Alone in the cemetery

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With many Christians marking All Saints' Day and then All Souls' Day this weekend, and with some countries celebrating the Day of the Dead at cemeteries,  I as a Jew felt a bit left out.
So I walked over to our  small Meitar cemetery, just to see  it for the first time.

There was a fresh burial, very moving, not expected.

I was the only living soul in the graveyard.
The sun set, the light faded, and a chill set in.
In the distance I heard  the automatic metal gate squeak  as it rolled shut across the entrance road.
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But here I am,  blogging; so you know I found a way out and made it home.
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Surprises in the gardens

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Let's stroll around the outdoor part of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem for our weekly tour meme, That's My World.

Half-hidden in the bushes is this 3rd century Samaritan sarcophagus.
Bulls' heads, a conch shell, garlands--beautiful what they carved in stone, eh?
It was discovered in Kfar Siris, near Jenin.
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This marble lid of a Roman period sarcophagus was found in Caesaria.

According to the myth depicted, Zeus changed himself into a swan to ravish Leda, wife of the king of Sparta.

From their union, Helen of Troy was born, whose beauty was the cause of the Trojan War.

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Too bad it is missing the upper part of the figures.

But, I guess you can't have everything . . . .

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Ossuaries and sarcophagi are scattered all around the grounds.

I have a feeling they are the ones not perfect enough to be placed INSIDE the museum, but they make for delightful surprises when you find them.

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It seems like even the form of these benches was inspired by the surrounding sarcophagi.

Enlarge the photo and take a close look. You think so?

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Interment in these large stone coffins was widespread in the Mediterranean basin in the 2nd to 5th centuries CE.

This funerary custom was first practiced among pagans and was later also adopted by Jews, Christians, and Samaritans.

The Greek word sarcophagus means “flesh-eating.”

The sarcophagi were placed inside mausoleums or in rock-hewn burial caves.

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And on that lively note we end the tour. ;-)

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Try to imagine

The view from inside a tomb, before the stone rolls and seals it.
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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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Returning in an urn

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The story of the urn begins at the prestigious École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem. On March 31 I was privileged to attend part of their Qumran Day, a day of lectures in memory of John Strugnell.
Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls the scholars at the School of Biblical and Archeological Studies have been deeply involved in the translation and interpretation of the texts. The original Scrolls team was appointed in the early 1950s by Jordan. (The Ecole is on Nablus Road in East Jerusalem, formerly Jordanian territory.) Young Strugnell came to the Scrolls Project in 1955 from Oxford. By 1987 he was editor-in-chief.

Photo courtesy of Fr. Jean-Michel de Tarragon

Strugnell taught at Harvard School of Divinity, but he spent his summers working on the scroll fragments at the Ecole Biblique. So it seemed right that after his death, late in 2007, his ashes would be brought from the United States to Jerusalem.
The Ecole is with the Priory of St. Stephen. Its monks are the teachers. The Dominicans are the Order of Preachers.
Here in the photo (courtesy of Fr. Jean-Michel) the brothers sing from the rite (in Latin and French) as a schola (choir) in the burial place.

Photo by Fr. Jean-Michel

Holy water was sprinkled toward the place of the entombment.

Photo by Fr. Jean-Michel

In the urn--John Strugnell's ashes.

Inside the wall in the crypt are the mortal remains of the deceased Brothers. The body is placed in a simple wooden casket. The marble marker bears the Brother's name, date of birth, date of monastic profession of vows, and date of death.

The present Dominican monastery (from the late 19th century) is built over remains of a 5th century Byzantine monastic complex. Back then the dead were buried in these ancient tombs cut in the rock. The body was buried. Cremation is not and was not allowed in Judaism and it took centuries for Christianity to begin to allow it.

You photo bloggers will enjoy meeting Brother Jean-Michel de Tarragon, here shooting with the big camera.

After getting his PhD (on Ugaritic Religious Cuneiforms Texts) at the Sorbonne, he came here and made Jerusalem his home. Until recently he served as the Prior of St. Stephen's Priory.

When he is not in a class teaching, he does photography for the institute.

He is also very enthusiastic about his project of converting between 15,000 and 18,000 glass plate negatives (from the really old-fashioned cameras) into digital pictures on compact disc.

St. Stephen's has accumulated the world's biggest private collection of old photos of Israel.

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Amazing to see the 19th and early 20th century photos of life here in this land! The country is lucky to have Frere Jean-Michel in Jerusalem.
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Interesting stuff:

A Jerusalem Post article about Professor Father Tarragon and the monastery

Ecole Biblique website in French and English
A new critique by Geza Vermes on the controversy surrounding both Strugnell and the handling of the translation and publication of the DSS
Photo of Qumran caves where the scrolls were discovered

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Shalom Abie, go in peace

Today, August 29, two deaths are being marked. For many Christians this is the day of The Beheading of St. John the Forerunner.

In Hebrew John is Yochanan HaMatbil, meaning John the baptiser. But, as I heard one professor say, he could also be called Yochanan HaMakbil, meaning John the parallel one. The lives of John and Jesus are woven together from birth to death and beyond, as this icon shows.
John said of himself, "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Make straight the way of the Lord."

Today Israel buried Abie Nathan, dead at age 81. Parallels here also. His voice, too, was of one crying out in the wilderness. Before there was peace with Egypt and Jordan, before Israel had a peace movement, Abie was a peace seeker. Like John the Precursor, Abie followed his heart and did bold and daring new things. He flew a little plane solo to Cairo in 1966, he talked with Arafat when it was still against the law, and he served time in jail for it. He almost died from a hunger strike. As today's Ha'aretz article says, "He earned a reputation as a maverick peace activist who often took diplomacy into his own hands." Like John, he was prepared to put his head on a platter if need be.
Nathan launched a pirate radio station in 1973 with news in Hebrew and Arabic and good music and talk. For twenty years we listened to what came from the Peace Ship. Who doesn't remember the opening "From somewhere in the Mediterranean, this is the Voice of Peace. . ."
More about Abie and his humanitarian work around the world is here, in the Jerusalem Post.

When asked what he would want engraved on his tombstone, Abie Nathan said, "Nisiti." It means, "I tried."

Femur, fibula, and frontal bones

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Hope this won't make anyone freak out, but my F words for today are femur, fibula, frontal bones, and funerary practices. Of Canaanites who were buried here on the outskirts of Jerusalem some 4,000 years ago.

Last week, to the excitement of all, we uncovered a skeleton in the burial cave I and three others were digging in. Here you can see the skull, arm bones, and ribs.

Eventually four skulls were discovered.

Can you imagine holding a Canaanite child's head in your hands and poking at the earth that filled it?
At first the bones are left in situ to be photographed, measured and sketched. Then the bones go to the lab to be weighed, measured, photographed, documented, etc.

Funerary objects came next. After removing the fragile bones we could start digging to look for funerary objects like pottery or the person's personal possessions such as jewelry or weapons.
At the time of burial, the clay vessels would have been full of food, drink, and perfumes.
All these the Canaanites believed were necessary for the journey to the netherworld.

The 100+ participants in ABC Wednesday have dug up different F words for their photos. Check out a few here.

Zal in Zion

Zichronam livracha--may their memory be for a blessing.
Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser z"l, the reserve soldiers who were wounded and kidnapped by Hizbullah on the northern border two years ago, came home to Israel today--in coffins. For two long years the families and all of us supporting them knew nothing of their fate.
Today's prisoner swap was painful too to the Israeli families who lost loved ones killed by the five terrorists who were released from prison and returned to Lebanon to a hero's welcome.
These are not the Z words I had planned to post for ABC Wednesday. But it would seem frivolous to do so under the circumstances.
Tomorrow will be another difficult day, with two funerals. To the families we say the traditional "May God comfort you among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem."

Stone of Unction

Pilgrims in the Holy Sepulchre dab oil on, and kiss, the Stone of Unction or Anointing Stone on which (tradition says) Jesus' body was prepared for burial.
John 19:39-40 says, "Nicodemus . . . came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes . . . . They took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths with the spices . . . ."