Hebron

Last night I went to a presentation about "Hebron" given by Rabbi Dr.
Gershon Bar Kochba, himself a resident of the Jewish Quarter of Hebron. The
lecture was accompanied by a video presentation featuring many old photos
and films, and the speaker was very lively and could only be called a
"showman." By profession he is a military historian, and also an amateur
archeologist.
He started out by giving the history of Hebron as portrayed in the Bible.
Then he compared the physical description with the small amount of
excavations that have been done on the tel that stands beside the old Jewish
Quarter. It describes how Ephron the Hittite wanted to give the cave of
Machpela to Avraham aveinu, but Avraham insisted on buying it for its real
price, and so he paid a huge amount of silver for it, so that he and his
descendents could always claim ownership. He buried his wife Sarah there,
and later he was buried there, and some of his sons. In the Bible it
describes how he went up the steps to the city gate and there bartered with
Ephron for the cave, and he showed us the stairs that have been excavated
going up to the gate of the ancient city, 3,500 years old. Those may have
been the actual steps that Avraham ascended.
He showed detailed photos of the building that surrounds the cave, that was
built by Herod, around the same time and in the same style as the Western
Wall (Kotel ma'aravi) in the Old City of Jerusalem. When people say they
are going to pray at the Cave of Machpela, that is a misnomer, because
no-one really knows where the cave is, it is somewhere under the building
where people actually pray, and there are only a few recorded instances of
people penetrating under the building, partly because of restrictions by the
Muslims who also consider it sacred.
Around 300 years ago a story is told of the Turkish Caliph visiting Hebron
and accidentally dropping his valuable sword into the hole in the floor of
the Mosque that had been constructed over the cave. He allowed a Jewish
Rabbi to go in and retrieve his sword. The Rabbi claimed to have also
penetrated the cave and seen the bones of the partiarchs, but this cannot be
confirmed. The Muslims subsequently built a decorative cover over the hole,
so that only a 20 cm aperture remained through which they lower a set of
candles, and they also constructed a domed structure over it.
You might ask where were the Jews in all of this, well, the fact is that for
700 years (1267-1967) Jews were not allowed to enter the building. They were
allowed to go only as far as the seventh step, on the stairs that had been
built on the side of the Herodian building, thru which one entered the
Mosque, completed in 1267. Jews crowded up to the seventh step to pray, an
indignity enforced by the Muslim guards. Jews were only able to enter the
building above the seventh step once the Israelis captured Hebron in 1967
from the Jordanians. The small arch and the steps are now gone, swept away,
but the place where the Jews prayed for 700 years is visible from the marks
on the side of the wall.
In 1929, there was an Arab uprising throughout the land resulting from a
deliberate rumor that the Jews had attacked the Mosques in Jerusalem. This
was of course not true, but such rumors are still used today to enrage the
Muslims. The worst massacre then took place in Hebron where 67 Jews were
murdered (some were also saved by Arabs). The British did not intervene,
and afterwards removed the Jewish survivors to Jerusalem, so that Hebron
became Jew-free from 1929-1967, while it was under British (until 1948) and
then Jordanian control.
In 1967, Rabbi Goren, the Chief Rabbi of the IDF, was so enthusiastic to
reach Hebron that he got ahead of the Army and in fact the town surrendered
to him. When he got to the "cave" of Machpela, Moshe Dayan, being a
serious amateur archaologist, wanted to go down and see the cave, but no-one
could (without excavations) because the hole in the floor was so small. So
the General in charge of the troops offered to send his 8 year old daughter
Michal down, since she could slip through. They did this, and they attached
a rope to her to make sure they could bring her back in case something
happened. When she got below she found a corridor and ran along it (they
had to get a longer rope) and found on the other side of the Mosque a
stairway leading up that was blocked at the top, which clearly was below a
twin to the structure built on top of the hole.
Since the Muslims were in charge of the Mosque and to avoid conflict no
further attempts were made for several years to enter the cave. An
arrangement was made that Jews and Muslims pray in the Mosque on different
days also to avoid conflict. In 1978, a group of Yeshiva boys organized a
plot to get into the cave. They arranged for a group equipped with tools to
open a tile in the floor above the stairway found by Michal while the Jewish
prayers were going on (loudly). This was documented by photos and even
a recording. Opposite to the corridor found by Michal they found another
small entrance, that they enlarged to get into, and below that they found
two chambers, although no obvious bones or burial compartments were
seen. But, it took them so long to find and get into that they had to stop
when the prayers ended. However, they made one mistake, someone left
a hammer lying on the floor and the Muslims found it, and from then on they
prevented any further possibility of searching.
Meanwhile, Jews first settled in Kiryat Arba outside Hebron, and then
re-settled parts of the Jewish Quarter, including Beit Hadassah, that is
contemporary to the original Hadassah Hospital building in the center of
Jerusalem. They found that the Jordanians had destroyed the ancient Avraham
aveinu Synagogue, had used the stones from the ancient Jewish cemetery for
paving and for toilets, and had built two markets over the main center of
destroyed Jewish houses. The synagogue and cemetery were subsequently
restored.
Although Israeli Governments did not explicitly sanction Jews returning to
Hebron, they could not effectively stop it. Once the intifada began in
2000, the Arabs shot thousands of rounds of bullets into the Jewish houses,
so they packed their windows with sand-bags (supplied by themselves not by
the IDF). But, then snipers shot at them too, and one day a year old baby,
Shalhevet Pass, was deliberately shot dead in its stroller. This so enraged
the Hebron Jews that they took over the market, that had been built on the
original Jewish homes and named it after her. The IDF was finally also
called in to clear out the snipers and they destroyed several houses that
were being used as firing points.
Today there is a very uneasy peace in Hebron. Jews feel that they have the
right to live there, after all it was a Jewish holy city long before the
Muslims came on the scene, and Jews were only eliminated from there by
massacre, something we should not accept in the case of any minority (and
note that this did not occur during a war. Also, PM Netanyahu negotiated
the Hebron Agreement with Yasser Arafat in 1997. Jews are back in Hebron
now by right, claiming legitimately Jewish-owned property, and they are
there to stay. How this can be arranged under a peace settlement is hard to
see, but that may be a long way in the future. But, there is no rational
reason why Muslims/Arabs can't accept a Jewish minority amongst them, just
as we accept Arabs within Israel. Let there be reciprocity and tolerance.
(for more information see: www.hebron.org.il)