When Jews visit the cemetery to remember a loved one, it is customary to place small stones on the grave, instead (or in addition) to flowers, which are typical of the Christian world. This ancient tradition recalls the custom of many peoples to mark a place of hierophany (the miraculous presence or revelation of a sacred or divine element) with a stone stele. A famous biblical passage recounts when Jacob had the famous dream of the ladder, at the top of which he met the Lord, and to mark that place, he placed a stone:
“Jacob, leaving Beer-Sheba, was on his way to Haran. When the sun set, he came to a place and spent the night there, because the sun had set. He took some stones of that place, put them under his head, and lay down there. He dreamed and saw a ladder set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the Lord stood above it and said: ‘I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give to you and to your descendants. Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread abroad to the west, the east, the north, and the south, and in you and your descendants, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’ When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.’ And he was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’ Then Jacob rose early in the morning, took the stone that he had put under his head, and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He called the name of that place Beth- El” (Genesis 28:10-19)
Stones have thus come to symbolize the marking of a sacred place, and graves for Jews are considered sacred sites. It seems that in ancient times, when Jews were nomadic shepherds who spent much of their time in the arid desert, they would often erect stone mounds to mark the burial sites of their loved ones. This custom has been passed down through generations, even when the Jews left the desert. Thus, on the graves in cemeteries, Jews place small stones either instead of or alongside flowers to remember their loved ones and their origins. This is especially true on the anniversaries of a death and on the eve of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).
