Tiberias tombs, part II

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Thank you all for your comments and questions on yesterday's post. They are of great interest to me.
Today let's continue the subject and look at some of the things which caught my eye as I roamed the ancient Jewish cemetery of Tiberias.

My first time to see such memorial flames.
The oil + water probably can burn for a long time.

As a sign of respect, visitors put a stone on the tomb.

Also, mourners place a pebble on the earth that has been shoveled into the grave as they depart from a funeral.

This admor (great rabbi) must have LOTS of people who come to pay their respects.

If you click to enlarge the picture, you see little notes among the piled stones.

The black is from the many little tea lights lit in his memory.

Prayerbooks are available in a rain-proof book case.

A (very) few of the older graves had been given a coat of blue paint.

I assume this is the old Middle Eastern superstition that this shade of blue drives away "the evil eye."

In the huge cemetery this was the only place I saw with anything to sit on.

These names are not on graves but rather on a gal'ed, a memorial.

It speaks of the 19 "martyrs," largely women and children, who were stabbed and burned to death, some in the synagogue and some in their homes, when "raiding gangs of Arab rioters" infiltrated the Tiberias neighborhood of Kiryat Shmuel on October 2, 1938.

The 1936-1939 Arab revolt was a hard time for the Jewish residents of Palestine, then under the British Mandate; but the Tiberias massacre was especially shocking.

The words of the prayer are large and clear so that a group of mourners who has just buried their dead relative can recite it in public, together.

However difficult it is to understand why your loved one was taken away, the prayer Tziduk HaDin must be said, as a statement of our faith and trust in God's justice.

It speaks of God giving life to the dead.

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Judaism does not have dogmas, especially not about future things that we have no way of knowing for sure.

Some believe in resurrection and some do not.

This raised walkway over the graves must have been built recently to protect the sensibilities of the ultra-Orthodox. It separates the hundreds of mourners leaving the cemetery after a funeral into MAN [sic] and WOMEN.

After finishing our archaeology work in early afternoon (the dig was just south of the cemetery), I would often stop in the cemetery to roam about, all alone.

When the sun dropped behind the mountain, darkness fell quickly, reminding me it was time to return to the land of the living.

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Tiberian tombs

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For T day on ABC Wednesday we travel north to Tiberias to visit tombs, some over two thousand years old.

(Touch your mouse button to enlarge any photo.)

The gate to the ancient cemetery.
(Everywhere in Tiberias you see ancient local basalt stones "impaled" on iron fences for decoration. Always reminded me of shwarma meat roasting on a turning spit.)

Just across the road is the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

This man was the only other person I ever saw during my wanderings in the huge cemetery.

He was praying at the tomb of an important Admor (the word comes from the Hebrew Adoneinu, Moreinu, Rabbeinu, meaning our master, our teacher, our rabbi).

Many of the revered old rabbis are buried here.

Tiberias is one of Israel's four "holy cities." The Chabad website explains it thus:

"Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries Tiberias received an influx of rabbis who established the city as a center for Jewish learning.  One of these was Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitbesk, one of the leaders of the third generation of the Chassidic movement, who, in 1765, emigrated from Eastern Europe together with a group of several hundred followers. During this time, because of its concentration of Jewish scholars and mystics, Tiberias became known as one of the four 'Holy Cities,' along with Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safed."

This was a rare instance of a modern-style use of basalt.

Most of the tombstones are so old their inscriptions cannot be read or are missing.

This design was unique.

This one is very unusual.

Ever since Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, built Tiberias some two thousand years ago, it has been shaken by battles, earthquakes, and a great flood.

Plus, I imagine many good stones were robbed from the graves by unfriendly "neighbors" or conquerors for reuse in building their own houses.

According to the sign, 350 graves have been repaired in the section where the disciples of the Baal Shem Tov are buried.
 The work was done by the Committee to Save the Tombs of the Ancient Ones.

The sign invokes God's blessings on the family of the benefactor "by the great merit of the righteous ones buried here."

Come back tomorrow and I'll show you  the divided (male-female) walkway that he had constructed for people to exit the cemetery after a funeral and some other things that were new (and strange) to me in this special place in old Tiberias.
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UPDATE: Sorry, I forgot not everyone is familiar with Jewish burial.
A grave is dug, the shroud-wrapped body in put IN THE EARTH and is covered with earth.
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
OVER that goes the marker or tombstone or raised structure.
In Israel a coffin is used only for military and state funerals, not for the rest of us.
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(Linking to inSPIREd Sunday.)
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