In honor of the late Ilan Ramon, Nahalel Cemetery

Ever since Ramon was buried in the cemetery of the pioneers of the Jezreel Valley, the place has not stopped being visited by visitors - individuals and groups. The large box at the foot of the grave is full of letters written to him. His close friends talk about the sympathy and sacrifice for his character, and the feeling of being missed in his death

 
21.6.2003
 
By: Sagi Green, Haaretz courtesy of Walla! 
 
 
The grave of Ilan Ramon in the Nehalel cemetery. In recent months, the nature of the visits has changed: fewer teenagers with guitars and candles, more families and organized groups. Photo: Yaron Kaminsky, Haaretz

Direct link to this page: https://www.hayadan.org.il/ramongrave1.html

In winter the place is breathtaking. The small hill is filled with beech trees, and below it, in the Jezreel Valley, is a carpet of red anemones. On the small hill in Tel Shemron lies the cemetery of Nahalel. But now it's almost summer, and a few days after Independence Day, the tombstone on the grave of astronaut Col. Ilan Ramon was covered with flower bouquets and brown tuff stones that people had placed in his memory, with 13 soul candles that had already gone out, and a burgundy-colored miracle on which were embroidered in gold the verses from The Desert Chapter Six ": "May the Lord bless you and keep you, may the Lord show His face to you and guide you, may the Lord raise His face to you and give you peace."
Someone also left a heart-shaped key chain there and another put a kangaroo doll there. At the foot of the grave is a large box on which is engraved "Letters to Ilan", and it is full of letters.

Since Ramon was buried there, on February 11, 2003, visitors have not stopped visiting the place. Individuals, couples, families, school students on an annual trip, employee committees, nursing home residents. People come, stand by the grave, place a stone, identify the symbol of the STS 107 space mission with the illustration of the shuttle at the top of the military tombstone, or read the inscription "Hear my voice, my far away... Rona". Some come with a prepared letter, and some write something, words of participation in the family's grief or words of sympathy and even admiration, sometimes on the other side of the most available piece of paper - a page torn from an appointment book or a restaurant invoice - and drop it in the box. Sometimes a class or an organized group conducts a short ceremony. Take pictures and take pictures, stand or sit for a few minutes near the grave.

A grandmother came with her little grandson. They stand by the tombstone and the boy swallows a letter. She asks, "Remember when we saw him in the spaceship?" He nods. They stand like this in silence for a few minutes until the boy asks his grandmother, "Where is Ilan Ramon?" And she answers him, "He's gone, he's in heaven now."

Why do people come? In conversations with those who have visited the grave in recent weeks, two explanations come up again and again: the first is a feeling of closeness and sympathy for Ramon the man and also for the figure he represented; Or as Einat David, an employee of the Ministry of Agriculture from Kirit Ekron who was in the area as part of her job and decided to go to the grave, put it: "I feel pain for every Jew who died, but especially for him. There was something so good about him, so warm. He symbolized everything that is positive in this country." The second explanation that comes back is the great sense of loss in his death. Nati, a policeman from the area, who visited the grave and placed a stone on it, put it this way: "It seems to me that he could have contributed a lot more to the country. The feeling is that hell, until we send someone into space, why is this happening specifically on the shuttle he is on."

The graves of the righteous of the seculars

Boaz Cohen is, according to his definition, Nahalel's water man. Although he says he prefers to "be here as little as possible", one hot Sunday morning in mid-May he measures pipes in the cemetery, saws and connects them, stretches silver irrigation lines. "In the beginning, you couldn't find a single parking space here," he says, pointing to the large trunk of his van, "do you see that? At the end of the day, everything would be filled with wreaths and candles. I'm working here and suddenly I hear, 'Hello, turn off the generator'. What happened? People come and do rituals here. Nevertheless, the man is a symbol."

"Saturday is a whole mess there," describes Kobi Fleishman, a tour guide from Bethlehem in the Galilee, whose Nahalel cemetery is part of the tour route he conducts. Fleishman sees the ascent to the grave as part of a phenomenon he recognizes in recent times, of journeys to the cemeteries of the first Zionists, the Yishuv, the Shumer and the Haganah. This is how you arrive at Tel Shemron, where the pioneers of the Jezreel Valley are buried, and also visit the tombstone of Ilan Ramon. "These places have become the graves of the righteous of the seculars," he says. "They serve as a source and reason for nostalgia, for embracing the 'good old Land of Israel', for an apparently better past. People are looking for heroes who will bring them back to a time when everything seemed clearer, more optimistic."

The grave of one of the pioneers of the settlement, Olga Hankin - the wife of Yehoshua Hankin, the Redeemer of the Lands - has already become a true righteous grave. Even though she had no children and was completely secular, barren women from the area come to worship her grave in Ma'ain Harod, perhaps because she was a midwife. In Hellal it is not happening yet. No one falls on the grave of Shmuel Dayan, or of his sons, Zorik and Moshe, and does not bury notes in them asking for help.

But during one of the visits this month, an extraordinary messenger appeared near the grave of Ramon Menesher. On a chrome page, at the top of which is a photograph of him between the flags of Israel and the United States, and at the bottom of it is the inscription "Shabbat vigil in Eretz Yisrael, PO Box 647 Arad", among other things it is written: "We noticed how you became a Jew, being a Jew there at NASA among gentiles, when it became clear to you that one The dates for the launches were set for Tisha B'Av. You asked to postpone the launch... Jews and non-Jews heard from you with pride that you took with you into space a Bible, a mezuzah, kosher food, a Torah book and a cup for sanctification..." The message concluded with the sentence: "Ilan! You were not a landed Israeli, but a proud Jew!"

Still, most of those who follow refer to Ramon first and foremost as the first Israeli astronaut. On the tour that Fleishman conducts there, he reads a booklet issued by the Air Force, which contains letters sent and received by Ilan Ramon, as well as "Zemar Noga" ("Hear My Voice"), a poem by Rachel, who is now identified with him. "The listeners don't cry", he says, "but they definitely wipe away a tear".

Picnic at Tel Shemron

Ilan Ramon was not born in the Jezreel Valley nor did he grow up there, but he was buried there. There are several reasons for this, perhaps beginning in 1991 with the great wave of immigration from Russia. Then the reception center in Nahalel was filled with new immigrants and teachers were needed. That's how three people got there: physical education teacher Rona Ramon, math teacher Ayelet Shalain and teacher H. The three of them formed an immediate bond, which was strengthened by shared breakfasts at the home of Shalain's parents, born in Nahalel, resident of Tamar today.
The couple were added to the female triangle, and between the men - Ilan Ramon, commander of the F-16 squadron from the Ramat David base, M., commander of a helicopter squadron at the same base, and Roni Shlain, a farmer with a farm in Nahalel - close ties were formed. A friendship was also formed between the children. They all spent holidays together, went on joint vacations and picnics at Tel Shemron. The close relationship was maintained even when the Ramon family moved to the air force base in Hazor.

Ilan Ramon would drop by to visit Tamar next to Nahalel, and during one of the visits "he was sitting in the corner, still wearing a flight suit, and he was all excited," recalls Shelin. "He told us that he was chosen to be the first Israeli astronaut. He was not allowed to reveal the secret, but we had to tell." Shalein answered him: "What are you going for? Like that, going out in a small box outside the atmosphere?” But he got kicked under the table by the woman next to him, "and only then did I change my phase, and became excited along with him."
"Three weeks before takeoff, Ilan would call every day: 'Well, are you coming? Well, are you coming? Well, are you coming?'" says Ayelet Shalain, "until Rona picked up the phone once and said: 'Roni, enough with the chatter, Ilan wants you to be with him.'"

Roni, Ayelet and their four children went to Cape Canaveral for a week. The Shlain family remembers the excitement of the launch, the countdown in a tangle of languages, the deafening noise, like no other, the billowing smoke, the spaceship detaching from the ground, making the long-awaited turn in the air that ensures everything went well, and the almost uncontrollable roars of admiration at the sight of all this. "It's not just the takeoff," says Shaline, "it's also the knowledge that Ilan, your friend, is in there and that in a moment he's going to leave the atmosphere."

The family returned to Israel with a letter that Ramon had left for them before he boarded the ferry. Three days before the landing, Rona Ramon called and said that the entire STS 107 crew intends to come to Israel in May, and that they want to stay at Tamar. There they already started to puzzle over how to even produce such an event, who is invited and who is not.

The valley pioneers and the space pioneers are buried here

On February 1, 2003 at 16:16, Roni Shlain was on duty at the barn with his son Ehud, Ayelet was at home with their daughter Ahinoam. They soon realized that something very bad had happened. Ayelet told Ahinoam that Ilan must have abandoned. "There can be no such thing, he has already jumped several times in his life." Then she caught Rona Ramon on the phone, who only said "come". On the way home from the farm, Roni ordered tickets for the first flight to the United States, and later that evening, God and the Shaline couple flew there.

There, during one sleepless night, in a conversation between the three friends, the idea was born that Ilan Ramon Yetman would sing. "She wanted a cemetery that has a more private, less urban feel, a place with trees," says Ayelet. "I suggested to her, why don't we bring him to Nahalel, there is also a lot of symbolism in this and he will be next to us and we can come there, and this is also in a place that he loved so much, overlooking the base." Rona didn't say anything, she just listened.

Early the next morning Roni came to find out if she had decided about the burial place. Even before he opened the door he saw her running towards him. "'Roni, will they agree that he will be buried in Nahalel?' she asked. I told her, 'Sure, what a question.'" Roni and Ayelet Shlain called from the United States to the Ministry of Economy. The agreement to bury him in the Nahalel cemetery was unanimously accepted.

When they were in the United States they did not know how the news of Ilan Ramon's death was received in Israel. Only when they returned did they understand the intensity of the grief, also because somehow they had become unofficial representatives of the Ramon family. People call and send letters, trying to comfort and establish contact through them. According to their estimation, they only received tens of thousands of postal items - letters, memorial booklets and poems. These are transferred to the commemoration department in the Air Force and there they are kept for Rona Ramon.

Ayelet and Roni Schlein are not surprised by this huge wave of sympathy: "Ilan was free of arrogance and haste, he spoke to everyone at eye level, it doesn't matter if you are the president of the country or from the common people. He entered everyone's heart."

Is that the whole explanation? "I also explain it by saying that this confused nation was looking for someone and he crowned him a leader," says Ayelet. "He did not upset anyone and took this mission as a state mission, with the drawing of the boy from the Holocaust and the representation of the Jewish people in the Diaspora, and the kosher food and the air force and Eric Einstein's record. He could have taken it as a personal promotion for himself and his family, but he chose to take it as a national mission and did it in an amazing way. This task was tailor-made for him. He had it."

Beyond that, Ayelet and Roni Shlain mention the spiritual experience that surrounded him in space, in a place where the borders blur and the earth looks blue and round and beautiful and peaceful. "People picked up on this and it connected them to his death, so many are sure that he is still hovering up there and hears them, and sees them and feels them, and that's why people can still write: 'To the late Ilan Ramon, praise be to the cemetery.' Sometimes I read the title and say to myself, 'This is from Harry Potter.'"

Doesn't the fact that so many mythological figures are buried in this place, the Nahalel cemetery, also help to strengthen the myth of Ilan Ramon? "Look," says Roni, "this place deserves Ilan, and Ilan deserves him." The pioneers of the valley and the pioneers of settlement in Israel are buried there, and now also the pioneer of space."

A military grave outside the military area

Ilan Ramon lies right next to Moshe Dayan's grave, in a military grave, but outside the military plot, and next to it is a grave plot that is preserved at Rona Ramon's request. This is the compromise that the family reached with the farm.

Although the decision to agree to place his grave there was unanimous, it is doubtful whether they expected such an influx of visitors there. Will the current now increase or weaken? Over the past few months, the nature of the visits has changed: fewer teenagers with guitars and candles, more families and organized groups on trips. Maybe over time people will look for other heroes.

Some believe that the myth will only grow. The guide Kobi Fleishman also describes practical reasons for the place to remain in the mind: "This is it, the grave marker of Ramon Benhalel is included in the brochures that are distributed among the tour guides and in the multitudes of travel books that are written here. The regional tourism association also knows Tel Shemron quite well.
"When I tell people on my tours that they are going to visit Ilan Ramon's grave, many say that it is very important. Some wonder why Rona and the family are still there, why they don't return to Israel already, expecting the widow to be a widow." And what does he answer? "That it's none of our business."

A few weeks ago, when Ofer Aviran, who also guides tours in the valley, arrived with a group under his guidance at the Nahalel cemetery, he told his listeners: "We only knew Ilan Ramon for two weeks, but he managed to touch the sadness of each one of us." He likened his entry into the Israelis' lives to a lightning show. And maybe this short, one-time flash is the explanation for the candles, flowers and letters that keep coming.