Rachel's Tomb

Rachel's Tomb (Hebrew: קבר רחל‎ translit. Kever Rakhel), also known as the Bilal bin Rabah mosque (Arabic: مسجد بلال بن رباح‎) to Muslims is the name given to a small religious building revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims. The tomb is located within a Muslim cemetery in a walled enclave biting into the outskirts of Bethlehem, 460 meters south of Jerusalem’s municipal boundary, in the West Bank. The burial place of the matriarch Rachel as mentioned in the Jewish and Christian Old Testament, and in Muslim literature is contested between this site and several others to the north. The earliest extra-biblical records describing this tomb as Rachel's burial place date to the first decades of the 4th century CE. The present structure consists of two chambers; one, a domed chamber, is of Muslim Ottoman construction. The antechamber was built by Sir Moses Montefiore in 1841. According to the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, the tomb was to be part of the internationally administered zone of Jerusalem, but the area was occupied by Jordan, which prohibited Israelis from entering the area. Though not falling within Area C, the site has come under the control of the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs. Rachel's tomb is the third holiest site in Judaism. Jews have made pilgrimage to the tomb since ancient times, and it has become one of the cornerstones of Jewish-Israeli identity.