Eight Meters Down

The mapping mission is officially a joint project of the Cemetery Council, the Vaad Ha’Eidah HaSepharadi, the Chevra Kaddisha for the Sephardic communities in Jerusalem, and the Asra Kaddisha. But the real heroes of the effort are an avreich and independent researcher named Rabbi Mordechai Motola, Asra Kaddisha representative Rabbi Moshe Ackerman, and Aaron Epstein, who works with the City of David organization and is a researcher with the Har Hazeisim Information Center.

Not deterred by the daunting labor-intensive task, the group has tentatively mapped out close to 50,000 kevarim, and their goal is to identify every kever on Har Hazeisim.

Rabbi Ackerman and Aharon Epstein are on Har Hazeisim just about every day, in all kinds of weather. Despite Rabbi Ackerman’s advanced age, he climbs up and down the slopes of the mount, familiar with each nook and cranny. “Our goal is to contact anyone who has a relative or loved one buried here but doesn’t know where — we want to solve the mysteries,” Rabbi Ackerman relates. “I began working on this mapping project 16 years ago, but at one point, the restoration work was suspended and I was devastated. It means so much to me to be able to uncover as many tombstones as is humanly possible, and time is of the essence.”

But that’s easier said than done. “Numbers-wise,” says Aharon Epstein, “during the short reign of the Jordanians, they succeeded in destroying about 30 percent of the graves on Har Hazeisim. To this day, over 50 years later, we hear about cases where fragments of matzeivos are found in floor tiles in the eastern part of the city.”

Researcher and kevarim scholar Rabbi Motola explains why the tombstones were such a prize worth looting. “According to documentation from that time period,” he says, “they had a tender to produce marble, and they took the marble from the tombstones in order to meet the supply. During the day, the Jordanians would take apart the headstones, and at night they’d load them onto trucks. An Israeli committee established after the Six Day War documented how the broken headstones were used in the building of five Jordanian army bases — and they didn’t even try to cover up the Hebrew inscriptions.”

Rabbi Motola says his interest in kevarim was piqued as a bochur, when he became a bit of an expert in the kivrei tzaddikim of northern Israel. Then, as a talmid in Jerusalem’s Yeshivat Yakirei Yerushalayim, he would often visit Har Hazeisim, mostly on fast days and on Fridays, in order to find graves of tzaddikim and to learn more about them.

“For me, it was such an amazing place, where so many names of gedolim that we, as yeshivah students, encounter each day, are buried.” Rabbi Motola eventually published a sefer entitled Dovev Sifsei Yesharim al Har Hazeisim, a list of the tzaddikim buried on the mount and a biography of their lives.

As he finished writing the sefer, though, Rabbi Motola came to realize that besides kivrei tzaddikim, there are tens of thousands of “regular” people buried on the mount who don’t even have a tombstone. And in order to understand what happened, it’s important to go back about 80 years.

“Burials stopped on Har Hazeisim exactly three months before the founding of the state, on Purim Katan, 15 Adar I, 1948,” he explains. “That day, according to a note that appears in the ledgers of the undertakers, ten people were brought for burial. The next day, they already began burying in the cemetery in Sanhedria.”

For months already, it was dangerous to come to Har Hazeisim, and the undertakers literally risked their lives to bring people to burial. As noted in the ledgers, they would bury the dead while the Jordanians sat at the top of the mountain shooting at them. In one incident, a member of the Ashkenazic chevra kaddisha was shot to death by sniper fire, and his colleagues buried him on the spot. At that point they realized that the situation was untenable. Three months later, Har Hazeisim was transferred to Jordanian control.

“Not only did they destroy thousands of tombstones,” Rabbi Motola says, “they also paved a road right through the burial grounds ahead of the Pope’s visit to the Holy Land in 1964. There was already a path running between two chelkahs, and they simply took a bulldozer and widened it, destroying the plots on both the left and the right. After the Six Day War, when the chevra kaddisha returned to Har Hazeisim, they discovered that rows of these plots had nothing left. The Jordanians took all the sand and the dirt, including the bones, and threw it to the side. There was no way to know where exactly it all came from, so the Asra Kaddisha dug a huge burial pit, where the holy earth and the bones were reburied — sort of like a mass grave.”

In Record Time

Rabbi Motola and his colleagues were faced with a huge challenge: They wanted to locate and restore the destroyed tombstones — but even if they had names, how would they know where they’d been buried?

They were partially lucky. “In some of the Ashkenazi chelkahs,” Aharon Epstein explains, “there was a clear registry of the deceased, from where it was possible to figure out exactly where each person was buried. So the minute there was funding, it was relatively easy for us to move in and rehabilitate the area. In the Sephardic chelkahs, in contrast, there was a significant problem, because they didn’t record the rows, so for many years it was impossible to know where the kever was located.”

Still, there were rumors about burial ledgers written by the members of the Parnas family, who were the undertakers in Jerusalem for hundreds of years, and buried both Ashkenazim and Sephardim. The ledgers were eventually located, but they were old and faded and hand-written in a type of code. They were eventually handed over to the archive manager of the Vaad Ha’Eidah HaSepharadi, who was able to decipher the codes. Rabbi Motola and other volunteers entered it all into the computer database of the Information Center.

By carefully perusing the ledgers, it’s possible to figure out, according to various codes and markings, who is buried in which row, in which area, and next to whom. In general, the Parnas family used the prominent graves in any given area as a starting point, and then marked other graves based on those locations. For example, the starting point might be “the place of Pircha Sassoon,” who was a big philanthropist, and then there are people located “to the foot of Pircha Sassoon” or “to the right of Pircha Sassoon.”

Rabbi Ackerman remembers one of the first graves they searched for: Rav Avraham Adess ztz”l who passed away in 1925. “The family asked us again and again to try and locate his grave, but for years, we had no idea where to start. As soon as we got the Parnas ledgers, though, we were able to find a starting point. So although we knew the approximate area, we were talking about six or seven meters underground.

“One day, I was with the workers who were digging and suddenly we discovered a piece of a tombstone, at the edge of which appeared the name “Adess.” I got very excited and informed the family that a part of the tombstone had been found. They immediately organized buses from all over the country and wanted to come to Har Hazeisim that very day. But a few minutes later, we found the other parts of that matzeivah, and it turned out that it was not Rav Avraham’s headstone, but rather that of his grandson, on which it was stated that he died at the age of 16.”

The family wasn’t disappointed, though — they were happy that the team had located the grandson’s kever, and realized that if his grave had been discovered, it was likely very close to their grandfather’s gravesite.

“And a few days later,” continues Rabbi Ackerman, “we did find the graves of Rav Avraham Adess and his wife, and the family was overjoyed. Sometime later, we also found the gravesite of Rav Saadya of Shklov, and this time, it was the family of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin who was thrilled by the discovery. Rivlin’s family came to Eretz Yisrael with the talmidim of the Vilna Gaon, and Rav Saadya led this aliyah and established the first Ashkenazi settlement in Jerusalem.”

Meeting Mother

About six years ago, Rabbi Motola received a phone call from an elderly rav who lives in Rishon L’Tzion. “The rav heard that I locate graves on Har Hazeisim, and he was pleading with me to try and locate a specific grave in the Ras Al Amud section. That’s a section near the Arab village of the same name. After doing a little research, I learned that the section had been heavily damaged, and that out of 1,300 matzeivos, about 50 remained, and only two were standing in place.

“I used whatever information I had about that plot, and tried to create a diagram mapping out who’s buried where. But nothing came together. I realized that I needed a better starting point, and so I spent an entire month researching old archives, looking through pictures and ledgers, but still no results.” Rabbi Motola was about ready to give up. He thought to himself that only ruach hakodesh would help him out now.

“I hate to admit defeat, but on Friday I decided that on Motzaei Shabbos I would call the rav to tell him there was no chance. I remember standing at Minchah on Erev Shabbos and davening to Hashem: ‘Either enlighten me or calm my heart, so I should stop chasing the wind.’

“On Motzaei Shabbos I went over the lists one last time — and suddenly I noticed an interesting detail: Of the 1,300 names that the ledger indicated were buried in Ras Al Amud, it said that some of the graves were made of concrete. At first I didn’t think this was very important, because these were graves that were destroyed, so what difference does it make what they were made of? But when I contacted Rabbi Ackerman and asked him if he would know how to discern the graves made out of concrete, to my surprise, he replied that yes, the structure of the concrete graves are visible to this day.

“That very night, I gave him a detailed diagram of the graves that according to my calculations should have been made of concrete. He got back to me, stunned: ‘Are you sure you weren’t in the chelkah overnight? Because you are totally on the mark.’ At that moment I realized that Hashem had granted me a special illumination. In one minute we had the key to identifying 140 graves, including the one that the rav from Rishon L’Tzion asked me to locate.”

Rabbi Motola then realized that 140 families who’d probably given up looking for the graves of their forbears were totally unaware that they were found.

“I decided to take all the names and to try to contact the families,” he relates. “I basically just went through the phone book, making hundreds of calls until I hit the right last name. Of course, I didn’t want to shock anyone, and I took into account that they might have been elderly, so I always asked to speak to the wife, who was not directly related to the deceased. I told her about the discovery and asked her to break the news to her husband.

“I’ll never forget one phone call — it was a family from Bat Yam, and I asked the woman who answered if she had a connection to a woman named so-and-so. The woman was quite surprised, and replied, ‘Yes, that was my mother-in-law. But she died before I was born.’ I explained what I was calling about and she promised to speak to her husband and prepare him. A few minutes later, the husband called me back, sobbing loudly. He told me, ‘My mother died when I was a year-and-a-half old — I never knew her. After the Six Day War, my father went back to Har Hazeisim, and he was told that a road had been paved over her grave.’ I explained to him that although that was true, with siyatta d’Shmaya, the grave has been uncovered. He begged me to call his mother’s brother, who was 93, and so we made a conference call — the emotion was overwhelming. The very next day at 7:30 in the morning, they came to Har Hazeisim. The man called me from the gravesite and said, ‘I am so excited to be meeting my mother, who I never knew, for the first time.’ ”

One chelkah in which, after painstaking research, it’s now known who was buried in which spot, is currently being uncovered, a layer at a time. “The digging work is in full swing,” Rabbi Motola relates. “A few months ago, on 3 Teves, we uncovered a kever and it turned out that it was on the day of that person’s yahrtzeit, which was like a wink from Heaven. I’ve already contacted the families and told them to get ready because we’re getting closer to the graves of their loved ones. People literally count the days, and so I update them — ‘We’re two rows above where your grandmother is buried…’ — and the excitement is palpable.”

Every Name is a World

Hundreds of graves of rabbanim and tzaddikim who were renowned in Jerusalem in the past centuries have recently been discovered due to the efforts of Rabbi Motola and his colleagues. One of those is the kever of Rav Yehuda Ben Moyal, a talmid chacham known as a wonder worker, who came to Eretz Yisrael from Morocco in the 19th century, just a few months before he passed away.

“The newspapers at that time described his levayah as being very large,” relates Rabbi Motola, “but when I tried to locate his gravesite, I discovered that Jordanians had destroyed everything in that area. I kept trying to create a map, but I’d always get stuck. Then last year, one of his descendants, who lives in Bnei Brak, called me and related that his mother was a great-granddaughter of Rav Yehuda Ben Moyal and he promised her that he’d find the grave before she passed away.

“I told him the truth. ‘I don’t think there’s much of a chance to find it, but daven that in the merit of your grandfather’s zechusim we should find the grave.’ The man promised to daven and that evening, I created a map for the umpteenth time, and checked the lists yet again. I also looked through a ledger called ‘Grave Sales,’ which had an exact description of gravesites that were purchased in people’s lifetimes.

“To my shock, in the very area I was concentrating on according to my sketches, I noticed an entry about the purchase of a grave by a woman, which noted that her plot is ‘at the foot of the grave of Yocheved Uziel, a kever yashan.’ Now, the words ‘kever yashan — old grave’ immediately increase the chances of location, because the older graves generally remained in place since they sank deeper into the ground, out of range of the tractors. As soon as I realized that there was an ‘old grave’ involved in this story, I tried to recreate my diagram — I was confident that we’d find it. And we did, just two days later.”

But that wasn’t the end of the story. Using this newly discovered grave, Rabbi Motola was able to locate many other graves in the area, because each one affected the discovery of another. “It turned out that a large group of Moroccan rabbanim who were very well known in Jerusalem at the time were buried there.”

For Rabbi Motola, it’s not just about finding the graves, it’s also about rediscovering the details of the lives of the tzaddikim who are buried there. “For every name, I begin a personal research project. I read ancient manuscripts and look for information. Sometimes I come upon fascinating material, such as the manuscripts of that tzaddik, important questions that were sent to him, pilpulim that he was mechadesh, and more. It’s really bringing their lost legacy back to life.”

There All Along

You might think that if the date of death is known, it should be easy to locate the grave, but Rabbi Motola explains that there was never a chronological order of burials. “You can see five people buried the same day, and each one is buried in a different section of the cemetery. Some paid more money in order to be buried in more ‘chashuv’ parts of the cemetery. Others wanted to be buried next to relatives. There were other considerations as well. We sometimes see a kever that’s 300 years old alongside one that’s just 80 years old. There are no rules,” he explains.

So what other hints do these kevarim sleuths use in order to uncover lost graves? Any details about the shape or structure of the kever can add to a more accurate diagram, and sometimes color is also used — some families would mark the graves in blue. In order to locate family members, they work with a company called My Heritage, which has a huge database of family trees.

Aharon Epstein notes that he also uses old photos. “I’ve gone to all kinds of local archives, but in the end, I discovered a huge trove of old pictures from Har Hazeisim in the Library of Congress in America. You can see Har Hazeisim from up close and from far, and they offer a lot of information. One of the exciting things about these pictures is seeing how the restoration work we’re doing really is making the cemetery look like it did in the past, with the same gates, stairs, and fences.”

These days, he says, his team is often able to come back to the family with certainty that they’ve found the burial spot where their forbear is buried. “Sometimes, though,” Aharon qualifies, “if we can’t be sure of the exact location, we advise the family to build a headstone that states: ‘Buried near this spot is…’ There are isolated cases where we can’t even find the general area — which isn’t such a surprise for anyone who’s ever tried to decipher the labyrinth of Har Hazeisim — and in that case we advise them to put a memorial plaque nearby.”

There are also cases where there is an existing grave with an intact tombstone, but the family doesn’t know where it is. “During World War I,” Aharon relates, “it was very common among Ashkenazim not to write the family name on the headstone. So it often happens that people are looking for a grave, and only after we put all the puzzle pieces together are we able to locate it for them — and it was there all along.”

Of course, due to the sheer numbers, there are thousands of kevarim that haven’t been located, many of which no longer exist and others with no remaining identifying details. But even in the section that’s currently being exposed, many families don’t even know that after all these years, the long-lost graves of their ancestors are about to be revealed.

Under Cover

The ancient cemetery in Tzfas wasn’t bulldozed over by enemy occupiers, but over centuries, thousands of graves in that holy city have also been ruined, their inhabitants unknown. For the last 30 years, Reb David Afnezer of Tzfas Religious Council has been on a mission to restore all those forgotten matzeivos.

“Since the times of the holy Ari, there was no one who dared touch the cemetery and restore it,” he says. “But about 30 years ago, the chief rabbinate of Tzfas decided to restore it and accessed some government funding for the project.”

Much of the cemetery had been destroyed by earthquakes and weather damage, and looking at the overgrowth and thorns, the first question for Reb David was, “Where do we start?”

“We knew more or less which area was used for burials in the 15th and 16th centuries, and we began digging there. As we dug, we discovered graves and tombstones, so we needed to be very careful. Most of the kevarim we’ve found are 500 to 600 years old. To date we’ve restored nearly 10,000 headstones.”

Do you know who the matzeivos belong to?

“That’s the great difficulty and also one of the biggest frustrations. It often happens that we dig and dig, but ultimately we find a matzeivah without a name, or a headstone whose inscription has become illegible over the years. Sometimes we find a grave without a headstone. On the other hand, we’ve found about 100 that remained fully intact, with the names and the dates. These matzeivos shed a lot of light on the history of those days in Tzfas. If we find something documented like that, it’s a great zechus, and if not, it’s still a zechus because we’ve restored the proper dignity to the deceased.”

Which famous graves have you uncovered?

“Among others, we found the kever of Rav Yeshoshua Bin Nun — not the one from Tanach, but a student of Rav Chaim Vital, the disciple of the Ari HaKadosh. Rav Yehoshua was a very wealthy man, who published the Ari’s writings. In his merit, people are able to learn Kabbalah. We also located the grave of Rav Yosef Falcon, on whose headstones it states, ‘Rabi Yosef Falcon Hasofer.’ At first we thought this meant that he was a scribe, but after searching through archives, I learned that it meant he was like a notary. In those days, they were strict to issue piskei halachah or piskei din only with the stamp of the city scribe, which gave them validity. You can see that Rav Yosef Falcon appears in lots of the writings and the halachic rulings of Rav Yosef Karo.

“The tremendous satisfaction you feel when you discover a kever is indescribable — you touch the matzeivah and expose the first letter and then the second, and daven that the rest of it will be found and that the matzeivah will be complete and unbroken. At this point you are using only your fingers, no tools, because you’re afraid to destroy, and suddenly, you see the entire inscription.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 825)