WHERE ELSE CAN YOU PICK UP THE PHONE, MAKE AN APPOINTMENT WITH A FURNITURE DESIGNER TO COME TO YOUR HOME AT NO CHARGE, CUSTOM DESIGN YOUR NEW FURNITURE TO FIT YOUR ROOM AND THEN FINANCE IT FOR YOU? Tomb And Gloom The thought of Rachel's Tomb in Palestinian- controlled territory angers both secular and religious Israelis. INA FRIEDMAN ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT A • : • : • : : • • a • MONTH Interest-Free FINANCING -Limited- offer ........... .-** • ''''' ■■ •• ■ ••1 ;), w Installation Special H- UJ H- 120 '50 Off We Now Welcome VISA and MASTERCARD RICK WALD Call For Details 489.5862 3.7111111•RLISMNIPIJ lthough it is ranked third in importance among the sites sacred to Jews in the Holy Land (after the West- ern Wall and the Cave of the Pa- triarchs), to the uninitiated Rachel's Tomb is easy to miss. Surrounded by high concrete slabs and guarded by soldiers in- side and out, the small, domed structure (built by the British- Jewish philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiori a century ago) looks more like an armed camp than a shrine. So far, this forbidding exterior has not kept Jews (mostly tourists, the soldiers say) from flocking there each day. But that could change once the area is transferred to the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, as part of Israel's withdrawal from Beth- lehem. As might be expected, the prospect of having to enter Pales- tinian-controlled territory to reach such a popular shrine spawned anger and consterna- tion in Israel. The surprise is that these feelings extend across both the religious and ideological di- vide. The fears about security are all the more pronounced because so many of the visitors to. Rachel's Tomb are women. Not that there's any feminist tradition as- sociated with the matriarch. On the contrary, "Rachel symbolizes a woman's power to help her mate realize his potential," ex- plains Osnat, the leader of a group of religious and non-ob- servant women who have come to express their solidarity with the hapless Rachel (who was bar- ren for many years and then died in childbirth) by chanting Proverbs 31 ("A woman of valor who can find?"). Neither, as is widely believed, do women necessarily visit the site to seek aid with traditional- ly "female concerns," such as fer- tility or finding a suitable mate. Rachel's Tomb, the sextant in- sists, is an "all-purpose shrine" at which worshippers of both sex- es pray for the matriarch's inter- cession. Still, women make up the great majority of the supplicants there. "I guess they assume they'll get a better hearing from one of their kind," quips an ir- reverent American tourist. Over the years, the purely re- ligious draw of Rachel's Tomb has acquired a nationalist overtone. Every Israeli schoolchild knows the passage from Jeremiah (31:15-17) in which Rachel, "weeping for her children" after Nebuchadnezzar exiles the Is- raelite tribes to Babylonia, is com- forted by the Lord's words: 'There is hope for your future ... and your sons shall return to their land." The quote has become something of a motto for the religious set- tlers in the West Bank, who see their settlements as the contem- porary fulfillment of that divine promise. Last month, inspired by Knes- set deputy Hanan Porat of the National Religious Party, a group of these settlers founded the Nechamat Rachel (Consolation of Rachel) Yeshiva at the back of the building. It's still an ad hoc affair, without a faculty or regu- larly scheduled lessons, and it's manned by only a dozen or so young men. But they believe that their presence will ensure that the tomb remains under exclu- sive Israeli control (though a sim- ilar strategy, adopted last year at . "This is the true land of our forefathers." —An Israeli student the ruins of a synagogue in Jeri- cho, failed to accomplish its aim). "This is the true land of our forefathers," one of the students declared earnestly when asked what he hoped to achieve. "When Rachel was buried here, the place where Tel Aviv stands was Philis- tine country. Since then, the idols may have changed, but the peo- ple living there are still worship- ping false gods. They're also mistaken if they think we'll ever surrender this place." When applied to the entire West Bank, this is precisely the stand on which the Israeli public is sorely divided. But in the case of Rachel's Tomb, the attachment of even Israeli iconoclasts re- mains a potent force. "This site is one of the corner- stones ofJewish-Israeli identity," Meron Benvenisti — a conflict- resolution expert better known for pointing out Palestinian sen- sitivities to Israelis — wrote in Ha'aretz last week. "Even Shu- lamit Aloni ... recognizes the im- portance of the site as a highly significant national symbol ... of motherhood, of mercy, of and hope for the salvation of the Jew- ish people."