Parshat Vayechi
By: Rabbi Moshe Goodman, Kollel Ohr Shlomo, Hebron
בס"ד
לשכנו תדרשו
Seeking the Holy Presence in Our Holy Land
וַיִּשְׂאוּ אֹתוֹ בָנָיו אַרְצָה כְּנַעַן וַיִּקְבְּרוּ אֹתוֹ בִּמְעָרַת שְׂדֵה הַמַּכְפֵּלָה"(בראשית נ)"
"... Therefore we have come before You HaShem our God... that You remember the merit of our Forefathers buried here, that You have mercy upon us, that Your compassion overcome Your attributes (of judgment), and cease our exile, quicken salvation.. and bring our.. Messiah."
With HaShem's mercy, more people than ever can indeed plead these words at the real burial site of our holy Patriarchs, Ma'arat HaMachpela, Threshold of the Garden of Eden, the Gateway of all souls to Heaven. Indeed, the spiritual value of Ma'arat HaMachpela as the Gateway to the Afterlife is so great that it champions with Jerusalem as one of the choicest spots in the world in regard to burial.
So writes Rabbi Tokachinsky zt"l, one of the foremost halachic authorities on modern burial and mourning in "Gesher Hahaim" (p.299) "It is an ancient tradition that the dead (who died in Hebron) are not to be sent to be buried outside of Hebron, even to Jerusalem, and even if the deceased had bought a grave or had a family grave-site in Jerusalem. And this is not only because of the honor of the burial-site of the Avot, but even more so because of the teaching in the holy Zohar (1, 57b), that Adam saw light coming out of the Garden of Eden to Ma'arat HaMachpela, and therefore he decided to be buried there, and so saw Avraham our Father a"h (ibid 127).
And also they said that when a man's soul leaves This World, it first comes to Ma'arat HaMachpela (Zohar Hadash Noah) , and there is the gateway to the Lower Garden of Eden (see Rabeinu Behayei p. Hayei Sarah and Tuv Haaretz p. 37): 'and we can thus conjecture that for this reason our teacher, Ramban zt"l, left Jerusalem for Hebron at the end of his days to dig a grave there, as he wrote to his son, Rabbi Nahman. And according to tradition he was burieded next to Ma'arat HaMachpela' ".
Based on these words, it is no wonder why all our Patriarchs wished to be buried not only in the Holy Land, as burial therein is also of great value as explained last year, but also specifically in Ma'arat HaMachpela. Not only Adam and our holy Patriarchs chose to be buried in Hebron. According to a number of amazing sources, although Moshe Rabeinu's first burial spot "is unknown", he was subsequently led after death in tunnels to Ma'arat HaMachpela to be buried with our Avot.
With that, let us conclude the book of Breshit, "the book of the Avot" and commence with the book of Shemot, the advent of Moshe Rabeinu...
Real Stories from the Holy Land #48: "On my way to Kiryat Arba, I was waiting quite a while to hitch a ride in Jerusalem to the "tunnel road" leading to Kiryat Arba, but nobody stopped. Even after praying for a ride, nobody stopped. Then I remembered that hazal say that prayer without Torah learning is not received, so I started to discuss Torah with another person also waiting. Immediately, a car stopped and took me just where I needed..."
Sources: Prayer at Maarat HaMachpela, Gesher Hahaim, Sifri veZot Habracha, Sefer HaTmuna 3, p.60
