The “claim to fame” of the city of Hevron is the Ma’arat HaMahpela, the Cave of the Forefathers and Mothers – מערת המכפלה. Its where Abraham & Sarah, Isaac & Rebecca, and Jacob & Leah are buried. Originally it was just a cave (a “double cave” actually – that’s what the Hebrew name for it means) on the side of a large sloping hill that Abraham purchased in a detailed transaction described in the Bible for 400 shekels of silver from Efron the Hittite who lived there and owned the land at the time. Abraham bought it after Sarah his wife died, as a burial place for her. (Apparently, burying people in caves was a thing back then; they’ve discovered many other smaller caves from the same time period which were burial sites, totally different than today, digging a hole in the ground and filling it with earth, etc.)
Anyway, long after they died, the site was known by the Israelites, so that when the Jews came out of Egypt and entered Israel, Caleb (one of the scouts who was sent to check out the land before the Jews entered) went there specifically and prayed there (it had been several hundred years after the forefathers and mothers had been buried there by that time.) During the time of the Maccabees there is some evidence that a small stone structure was built over the area to mark it and to allow for prayer or meditation there, but it was a bit later during Roman times that Herod, the King of Judea at the time – the same guy that refurbished the Jewish Second Temple and built what we know as the Western Wall – built the huge building that still stands today in Hevron over the site of the cave. This building is apparently the oldest building in the world that is still standing and is still being used for its original purpose (i.e. not turned into a museum or something else). It’s had a few additions over the years by the various Christian (crusader) and Muslim conquerors who have controlled it through the ages but overall is basically the same as it was 2000 years ago.
The Cave of the Forefathers and Mothers – the Ma’arat HaMahpela – מערת המכפלה is the second holiest site in Judaism after the Temple Mount (or the Western Wall, the closest many people get to the actual Temple Mount), and it is worth describing for a moment the different experience that was evident to me visiting each of these sites:
When you visit the Western Wall you are visiting the site of the destroyed Jewish Temples. It is an intensely national and communal experience. It is also individual, as it was through the Temple that God’s presence was most closely felt and so it is common to recite personal prayers, write them down on notes and put them into the wall, etc. I don’t mean to take away from the personal experience of being there, but when you look at that Wall you feel the entire history of our people. The highs – how majestic must the Temple have been at the time! It was the wonder of the world! And the lows – how our Temples were destroyed, our nation beaten down and carried off into captivity. And the high once again of being back in our homeland after 2,000 years; and perhaps also the weight of the struggles we still face. According to the Torah, the Temple was to be a “house of prayer for all nations,” where universal truths would unite the world. When you stand at the Wall, you feel all those things. There is so much there that sometimes it’s just too overpowering. Just too much. You can’t even take it all in. You may even feel guilty, like you perhaps should be feeling more than you are. It can be almost numbing. It is crowded, and noisy, and hot. There are throngs of people there, Jews and non-Jews from all over the world, pushing and yelling, praying and taking selfies.
But if the Wall is an intensely national experience, the Mahpela is an intensely personal one. Here there are only individual people. And those people lived as individuals, not as a great nation. They struggled in their relationship to God and in their relationships to their loved ones. Their stories are familiar to us. They are the Jewish cartoon personalities we remember from childhood, the “Bible stories” we learned in Hebrew school. And if we pray, they are the people we mention every time we say the first prayer of the Amidah, the standing, personal, silent prayer that is the center of all Jewish prayer services. These are the people that as individuals were somehow able to found our nation and change the course of history.
You walk in and its quiet. It’s lit, but dark compared to the bright sun outside. And though the building itself from the outside is huge, it feels small inside. You walk a few steps and then suddenly there’s Jacob – Yaakov. The dad from Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The guy who’s name was changed to Israel after struggling with an angel – the guy who dreamt about the ladder with the angles going up and down. You walk a few steps further and suddenly you’re facing Abraham – the first guy that started this whole brit – bris – circumcision thing. And Sarah – the barren mother who laughed when she heard the prediction that she would yet have a child. You turn around and there’s Leah, Jacob’s first wife, from that whole story about working seven years and then the brides being switched. (Rachel, her sister, is buried at a different site, on the road from Jerusalem.) I’m personally a Levi, so Leah is actually my great, great, great……grandmother, because Levi was one of her children.
You feel a bit small, like a child, coming back to your hometown with your mom and dad to visit your grandparents at the cemetery. And you wonder, are they watching me? Do they know I’m here? What would they think if they could see me now? Are they standing around with the other people of their time, beaming with pride, saying, “Hey, you see that guy down over there? That’s my great, great, great…grandson!” And of course it feels national, too, because what would they think if they could see us all now? The whole Jewish people?
The Mahpela is also a mystical place in our tradition. I have learned that there is a tradition that Adam and Eve are also buried in the cave. Why? Because according to the Zohar, the main book of Jewish mysticism, the Mahpela is one of the entrances to The Garden of Eden. So when Eve died, Adam buried her there, as close as he could get to their source, to God, to the perfection they once had. He was eventually buried there as well. And there is a further tradition that when we die our souls enter The Garden of Eden through the Mahpela, where they are greeted first by Adam and Eve, the primordial first humans, and then by our Mothers and Fathers who are there as well. So when you go there, it feels personal.
The two holy sites, the Western Wall/Temple Mount and the Mahpela, one communal, one personal, are like two opposites. They represent both the universal and the particular, that inescapable paradox that Judaism asks us to hold.
