Macpela Cave - Cave of the Patriarchs Hebron

In the heart of Hebron lies the Cave of the Patriarchs that was bought by Avraham Abino from the Hittite pencil about 3,700 years ago, and in fact it is the first hold of a Jew in the Land of Israel.

The smell of the fragrance of heaven and a special light that emanated from the Cave of the Patriarchs, brought Abraham our father to the decision that this was the place to buy for a grave estate.

Four couples are buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs: Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca and Jacob and Leah. The Cave of the Patriarchs because of the duplication of the couples buried in it and because of the duplication of the caves.

The Cave of the Patriarchs was discovered by the first man when he saw one light coming out of Heaven from which he was expelled, and wanted to be buried there. When the first Adam came to bury his wife Eve he smelled the fragrances of heaven he knew.

Several clues in the Bible indicate that even Moses was miraculously transported to the Cave of the Patriarchs after his death. In contrast, Esau's head is also buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs.

According to the Book of Zohar, the Cave of the Patriarchs is a place beyond the righteous souls from this world to the next world who pass through the development of Paradise. And we are all righteous.

Caleb son of Yafuna, separated from the spies and made his way alone to Hebron, to the Cave of the Patriarchs, to prostrate on the graves of the fathers and mothers and to pray to the Creator of the world to give him the strength to do the right thing.

The building above the Cave of the Patriarchs is one of the most beautiful monuments from the Second Temple period that has been preserved in its entirety and in all its splendor. (A strong earthquake that occurred in the country and that destroyed Safed, caused several stones in the structure above the Cave of Machpelah to move slightly from their position on the southern side).

This impressive building was built by Herod to glorify the tombs of the ancestors and is shaped like a tabernacle surrounded by pillars and arches. The ancient building is the only one in the world that has been intact and active for about 2,000 years. It was built by Jews, for Jewish prayer, about 600 years before the appearance of Islam in the world.

The building is a perfect and small model of the Temple Mount (2 dunams compared to 144 dunams on the Temple Mount) its dimensions: about 35x60 meters, the height of the southern wall is about 20 meters and the thickness of the walls of the wall is approaching 3 meters. In the northeastern wall is a stone that is almost 10 meters long and weighs about 40 tons.

Despite the splendor of the building above the Cave of the Patriarchs, the value of the cave is immeasurably greater than the archaeological value of the building. Throughout the generations, Jews from all corners of the world, including the great generation, sometimes under severe pain, have come to prostrate themselves on the graves of ancestors and pour out their prayers before the Holy One, blessed be He, while being helped by the "right of ancestors" - that God remembers the kindness of ancestors and brings a redeemer to their children's children for His name's sake with love.

Over the generations the building passed into different hands when Hebron was conquered by the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs (Muslims), the Crusaders (Christians) and the Mamluks (Muslims) who forbade Jews to pray in the cave and for about 700 years the Jews were only allowed to pray near the seventh step leading to the building above Cave of the Patriarchs. Throughout that period and to this day, Jews are not allowed to build a synagogue there.

In 1967, Hebron was liberated by the IDF, the city's residents surrendered without a fight, possibly due to the fear of Jewish revenge for past riots.

The actual information about the cave itself is very little. It is known that there are two eaves parallel to each other in Yitzhak Hall, both of which connect to one underground cave and within it another cave and probably there is also a third cave.

In the last generation, the veil of mystery was lifted a little and several facts about the underground complex were discovered. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who was interested in archeology, chained 13-year-old Michal Arbel, who was the girl Dakat-Go, daughter of the head of the Jerusalem District of the Shin Bet, through the candle hole at the end of Yitzhak Hall, an opening that is 26 cm wide. The girl discovered an underground room with three Tombstones A narrow corridor about 16 m long leads to the room and leads to another blocked exit.

Several years ago, in the month of Elul, at the height of the Salihot prayer, the instructors of the "Hebron School" managed to outwit the Muslim Waqf people who were guarding the place, but they left the Yitzhak Hall due to the noise caused by the Jewish worshipers during a particularly loud Salihot prayer in the poetry "Annu God of Abraham" "We clouded and feared Yitzchak And lots of blowing of the trumpets. The worshipers hit the floor with hammers and chisels on the side bordering the opening of the candles from which the Arbel container had been inserted several years before.

Slowly, the large stone began to rise and after they managed to move it, they discovered the same stairs that Michal described as being blocked at the end. A group of about seven guys, among them Dr. Noam Arnon, hung out inside. And they uncovered a double cave, from which a gusty wind blows and which is the same as the burial caves from the time of the patriarchs, which is located under the "Zion of the grave of Abraham our father".

The caves are now filled with dirt almost to the top and full of bones of Jews who asked to be buried next to their ancestors. The remains from the time of the patriarchs are buried deep, but on top of the dirt fill, fragments of various pottery from the time of the kings of Judah (about 2,900 years ago) were also discovered.

To Herod's building, the Mamluks added an adjoining building on its southwest side, through which the Jews enter today. The "Josephia" building - according to Arab tradition, the righteous Yosef was buried there. Excavations done there in secret did not turn up any findings, until recently underground radar mapping carried out under "Josephia" in 2016, revealed that under the structure there is a covered water reservoir with arches from the Roman period, built on top of a karst fissure.

These karst cracks in the rock were used as water reservoirs in the period before the construction of the building, and Herod planned to use them to supply water to the visitors of the complex. Another water reservoir is located in Seda Machpela near the "Josephia" building.

Since the State of Israel returned to Hebron, there has been a delicate and very sensitive fabric in the prayers of the Jews and the Arabs in the structure above the Cave of the Patriarchs.

The Israeli government returned the Jews to pray inside the building after 700 years of humiliation, but on the other hand allowed the Arabs to continue visiting the place and left the Jordanian Waqf to manage the building.

The hostile attitude of the Arabs led the government in the past to reduce Jewish visits to the place. Several times large crowds of Arabs committed pogroms and destroyed Torah scrolls, holy arks, pentacles and siddurim. The animosity continued when, while prayers were being said on the Jewish side of Yitzhak Hall, Arabs chose to raise their voices in their prayers and wooden chairs flew from side to side. The cave guard soldiers were frequently required to restore peace.

All of this ended on Purim 1994, when the senior and respected Jewish doctor in the area, Dr. Baruch Goldstein from Kiryat Arba, who for decades saved Jews and Arabs, entered and slaughtered Arab worshipers in the building above the cave.

The Goldstein massacre was preceded by a warning Goldstein received from senior IDF officials in the area that he should prepare for a major attack. Dr. Baruch Goldstein saw how Hebron - the city of kindness and connections, the Cave of the Patriarchs - the place of the graves of the ancestors, becomes the center of a murderous diversion of Islamic fundamentalism, and that young people come out of it enraptured, with murder in their eyes, from the "religious" sermons delivered over the graves of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. ‎

And at a certain moment, perhaps on the night of Purim, when the reading of the scroll was accompanied by cries of "Ithbah to a Jew", at a certain moment, the frequent pains of death, the streams of Jewish blood that was spilled and that are planned to be spilled, not on us, the honor of Israel that was trampled to the ground - transferred it to his mind, his religion, and Konno, loss of a human photographer, the fuse of sanity has been cut. And from the abyss of madness, he put on the clothes of the enemy, and did what he did. He put on the clothes of Ishmael, and did what he would not do.

After that incident, in which the life of Baruch Goldstein himself was also taken, the State of Israel decided to close the cave to Jewish prayer for about two years.

Today the building above the Cave of the Patriarchs is divided and separated by heavy, armored doors. The hall of Yitzhak the Great and the "Julia" remained for Arab prayer only, while the Abraham and Jacob halls as well as the court and the covenant hall remained for Jewish prayers.

10 days a year the Cave of the Patriarchs is open in its entirety to Jews. Arabs are not allowed to enter the building these days. And vice versa, there are 10 days when Jews are prohibited from entering and the entire building is used for Muslim prayer. These days are called "Jewish exception" or "Muslim exception" and they are chosen every year according to the holidays.

Every year, on the Shabbat of the Life of Sarah, when they read in the weekly parshah about the purchase of the Field of the Machpelah and the burial of Sarah in Kiryat Arba, Hebron, thousands of Jews come and stay on Shabbat in Hebron in the city of the guest entrances, and read the Torah about the purchase of the cave and the Field of the Machpelah in a very authentic way - in the Field of the Machpelah and in the building above the cave.

This is all about the prayers and visits to the structure above the Cave of the Patriarchs, but as far as the graves of the ancestors and the cave itself, it still disappears and is shrouded in secrecy.

Inside the cave where the fathers and mothers rest, apparently no man has ever entered and therefore the hidden and the hidden still prevail over the visible and the known.