It was a beautiful, clear day last week – the typical early winter weather that feels more like spring – when I visited Jerusalem’s hallowed Har Hazeitim to learn about the work of the International Committee for Har Hazeitim (ICHH) and tour the site of the new Visitor Center currently under construction.
Perhaps it was the majesty of the setting – that postcard view of Har Habayit framed by the Old City walls to the east (far more compelling than the usual views from the west), the shadow of desert hills melting into the horizon in either direction beyond. Perhaps it was the inexorable connection between past, present, and future that saturates the very air of Jerusalem. Or maybe it was the passionate, breathtakingly knowledgeable presentation by ICHH chairman Jeff Daube – but as I traveled through the impossibly narrow passageways and took in the sea of hewed stone, I felt anything but the subdued, somewhat depressing atmosphere of being in a cemetery.
Of course, Har Hazeitim (the Mount of Olives) is not just any cemetery. Arguably the most famous Jewish cemetery in the world, it houses some 150,000 Jewish graves and, it seems, nearly as many stories – some as old as Judaism itself.
“There is a direct relationship between Har Hazeitim and Har Habayit,” Daube says, pointing out the approximate area where the Kohen Gadol would immerse himself in a mikvah and prepare for the Yom Kippur avodah, as well as produce the ashes from the parah adumah (red heifer), directly opposite the Holy Temple.
The oldest known grave on Har Hazeitim is that of Bat Pharaoh – not Moshe’s Nile rescuer but the Egyptian princess Shlomo HaMelech married as part of his empire-building campaign.
There are tombs that go back even further: The remains of the prophets Chagai, Zechariah, and Malachi are said to be interred within the stone walls of an underground cave containing myriad smaller caves which are carved out from within like fingers from a palm. The site – accessed by a steep, uneven stone staircase and eerily dark inside – is manned by an affable and impressively erudite Russian Orthodox priest called, appropriately, Yirmiya. (He is not the only clergy based on Har Hazeitim. The several historic churches located there make it a popular pilgrimage site for Christian tourists.)
Torah luminaries from across the generations lie in rest on this mountain: The Ohr HaChaim; Rav Ovadiah MiBartenura; Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook and his son, Rav Tzvi Yehudah HaKohen Kook; Rav Gifter; Rav Hutner; the Netziv; the Maiden of Ludmir, Chana Rochel Verbermacher; the Boyaner Rebbe; Rav Shmuel Salanter, and many, many more.
Then there are the national heroes – Menachem Begin and his wife, Aliza; Henrietta Szold, Yehuda Alkali; fallen early fighters for the Jewish State, including Moshe Barzani and Meir Feinstein, and IDF soldiers; S.Y. Agnon; Sheldon Adelson; Rav Shlomo Goren, and countless others. The emotional proclamation that shook the Jewish world in 1967 – “Har Habayit bi’yadenu!” – rang out from right here, across the valley from the Lion’s Gate where our troops reentered the Old City.
On a personal note, my beloved uncle and maternal great-great-grandmother (his great-grandmother), who made aliyah to Palestine in the 1930s, seeking a more religious environment after emigrating to the U.S. from Poland, are both buried on Har Hazeitim – with front-row seats, as my family likes to say, to greet Moshiach.
Over the years – and especially between 1948 and 1967, when the entire eastern portion of Jerusalem was under Jordanian control – this 3,000-year-old mountain and everything around it suffered grave depredation (in both senses of the word). Approximately 40,000 graves were damaged, their tombstones used as paving stones and latrine tiles by the entrenched Jordanian army.
For decades, local Arabs had free rein, vandalism reigned, and many Jews – including those with family buried there – stayed away rather than risk being attacked with stones or Molotov cocktails. Our “cousins” used the area as a playground, a drug den, and a garbage dump. They held weekly donkey races, sometimes leaving the dead animals there to rot. “The place was a mess,” Daube says.
The first step to changing all that was a 2010 report by Israel’s then-state comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss documenting the unspeakable conditions on Har Hazeitim. His report focused the attention not only of Knesset members but of concerned private individuals who began lobbying for the rehabilitation of this most venerated Jewish cemetery. That year, American brothers Abe and Menachem (Kosher Fest founder) Lubinsky, whose parents are buried there, spearheaded the founding of ICHH. Daube, a former Israel director of the ZOA who made aliyah in 2007 after a decades-long career in special education, came on board shortly thereafter.
While today ICHH is working full steam ahead to get the planned Visitor Center up and running (more on that in a moment), its early role – which remains ongoing – was to advocate for government investment in improving the security situation on Har Hazeitim. Fortunately, from the outset, the issue has drawn broad support from across the political spectrum. “Left, right, center – it doesn’t matter. Everyone cares deeply about this mountain,” says Daube.
What’s behind the rare consensus? Har Hazeitim, Daube explains, “has enormous strategic value.” It is like the neck of an hourglass. Around it, encroaching from all sides, is Arab construction – most of it illegal. (The Jerusalem Municipality estimates that there are about 38,000 illegal Arab structures in eastern Jerusalem.) Thus, the mountain – which is actually a two-mile ridge stretching from Har Hatzofim in the north to Kidmat Zion/Abu Dis in the south – is as strategic as it is holy: Without Israeli sovereignty on Har Hazeitim, the Arabs would have uninterrupted control of the area, and the region known as Gush Adumim – which includes the city of Maale Adumim and a host of other Jewish communities – would be completely cut off.
After all, sovereignty, as Israel continues to learn the hard way, requires facts on the ground.
“Har Hazeitim keeps the entire eastern flank of Jerusalem in our control,” Daube notes. Well, that plus the various Jewish neighborhoods which have blossomed around it – including Maale Zeitim, Maalot David, Beit Orot, and Beit HaChoshen – outposts of intrepid Jewish families living in tightly secured buildings from which our flag proudly waves.
To reverse the lawlessness that had persisted for decades, ICHH successfully lobbied for the installation of more than 230 security cameras on Har Hazeitim, as well as extensive fencing. Then, in 2012, a police outpost with two assigned officers arrived in a trailer set down in the main parking lot on the mountaintop, just a few meters from the famed Seven Arches Hotel. (Incidentally, that hotel, formerly the Intercontinental, has its own stories to tell: It was the site of the PLO’s opening conference in 1964 at which its charter was drafted, and reportedly houses Jewish graves under its foundation. A Jewish owner recently purchased the property, though don’t expect it to be hosting Pesach programs any time soon.)
All that investment in security on Har Hazeitim has paid off. “We deployed every single method at our disposal to bring the situation under control,” says Daube, “and we have turned it around – if not 180 degrees, at least 160 degrees.” There have been no major incidents of vandalism on Har Hazeitim since October 2018.
Recently, another six-and-a-half million shekels were budgeted to upgrade the cameras, plus an additional four million for more fencing. The new surveillance equipment will allow for panning, zooming, and faster screen-switching to aid the two dedicated female soldiers tasked with monitoring the footage in real time.
Besides its security initiative, ICHH also successfully lobbied for the rehabilitation of graves desecrated by the Jordanians – to date, more than 20,000 of the 40,000 that were damaged have been restored from ruin.
This herculean effort had an unlikely partner: Abed, a longtime Arab gravedigger on Har Hazeitim whose family had been in the profession since the 1920s, used his photographic memory to help replace the restored headstones on their correct plots. Today, his grandson, also called Abed, serves as a caretaker on the site, paid by Hadassah to maintain the tomb of its founder, Henrietta Szold. When we passed by his purlieu, he and Daube greeted each other like old friends.
Having spearheaded the security overhaul of Har Hazeitim, ICHH has now turned its focus to a new mission. Quoting the Psalmist’s advice of “Sur mei’rah v’asei tov” (Move away from evil and do good), Daube says, “We got the mountain under control – now it’s time to start doing some good things.”
The Har Hazeitim Visitor Center is a 25-million-shekel project with the goal of drawing as many people as possible to the site – students, tourists, soldiers, and people of all ages and backgrounds. The planned 2,100-square-meter, three-story structure will include a full-fledged police station, a lecture hall, a synagogue, an information center, and a huge roof terrace with garden and amphitheater – all offering panoramic views with an eye to Har Habayit.
“It’s a Diaspora project as well as an Israeli project,” says Daube, with funding split between ICHH and the Israeli government, which is matching all private donations raised. Notably, following an expensive excavation conducted pre-groundbreaking to ensure that no human remains are buried under the site, the Visitor Center will be “kohen-safe.”
While a mountain lined with tombstones might seem a strange place to welcome visitors, Daube points out that Har Hazeitim is “the international cemetery of the Jewish people.” It’s both a historic treasure-trove and a still active burial site, with about 400 burials taking place annually. (Yes, plots are still available for purchase, including a new area just established on the “far side” of the mountain – but they don’t come cheap. An east-facing view on the “front side” of Har Hazeitim goes for upwards of $50 thousand, while a spot around the back will set you back around $20 thousand.)
But more important, the Visitor Center has a fundamentally strategic purpose: to attract thousands of visitors to Har Hazeitim and thereby make it safer. Daube likens it to the transformation of New York’s Central Park under Mayor Giuliani, who brought concerts, festivals, and other events to the then-benighted landmark during his tenure. The people came, the police came to protect them, and the tide slowly turned. By bringing as many people as possible to the site and making it a venue for events such as lectures and musical performances, ICHH hopes to turn the area from one many people still avoid due to security concerns to a thriving destination on everyone’s to-see list. But as Daube points out, changing the widespread perception of the area as unsafe is not an easy task.
A bus line already serves Har Hazeitim directly, taking visitors right to the parking lot atop the mountain, though with woeful infrequency. Another line serves an intersection just down the road from the Visitor Center – a junction which was once a rock-throwing hotspot but is now relatively quiet thanks to security cameras and police presence.
As part of the plan to make Har Hazeitim come alive for visitors, Daube hopes to introduce augmented-reality tours – think visiting the grave of a luminary and, right there on the spot, learning more about him or her in living color through your digital device. He’d also like to create a database identifying all those interred on the mountain.
But first things first: A VIP ceremonial cornerstone event will take place in February. Construction is set to be completed by late next year, with the grand opening of the Visitor Center slated for early 2027.
The ICHH is building it. Let’s hope the people come.
For more information, visit www.harhazeitim.com or www.harhazeisim.org.