Kesher Talk

Jews are flocking to the Tomb of Rachel: Jews regard Rachel's Tomb as the final resting place of the biblical matriarch and it ranks as Judaism's third holiest site. "We preceded the Arabs here by many, many years. They would stop us coming here if they could, as they did before 1967," said Ruth Koenigsberg, a visitor to the site. The Israeli government said in September that Rachel's Tomb would be folded into a Jerusalem "security envelope" to help seal it off from Palestinian attackers and suicide bombers.

Barren women have traditionally prayed for children at Rachel's Tomb. Muslims say the real Rachel's Tomb is elsewhere and the compound in question contains a revered old mosque, Bilal al Rabah, from which they have been barred since Israel seized the site and the West Bank at large in the 1967 Middle East war.

posted by Howard @ 11/08/2002 02:08:21 PM