Me'aras Hamachpelah

Biography

Me'aras Hamachpelah in Chevron is the kever of the Avos and Imahos: Avraham and Sarah, Yitzchak and Rivkah, Yaakov and Leah. The Torah itself records this. Avraham Avinu bought the cave and the field from Efron the Chitti, in Kiryas Arba, which is Chevron, as a burial place for Sarah Imeinu (Bereishis 23). Yitzchak and Yishmael buried Avraham there (Bereishis 25:9). Yitzchak was niftar in Chevron and was buried by Esav and Yaakov (Bereishis 35:27–29). Before his petirah, Yaakov Avinu commanded that he be buried in the me'arah with his fathers, and he said that he had already buried Leah there (Bereishis 49:29–31). Yosef and his brothers carried out that tzavaah (Bereishis 50:13). Rochel Imeinu is not buried here; the Torah says she was buried on the way to Efras, which is Beis Lechem (Bereishis 35:19, 48:7).

A tradition of Chazal, not stated in those pesukim, is that Adam and Chava are also buried in the me'arah. This is brought in Eruvin 53a and Bava Basra 58a, in the account of Rabbi Bena'ah who marked the caves, and in later midrashim and the Zohar. On this page it is mentioned only as a tradition of Chazal, not as a pasuk.

The rooms that visitors see today hold cenotaphs — memorial structures over the traditional kevarim. The caves themselves, beneath the building, have long been closed to ordinary entry. A shliach in Chevron brings your kvittel and sends back a photograph, as with the other kevarim on this site.

There is no one agreed yahrzeit for the Avos. In Rosh Hashanah 10b–11a, Rabbi Eliezer holds that the Avos were niftar in Tishrei, and Rabbi Yehoshua holds Nisan; neither gives a day of the month. Some later luachs list the 1st of Teves for Avraham Avinu, but that exact date is not in Bava Basra 91a, which is sometimes cited for it. The gathering that is well known today is Shabbos Chayei Sarah in Chevron. Traditional kvittel form here is the same as elsewhere: each name as Name ben or bas the mother’s name, with a bakashah, davening in the zechus of the Avos and Imahos. A special recovered nusach unique to this me'arah was not found.

Historical background

The great stone enclosure that stands over the me'arah is widely dated by historians and archaeologists to Herod, in the first century BCE, with walls of the same type as the retaining walls of Har HaBayis. In later centuries the compound was used as a church and as a mosque (the Ibrahimi Mosque). Under Mamluk rule, from the time of Sultan Baybars in the 1260s, non-Muslims were barred from entering; Jews were allowed only as far as a step on the eastern stairway — later fixed as the seventh step — until 1967, when Chevron came under Israeli control and Jews could enter again. Chevron had a Jewish community for many centuries, one of the four holy cities of Eretz Yisroel. In the riots of August 1929, sixty-seven Jews were murdered in Chevron, and the old community was broken up; the British evacuated the survivors. After 1967 a Jewish presence returned, including Kiryat Arba (1968) and later neighborhoods in the city. Today the compound is used by both Jews and Muslims, and access to some of the rooms, including the hall of Yitzchak and Rivkah, is limited to certain days.