Cities - Hevron - Hevron - Page 2

Sarah Nachshon and the Ancient Jewish Cemetary in Hevron
A baby boy was born to Baruch and Sarah Nachshon in 1975. Baruch, a famous Hasidic artist and his wife Sarah were among the first Jews to return to Hebron. Following the establishment of Kiryat Arba the Nachshon's celebrated the birth of a son and decided to perform the brit milah inside the cave of the Machpelah - burial place of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah. The baby was named Avraham Yedidya.

Three months later, Sarah found Avraham Yedidya dead in his crib. The young mother was beside herself. Why should her new son, brought into the covenant of Abraham in Hebron in the most ancient city of the Jewish People in the Land of Israel, be taken from her after only three months. Everything in this world has a purpose. What was the purpose of her three- month old son?

Sarah decides that Avraham Yedidya would be buried in the ancient Jewish cemetery in Hebron. The cemetery had been last used to inter the 67 Jews slaughtered in the 1929 riots in Hebron. It is minutes from the traditional graves of Ruth and Jesse and overlooks the Cave of the Machpelah. Perhaps, Sarah thinks, this was the purpose of the baby, to take part in a sad but vital part of renewing Jewish Hebron. After almost fifty years, the Jewish cemetery of Hebron would again be utilized as a Jew’s last resting place.

Late afternoon: the funeral procession leaves Kiryat Arba for the ancient Jewish cemetery in Hebron. Then, suddenly the mourners encounter soldiers and roadblocks! The cars come to a halt. Soldiers begin scouring the site, opening car doors, searching for something. "No, you may not proceed to the cemetery" the soldiers order the mourners, "the cemetery is off-limits". One of the car-doors opens. A women gets out with a bundle in her arms.

She addresses the soldiers, "Are you looking for me - are you looking for my baby? My name is Sarah Nachshon. Here is my baby, in my arms. If you won't let us drive to the cemetery we will walk!"

Men with shovels and flashlights, and women, Kiryat Arba residents, walk through ancient Hebron as night falls. They pass the Cave of the Machpelah. They pass the 450 year-old Abraham Avinu synagogue, left in ruins, destroyed by the Jordanian conquerors in 1948. Blockades, set up to stop the crowd, are pushed aside. Senior officers give orders over their walkie-talkies: "Stop them - don't let them proceed" - but the soldiers, overcome by the scene, radio back: "We can't stop them. If you want to stop them come down here and do it yourselves".

The procession continues, past Beit Romano, Beit Shneerson, home of Menuchat Rachel Shneerson Slonim, granddaughter of the "Ba'al HaTanya," up the steep hill to the ancient cemetery.

Moonlight illuminates the field. Sarah Nachshon releases the body of her tiny son, Avraham Yedidya and it is lowered into the freshly dug grave. The grave site is only meters from the mass grave of 1929. Mustering her voice, Sarah utters: "Four thousand years ago our Patriarch Abraham purchased Hebron for the Jewish People by burying his wife Sarah here. Tonight Sarah is repurchasing Hebron for the Jewish People by burying her son Avraham here".

Beit Hadassah
1929 and 1936 - As in Jerusalem, riots and pogroms kill tens of Jews. Just as these riots forced the Jews out of several areas of the old city of Jerusalem at the time, they put an end to the Jewish presence in Hebron, until after the six day war of 1967. But, even then, the going wasn't easy...in roughly 1970, a representative of the Israeli government approached Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, ztz'l with a "plan" to settle Jews in Hebron. The Rebbe's reply (paraphrase) was "you're not planning on settling Jews in Hebron. You have a plan to create a settlement outside of the city of Hebron, and to call it Kiryat Arba, and you think that with this plan you will acquire my acquiesence and agreement. But we will not accept anything short of the return of Jews to the holy city of Hebron itself."

Pesach 1968 - Jewish families return to spend Pesach in Hebron

Erev Rosh Hashana 1971 - families move from military compound to what will become Kiryat Arba, adjacent to Hebron

Erev Rosh Chodesh 1979 - Jews move into Hebron
A week and a half after Pesach in 1979, a group of ten women and forty children make their way through the deserted streets of Hevron and climb in the back window to the Hadassah medical building, built in the 1870's for both Jews and Arabs, but deserted after the pogroms of 1929. They are discovered only in the morning, when the soldiers guarding the compound hear the voices of children singing "vshavu banim l'gvulam" - the children have returned home. The soldiers quickly report to their superiors and the subject becomes a national issue.

The Prime Minister at the time, Menachem Begin, is not in favor of Jewish settlement in Hebron, but neither does he want to uproot them. He orders the building surrounded, with no water nor rations allowed in. Rabbi Moshe Levinger goes to Begin and tells him, "when we surrounded the Egyptians in '73, we gave them water and food. At the very least we can do the same for our own women and children." Begin has no choice but to agree. For two months, the residents remained under this state of siege. Finally, after two months, the women and children were allowed to leave and return. This situation continued for a full year.

Every Shabbat, students and residents of Kiryat Arba would come and pray at the cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, and a group of men would them come to the Haddassa building and dance and recite Kiddush for the women and children residing there. On one Shabbat in May, 1980, the group of men was fired upon and attacked by a group of terrorists from a building accross the street from the Hadassah building. Six yeshiva students were killed. The army destroyed the building the next day, and official recognition of the Jewish presence in the city of Hebron was finally granted. (This is a pattern that has been followed ever since, throughout the heartland of Yehuda and Shomron - citizens take the initiative to settle, the government resists and even sometimes forcibly evicts the citizens, there is a bloody terrorist attack, and then, and only then, the government decides to grant official recognition).

Twenty years later, in June, 2000, a building was built in memory of the six who were murdered. The new building houses six families.

In the meantime, Jewish settlement has expanded further up the hill, accompanied always by terrorist attacks and new families moving in. In what is the most distant enclave, seven families live in Tel Rumeida, overlooking the ancient cemetary of Hebron. One of the six caravans was burst into in 2000, and a rabbi was murdered. Only then was Tel Rumeida granted official government recognition, together with plans to build housing for several more families.

2004 Recently, the Jewish settlement was extended yet further with the establishment of a kollel at the site of the house of the Rebbetzin Menucha Rachel, daughter of the Mittler Rebbe, second Lubavitcher Rebbe, who was a recognized tzedaket living in Hebron during the nineteenth century. This establishment coincided with the arrival of Rabbi Danny and Mrs. Bat Sheva Cohen as the official Chabad/Lubavitch emissaries in Hebron. They themselves live in the Avrohom Avinu complex in the city of Hebron.