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No more room for Israel’s dead

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Correspondent Daniel Estrin reports on different type of land crisis plaguing Israel — the country’s urban centers are running out of space to bury its dead.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  Israel is facing a land crisis, one that doesn’t involve settlements and territories.  It’s running out of space to bury its dead. Daniel Estrin reports from Tel Aviv on one possible solution.

DANIEL ESTRIN: The Israeli government produced this infomercial for shock effect.

[INFOMERCIAL SOUNDS]

ESTRIN: In the opening scene, some kids are flying a kite. The camera follows the kite as it soars high in the sky, for an aerial view of what’s next door.  It’s Tel Aviv’s Yarkon cemetery and it’s colossal, about the size of 105 football fields. The complex was built 18 years ago to make room for more graves. Today, it’s almost completely full. Thousands of white gravestones are packed together like sardines.  Cremation might seem to be the answer.  But in Israel, it’s not really an option. Jewish law forbids it, and even for many non-religious Israelis, it’s too reminiscent of the Nazi crematoria. So Tel Aviv architect Tuvia Sagiv came up with a creative solution. It’s a burial design inspired by the way most people live in Israel in multi-level apartment buildings.

TUVIA SAGIV: If it’s possible to live one above the other, why not die one above the other?  That’s the solution.

ESTRIN: Israeli burial societies have begun to encourage spouses to double up in graves.  But to solve the problem on a grander scale, Sagiv took a cue from the ancients.

[INFOMERCIAL SOUNDS]

ESTRIN: This is part two of the government-produced video. It shows images of rock-hewn burial chambers in northern Israel, dating back to the first century.  Hundreds of niches are carved into the walls, where Jews were buried one on top of the other.  Sagiv and an associate designed a modern version, which they built about ten years ago in Tel Aviv. It’s a four-story cement building, where bodies lay inside chambers in the walls.  But here’s the catch. Jewish law dictates that the deceased must be connected to the earth. So the architects designed a sophisticated grid of holes and dirt.

SAGIV: This is the magic of the solution. You see, the body is here, the earth is here.

ESTRIN: The body is really surrounded by earth on all sides.

SAGIV: All sides.

ESTRIN: Basically kind of like a chess set.

SAGIV: And the earth is connecting to the original earth. That’s the point.

ESTRIN: Even if a body is buried on the fourth floor, the network of dirt inside the walls and columns connects it to the ground.

SAGIV: Here is the entrance to the elevator.

ESTRIN: What a concept, to take an elevator up to visit your loved one.

SAGIV: Yes, why not? It’s very close to God, no?

ESTRIN: Well, it depends how you look at it. For some, “high-rise burial” sounds like an oxymoron. That’s why Sagiv designed the building to resemble a green burial mound. You don’t see the graves from the outside, just cement tiers lined with shrubbery.  Sagiv says it can accommodate four times as many bodies as a traditional graveyard. But his designs weren’t an easy sell. He and his associate first had to get the approval of the Chief Rabbinate.

SAGIV: At first they didn’t want to hear us. Rabbis say It’s reformic? “What are you doing?   What are you talking about this nonsense?”

ESTRIN: Today, the rabbis give their thumbs up. And now that Tel Aviv’s Yarkon cemetery is nearing capacity, pressure is rising. A government-appointed committee is working on a plan to require every cemetery in Israel’s urban centers to offer multi-level burial options. It’s expensive, four times more than the cost to dig a normal grave.  And so far, only a few multi-level structures have been built. Still, the Israeli public seems to be warming to the concept.

ESTRIN: At the burial chambers in Tel Aviv, two brothers pay their respects to their late mother. They jokingly refer to the niche in the wall as “mom’s apartment.”  They say that they didn’t see a problem burying her this way. If it was good enough for the ancient Jews, they say, it’s good enough for her.   For The World, I’m Daniel Estrin, Kiryat Shaul Cemetery, Tel Aviv.

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