Currently on display in Jerusalem's Tower of David Museum
just inside the Jaffa Gate of the Old City, is a shocking
exhibition of 39 stone Jewish coffins. The coffins have been
removed from burial caves dating back to the period of the
Bayis Sheini. They were discovered at a site called
Chekel-Doma, situated on the periphery of the Har Hazeisim
cemetery near the village of Silwan.
This exhibition, which is being sponsored by the Antiquities
Authority, has recently been on display in various places
throughout the United States and Europe, and is making its
Israeli debut in Jerusalem.
The coffins on display at the exhibition are now empty, since
the skeletons, which had peacefully resided in them for 2000
years, were exhumed by the archaeologists during the
excavations and were sent to various research institutes in
the country's universities and museums.
Excavations on the site were secretly carried out about ten
years ago. Throughout the excavations, archaeologists entered
the burial pits and desecrated the bones of the ancients
buried there. According to blueprints and reconstruction
sketches presented at the exhibition, the caves date back to
the period of the Bayis Sheini. The pits correspond to
the descriptions in Bava Basra, 100a, and of the
commentaries there.
It is especially heartbreaking as well as shocking to see
coffins on which the names of the deceased are inscribed in
ancient Hebrew script: names such as "Ariston" and "Shlomzion
bas Ariston."
An additional burial cave was found during the installation
of a water line in the area last year. With characteristic
eagerness, the archaeologists swooped down on the complex and
began desecrating bones discovered there. This time, however,
activists of the Federation for the Prevention of the
Desecration of Graves learned about this violation on time.
After much effort, with the help of UTJ's representatives in
the Jerusalem Municipality, they succeeded in halting the
desecration and sealing the cave.
Activists of the Federation have turned to gedolei
Yisroel and to chareidi community activists in order to
immediately discontinue this horrendous exhibition, and to
guarantee that the coffins, which from a halachic standpoint
are considered articles of the deceased, receive respectable
Jewish burials, as dictated by halocho.
"The graves of the ancients which were desecrated in so
shocking a manner cannot serve as objects in an itinerant
exhibition, nor as spectacles for visitors. Have you both
murdered and inherited?" say they members of the Federation
for the Prevention of the Desecration 0f Graves.
