A week or so ago, we rode our bikes up a nearby hill to visit the national military cemetery at Mount Herzl.  This is one of the most breathtakingly beautiful and sentimental memorial cemeteries we’ve ever seen. It was a vast area of many acres. The combination of gravesites, trees, flowering bushes, marble monuments, stone walkways, open patios, benches, plaques and so forth, was not only inspiring, but also emotionally wrenching.

A small burial section of the cemetery

A typical path through the cemetery

The cemetery is named after Theodor Herzl, who is considered to be the father of modern Zionism, i.e. the need and desire for Jews to have their own homeland so as to be free from anti-Semitism. Herzl died in 1904 in Vienna, 44 years before the establishment of the State of Israel. His will stipulated that he have a simple funeral, without flowers or speeches, yet 6000 people attended. He was originally buried in Vienna and in 1949 his remains were reburied on Mount Herzl, overlooking Jerusalem.

Herzl’s tomb