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Continuity of Jewish PresenceHebron

Of all the ancient communities in Israel, none is more ancient than Hebron—the oldest Jewish community in the world. The first mention of Hebron is in Genesis, after the death of the Matriarch Sarah. Genesis 23 relates the story of Abraham approaching the Hittites in Hebron and asking to purchase an empty field in order to build a burial site for his wife (Genesis 23). After he paid for it—insisting on it, though the Hittites were willing to give it to him for free—he buried Sarah, and later, Abraham himself, along with Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah were all buried there.

Hebron is mentioned dozens of time throughout the Old Testament. Judges 1 describes the conquest of Hebron, and later King David was anointed there (II Samuel 2:5). Even after the destruction of the First Temple, there still existed a Jewish population in Hebron, as described in Nehemia 11. King Herod, during his reign around 35 BCE, built a huge structure over the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the base of which still stands today. Jews continued to be a presence in the city, through the destruction of the Second Temple and the Jewish Revolts against the Romans.

There is archaeological evidence of synagogues from the Byzantine period. During the years of Seljuk conquest, in the 7th century, the Jews lived peacefully in Hebron as well. The Crusaders expelled the Jewish community in 1100, but the Jews returned during Mamluk rule.

In the 16th century, when Israel was under Ottoman rule, Jews fleeing from Spain arrived in Hebron and established the Avraham Avinu (Abraham our Father) synagogue. The community flourished during the Ottoman Empire, with many Diaspora Jews coming to settle in the city, despite occasional pogroms from the Arab population and an often shaky economic situation. In 1893, the Beit Hadassah building was constructed, which served as a clinic for the Jewish and Arab populations.

The Hebron community suffered during the First World War, as the young men were forcibly drafted into the Turkish army, and disease and poverty were rampant. Following the war, though, the community started to recover, and by 1929, the population had risen once again.

However, in 1929 the Jews in Hebron were the victims of a brutal, planned, and systematic attack by local Arabs. The Jews and Arabs in Hebron had more or less lived harmoniously, but during the 1920s, there were many incidents of Arabs harassing the Jews. In August of 1929, the Arabs, egged on by rumors that the Jews attacked local Arabs and cursed Mohammad, started rioting in the Old City of Jerusalem. The riots quickly spread, with the worst of the atrocities occurring in Hebron and Safed. Some of the local Arab families in Hebron saved Jews by hiding them in their houses. By the end, sixty-seven Jews had been massacred, including yeshiva students, women, and young children.

Some families attempted to move back to Hebron a few years later, but were evacuated by British forces in 1936 due to the Palestinian Arab National Revolt. This effectively ended Jewish presence in Hebron until after the 1967 Six Day War. (Following the 1948 War of Independence, the city fell under Jordanian control.)

After the Six Day War, Hebron was returned to Israeli control; since then, it remains closely linked to its neighbor, Kiryat Arba. In 1968, Rabbi Moshe Levinger moved into Hebron's Park Hotel with a number of other families, in an attempt to repopulate the city. After a year of attacks on the Jews, the government moved them to a nearby military base in Kiryat Arba. In 1979, the city was more permanently established when Levinger's wife, Miriam, led a controversial group and settled in Beit Hadassah. In 1980, six Jews were killed and twenty wounded when they were attacked by the Arabs on their way home from prayers on a Friday night. Following the attack, the government agreed to refurbish Beit Hadassah along with other buildings in the area.

Since 1997, Hebron has been divided into two areas, H1, under control of the Palestinian Authority, and H2, controlled by the Israeli military to protect the Jews living there. Violence from both sides has erupted in Hebron since the Oslo Accords. During the first and second Intifadas, the Jewish community was subject to many attacks. In 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a resident of Kiryat Arba, attacked and killed Muslim worshipers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs. After the Goldstein attack, security at the tomb has been shared by the IDF, which patrols the outside, and a special police unit, which secures the inside.

The post-1967 Jewish population in Hebron has been the subject of much controversy. Most recently, a group moved into the Beit Shalom house, but it was under much dispute, and the Israeli government evacuated those living there in 2008.

The town of Hebron is second only to Jerusalem in its holiness. The Jewish people laid claim to the city two millennia ago, when Abraham insisted on purchasing the plot of land. He must have known it was to be a stormy area.