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| ancient Herodian structure over the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron, courtesy, Wikipedia |
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 7th 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 11th 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-12th
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.
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