![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
During the period of British rule in Jerusalem (1917–1948), the “Gemilut Hesed shel Emet” society—or Gahsha—a burial society was founded by Jerusalem's community council. From the perspective of national Zionist activity, Jerusalem’s burial society reflected attempts to firmly establish a general national awareness within the Jewish community. The idea of a cemetery for all Jews with no distinction made based on origin constituted a significant change for Jewish cemeteries in Jerusalem and in the entire land at the time. Establishing this type of cemetery conveyed an important Zionist principle: the national movement aspired to represent all Jews, in their lives and even in their deaths. Zionist activity in the field of burial and cemeteries was one driving force for creating a new sense of space in Jerusalem, the kind that hoped to connect local identity with Zionist identity and used the language of new Jewish nationalism in the land of Israel. The burial activity should be viewed within nation-building efforts and the Zionist movement's attempts to promote a central authority in the land, which ultimately led to the founding of a sovereign Jewish state in May 1948.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 In his research, Avriel Bar-Levav characterizes a number of models for understanding the various roles of the cemetery in Jewish culture, including the place of identity. See especially Bar-Levav, “Where We Are Not.”
2 Maimonides stated that the resurrection of the dead was one of the thirteen principles that all Jews must believe in; those who did not, he felt, would forfeit their place in the World to Come. On Jewish burial on the Mount of Olives in the late Ottoman period, see Ben-Arieh, City Reflected, 42–9.
3 “Kollel” is a term that refers to an economic, ethnic, social, and religious group in the land of Israel of a group of Jews that originated from a specific city of country; these were active in Jerusalem beginning in the nineteenth century. Jews who still lived in those cities or countries outside of the land of Israel donated money for the maintenance of the kollels, called ḥaluka (distribution), in order to fund the yeshivas of their brethren in the land of Israel. Thus the kollels developed primarily along the lines of origin countries. See Ben-Arieh, Jerusalem in the 19th Century, 319–36.
4 Azaryahu, In Their Deaths; Mosse, Fallen Soldiers.
5 Mann, “Zionist Uncanny”; Azaryahu, Place for Memory.
6 Bar-Gal, “Landscape of Death.”
7 Gonen, “Geography of Burial Places.”
8 Rubin, “Death Customs”; Azaryahu, “Mount Herzl”; Bar, Landscape and Ideology; Aronoff, “Establishing Authority”; Ohana and Feige, “Funeral at the Edge”; Bar-Gal and Azaryahu, “Jewish Tradition.”
9 Fuchs, “Sites of Memory”; Weiss, “Resting in Peace.”
10 Reiter, Allah’s Safe Haven?; Leshem, “Over Our Dead Bodies”; Bar, “Jewish State, Muslim Cemeteries.”
11 Katz, “Changes to the Landscape.”
12 Gonen, “Place of Rest.”
13 Pesiqta De Rab Kahana, Mandelbaum ed. (Newark, 1961–62), 234–5; Targum Song of Songs 8:5. The central source for the idea of the resurrection of the dead on the Mount of Olives is the prophecy in Zech 14:3–4. In the end of days, a great war with all of the nations will take place for Jerusalem. After the city is captured, God will intervene: “Then the Lord will come forth and make war on those nations as He is wont to make war on a day of battle. On that day, He will set His feet on the Mount of Olives, near Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives shall split across from east to west, and one part of the Mount shall shift to the north and the other to the south, a huge gorge” (JPS trans.). As a result of the war, God will be king over the entire land, and Jerusalem will be safe.
14 On the ancient tombstones near the bottom of the mountain near the Kidron River and the different views about their dating, see Schiller, Mount of Olives, 26–30.
15 Ben-Aryeh, “Population”; Carmel, “Competition, Penetration, and Presence.”
16 Kaniel, “Organizational and Economic Struggles.”
17 Ḥevra Kadisha, Jubilee Book, 11–12.
18 Ḥevra Kadisha, Jubilee Book, 11–13.
19 A bleak description of the condition of burial services in Jerusalem in the late Ottoman period is given by Judge Gad Frumkin in his memoirs; see Frumkin, Path of a Judge, 95–7.
20 For more on the terms and the academic discussion about their problematic nature that has developed in recent decades, see Kaniel, “Terms”; Herzog, “Terms”; Bartal, “‘Old’ and ‘New.’”
21 Salmon, “Ashkenazi Urban Settlement,” 605–9.
22 The central institutions of Knesset Yisrael were the assembly of representatives, the National Council, and the chief rabbinate, though it took a few years to put a system in place. In 1920, the first elections for the assembly of representatives took place but it was only seven years later, in 1927, that the British authorities recognized Knesset Yisrael as representing all of the Jews of the land of Israel. For more on this, see Cohen-Hattab, “Jerusalem’s Va’ad HaKehila.”
23 Cohen-Hattab, “Jerusalem’s Va’ad HaKehila.”
24 Friedman, Society and Religion, 34–7.
25 The members of the commission were activists and public figures from the Yishuv and Jerusalem in particular: Chairman Judge Gad Frumkin, Zerach Epstein, Yitzhak Elyashar, Haim Salomon, Moshe Slotzkin, Peretz Kornfeld, and Shmuel Lupo. See A199/21, Gad Frumkin Archive, Central Zionist Archive (hereafter: CZA; all archival sources are in Hebrew). While Frumkin served within Mandatory Palestine’s Supreme Court (see note 27 below), the remainder of the commission’s members held senior positions in Jerusalem’s Jewish community council, the executive arm of Knesset Yisrael, recognized by the British as the body representing the Yishuv at the time. For more on the community council in Jerusalem during the Mandate period, see Cohen-Hattab, “Jerusalem’s Va’ad HaKehila.” For more on ritual slaughter and the disagreements between the ethnic groups on the subject, see Kaniel, “Organizational and Economic Struggles.”
26 Ḥevra Kadisha, Jubilee Book, 14–15.
27 Gad Frumkin (1887–1960) served on Mandatory Palestine’s Supreme Court for twenty-eight years. He was effectively the most senior Jewish officer in the British Mandate’s government. For more on Frumkin, see Brun, “Lost Honor.”
28 Frumkin, Path of a Judge, 428.
29 The 1928 “Communities Law” recognized the Jewish Yishuv as a national community with a right to create its own self-governing institutions. The first elections for a Jewish Community Council in Jerusalem notably contained a change in the originally proposed name for the body, which now referred to the Jewish and Zionist nature of the community, indicating the growing status of the Zionist establishment in the city. The council became an important and central body, overseeing most of the Jewish communities in Jerusalem. It was only after 1928 that the council was able to carry out its plans, including those related to burial. See Cohen-Hattab, “Jerusalem’s Va’ad HaKehila.”
30 Memo of A. Ḥ. Levi to Ben-Aharon, lawyer, 5 April 1932, J2/3520, Jerusalem City Archive (hereafter: JCA).
31 Memo of the burial committee to the community council’s executive committee, 6 July 1932, J2/3520, JCA.
32 “The Creation of the Burial Society,” 16 June 1945, J2/3622, JCA.
33 Haim Salomon (1879–1960) was the son of Yoel Moshe Salomon, the founder of the Nahalat Shiva neighbourhood and Petah Tikva. Haim Salomon was a public figure in the Jerusalem community and an industrialist who served as a member of the Jerusalem community council for a number of years, even serving as its chair for some of the time. From 1929 to 1932 he was a member of the National Council. See Tidhar, Encyclopedia, 278.
34 A Catholic convent on Via Dolorosa Street in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.
35 As quoted from the words of Haim Salomon, J2/3622, JCA.
36 For a copy of the land’s registration in the land registry, see book 3, p. 43, J2/3622, JCA.
37 Knesset Yisrael, Kehillat Yerushalayim, 3–5. The eight representatives were: Judge Gad Frumkin (chairman); three representatives of Kehillat Yerushalayim: Moshe Ostrovksy (vice chairman), Chaim Shmetterling, and Eliyahu Lulu; three of the founders: Yeshayahu Brody (treasurer), Haim Salomon, and Mordecai Eliash; and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi representing the National Council.
38 Knesset Yisrael, Kehillat Yerushalayim, 20.
39 Knesset Yisrael, Kehillat Yerushalayim, 15–19.
40 Knesset Yisrael, Kehillat Yerushalayim, article 5a.
41 Knesset Yisrael, Kehillat Yerushalayim, article 5b.
42 Knesset Yisrael, Kehillat Yerushalayim, article 6a–b.
43 As described by Judge Frumkin in his memoirs: “The graves are arranged with no order and no method, with no paths and lanes, and you can only reach them by rough steps and leaps from grave to grave and from gravestone to gravestone”; Frumkin, Path of a Judge, 96.
44 Troen, Imagining Zion.
45 For more on this and on critical thinking in modern planning in the context of the land’s development from the beginning of the renewed Jewish settlement, see Fenster, Whose City, 30–55.
46 Frumkin, Path of a Judge, 430; Internal review b, 29 September 1938, A199/28, CZA.
47 On Richard Kauffmann and his considerable involvement in the planning of Jewish settlement in the land of Israel during the period of British rule, see Epstein-Pliouchtch and Levin, Richard Kauffmann. On the garden suburbs in Jerusalem during the British Mandate, see Biger, “Garden Suburbs.”
48 On the different halakhic opinions on the subject, see Ḥevra Kadisha, Jubilee Book, 45–6.
49 Frumkin, Path of a Judge, 430; “The Unheard Speech,” 14 March 1943, J2/3622, JCA. Rabbi Simonsohn was a passionate supporter of the Zionist idea, immigration to the land, and revival of the Hebrew language; he asked to be buried in the land of Israel in his will. His friends and those who cherished his memory from Germany who were in the land of Israel, some of whom were active members of the Gaḥsha, saw the opening of the area on the Mount of Olives as an opportunity to execute his will. For more, see Noy, “Das erste Begraebnis”; Urbach, “Rabb. Dr. Max Simonsohn.”
50 My thanks to Sara Barnea and Jonathan Manovich of the Mount of Olives Information Center, Elad Foundation, for making the lists of those buried in the Gaḥsha plot at the time available to me.
51 Ḥevra Kadisha, Jubilee Book, 50–4.
52 Bar-Levav, “Games of Death,” 59, 67–89.
53 For more, see Ehrnvald, “Military Campaign,” 341–88.
54 Information about community work, 1 February 1948, J1/6786, CZA.
55 Benvenisti, City of the Dead, 69–71.
56 Information about community work, 27 February 1948, J1/6786, CZA.
57 Polk, Jerusalem district governor, to the chief secretary, 10 March 1948, GL-14/8583, Israel State Archives (hereafter: ISA). On the Sanhedria neighbourhood, see Ehrnvald, Sanhedria.
58 Yitzhak Ben-Zvi memo, 25 February 1948 J1/6786, CZA; Davar, January 1, 1948, p. 1 (Hebrew).
59 Information about community work, 27 February 1948, J1/6786, CZA.
60 The Emergency Committee was founded by the Yishuv’s leadership in late 1947 in order to prepare the formation of the state apparatus. For more, see Alsberg, “Emergency Committee,” 49.
61 Ḥevra Kadisha, Jubilee Book, 106–7.
62 At the same time, there were twenty-three other burial societies in Jerusalem. See Ḥevra Kadisha, Jubilee Book, 104–7.
63 Haim Salomon to Dov Yosef, 9 September 1948, J2/3622, JCA.
64 Jerusalem committee temporary confiscation order, 28 May 1948, J2/3622, JCA. On the history of the Sheikh Badr cemetery, see Yizrael, “Jewish Cemetery.”
65 Ḥevra Kadisha, Jubilee Book, 110–2. A few dozen additional bodies of people who had died during the war were buried in a new small plot near the old Shaare Zedek hospital.
66 Gonen, “Choosing the Right Place”; GL-14/8583, ISA.
67 The gap immediately after the state’s founding between the desire to allow burial by community due to special burial customs and what actually took place on Har HaMenuḥot is a subject that is out of the bounds of this article. While some plots there are unique to one ethnicity, other areas are set aside for members of the Haganah, for bereaved parents, for the city’s notable citizens, for important rabbis, and more. See GL-14/8583, ISA.
68 Ḥevra Kadisha, Jubilee Book, 113–4.
69 Ḥevra Kadisha, Jubilee Book, 134.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Kobi Cohen-Hattab
Kobi Cohen-Hattab is an Associate Professor at The Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Faculty of Jewish Studies, Bar Ilan University, Israel. His main research interests are historical-geography of tourism in modern time, the development of Holy Sites, History of the archives in Israel and the relationships between Zionism and the Sea. [email protected]