Adelson was buried on Mount of Olives – why not renovate this holy site?
Adelson's wish to be buried on the Mount of Olives shows his clear love of the Holy City of Jerusalem, ICHH claims.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFStones placed in remembrance lie on grave tablets on the Mount of Olives Jewish cemetary as the sun sets in Jerusalem(photo credit: LASZLO BALOGH/ REUTERS)
The late Jewish-American casino magnate and political king-maker Sheldon Adelson was buried on the Mount of Olives on Friday – and this expressed his love of the Holy City of Jerusalem, the International Committee of Har HaZeitim (Mount of Olives – ICHH) said in a Monday press release.The famous site is deeply meaningful for Jewish people around the world as popular belief has it that those buried there will be the first to return to life when the Messiah redeems humanity. Noted Jewish leaders had been buried there since the First Temple period and visitors can pay their respects to the religious scholar Nachmanides, the Hebrew language scholar and activist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and poet Else Lasker-Schüler who are among those interred there.The ICHH was created by two brothers, Avraham and Menachem Lubinsky, who felt that the heritage site needs to be better maintained. Their points were that a visitor’s center should be created, security guards placed to defend graves from being vandalized, and that the site should be accessible to all visitors. The press release calls on the government to restore roughly 30,000 graves. The committee is directed by Shalom Lerner, the former deputy mayor of Beit Shemesh."It is time to build a fitting visitor center which will also serve as a historical and educational center,” Lerner said. “It is our obligation to prepare the mountain for the great day of Techiyat HaMeitim (resurrection of the dead) of our beloved ones.”The graves had indeed been defiled during the 20th century by Jordan when its soldiers used Jewish tombstones to build an army barracks near the Mount of Olives before the Six Day War.Menachem Lubinsky argued that, seeing how former prime minister Ehud Olmert was discussing the option of Israel managing the holy site with other nations such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia, it is important that a visitor’s center jointly operated by Jews from Israel and abroad will be built to mark the Jewish nature of the site, Hamodia reported two years ago.
