By Rav Alberto Sermoneta, Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Bologna
In chapter 23 of the book of Genesis, we find the account of the death of the matriarch Sarah, wife of Abraham.
The chapter recounts the trials of Abraham in order to obtain a plot of land to bury his wife, a place that would later become, in the course of history, the dwelling and land of the Patriarchs and their wives.
The cave of Machpelah located in Hebron is the par excellence symbol of the Jewish cemetery, and is perhaps the first cemetery in the history of the Jewish people.
Indeed, in the Jewish tradition, despite the utmost exaltation of the concept of life and its sanctity, the cemetery is considered of equal importance.
It is considered a testimony, in the event that, God forbid, the Jewish presence should disappear from a certain locality.
A testimony of past presence, but one that lives on through memory.
In the Jewish tradition it is known by the appellation of Bet Ha-Chaim – house of life, since the concept of the total cessation of life, in Jewish thought, has no value whatsoever.
Death is considered a phase of life itself; the conclusion of one cycle and the beginning of another.
The soul, the spiritual part of the living being, returns to its creator, considered the source of life, while the body, through its decomposition, joins with other elements of nature, thus returning to live in other forms.
For this reason, the cemetery must not be viewed as a place of death or in a certain sense a place where one can think only of the eternal dwelling, the ultimate one of a human being, but rather as a place where one goes to honour our loved ones and where one definitely gathers to concentrate on their past life and draw from this a teaching for our present and future life.
This is the conception of death for us Jews, and this is why we tend to attribute particular importance to the cemetery, considering it, alongside the Synagogue as a meeting place for an active community, a sacred place for the community in general.