KIDRON VALLEY (VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT)/MOUNT OF OLIVES

Jewish cemetery, Mount of Olives, overlooking Valley and the
Temple Mount, courtesy, LandOfIsraelBurials.com

In the time of Joshua, the area in and around Jerusalem, including the Valley of Jehoshaphat, was allotted to the tribe of Benjamin. In early Jewish tradition, this Valley was said to be more of a metaphor than an actual valley. According to the Prophet Joel, at the end of days, Yhwh would gather all the heathen in the Valley of Jehoshaphat (transl. god judges) and He would judge them according to their misdeeds to Israel, the Last Judgement. In Jewish tradition, the walls behind the Temple area that face this valley will be where the messiah will first appear, and from the Mount of Olives, on the opposite side overlooking the valley as well as the Temple area, the dead will be resurrected upon his coming. Jewish preference throughout the centuries to be buried on the Mount of Olives had more to do with this than with any significance regarding the valley below, already the burial site of such Biblical figures as Absalom son of David, the priest Zechariah, and the sons of Hezir, a priestly family of Jerusalem. Indeed, this valley was not referred to as the “Valley of Jehoshaphat”, but a simple land formation formed by the upper reaches of the Nahal Kidron. After the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple by the Romans on the 9^th of Av (Tisha B’Av), the Jews were banished from the area but still continued to celebrate the festival of Sukkot on the Mount of Olives. As the Mount was slightly higher than the Temple Mount and because it offered a panoramic view of the Temple site, it also became a traditional place for lamenting its destruction every Tisha B'Av. It wasn’t until the beginning of the 4^th century that Christian pilgrims began to identify the valley below as the “Valley of Jehoshaphat” due to its location. Later on, Jews and Muslims also accepted this designation.

For centuries, especially since the Crusader period, the Arabs, usually from nearby Silwan, often prohibited Jewish burial on the Mount for a variety of reasons, and Jewish gravestones were often desecrated. By the mid-1850s, the villagers of Silwan were paid £100 annually by the Jews in an effort to prevent the desecration of graves. Among the most prominent people buried there might be mentioned: Rabbi Meir Poppers (d. 1662), a prominent rabbi and kabbalist from Bohemia (today, the Czech Rep.); Yehudah Hasid who led approximately 1000 Jews from Eastern Europe to settle in Jerusalem in 1700; Chaim ibn Atar who came from Morocco and established the Knesset Yisrael Yeshivah in 1742; Abraham Gershon of Kutow, son-in-law of the Baal Shem Tov, he was closely associated with the Kabbalist Yeshivah Bet El in Jerusalem beginning in 1747 led by Rabbi Shalom Sharabi of Yemen who was also buried on the Mount; Moshe Biderman, Lelover Rebbe who, it is said, took the cloak of Napoleon Bonaparte, brought it to Jerusalem, and from it, made a cover for the Ark of the Covenant; Rabbi Joseph Sundel Salant (d. 1866), devoted student of the Musar movement as well as one of the earliest Ashkenazi Chief Rabbis of Israel (1837-1866); Rabbi Meir Auerbach (d. 1877), co-founded, along with Rabbi Shmuel Salant, later Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, the Vaad Clali, an umbrella organization of all kollelim in Israel; Rabbi Yehudah Alkalai, Sephardic rabbi from Serbia who was one of the forerunners of the Zionist movement and inspired the founding of Petah Tikvah in 1878; the first, and so far, only female Rebbe, known as the Maiden of Ludomir (d. 1888); Rabbi Yehoshua Leib Diskin (d. 1898) who served as rabbi in Brisk and Jerusalem; Jacob Saul Elyashar (d. 1906), Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Ottoman Palestine since 1893; the Ben Ish Chai (d. 1909), prominent Haham of Baghdad; Shimon Hakham (d. 1910), Bukharan writer and translator of Jewish holy texts and stories in Judeo-Tajik; Israel Dov Frumkin (d. 1914), Israeli journalist who helped found one of the first Hebrew newspapers in Israel, Havatzelet in 1865.

Of those who were buried on the Mount during the period of the British Mandate (1917-1948): Shlomo Moussaieff (d. 1922) one of the founders of the Bukharan Quarter in Jerusalem; Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (d. 1922) reviver of spoken Hebrew; Jacob Israël de Haan (d. 1924), journalist who came from Holland and who identified with the orthodox Agudat Yisrael party resulting in his assassinated by the Haganah; Nosson Tzvi Finkel (d. 1927) founder of the Slobodka Yeshivah in Hebron; Solomon Eliezer Alfandari (d. 1930), Chief Rabbi of Damascus (1897-1904) and Safed (1911-1918); Nissim Behar (d. 1931), educator and advocate for the Alliance Israelit Universelle education system; Boris Schatz (d. 1932), an avowed anti-secularist, founder of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem; Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld (d. 1932), Hareidi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem (not to be confused with the position of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi); Yossele Rosenblatt (d. 1933), prominent Hazzan; Abraham Isaac Kook (d. 1935) who held the office of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi in 1921, after the position was vacant for a few years; Yaacov Meir (d. 1939), formerly Chief Rabbi of Palestine (1906-07) until he was overthrown by his political enemies, after serving in Salonica, he became Sephardic Chief Rabbi of British Mandate Palestine since 1921; Henrietta Szold (d. 1945), founder of Hadassah; Meir Feinstein (d. 1947) and Moshe Barazani (d. 1947), celebrated freedom fighters against British imperialism; Harry Fischel (d. 1948), American businessman and philanthropist, one of the last individuals to be buried on the Mount before the Arab occupation in 1948.

During the War of Independence in 1948, the entire area fell to the Arab occupying forces of Jordan. All Jews who lived in the area were ethnically cleansed and Jewish visits were prohibited. Officially approved massive vandalism of gravesites took place and 40,000 of the 50,000 graves were desecrated. King Hussein permitted the tombstones to be used as building materials for roads and latrines as well as partially for the construction of the Intercontinental Hotel at the summit of the Mount of Olives together with a road that cut through the cemetery. Such activity had the stamp of approval of the United Nations, Europe, and most Zionists who enthusiastically looked the other way. This was the situation until 1967, when Israel liberated the Old City and surrounding region in the Six Day War. After the War, restoration work of the cemetery began, under international condemnation. It was later re-opened for burials.

The following is a partial list of the prominent personalities that are buried on the Mount of Olives since 1967: Princess Alice of Battenberg (d. 1969) mother of Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh and recognized as Righteous Among the Nations for saving Jews in Greece; Shmuel Yosef Agnon (d. 1970), writer and Nobel Prize laureate; Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman (d. 1976); writer Uri Zvi Grinberg (d. 1981), Zvi Yehuda Kook (d. 1982) Rosh Yeshivah of the Mercav Harav Yeshivah and son of Abraham Isaac Kook; Robert Maxwell (d. 1991) British MP and (dishonest) philanthropist; Prime Minister Menachem Begin (d. 1992) who cruelly ethnically cleansed the Sinai of Jews; Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren (d. 1994); Revisionist freedom fighter Israel Eldad (d. 1996); British Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits (d. 1999); Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg (d. 2008) Chabad emissaries to Mumbai India killed by Pakistani terrorists; Moshe Hirsch (d. 2010) leader of Neturei Karta; Meyer Rosenbaum, Chief Rabbi of Cuba.