Sunday, December 12, 2010

Which Jew Visited Hebron's Machpela Cave in...1914?


The Cave, until 1967, who prohibited from entrance of any non-Muslim and despite its holiness for Jews, Jews were banned from ascending higher than the 7th step.

In August 1929, a week before the riots in Hebron, the Rayatz, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef Schneerson, father-in-law of the last Chabad Rebbe, Menachem Mendel, entered the Cave hall:-

...Hebron resident Yehuda Leib Schneersohn, who spoke Arabic, testified that he saw the sheikh standing on the steps of the Slonim house and shouting, "Come here - Slonim is hiding 40 yeshiva boys here. Slonim bought the Muslims with money that he gives them from the bank. The secretary of the yeshiva, who brings new foreigners to Hebron every day, is also here."
Sheikh Marka denied the charges totally and claimed he had tried to defend Jews, but if Schneersohn didn't make up his testimony (and maybe even if he did), he was probably referring to rumors about the way Slonim obtained the permit to visit the Cave of Machpelah. Prof. Yisrael Bartal, who has been studying the Old Yishuv for 30 years, suggests that we remember what happened the previous time a Jew tried to enter the mosque above the Cave of Machpelah, 90 years before the visit of the Lubavitcher rebbe. In June 1839, Sir Moses Montefiore and his wife paid a visit to Palestine and received a permit to enter the Cave of Machpelah from the Turkish governor. In his diary Montefiore wrote that Arabs had almost murdered them, and reported a near-outbreak of a pogrom against the Jewish community.
Friedman thinks that after the massacre the Rebbe Rayatz dropped his idea of establishing a Chabad center in Palestine. After his visit to the Holy Land, he traveled to the United States, returned to Europe and resided in Poland until the start of World War II...

...Prof. Porat says he did not find in the Arab sources any mention of a possible link between the visit and the massacre, nor could any such linkage exist, he says, because in contrast to the Temple Mount, where there was a Jewish claim to ownership of the site, no one contested the Muslims' control of the Cave of Machpelah. Porat is echoed by Prof. Friedman: "I found no mention of any connection between the Rayatz's visit and the pogrom in Hebron. I went over all the documents about the riots in the Zionist Archives and in the Agudat Israel archives. If any such connection existed, it would certainly be mentioned in one way or another."...


So, there was another inbetween visit, that of Morgenthau and that too caused a "fanatic mob" to assemble.

^

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