Subscribe to Print Edition | Thu., June 11, 2009 Sivan 19, 5769 | | Israel Time: 01:40 (EST+7)
Haaretz israel news English
web haaretz.com
Haaretz Toolbar
Diplomacy
Defense Jewish World Opinion National
Print Edition
Car Rental
Books Haaretz Magazine Business Real Estate Focus U.S.A. Travel Week's End Anglo File
Share |
Alon Hilu / Who goes to holy men's graves in Israel?
By Alon Hilu
Tags: graves, Israel News 

I came to the grave of the Moroccan holy man Rabbi David And Moshe entirely consumed by doubts: Not only is the whole business of prostrating oneself on holy men's graves foreign to me (if magic and mysticism at all, I'm more into readers of coffee grinds and Tarot cards), but also it turned out that in the apartment in the workers' housing project in the Canaan neighborhood, a modest neighborhood at the edge of Safed that for 36 years now has been a pilgrimage site, there isn't even a single grave to save one's soul. This is because Rabbi David AndMoshe (whose name, incidentally, David VeMoshe in Hebrew, is apparently a corruption of David Ben Moshe, David Son of Moshe), is still buried in the Atlas mountains.



At the entrance to the compound (outside there's a scorched, sooty bay for lighting candles), is a place for the ritual washing of hands "for the glorification of our parents' soul" and a sign bearing a grave warning to women not to enter when they are ritually impure - that is, when they are menstruating or recently gave birth.
Advertisement
I am greeted warmly by Ami Ben Haim, 37. He lives with his father in the apartment that serves both as a residence and a pilgrimage site. The father and householder is Avraham Ben Haim ("he's sleeping now"), whose life changed completely in 1972 when the above-mentioned holy man visited him in a dream and commanded him to "establish for him a place to be in" - without even bringing his bones to Israel.

The courteous son takes us inside, into a room that has the appearance of a synagogue, where plywood shelves groan under sacred books around a kind of marble slab in the center resembling a tombstone with two slots for slipping in donations. Alongside the dummy tombstone - a photograph of the real grave in Morocco.

On the other side of the corridor, Moshe, Ami's younger brother (one of 10 brothers and sisters) is digging into a copious lunch, and to the left the door is open to a spacious bedroom, where a picture of their mother, Masouda of blessed memory, hangs. "People come here all day long and also at night," sighs Ami with satisfaction. "Busloads of Russians come here in order to take the holy man's candles. You ask them 'Where do you know him from?' 'We don't know him but whatever we ask him for, he helps us.' They come here, three or four buses a night, doing the holy men's graves, and this is one of their places. This holy man is one of the greats, the holy men's chief of staff."

Isn't it a nuisance that people come here all the time? After all, you live here.

"Heavens forfend."

There are pests, I would imagine.

"True. You have to accept both the good and the bad. You need a lot of patience."

The procedure for prostration is quite simple: You go to the grave- not-a-grave, light a candle, make your request and vow a vow. Things start to get complicated only for people who don't keep their promises.

"There was a woman here who had been married for 10 years, barren," relates Ami, launching into a horror story to demonstrate the point. "She came here and started to cry. My father said, 'Make a vow to the holy man that if he gives you a son you will give him the holy man's name, either David or Moshe.' She said: 'More than that. I will give him the holy man's name and I will come here to do the circumcision.' Nine months later she phones: "I've had a son, but my husband isn't prepared to have the circumcision here, but rather at a hall.' She went to the circumcision, a hall with 400 invited guests, they came to do the circumcision and the boy has jaundice. At night the holy man comes to her in a dream and tells her: 'Tomorrow morning do his circumcision the way we said.' She got up at six in the morning, brought him here, the child doesn't have jaundice, they did his circumcision. They called him Moshe."

As Ami is speaking rapidly and excitedly, I suddenly remember with horror a dream that came to me several weeks earlier and I had forgotten. I dreamed that my grandfather, Eliyahu Ballas of blessed memory, was standing at the door to my house wrapped in a prayer shawl and with a big smile on his face. "Grandpa, aren't you dead?" I ask him delicately and he laughs heartily, as he did when he was alive, and says to me, "No, I am here."

I recount this dream to Ami, who immediately repays me with a counter-story about his mother who came to his father in a dream and warned him not to be filmed for a television report, and then the reason for the warning became clear: The report was broadcast on the Sabbath.

At another and even more famous station on the Galilean holy-man circuit, the grave of the matchmaking holy man Yonatan Ben Uziel in Amuka, I meet Yitzhak Zjorno from Kiryat Gat, who also takes pains to undermine my sense of reality. "After a person dies, there are souls in the celestial world," he whispers to me, gesturing toward a sky dotted with innocent-looking summer clouds.

Why have you come here?

"I and my wife have taken a vacation. My wife works as an aide in special education, I'm a career army pensioner, and we decided - what's it called? - to refill our spiritual batteries. Here in Amuka it's very specific, for people who are going to marry, and they have all kinds of impediments. He himself was a supreme holy man and he wasn't married. But he's the one who is going to see to it, because of what happened to him, he is going to see to putting things right and indeed such things have happened. My daughter, for example, after she did all the prayers and circuits of the tomb here, she got married that same year."

Sarah from Rehovot, too, hopes for help from the holy man Ben Uziel: "I came for a match for my son," she says, polishing the lenses of her glasses. "He's 26."

That's pretty young, isn't it?

"Twenty six and a half."

And she turns to circumambulate the tomb seven times in order to win the holy man's benevolence.

The stories full of inner conviction about dreams and holy men, about vows and prohibitions, about prophecy and destruction, in the end do their work on my irresolute soul, and I submit wholly to Ami's exhortations and ask to perform the ritual of prostrating myself on the grave in the worker's housing project apartment at number 172 Canaan neighborhood, Safed. Ami hastens to put a packet of candles in my hand in return for NIS 15, and gives me precise instructions: "Light a candle now and every day for the next 40 days."

"But I want to win the Sapir Prize, and the ceremony will be held next Tuesday."

"So alright. Light one candle now and one candle on the day of the prize and ask the holy man to arrange it for you."

Playwright and novelist Alon Hilu was born in Jaffa in 1972. His first novel "Death of a Monk" (2004), published in English in 2006, is a retelling of the Damascus Blood Libel of 1840. The most recent book by Hilu, who is also a lawyer, "The House of Dajani," a saga of the First Aliyah from the Palestinian perspective published in 2008, has been shortlisted for the 2009 Sapir Prize for Literature.
Bookmark to del.icio.us  
 
Holocaust Memorial
Elderly gunman named as white supremacist opens fire on guards at D.C. memorial.
Why 'Jewish' state?
A.B. Yehoshua argues that the many qualifiers of Israel's name do more harm than good.
  1.   Alon 08:54  |  Yosemite 10/06/09
Special Offers
Advertisement
hotel Jerusalem
David Citadel Hotel, come stay at the finest of Jerusalem hotels.
ISRAEL ARMY SURPLUS STORE
IDF insignia,Uniforms, Paladium Boots Watches, Israel Army T-shirts & Collectibles
Dead Sea Skin Care
Quality cosmetics from the Dead Sea. Coupon code HAARETZ for 12% off!
Eldan Rent a Car
Israel's leading car rental company offers you a 20% discount on online reservations
Junkyard
Junk a car - get free towing nationwide and a tax-deductible receipt
More Headlines
00:20 Neo-Nazi kills guard at U.S. Holocaust Museum
00:57 WATCH: Obama 'saddened' by fatal attack at U.S. Holocaust Museum
00:39 Background / U.S. shooting suspect's history of seething anger
16:50 Cabinet to IDF: Respond to any attack from Gaza
07:41 'U.S. won't abandon legitimate Palestinian aspirations'
18:53 Supreme Court chief: Why won't state demolish illegal outposts?
21:33 Carter to hold rare meeting with settler leader
19:55 Yishai urges Netanyahu to cancel Tel Aviv gay parade
20:58 WATCH: Daily news round-up from Israel
00:00 Special ed teacher suspected of threatening students with rifle
12:50 A.B. Yehoshua / Why do we insist on a 'Jewish' state?
21:22 Palestinians confirm first case of swine flu
19:09 Ahmadinejad calls rival Iran candidates 'Hitler'
16:18 Woman mistakenly junks $1 million mattress
19:26 Former Liberian warlord Charles Taylor 'converts to Judaism'
Home | TV | Print Edition | Diplomacy | Opinion | Arts & Leisure | Sports | Jewish World | Site rules |
| Israel 2009 election results | Makom: Engaging on Israel
| Search engine marketing
Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, offers real-time breaking news, opinions and analysis from Israel and the Middle East. Haaretz.com provides extensive and in-depth coverage of Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East, including defense, diplomacy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the peace process, Israeli politics, Jerusalem affairs, international relations, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli business world and Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora.
© Copyright  Haaretz. All rights reserved