THE ETERNAL JEWISH CEMETERY HAR HAMENUCHOT, JERUSALEM
Cemeteries are always a step in another world of a society. Experiencing another kind of city; feeling the respectful silence, often deserted, an oasis of calm as well as feeling scary and thrilled at the same time. These curious places and their changing appearance according to the traditions are attracting to me. Now, being in Jerusalem, I got to know a new and different kind of burial tradition – the eternal Jewish cemetery. Its flatness of colour, orderliness in form and unsteadiness in heights tease my curiosity to discover the landscapes of another kind of cemetery.
Har HaMenuchot, one of the cemeteries in Jerusalem, is running out of space due to the local and international demand and Israeli mortality rate these days. The „Mount of the Resting“ seems like a city – a necropolis which is welcoming the visitor at the western side of Jerusalem. While the burial grounds are lanced with streets for cars, populated with places of prayer, public toilets and CCTV, towers arise on the edge – everything is laid out on the grid of graves. A pattern which creates 30 centimetre alleys to crawl the fields. It depends on which section of the cemetery you are to be able to catch shadow or not, where one section provides trees and bushes, the other section is desisted from vegetation. Furthermore a delusive orientation and the abandoned lights in tailored candle boxes makes everything even more preposterous. Not to mention the issue of religion which is omnipresent in an institution like this, especially if religious beliefs get mixed up by the coexistence of their dead bodies on the same place. Only Jews can be buried here.
Overall I am attracted to these grotesqueness of building typol- ogies, sense of city and landscape patterns. Through mapping, analytical drawings as well as essays I am looking into the world of Jewish cemetery and its phenomenon on the instance of Har HaMenuchot. The output is part of my work as an exchange student at the Architecture Department of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem (Winter 2019/2020).
MASTER | 3RD SEMESTER | WINTER 2019/2020
PERSONAL RESEARCH | ARCH. N.R.HARAG, SENIOR LECTURER
