Wednesday, April 7, 2010 (Part 5):Everything in the Jewish Quarter is very close together and compact. From the Pinkas Synagogue, we walked only about 20 yards to the Jewish Cemetery. This Cemetery is simply an amazing place. It is a jumble of headstones.
The history of the Cemetery is derived from the historical fact that Jews had so few rights in the city and these limitations extended to the right to own property. Thus, the Jewish community had only a very small piece of property where it could bury its dead. Not surprisingly, the space filled up quickly. In order to create the additional space needed to continue to create a resting place for their dead, the residents began to pile earth on top of the graves and bury corpses on top of each other. The graves are 12 deep in this Cemetery, and hundreds of thousands of bodies are buried in this very small space. The exact number is unknown.
With so many bodies buried in such a small space, it is no surprise that the headstones fill just about every square inch of available land! The headstones were not readable to us (all in Hebrew), but there are occasional figures engraved on the stones that denote characteristics or professions of the people buried here. For example, a lion denotes courage and a stethoscope identifies the deceased as a doctor. Many famous people from the history of the Quarter are buried here, but few of them have headstones that look any different from all the others -- simply because there was no space for grand, showy monuments.
No comments:
Post a Comment