Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery


The Jewish Cemetery on the Mount of Olives, including the Silwan necropolis, is the most ancient and most important Jewish cemetery in Jerusalem. Burial on the Mount of Olives started some 3,000 years ago in the days of the First Temple, and continues to this day. The cemetery contains anywhere between 70,000 and 150,000 tombs from various periods, including the tombs of famous figures in Jewish history.

History

In the 19th century special significance was attached to Jewish cemeteries in Jerusalem, since they were the last meeting place not only of Jerusalemites but also of Jews from all over the world. Over the years, many Jews in their old age came to Jerusalem in order to live out the rest of their lives there and to be buried in its holy soil. The desire to be buried on the Mount of Olives stemmed in part from the Segulaic advantages attributed to the burial, according to various sources.
During the First and Second Temple Periods the Jews of Jerusalem were buried in burial caves scattered on the slopes of the Mount, and from the 16th century the cemetery began to take its present shape.
The old Jewish cemetery sprawled over the slopes of the Mount of Olives overlooking the Kidron Valley, radiating out from the lower, ancient part, which preserved Jewish graves from the Second Temple period; here there had been a tradition of burial uninterrupted for thousands of years. The cemetery was quite close to the Old City, its chief merit being that it lay just across the Kidron Valley from the Temple Mount: according to the midrash, it is here that the Resurrection of the Dead would begin. The Messiah will appear on the Mount of Olives, and head toward the Temple Mount. As the sages say: "In the days to come, the righteous will appear and rise in Jerusalem, as it is said, "And they will sprout out of the city like the grass of the field" - and there is no city but Jerusalem".

Rule of Jordan

During the Jordanian rule, the Jewish cemetery suffered systematic damage to gravestones and tombs. As early as the end of 1949, Israeli viewers stationed on Mount Zion reported that Arab residents began uprooting tombstones. In 1954, the Israeli government filed a formal complaint with the UN General Assembly regarding the further destruction of graves and plowing in the area. In the late 1950s, the Jordanian army used tombstones to build military camps. Dozens of tombstones were completely transferred to the tomb camp, a military camp established in nearby al-Eizariya, where they were used to floor tents and toilets.
The Hotel Inter-Continental Jerusalem was built on top of the Mount of Olives, and the access road to it was paved on graves, while the tombstones were shredded to gravel for use as raw material. When the Jordanians extended the road to Jericho, they demolished six rows of graves and threw the bones with the ground towards the lower Sephardic section. Even after sorting out some of the bones, a large pile of earth remained. In addition, ancient tombstones that stood around the tomb of Zechariah were removed from the area of the tomb in order to expand the access road to the village of Silwan. In his book 'Against the Closed Wall', Meron Benvenisti writes that tombstones were also transferred to the courtyard of the Citadel of David, where they were smashed and fragments of which were used as markers for the parade ground.

The cemetery today

As early as 1968, the Arabs began stoning the mourners on their way to the cemetery, through the Arab village. In 1992, with the burial of Prime Minister Menachem Begin on the Mount of Olives, it was decided to establish a dedicated security company for the cemetery, and to increase the protection of visitors to the site. In 2005, acts of harassment against Jews intensified, and it was decided to set up a guard unit for personal or group escort to those who came to the cemetery. In 2009, cars were attacked and many visitors were injured on the way to the cemetery. The "Jerusalem for generations" association turned to public figures, followed by a debate in the Knesset. In 2011, the chairman of the Almagor organization was attacked and injured on his way to the graves of his Holocaust survivor parents. As a result, an attempt was made to increase public awareness of this attack and to mobilize the authorities and voluntary organizations against it. As of 2010, the security and personal escort service is free of charge, financed by the Ministry of Housing. Till today burial plots and tombs remain in a state of neglect. The plots of the graves suffer from vandalism, including the desecration of gravestones and the destruction of graves. A series of government decisions to rehabilitate parts of the mountain, as well as funds allocated for maintenance and renovation, have not yet succeeded in changing the situation.

Notable graves

Many famous names are buried in the cemetery such as Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar, known as the Ohr ha-Chaim, and Rabbi Yehuda Alcalay who were among the heralds of Zionism; Hasidic rebbes of various dynasties and Rabbis of "Yishuv haYashan" together with Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, and his circle; Henrietta Szold, the founder of the Hadassah organization; the poet Else Lasker-Schüler, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the father of Modern Hebrew, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, the Nobel Laureate for Literature, and Boris Schatz, the founder of the Bezalel School of Art; Israel's sixth Prime Minister Menachem Begin; the victims of the 1929 Arab riots and 1936–39 Arab revolt, the fallen from the 1948 War of Independence, together with Jews of many generations in their diversity.

Rabbis and religious scholars