Ancient Burial Cave at Kibbutz Tzuba

by Carly Whay,       11^th grade,        St. Louis

A week into our four month pilgrimage to Eretz Yisrael we were able to visit ~2700 year old burial caves here on Kibbutz Tzuba. Though we have been here a short time it is already evident how seeing history where it happened affects the learning process. Although ordinary schools are indoors and fairly similar, learning outside and in historical settings help students obtain information more easily. There's also a certain emotional aspect about it too. Sitting in the caves and thinking that this is where people in ancient times would come to bury their dead is very powerful.

In America, we learn about history sitting in a classroom, it doesn't seem real. But in Israel, we can walk right into our backyard and find 3,000 year old ruins of history. Kibbutz Tzuba is a great place to learn Jewish history for many reasons. Firstly, the people have maintained the same agricultural roots since biblical times. Secondly, Tzuba is mentioned in the Tanach. There was a biblical settlement in Tzuba. Towns in America will be at most 400 years old, and much of history would have been built over. Israel has been able to preserve the land in places like Tzuba so we can learn from them.

The burial cave itself was very interesting. What the ancient Israelites would do was that they would "bury" their deceased in the caves until the bodies decomposed and were eventually just bone, dust to dust. Then they would return them to their ancestors, meaning they would place the bones in a small cavity within the cave. This also ties into the ten commandments, "Honor thy Father and thy mother." In a literal sense this meant paying respect to the dead and visiting them, in accordance to the tradition of the time.

The reading of the Torah portion in Genesis "Chayei Sarah" inside the cave truly tied together the story of the cave. Since we cannot go visit the actual cave where the matriarchs and patriarchs are buried in Hebron, we can still experience what the cave must have been like before a Jewish worship area and a mosque were built on top of it.

Finally, it is unwise to take the Tanach necessarily as a literal source of history, but it should not be completely overlooked. The Tanach provides explanations and insight into the practices of our ancient ancestors. It is impossible to know if there was even an Abraham or Moses, but we know that these stories were passed down and are a part of our tradition. The Tanach may not have literally happened, but it certainly provides a moral code to live by and insight into lives and problems of our ancestors.