Grave Crisis

The burial place of the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1135-1205) was determined, so legend has it, when the camel that bore his bones from Cairo to Palestine refused to budge from a spot near the Sea of Galilee. In time, the modern city of Tiberias grew up around the old square stone that marked his grave. The burial ground became a grubby lot littered with shacks and privies.

To honor the "Rambam,"* Israel's Ministry of Religious Affairs last year decided to spruce up the tomb. Plans included a concrete roof and a fence. But when a bulldozer started digging the foundations, workers found bones from other old graves near by. Experts were not sure whether they were remains of Jews, Moslems or Crusaders, and Tiberias' rabbis ordered them buried in unhallowed ground.

The news outraged the devout. From their ghettolike quarters in Jerusalem, a band of extreme-Orthodox Jews sallied forth and plastered the city with proclamations calling down the wrath of God on anyone suggesting that the Rambam had been buried in "unworthy company." Hundreds of bearded and ringleted men picketed the tomb to prevent further sacrilege, fasted, paraded through the streets, recited psalms at the graveside day and night.

Last week Israel's chief rabbinate handed down a ruling: "Excavations must cease." The bulldozer rumbled away, and contractors tried to figure out a way of building without digging. Israel's government nervously denied that the Rambam's bones had been disturbed in any way.

* A reverent nickname formed from the word 'rabbi" and letters of Maimonides' name.

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