The Jewish Cemetery on the Mount of Olives, including the Silwan necropolis, is the most ancient and most important cemetery in Jerusalem. Burial on the Mount of Olives started some 3,000 years ago in the First Temple Period, and continues to this day. The cemetery contains about 70,000 tombs from various periods, including the tombs of famous figures in Jewish history.
In the 19th century special significance was attached to Jewish cemeteries in Jerusalem, since they were the last meeting place not only of Jerusalemites but also of Jews from all over the world. Over the years, many Jews in their old age came to Jerusalem in order to live out the rest of their lives there and to be buried in its holy soil.
During the First and Second Temple Periods the Jews of Jerusalem were buried in burial caves scattered on the slopes of the Mount, and from the 16th century the cemetery began to take its present shape.
The old Jewish cemetery sprawled over the slopes of the Mount of Olives overlooking the Kidron Valley (Valley of Jehoshaphat), radiating out from the lower, ancient part, which preserved Jewish graves from the second Temple Period; here there had been a tradition of burial uninterrupted for thousands of years. The cemetery was quite close to the Old City, its chief merit being that it lay just across the Kidron Valley from the Temple Mount: according to Jewish tradition, it is here that the Resurrection of the Dead would begin once Messiah will appear on the Mount of Olives and head toward the Temple Mount.
Many famous names are buried in the cemetery such as Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar, known as the Ohr ha-Chaim, and Rabbi Yehuda Alcalay who were among the heralds of Zionism; Hasidic rebbes of various dynasties and Rabbis of "Yishuv haYashan" (the old – pre-Zionist - Jewish settlement) together with Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, and his circle; Henrietta Szold, the founder of the Hadassah organization, the poet Else Lasker-Schüler, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda the father of Modern Hebrew, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, the Nobel Laureate for Literature, Boris Schatz, the founder of the Bezalel school of Art; Israel's sixth Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the victims of the 1929 Arab riots and 1936–39 Arab revolt, the fallen from the 1948 War of Independence, together with Jews of many generations in their diversity.
Nahmanides, the Ramban
Obadiah ben Abraham, the Bartenura
Ḥayyim ben Moshe ibn Attar, the Ohr ha-Ḥayyim
Yosef Hayyim, Baghdad-born rabbi and posek known as the Ben-Ish Hai
Shalom Sharabi, the Rashash
Yaakov Chaim Sofer, the Kaf Hachaim
Elazar Abuchatzeira, rabbi and grandson of the Baba Sali
Levi Yitzchok Bender, leader of the Breslov community in Uman and Jerusalem
Avrohom Blumenkrantz, American Orthodox rabbi
Yehoshua Leib Diskin, rabbi in Brisk and Jerusalem
Shlomo Elyashiv, Lithuanian kabbalist
Moshe Mordechai Epstein, rosh yeshivas Slabodka, Lithuania
Nosson Tzvi Finkel, the Alter of Slabodka
Zerah Flegeltaub, rabbi of Jerusalem and Suwalki, Poland, son of Rabbi Shlomo Flegeltaub of Warsaw
Abraham Gershon of Kitov, brother-in-law of the Baal Shem Tov
Shimon Hakham, Bukharian writer and translator of Jewish holy texts and stories in Judeo-Tajik
Moshe Halberstam, rosh yeshivas Tschakava
Yitzchok Hutner, rosh yeshivas Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin, Brooklyn, New York
Judah he-Hasid, 17th-century immigration leader
Aryeh Kaplan, American Orthodox rabbi and author
Zvi Yehuda Kook, rosh yeshivas Mercaz HaRav Kook
Avigdor Miller, American Orthodox rabbi, author and lecturer
Shlomo Moussaieff, Bukharian family patriarch
Meir ben Judah Leib Poppers, Bohemian rabbi and kabbalist
Eliyahu David Rabinowitz-Teomim, rosh yeshivas Mir
Zundel Salant, rabbi and primary teacher of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter
Yechezkel Sarna, rosh yeshivas Slabodka
Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg, rabbi and Rosh Yeshiva of Torah Ore
Gedalia Schorr, rabbi and Rosh Yeshiva of Torah Vodaas, Brooklyn, New York
Sholom Schwadron, the "Maggid of Jerusalem"
Dov Schwartzman, rosh yeshiva Yeshivas Bais HaTalmud, Jerusalem
Avraham Shapira, rosh yeshivas Mercaz HaRav Kook
Gedaliah Silverstone, rabbi in Belfast and Washington, D.C.
Ahron Soloveichik, rosh yeshivas Brisk, Chicago, Illinois
Pesach Stein, rosh yeshivas Telz, Cleveland, Ohio
Yitzchok Yaakov Weiss, head of the Edah HaChareidis, Jerusalem
Yitzchok Dovid Groner, director of Yeshivah Centre, Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
Simcha Bunim Alter, fifth Gerrer rebbe
Yisrael Alter, fourth Gerrer rebbe
Moshe Biderman, Lelover rebbe
Mordechai Shlomo Friedman, Boyaner rebbe of New York City
Levi Yitzchak Horowitz, second Bostoner rebbe
Yosef Leifer, first Pittsburger rebbe
Maiden of Ludmir, female Hasidic rebbe
Yechiel Yehoshua Rabinowicz, Shedlitser rebbe
Issamar Rosenbaum, Nadvorna rebbe
Shaul Yedidya Elazar Taub, Modzitzer rebbe
Solomon Eliezer Alfandari, Chief Rabbi of Damascus and Safed
Meir Auerbach, first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem
Chaim Berlin, Chief Rabbi of Moscow
Haim Douek, Chief Rabbi of Egypt
Jacob Saul Elyashar, Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Ottoman Palestine
Shlomo Goren, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel
Immanuel Jakobovits, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, London
Abraham Isaac Kook, Chief Rabbi of British Mandate Palestine
Jacob Meir, Sephardic Chief Rabbi of British Mandate Palestine
Meyer Rosenbaum, Chief Rabbi of Cuba
Shmuel Salant, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem
Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem
Isser Yehuda Unterman, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel
Harry Fischel, American Jewish businessman and philanthropist
Robert Maxwell, British media magnate and supporter of Israel
George Weidenfeld, British Jewish businessman and philanthropist
Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Israeli writer
Nissim Behar, pioneer of Modern Hebrew education
Shmuel Ben David, (1884–1927), illustrator, painter, typographer, and designer
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the father of modern Hebrew
Israel Dov Frumkin, Israeli journalist
Uri Zvi Grinberg, Israeli poet and journalist
Yossele Rosenblatt, hazzan and composer
Else Lasker-Schüler, German-Jewish poet
Boris Schatz, founder of the Bezalel School in Jerusalem
Ephraim Urbach, Israeli scholar
Judah Alkalai, precursor of political Zionism
Moshe Barazani, Lehi fighter
Menahem Begin, Israeli prime minister
Israel Eldad, Revisionist Zionist philosopher and fighter
Meir Feinstein, Irgun fighter
Jacob Israël de Haan, Dutch Jewish journalist assassinated by the Haganah
Moshe Hirsch, leader of Neturei Karta
Ida Silverman, Jewish philanthropist, speaker, and Zionist fund-raiser
Henrietta Szold, founder of Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America
Eliyahu Asheri, Israeli terror victim
Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, terror victims
Rachel, Netanel, Rephael and Ephraim Weiss, victims of the Jericho bus firebombing
Boedil Thurgotsdatter, medieval Danish queen
Princess Alice of Battenberg, mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, recognised as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem