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Rabbi Shurin, Tisha b'Av and Hevron


I first met Rav Shurin at the Jerusalem Volvo dealer in 1983 when we were both olim hadashim, new immigrants to Israel. In those days, it was considered a privilege to buy a car from the dealer, not a privilege for them to sell you one. As a result the two of us were left waiting for about half an hour while the salesman (if you could call him that) disappeared for a lunch break. So we began talking, me, recently arrived from Australia, renting in Kiryat Moshe in Yerushalayim and the rabbi, just moved into his permanent abode in Efrat after a few months in an absorption center in Kiryat Arba.

I had studied at the yeshiva in Kiryat Arba and later in Mercaz haRav. Rav Shurin knew Rav Avrohom Shapira (a rosh yeshiva at Mercaz) from their days in the Hebron Yeshiva. So with these two commonalities ( Kiryat Arba & Rav Shapiro) we played Jewish geography for over an hour (well they he said he would be back in half an hour, but . . . ) until the Volvo man returned to take our money.





It took a further two years until our family also found our permanent home in Efrat and I again met the Rabbi who had a little congregation in a wood panelled bomb shelter near his house. He held prayer services there and gave Gemara lessons mornings and evenings, as well as hosting a night Kollel, where people from the town would come and learn together.

The first year I was living in Efrat, Rabbi Shurin announced on Tisha b'Av that he wants to go to a cemetery after morning prayers. He said we could go to the local (then still small) cemetery next to Kfar Etzion, but since we are so close to Hevron (17 kilometres to the south), we should go there to visit the graves of those slaughtered in the 1929 pogrom in Hevron in which over sixty Jews were massacred on one long summer's shabbat.

He illustrated the importance of visiting a cemetery on the 9th Av with a story in which he was personally involved. He told us that he used to spend the New York summers in the mountains, at a bungalow colony with a group of rabbis. Included in this circle was the famed Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. Rabbi Shurin recalled that one Tisha b'Av it was particularly hot, "it was over a hundred degrees. Reb Moshe asked me to drive him to a cemetery." Rav Shurin explained that most of the rabbis then did not have cars, but he was one who did. "I felt sorry for him because he was getting old and they didn't have air conditioners in cars yet back then, so I told him there were no Jews buried anywhere nearby", knowing full well that on Tisha b'Av as opposed to before Yom Kippur, any cemetery would do. The aim of the visit was to see the frailty of humanity and to cause you to think about yourself in order to make you re evaluate your purpose and status in this world.

"He told me that we don't need a Jewish cemetery . . . I said there aren't any cemeteries in the vicinity . . . he said, 'we passed one ten miles back' . . . so I had no choice but to drive him there . . . it was very hot, but I had to take him."

Our rabbi wanted to learn from this action of the great sage the importance of this act on this day. Most people don't bother but Rav Moshe, by his actions, taught us the importance of visiting a cemetery. So we, together with Rav Shurin, visited the old Hevron cemetery.





The graveyard is located on a hill overlooking the city of Hevron and Ma'arat haMachpela, The Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, where four "famous couples" are buried: Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca and Jacob and Leah. The last burials in Hevron were of those that were brutally murdered in the 1929 massacre. By 1967, when we were able to return to the area after the Six Day War, the Jewish sites of Hevron were in a shambles. Both the four hundred year old Avraham Avinu and the cemetery lay under piles of rubbish and rubble, covered in animal dung and carcasses. I remember these sites from the days I studied in the yeshiva in Kiryat Arba in 1976. Then Jews were not yet living in the city itself, only in the outskirts. I remember professor Benzion Tavger, who came to Hevron from Novosibirsk. He cleaned up the two sites in the face of harassment and interference by officials in the Military Administration. The tombstones of the 1929 martyrs were reinstated, based on some old records and photographs, and on eye witness accounts of some old men from Yerushalayim who had taken part in the original burials, the Hevra Kadisha. The bones of the victims were scattered all over the site. They had been butchered for a second time. I remember the day that the work was completed.

Having learnt from 1935 in the Hevron yeshiva, by then located in Geula in Jerusalem, our Rav was familiar with many of the stories of the massacre. While he obviously had not known the people lying in the graves, he knew some of their families and he knew many of the survivors. He related these happenings to us. He enlivened this place in front of our eyes.

The following year, with a few more people in tow, we visited again. This year the Rabbi said, in his typical Lithuanian accent, where 'sh' and 's' sound alike, "Why don't we also go the Cave as well . . . after all it is also a cemetery and very important people are interred there".

So that's how and why our custom of visiting started. It's well over twenty years now. Our beloved sage is no longer with us, passing over to the world that is all Truth a little over a year ago. We continue to narrate his stories and try and follow in his footsteps.

We would add other stops along the way. We started to say the two kinot, lamentations, that related Jeremiah (Yirmiyahu) the prophet's visit to Hevron, to the Cave, during the destruction of the first Temple. Kalir, the paytan that wrote these lamentations, describes the tribulation of Yirmiyahu, and the conversations between God and the forefathers and mothers that ensued as a result.

Some years we visit the graves of Ruth and her grandson, Yishai (King David's father) which is on the same ridge as the old cemetery. Over the years we have seen the developments there and in other parts of Hevron. We also added to our itinerary a stop at the grave of Dr Baruch Goldstein who was murdered in Ma'arat haMachpela. For political reasons he is buried alone, in Kiryat Arba, and not in Hebron, but the Rav, who knew Dr Goldstein well from his time living in the Kiryah, would not pass up a stop there. He said that Rabbi Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of Hevron, ruled that "Reb Boruch" as he would call him was a martyr and he wasn't going to argue with the ruling of this great rabbi.

There was a period when the Ma'arah was closed off completely as renovations were carried out to "improve" security there. Rabbi Shurin still insisted we go. I remember the joy (if there is such a thing on Tisha b'Av) on my Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Eliezer Waldman's face when we arrived. "The people of Efrat have come to visit their fathers", he stated. In those days, no-one came.

We've seen ups and downs in the numbers arriving on Tisha b'Av. Intifada, bad roads, lots of excuses. But this year, thank God, the place was full of Jews of every colour of the spectrum. It was a Tisha b'Av pleasure to see and and be part of it. Following Rav Lior's ruling a few years ago that cohanim (priests) were allowed to enter the complex, many "new" faces arriving, one them being our Rabbi from Efrat, Rabbi Riskin.

I saw Dov Shurin this morning in the cave compound. He is there every year. I told him that his father always said on leaving the Cave that next when we come back down here, Avraham Avinu will be waiting to greet us. He based this on a comment by the Tosafoth. I told Dov I hadn't forgotten his father's words and that next he and I will be sitting right here with Avraham.


Please feel free to and don't forget to stop by my site to look at my latest (and classic) photographs.

Enjoy!


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