{"id":39962,"date":"2015-05-20T13:31:44","date_gmt":"2015-05-20T18:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=39962"},"modified":"2015-05-20T13:31:44","modified_gmt":"2015-05-20T18:31:44","slug":"catacombs-make-a-comeback-as-jerusalem-seeks-room-for-the-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/israel\/catacombs-make-a-comeback-as-jerusalem-seeks-room-for-the-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Catacombs Make a Comeback as Jerusalem Seeks Room for the Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"U920484123663kSC\">For Jews seeking eternal rest, the most coveted real estate on Earth lies in the soil of Jerusalem. Unfortunately, the city is rapidly running out of room to bury the dead.<\/p>\n<p>And so it has come to pass that an Israeli burial organization has teamed with a cutting-edge construction firm to bore deep under a mountain here to create a vast underground necropolis \u2014 with \u00adelevators.<\/p>\n<p>The first phase of the new subterranean city of the dead will include 22,000 crypts, arranged floor to ceiling in three tiers, in a network of intersecting tunnels now being dug through the rocky clay soil beneath Jerusalem\u2019s largest cemetery.<\/p>\n<p>The $50\u00a0million project, begun a few months ago and paid for with private funds generated by the sale of burial plots \u2014 mostly to Jews overseas \u2014 is the first of its kind here in modern times. And it is likely to be the start of a trend.<\/p>\n<p>The full story is found at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/middle_east\/israel-is-running-out-of-cemetery-space-so-its-digging-vast-catacombs\/2015\/05\/19\/5041a376-fa7d-11e4-a47c-e56f4db884ed_story.html\">The Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For Jews seeking eternal rest, the most coveted real estate on Earth lies in the soil of Jerusalem. Unfortunately, the city is rapidly running out of room to bury the dead. And so it has come to pass that an Israeli burial organization has teamed with a cutting-edge construction firm to bore deep under a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":730,"featured_media":39964,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Catacombs Make a Comeback as Jerusalem Seeks Room for the Dead - OU Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/israel\/catacombs-make-a-comeback-as-jerusalem-seeks-room-for-the-dead\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Catacombs Make a Comeback as Jerusalem Seeks Room for the Dead - OU Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For Jews seeking eternal rest, the most coveted real estate on Earth lies in the soil of Jerusalem. Unfortunately, the city is rapidly running out of room to bury the dead. 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