Kinneret Cemetery

Kinneret Cemetery (בית הקברות כנרת) is a cemetery located on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, near the Kvutzat Kinneret.

His History
The first grave in the cemetery was dug in 1911, several months after the great strike. It was the grave of Menachem Mendel Shmulevitz (MMS), who was one of the tenants at Beit HaMotor. He died or was murdered while going to bring bread from the Kinneret colony.

The decision was made to bury him near the Sea of Galilee. The cemetery served the residents of the Kinneret colony, and over time also the Kinneret group, members of the Histadrut, and members of the labor movement.

Famous figures from the First and Second Aliyah are buried in the cemetery, including the poet Rachel, Berl Katznelson, Shaul Avigur, Avraham Herzfeld, and others. Also buried there are the poet Elisheva Bichovsky, as well as socialist Zionist leaders who died and were buried in the diaspora, and their remains were brought to Israel after the establishment of the state, such as Moses Hess, Dov Ber Borochov, and Nachman Syrkin.

The cemetery has a special corner for Shmuel Yavnieli, an emissary of the Zionist Congress who was involved in bringing the Yemenite Jews of Kinneret to Israel in 1909. Additionally, there are tombstones of members of the Hashomer organization buried in Kfar Giladi, as well as the grave of Shmuel Stoller, one of the founders of the Kinneret group and a recipient of the Israel Prize for Agriculture.

The cemetery has a special section allocated for the Yemenite Jews of Kinneret. With the publication of Professor Yehuda Nini's book "Did I Dream a Dream, The Yemenite Jews of Kinneret – Their Settlement and Uprooting," the refusal of the group and colony residents to bury the deceased Yemenite Jews of Kinneret in the cemetery itself was revealed, and only after some time was a separate section allocated for them in the cemetery. Another special section is for the exiles of Tel Aviv who arrived in Kinneret after being expelled from Tel Aviv in 1917. 52 people arrived at the Kinneret courtyard and lived there under harsh conditions. 10 died and were buried under a pile of stones without a marker.

In the 1950s, Kinneret members placed a tombstone on each grave, inscribed with "Unknown from the exiles of Judah." The names of the deceased exiles, discovered in the Zionist Archives in 1991, are commemorated on a memorial erected in the heart of the cemetery, near this section. The poet and songwriter Naomi Shemer, a native of Kinneret, is also buried in the cemetery. Some distance from her is the grave of the writer and playwright Aharon Megged.