Hebrew Cemetery in the city's Dodgeville area on the occasion of its 100th anniversary, and the synagogue will mark its centennial three years from now.