The Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, the burial place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their wives, faces closure within fourteen days after Israel’s Ministry of Religious Services issued a directive ordering the site’s administration to prepare for a full shutdown. The ministry cites a lack of legally authorized funding following a Supreme Court ruling that suspended budget requests approved by the Knesset Finance Committee.
Ministry Director General Yehuda Avidan instructed Cave of the Patriarchs Administration Director Amitai Cohen and Kiryat Arba Religious Council Chairman Ori Tzobari to halt all entry to worshippers, visitors, and tourists, lock the site’s entrances, lay off employees, cancel scheduled events and ceremonies, and coordinate with the IDF, Israel Police, and Border Police to take over physical security once civilian services cease. About one million visitors come to the site each year, according to the site’s administration.
The site had relied in part on coalition agreement funds that were never formally incorporated into the state budget. Avidan wrote that his ministry, operating through the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria, bears responsibility for the site’s funding and operation, and that it had warned previously that this arrangement rested on unstable ground. “It is important for me to clarify and emphasize unequivocally that the ministry is not holding back or shirking its responsibility towards the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which is a heritage site with a top religious and historical importance,” Avidan wrote. “As long as there is no existing and approved funding source, our hands are tied, and there is no option to create monetary commitments out of thin air.” He closed the letter stating the ministry “deeply regret[s] reaching this unfortunate situation,” but that the law requires the preparations to proceed until an authorized funding source is arranged.
The site now threatened with closure is not simply a heritage landmark. According to the biblical text, it is the first piece of land the Jewish people ever legally owned in the land of Israel.
The account appears in Genesis 23. After Sarah’s death in Hebron, Abraham approaches the local Hittites to purchase a burial site, refusing an offer of a free plot and insisting instead on paying full price so that his claim to the land could never be disputed. He negotiates directly with a man named Ephron for a specific field containing a cave: “And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city” (Genesis 23:17-18). The price, four hundred shekels of silver, is stated explicitly in the text, and the transaction is described with the formal, legal precision of a property deed, not a casual purchase.
The Cave of Machpelah, as the Bible calls it, becomes the burial place of the patriarchs and matriarchs in the generations that follow. Abraham himself is buried there beside Sarah (Genesis 25:9-10). Isaac and Rebecca are buried there, as are Jacob and Leah. Jacob, dying in Egypt, makes his son Joseph swear to carry his body back to this same cave rather than bury him in Egypt, instructing him plainly: “Bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a buryingplace” (Genesis 49:29-30). Joseph fulfills that oath, and Jacob’s body is carried the full distance from Egypt to Hebron for burial (Genesis 50:13).
The structure standing over the cave today, the massive enclosure of large stone blocks that still forms the base of the building, dates to the Herodian period, built by Herod the Great in the first century BCE using the same construction technique and stonework found at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The building has passed through Byzantine, early Islamic, Crusader, Mamluk, and Ottoman hands over the centuries, each leaving its own additions to the structure, while the site beneath has remained continuously associated with the same biblical burials throughout. For centuries under Mamluk and later Ottoman rule, Jews were barred from entering beyond the seventh step of the entrance staircase, permitted only to pray from outside. Since 1967, the site has been divided for prayer between Jewish and Muslim worshippers, following the Ibrahimi Mosque tradition that also identifies the site with Abraham, whom Islam likewise honors as a patriarch.
The Cave of the Patriarchs is regarded in Jewish tradition as the second holiest site in Judaism, after the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Its closure, even framed by the ministry as procedural and financial rather than political, would mark the first time in decades that regular Jewish access to the site has been suspended entirely. Avidan’s letter makes clear that the ministry views the closure as forced upon it rather than chosen, a consequence of a funding structure built on coalition agreements that were never absorbed into the formal state budget, now unwound by a Supreme Court ruling with no immediate substitute in place.
