2025 Theses Master's

Pushka, Candles, and a Roof: Heritage-Making at New Holy Jewish Burial Sites in Israel

Auerbach, Illy

This thesis examines the emergence of new Jewish sacred burial sites in Israel, primarily since the 1970s—graves of tsaddikim (revered Jewish spiritual figures) that have become pilgrimage destinations within a single generation. While the broader phenomenon extends beyond Israel’s official borders, this study focuses on sites within Israel’s legal territory. These are not necessarily institutionally designated holy places, but emerge through grassroots devotion, ritual repetition, and improvised spatial practices.

The study introduces the concept of accelerated heritage-making to describe how sacred sites form rapidly through narrative, physical intervention, and social momentum. This acceleration reflects broader cultural and political shifts: demographic changes, the weakening of secular authority, and the growing influence of Orthodox and Mizrahi communities. Today, institutions recognition often follows rather than initiates sanctification, with state and municipal bodies endorsing sites aligned with dominant religious-national ideologies.

Harnessing on archival research, fieldwork, interviews, media analysis, and comparative documentation of more than a dozen sites, the research traces how sacred status is built, sustained, and amplified—from small gestures to large-scale infrastructure. These sites function as vernacular systems of cultural legitimacy: informal, highly visible, and shaped by uneven access to land, resources, and symbolic authority.

Rather than asking what should be preserved, the thesis asks how heritage is made—fast, from the bottom up, and in real time—and what that means for preservation when meaning takes hold before institutions are ready to recognize or engage with it.