SHA’AR HAMENUCHOT

Reserve your place in history

Sha'ar HaMenuchot “Mount of Those who are Resting” - is the largest cemetery in Jerusalem

The Mount of Olives or Mount Olivet is a mountain ridge east of and adjacent to Jerusalem's Old City.

It is named for the olive groves that once covered its slopes. The southern part of the mount was the Silwan necropolis, attributed to the elite of the ancient Kingdom of Judah. The mount has been used as a Jewish cemetery for over 3,000 years and holds approximately 150,000 graves, making it central in the tradition of Jewish cemeteries.

Several key events in the life of Jesus, as related in the Gospels, took place on the Mount of Olives, and in the Acts of the Apostles it is described as the place from which Jesus ascended to heaven. Because of its association with both Jesus and Mary, the mount has been a site of Christian worship since ancient times and is today a major site of pilgrimage for Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants.

Much of the top of the hill is occupied by At-Tur, a former village that is now a neighbourhood of East Jerusalem.

From Biblical times until the present, Jews have been buried on the Mount of Olives. The necropolis on the southern ridge, the location of the modern village of Silwan, was the burial place of Jerusalem's most important citizens in the period of the Biblical kings.

History
Sha’ar HaMenuchot

before

1948

Until 1948, Jewish burials in Jerusalem were conducted in the millennia-old Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

1948

In 1948, the Arab siege of Jerusalem cut off access to the Mount of Olives, and this remained the status quo after the 1949 Armistice Agreements.

In 1948 several temporary cemeteries opened to handle wartime deaths in Jerusalem, including the Sanhedria cemetery, Sheikh Badr Cemetery, and the Shaare Zedek Cemetery (on the grounds of the old Shaare Zedek Hospital on Jaffa Road). After the establishment of the state, however, these were deemed inadequate for the needs of a growing city.

in late summer

1948

In late summer 1948, developers identified a 300 dunams hilltop located between Givat Shaul and Motza and overlooking Highway 1. It was outside the boundaries of Jerusalem at that time, yet accessible to the city, and it had soft rock for grave-digging.

They calculated that each dunam would accommodate 200 graves and estimated a need for 1,000 graves per year. At the time, the city of Jerusalem had 150,000 Jewish residents with a mortality rate of 1,000 annually; at that rate, the new cemetery was expected to suffice for the next 40 years.

The developers received permission to build the cemetery a month later, but disagreements between the various burial societies delayed the first burial until the fall of 1951. With the opening of the new cemetery, civilian graves were transferred here from the temporary cemeteries at Sheikh Badr and the old Shaare Zedek Hospital.

1951

In 1951 a new cemetery was established at Mount Herzl, dedicated by government decision as Israel's national cemetery, where national leaders and fallen soldiers would be interred.

1990’s

In the 1990s developers began expanding the cemetery onto the northern and western slopes of the hill. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.

2008

By 2008 the cemetery spanned 580 dunams (0.58 km2; 0.22 sq mi) in which more than 150,000 people are interred. Lorem ipsum dolor Shaar is a shrine of history and culture for Jersusalem sit amet.

Operation

The graves on Har HaMenuchot are divided into sections operated by various chevrei kadisha (burial societies). The Kehillat Yerushalayim burial society was allotted more than 50% of the land when the cemetery opened. Other sections were apportioned to burial societies serving the Ashkenazim (also known as Perushim), Sephardim, and Hasidic communities of Jerusalem.
‍
In the late 1990s other chevrei kadisha opened, serving the Kurdish, Georgian, Yemenite, and Bukharan Jewish communities. The Kehillat Yerushalayim burial society also operates a special section reserved for those whose Jewish identity is questionable, such as non-Jewish immigrants and atheists. Both the Kehillat Yerushalayim and the Sephardi burial societies maintain an on-site funeral parlor.

Points of interest

01- 0N

Exercitationem Praesentium

Near the main entrance lies the original Chelkat Harabbonim operated by the Ashkenazi (Perushim) burial society, which includes the graves of many gedolim of the past 60 years from around the world.