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Tombs

Tombs

Etz Hayyim Synagogue

The southern Ronald Lauder courtyard to the south of the synagogue sanctuary contains four graves of former rabbis of the Hania community which are mentioned by Crete’s last Chief Rabbi, Abraham Evlagon (1848-1933) in his memoir published in 1921. Here, he gives the precise names and dates of Rabbi Joseph Ben Shalom (d. 1821) and his brother, Rabbi Baruh Ben Shalom (d. 1841). There is also a grave of Rabbi Avraham Z. Habib of Gallipoli, who died in 1858, and a fourth grave of Rabbi Hillel Eskenazi, a noted mystic and kabbalist, who died in 1710. Evlagon also notes that this last burial was recorded only in tradition and that its original location had been lost. In the course of removing rubble and the paving stones of the ground floor of the women’s gallery during the synagogue’s reconstruction, a tomb was brought to light under the stone stairs that had been incorporated into the support wall. This is undoubtedly the tomb of Rabbi Hillel which was not visible when Evlagon wrote his memoir.

The graves are enclosed by an Eruv (border or delineation) separating the small burial site from the synagogue because Jewish law dictates that graves must not be positioned in close proximity to the sanctuary and Mikveh. 

Dominating the east wall of the courtyard is a large white-washed ossuary containing the bones of fifteen Jews who had passed away during the German Occupation. In 2009, Nikos Stavroulakis, the then-Director of Etz Hayyim, was called upon by the Archaeological Authority in Hania to identify some skeletal remains found in the vicinity of the former Jewish cemetery, which was largely destroyed during the German occupation. 

Sixty-five years later, Nikos was able to establish with a high degree of certainty that the skeletal remains most likely originated from in situ Jewish burials on the site of the former cemetery. The absence of any names on the large flat stones covering the burials suggested to him that they dated to the period of the German Occupation of Hania (1941-1944) when it would have been impossible to inscribe the tombstones in Hebrew. In the end, it was decided that these skeletal remains stay in Hania.

Along the walls of the southern courtyard are some tomb stones inscribed in Hebrew that were recovered from the site of the old Jewish cemetery where a school was later built in the 1960s.