Arabs freak out over Hasidic Jews praying at a site straddling the Lebanese border ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, March 10, 2025

Arabs freak out over Hasidic Jews praying at a site straddling the Lebanese border

Is the Talmudic Rabbi Ashi's tomb in Lebanon? Is it even Rav Ashi's tomb?

Israeli security forces approved and secured the pilgrimage of hundreds of ultra-Orthodox hassidic Jews to the tomb of Rav Ashi, located along the northern Lebanese border, Army Radio and the Lebanese National News Agency reported on Friday morning.

The pilgrims were reportedly escorted by IDF soldiers early on Friday morning to hold the Shacharit prayer at the site of the tomb, located along the Blue Line.

Arab media is aghast at this supposed encroachment of Lebanese land. Lebanon24 report headline says, "Visiting Rabbi Ashi's grave is a religious pretext that leads extremists to enter the Lebanese interior."

According to a YNet report in 2000, the site was one of the last disputed sites when the UN drew its Blue Line between Israel and Lebanon. It was decided to split the site, King Solomon-style.

Google Maps seems to place the entire site on the Israeli side.

Does the Blue Line really cross the street, bisect the building and then return to the road? Apparently, according to the story.

At any rate, there is no indication that the Hasidim crossed the Blue Line. If they did, it is the most minor infraction one can imagine. No one can seriously call this a land grab.

The history is a little more interesting. As far as I can tell, no one claimed that this was the site of Rav Ashi's grave until at least the 17th or 18th centuries.

Rav Ashi lived his whole life in Babylonia, near Sura, where he was the head of a venerated academy. The Sura academy was a center of learning from 225 to 1033 CE. That's about as long as Cambridge University has existed.

Other heads of the Sura academy are assumed to have been buried in Babylonia, today's southern Iraq. There was no tradition I can find at the time to transport even major rabbi's bodies from Babylonia to the Land of Israel, which would be a lengthy process at odds with Jewish tradition to bury people immediately. Sura is about 850 kilometers from the site in a straight line.

There is no source for Rav Ashi's re-internment. It is unclear where the Breslovers got this tradition from.

However, centuries of prayer at a place gives it some level of sanctity, due to the prayers themselves. The emotional attachment to the place is quite real even if it is found to be incorrect.