BETHLEHEM AND TOMB OF RACHEL

Tomb of Rachel, northern outskirts of Bethlehem, courtesy, JewishIsraelTours.com

[the majority of this article is credited to Nadav Shragai, Senior Researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs]

Bethlehem today is a largely Muslim city with a Christian minority, located about 5 miles south of Jerusalem. The Hebrew matriarch Rachel died on the northern outskirts of Bethlehem while giving birth to Benjamin. For centuries and to this day, her grave has been a venerable holy site for Jews throughout the world. After the conquest of Canaan by Joshua, Bethlehem was among the cities of Judah allowing it to rapidly become a Jewish city. Its name means “house of bread”, probably indicating that bread-making was an important industry at that time. It was the scene of the story of Ruth who became the ancestor of David, and it was through him, a native of Bethlehem, that the messiah would spring forth, ushering in an era of peace and justice. In Christian tradition, that would be Jesus Christ.

During the days of Herod, and after, Bethlehem achieved historic importance as the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ, and as such, has been the site of pious Christian pilgrimages throughout the centuries, even today. Since the destruction of Jerusalem in 70, Bethlehem became less and less a Jewish city and more and more a city of foreign peoples, mainly Christians. As early as the second century, a stable in one of the grottoes close by the town was pointed out as the spot where Jesus was born. After the Arab conquest in the 7^th century, a handful of Jews still lived there. In the 12^th century, the traveler Benjamin of Tudela counted 12 Jews among the foreign population. His was also the first recorded Jewish visit to the Tomb of Rachel. For decades afterward, the Tomb continued to be an important site of Jewish pilgrimages. It was visited by Rabbi Ovadiah di Bertinoro in the second half of the 15^th century and by the 16^th century, the Arab historian Mujir al Din regarded Rachel’s Tomb as a Jewish holy place. The building received its distinctive shape in 1622 when the Turkish governor of Jerusalem, Mohammad Pasha, permitted the Jews to wall off the site’s four pillars that supported the dome. Thus, for the first time, Rachel’s Tomb became a closed building, which also simultaneously prevented Arab shepherds from grazing their flocks at the site. Yet according to one report, an English traveler claims this was done “to make access to it more difficult for the Jews.”

Since the 18^th century, the local Taamra tribe of Arabs would harass Jews visiting the tomb and collect extortion money to enable them to visit the site. One of the scribes who managed the accounts of the Sephardic Jewish kolel (congregation) reported on the protection money that the Jews had to pay. According to him, the payment was to the “non-Jews and lords of the lands who are called effendis…(15000) Turkish grush…and these are the people who patrol the way of Jaffa Road, Kiyat Yearim, the people of the Rama, the site of Samuel the Prophet, the people of Nablus Road, the people of Efrat Road, the tomb of our Matriarch Rachel…so they would not come to grave-robbing, heaven forbid. And sometimes they complain to us that we have fallen behind on their routine payments and they come scrabbling on the gravestones in the dead of night, and they did their things in stealth because their home is there. Therefore, we are compelled against our will to propitiate them.”

In 1796, Rabbi Moshe Yerushalmi, an Ashkenazi Jew from central Europe who immigrated to Israel, related that a non-Jew sits at Rachel’s Tomb and collects money from Jews seeking to visit the site. Other sources attest to Jews who paid taxes, levies, and presented gifts to the Arab residents of the region. Ludwig August Frankl of Vienna, a poet and author, related that the Sephardic community in Jerusalem was compelled to pay 5000 piastres to an Arab from Bethlehem at the start of the nineteenth century for the right to visit Rachel’s Tomb. Taxes were also collected from the Sephardim in Jerusalem to pay the authorities for various “rights”, such as, among other things, payment to the Arabs of Bethlehem for safeguarding Rachel’s Tomb. Rabbi David d’Beth Hillel, a resident of Vilna who visited Syria and the land of Israel in 1824, testified that “…On the opposite hill, there is a village whose residents are Arabs and they are most evil. A stranger who comes to visit Rachel’s Tomb is robbed by them.” In 1827, Avraham Behar Avraham, an official of the Sephardic kolelim in Jerusalem, obtained recognition from the Ottoman Turkish authorities of the status and rights of Jews at the site. This was, in practice, the original firman (royal decree) issued by the Ottoman authorities recognizing Jewish rights at Rachel’s Tomb. The firman was necessary since the Arab Muslims disputed ownership by the Jews of Rachel’s Tomb and even tried by brute force to prevent Jewish visits to the site. From time to time Jews were robbed or beaten by local Arab residents, and even the protection money that was paid did not always prevail. Avraham approached the authorities in Constantinople on this matter and in 1830, the Turks issued the firman that gave legal force to Rachel’s Tomb being recognized as a Jewish holy site. The governor of Damascus sent a written order to mufti of Jerusalem to fulfill the sultan’s order. A similar firman was issued the following year. In 1841, Sir Moses Montefiore obtained a permit from the Turks to build another room, with a dome, adjacent to Rachel’s Tomb to keep the Arab Muslims away and to help protect the Jews at the site. A door to the domed room was installed and keys were given to two Jewish caretakers, one Sephardic and the other Ashkenazi. Jewish caretakers managed the site from that time until it fell into Arab hands in 1948.

This present status notwithstanding, Arab harassment continued. In 1856, James Finn, the British Consul in Jerusalem, spoke about the payments that the Jews were forced to make to Arab Muslim extortionists at some of the holy places including Rachel’s Tomb: “100 lira a year to the Taamra Arabs for not wrecking Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem.” In spite of all the dangers, Jews continued to make their way to the site.

By 1905, Bethlehem was a majority Christian city with a Jewish population of 1, a doctor, according to the English traveler Elkan Adler (rising to 2 in 1922). Yehoshua Burla, the father of author Yehuda Burla, was the caretaker of Rachel’s Tomb. The last caretaker was Shlomo Freiman who often spoke of Arab harassment of Jews at the site in the closing days of the British Mandate. He was prevented from having any access once the site came under Arab occupation after the War of Independence. After the Six Day War, Jewish pilgrimages began again. On October 19, 2010, the anniversary of Rachel’s death, some 100,000 Jews visited the site.

Since Jews are prohibited from living in Bethlehem, the nearest Jewish locations to the city are the present neighborhoods of Gilo and Har Homa in the southern part of Jerusalem. Much of the land of the town of Irtas was owned by a Jewish convert to Christianity in the mid-19^th century. But since then, the town has had no Jewish association.