CAVE OF MACHPELAH

ancient Herodian structure over the Cave of
Machpelah in Hebron, courtesy, Wikipedia

The Cave of Machpelah, sometimes referred to as the Tombs of the Patriarchs, is a series of caves located in the heart of the Old City of Hebron in the Judean hills, approximately 18 miles south of Jerusalem. In 1967, Israel liberated the site from Arab occupation and subsequently divided the ancient structure over the tombs and the cave into a synagogue and a mosque. The site is considered by Jews to be the second holiest place in the world, after the Temple Mount.

The word Machpelah means "doubled", "multiplied" or "twofold". Therefore, a literal translation would simply be "the double cave". But according to some, the name could refer to the layout of the cave which is thought to consist of two or more connected chambers. This hypothesis is discussed in the tractate Eruvin from the 6th century Babylonian Talmud which cites an argument between two influential rabbis, Rav and Shmuel. Another theory holds that Machpelah didn't refer to the cave but rather a large tract of land, The Machpelah, at the end of which the cave was found. This theory is supported by some Bible verses such as Genesis 49:30, "the cave in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre in Canaan…".

According to Jewish tradition, the cave and adjoining field were purchased by Abraham as a burial plot. This was the first commercial transaction mentioned in the Bible. He had approached the sons of Heth who were charmed by him and told him that he can bury his dead in any of their tombs. Instead, he decided to purchase the site of the Cave of Machpelah from its owner, Ephron the Hittite, for a fair price. Afterward, Abraham’s wife Sarah died, according to Genesis 23:1–20, and was buried in the cave. She was 127 and the only woman in the Bible whose exact age is given. The burial of Sarah is also the first account of a burial in the Bible. In time, Abraham himself followed her, and much later, his son Isaac, and his wife Rebecca, and finally Jacob’s wife Leah. In the final chapter of Genesis, Joseph, ruler of Egypt, had his physicians embalm his father Jacob, before they removed him from Egypt to be buried in the Cave next to Leah. (Jacob’s second wife Rachel was buried in her own tomb on the outskirts of Bethlehem.)

In 31–4 BCE, King Herod the Great built a large, rectangular enclosure over the cave. It is the only fully surviving Herodian structure from the period of Hellenistic Judaism. After the destruction of Jerusalem, the site remained a Jewish pilgrimage center, only now, they were forced to share it with Christians. The Piacenza Pilgrim (c. 570) noted in his pilgrimage account that Jews and Christians shared possession of the site.

The Arab occupation of the 7^th century was actually seen as a liberation by the Jews. When they conquered the country they handed over the supervision of Machpelah to the Jews, in recognition of their assistance. They also permitted the building of two small synagogues at the site. Over the years, even though Jews were permitted to pray at the site itself, it officially acted as a mosque as long as it was under Muslim rule (or a church when it was under the control of the Christian Crusaders). During the late 11^th century, the Jewish official responsible for the area bore the title of "The Servant to the Fathers of the World." The Jews of Hebron were accustomed to pray daily in Machpelah for the welfare of the head of the Palestinian gaonate. Many Jews sought to be buried in its vicinity considering burial there to be equal to burial on the sacred Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. When the site became a church during the Crusader period, Jews were banned from using the adjoining synagogues. In the mid-12^th century, the Arab nobleman from Damascus, Ibn al-Qalanisi in his chronicle alludes to the discovery of relics purported to be those of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, a discovery that excited eager curiosity among all three communities in the southern Levant, Muslim, Christian, and certainly Jewish. Towards the end of the period of Crusader rule, in 1166 Maimonides visited Hebron and wrote, "On Sunday, 9 Marheshvan (October 17), I left Jerusalem for Hebron to kiss the tombs of my ancestors in the Cave. On that day, I stood in the cave and prayed, praise be to God, (in gratitude) for everything." In 1170, Benjamin of Tudela visited the city, which he called by its Frankish name, St. Abram de Bron. He reported: "…there is the great church called St. Abram, and this was a Jewish place of worship at the time of the Mohammedan rule… The custodians tell the pilgrims that these are the tombs of the Patriarchs, for which information the pilgrims give them money. If a Jew comes, however, and gives a special reward, the custodian of the cave opens unto him a gate of iron, which was constructed by our forefathers, and then he is able to descend below by means of steps, holding a lighted candle in his hand. He then reaches a cave, in which nothing is to be found, and a cave beyond, which is likewise empty, but when he reaches the third cave behold there are six sepulchres, those of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, respectively facing those of Sarah, Rebekah and Leah, upon which the names of the three Patriarchs and their wives are inscribed in Hebrew characters. The cave is filled with barrels containing bones of people, which are taken there as to a sacred place. At the end of the field of the Machpelah stands Abraham's house with a spring in front of it". Rabbi Shmuel bar Shimshon visited the cave in 1210 with the permission of the governor of Jerusalem; he says that the visitor must descend by twenty-four steps in a passageway so narrow that the rock touches him on either hand.

When the Egyptian Muslim Mamelukes took over Crusader lands, they forbade Jews, as well as Christians, from entering the site, allowing them only as close as the fifth step on a staircase at the southeast, but after some time this was increased to the seventh step. But they were able to insert petitions into a hole opposite the fourth step. This hole pierces the entire thickness of the wall, to a depth of 6 ft. 6 in. It is first mentioned in 1521, and it can almost certainly be assumed to have been made at the request of the Jews of Hebron, possibly on payment of a large sum, so that their supplications would fall into the cave situated under the floor of the area. The Cave itself was off-limits to everyone, even Muslims.

After Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria in 1948, no Jew was allowed in the territory and consequently no Jew could visit the tomb. Following its liberation by Israel in 1967, Hebron, and Machpelah in particular, came under Jewish control for the first time in 2,000 years and the 700-year-long restriction limiting Jews to the seventh step outside was lifted. According to the autobiography of the Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces, Major General Rabbi Shlomo Goren, on June 8, during the Six-day war, he made his way from Gush Etzion to Hebron. He then entered the site and began to pray, becoming the first Jew to enter the compound in 700 years. While praying, a messenger from the Mufti of Hebron delivered a surrender note to him, whereby the rabbi replied "This place, Ma'arat HaMachpela, is a place of prayer and peace. Surrender elsewhere."

The stairway leading to the site was destroyed in order to erase the humiliating "seventh step". The first Jewish wedding ceremony to take place there was on August 7, 1968. At the same time, a special arrangement was made to accommodate Jewish services on the Jewish New Year and Day of Atonement. This led to a hand-grenade being thrown on the stairway leading to the tomb on October 9; 47 Israelis were injured, 8 seriously. However, that same day, the first Jew to enter the underground caves was Michal Arbel, the 13-year-old daughter of Yehuda Arbel, chief of Shin Bet operations in Judea and Samaria, because she was slender enough to be lowered into the narrow hole and gain access to the tomb site, after which she took photographs. A group of Israeli residents in the area then reestablished a small synagogue under the mosque. On November 4, a large explosion went off near the gate to the compound and 6 people, Jews and Arabs, were wounded. On Yom Kippur eve, in 1976, an Arab mob destroyed several Torah scrolls and prayer books at the tomb. In May 1980, an attack on Jewish worshippers returning from prayers at the tomb left 6 dead and 17 wounded. In 1981, a Jewish group lead by Noam Arnon took photos of the burial chambers. Tensions would later increase when the Zionist authorities under Yitzhak Rabin decided to backstab the Jews and sign the Oslo Accords in September 1993. It was only a matter of time before something tragic would happen. In February 1994, 29 Arabs were killed at the site and scores injured by a Jewish resident of Kiryat Arba, Baruch Goldstein. The resulting riots resulted in a further 35 deaths. The increased sensitivity of the site meant that in 1996, the Wye River Accords included a temporary status agreement restricting access for both Jews and Muslims. As part of this agreement, the Jews control the southwestern section. Muslims are allowed free reign over the entire site but the waqf (Islamic charitable trust) controls 81% of it which includes the whole of the southeastern section which lies above the only known entrance to the caves and possibly over the entirety of the caves themselves. In consequence, Jews are not permitted to visit the Cenotaphs of Isaac or Rebecca, which lie entirely within the southeastern section, except for 10 days a year that hold special significance in Judaism. Tourists are permitted to enter the site. Furthermore, it is illegal for Jewish religious authorities to maintain the site, allowing only the waqf to do so.

Security at the site has increased since the Intifada. On February 21, 2010, the Zionists, uncharacteristically, announced that it would include the Cave of Machpelah in a national heritage site protection and rehabilitation plan. This made the UN, the Arab governments, and the Obama administration, very angry.

LOD

Lod city center, courtesy, Wikipedia

Lod is an Israeli city about 9 miles southeast of Sheikh Munis. In 2019 it had a population of about 77,000. Israel's main international airport, Ben Gurion Airport (previously known as Lydda Airport, RAF Lydda, and Lod Airport) is located on the outskirts of the city.

The town of Lod appears in the Hebrew Bible as a town of Benjamin but is not mentioned in the Book of Joshua. It is however, mentioned in the Book of Chronicles as being founded by Shemed the Benjaminite who also founded the town of Ono (1 Chronicles 8:12; Ezra 2:33; Nehemiah 7:37; 11:35). In Ezra 2:33, it is mentioned as one of the cities whose inhabitants returned after the Babylonian captivity. From the fifth century BCE until c. the 2^nd century, the city was a center of Jewish scholarship and commerce. During the Hasmonean period, Jonathan Maccabee and his brother Simon conquered the city from the Greeks and enlarged the area under Jewish control. But in 63 BCE, the Land of Israel came under Roman rule and twenty years later, Cassius, the Roman governor of Syria, sold the inhabitants of Lod into slavery. They were set free two years later by Mark Antony. In the New Testament, Lod appears in its Greek form, Lydda, and was the site of Peter's healing of a paralytic man as described in Acts 9:32-38. The earliest Christian community in the town was established at this time. In 66 CE, during the First Jewish–Roman War, Lod/Lydda was under the command of John the Essene. The Roman proconsul of Syria, Cestius Gallus, razed the town on his way to Jerusalem which was also razed four years later. But in the period following the destruction, Rabbi Tarfon, who appears in many Tannaitic and Jewish legal discussions, served as the town’s rabbinic authority. During the Kitos War, 115–117 CE, the Roman army laid siege to Lod/Lydda, where the rebel Jews had gathered under the leadership of Julian and Pappos. The distress became so great, that Patriarch Rabban Gamaliel II, who was shut up there (and died soon afterwards), controversially permitted fasting on Ḥanukkah. Lydda was finally taken and many Jews were executed; the "slain of Lydda" are often mentioned in words of reverential praise in the Talmud. Generally speaking however, the town flourished between the first war against Rome and the Bar Kochba Revolt (132-135 CE). It had a large market; cattle were raised in the area; and textile, dyeing, and pottery industries were established. It was the seat of a local Sanhedrin; famous scholars, such as R. Eliezer b. Hyrcanus, R. Akiva, Joshua b. Levi, Judah b. Pazi, Eleazar bar Kappara, and Ḥanina bar Ḥama taught there. Among its synagogues was one specially maintained by a community of Tarsians.  After the Bar Kochba Revolt was crushed, Jews remained in Lydda, though its agricultural hinterland had been destroyed. On the other hand, the patriarch R. Judah I leased estates in its plain. The Samaritan element became more powerful in Byzantine times, although the town became predominantly Christian and had a bishop.

In 1170, Benjamin of Tudela found only one Jewish family there, but after Saladin's re-conquest of the town in 1191, more Jews settled there. The community was even described by the 14^th century geographer Ashtori ha-Parhi. A small community existed sporadically since then but was largely gone for most of the 19^th century. In the second half of the century however, a new community was established, but they were ethnically cleansed by Arabs after the 1921 Jaffa riots. Some returned afterwards. In 1934, an airstrip was built by the British authorities for purposes of trade and travel. In 1973, it was renamed, Ben Gurion Airport. 

In the 1947 United Nations proposal to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, Lydda was allotted to the Arabs. During the bloody Arab onslaughts that triggered the War of Independence, Israeli forces captured the town and it was later incorporated into the State of Israel. The Arab population fled and later, Jewish refugees from “Arab” countries settled there. Beginning in the 70s, they were joined by Jews from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union.

In 1996, prior to the widening of HeHalutz Street, a well-preserved mosaic floor dating to the Roman period was excavated as part of a salvage dig conducted on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Municipality of Lod. The mosaic was initially covered over with soil at the conclusion of the excavation, for lack of funds, to conserve and develop the site. It is now part of the Lod Mosaic Archaeological Center.

Although Lod has been plagued by a poor image for decades, as of 2008 dozens of projects were under way to improve life in the city. New upscale neighborhoods are expanding the city to the east, among them Ganei Ya'ar and Ahisemah. In 2010, the Lod Community Foundation organized an event for representatives of bicultural youth movements, volunteer aid organizations, educational start-ups, businesses, sports organizations, and conservation organizations.   

Lod is also active in Israel’s sports scene. The city's major football club, Hapoel Bnei Lod, formed by a merger of Bnei Lod and Rakevet Lod in the 1997, plays in Liga Leumit (the second division). Its home is at the Lod Municipal Stadium. Two other clubs in the city play in the regional leagues: Hapoel MS Ortodoxim Lod in Liga Bet and Maccabi Lod in Liga Gimel. Hapoel Lod played in the top division during the 1960s and 1980s, and won the State Cup in 1984. It folded in 2002. A new club, Hapoel Maxim Lod (named after former mayor Maxim Levy) was established soon after, but folded in 2007.