Hari ni kami dapat satu lagi assignment yang to me is kinda unique, melawat tanah perkuburan orang-orang Yahudi, a Jewish Cemetery. Fancy having a Jewish burial ground right in the middle of Penang. Those days they call it Jalan Yahudi, but now, probably due to the increasing Jewish sentiments, nama jalan tersebut telah ditukar kepada Jalan Zainal Abidin. But to the locals, it is still the good ole Jalan Yahudi.
It was quite late when I reached there. And being in the city, I couln't feel the spookiness of a graveyard though,walaupun di waktu remang-remang senja...
The Cemetery gate. The word "Jewish" looked so bold in the half-light.
... Posing in front of the Jewish Cemetery at dusk.
Just look at nama yang tertera di pintu pagar ini. Ia menerangkan maksudnya yang tersendiri without having people to explain what place that is. The lettering is bold, the definition is loud...
The pics below are some typical tombstones yang sempat saya rakamkan di lensa kamera saya senja-senja ni... It was reported that at this very ground exist about 114 graves with the last entombment in 1978.
A Jewish cemetery (Hebrew בית עלמין) ("beit alamin" or "beit kvarot") is a cemetery where members of the Jewish faith are buried in keeping with Jewish tradition.
Known in Hebrew as "house of eternity," the land of the cemetery is considered holy and a special consecration ceremony takes place on its inauguration. Establishing a cemetery is one of the first priorities for a new Jewish community. A Jewish cemetery is generally purchased and supported with communal funds.
Then, we students were asked to create a monument untuk memperingati diri kita setelah roh meninggalkan jasad. But what is a monument? Is it a tombstone like the Jewish ones? Or a grand elaborate ones? A glass coffin perhaps, for glams?
According to Wikipedia : "A monument is a type of structure either explicitly created to commemorate a person or important event or which has become important to a social group as a part of their remembrance of past events. They are frequently used to improve the appearance of a city or location. Cities that are planned such as Washington D.C., New Delhi and Brasília are often built around monuments. The Washington Monument's location (and vertical geometry, though not physical detail) was conceived to help organize public space in the city before it was ever connected with George Washington. Older cities have monuments placed at locations that are already important or are sometimes redesigned to focus on one. As Shelley suggested in his famous poem "Ozymandias" ("Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"), the purpose of monuments is very often to impress or awe. In English the word "monumental" is often used in reference to something of extraordinary size and power. The word comes from the Latin "monere," which means 'to remind' or 'to warn.'
Functional structures made notable by their age, size or historic significance can also be regarded as monuments. This can happen because of great age and size, as in the case of the Great Wall of China, or because an event of great import occurred there such as the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in France. Many countries use Ancient monument or similar terms for the official designation of protected structures or archeological sites which may originally have been ordinary domestic houses or other buildings.
Monuments are also often designed to convey historical or political information. They can be used to reinforce the primacy of contemporary political power, such as the column of Trajan or the numerous statues of Lenin in the Soviet Union. They can be used to educate the populace about important events or figures from the past, such as in the renaming of the old General Post Office Building in New York City to the James A. Farley Building (James Farley Post Office), after former Postmaster General James Farley.
The social meanings of monuments are rarely fixed and certain and are frequently 'contested' by different social groups. As an example whilst the former East German socialist state may have seen the Berlin Wall as a means of 'protection' from the ideological impurity of the west, dissidents and others would often argue that it was symbolic of the inherent repression and paranoia of that state. This contention of meaning is a central theme of modern 'post processual' archaeological discourse.
Monuments have been created for thousands of years, and they are often the most durable and famous symbols of ancient civilizations. The Egyptian Pyramids, the Greek Parthenon, and the Moai of Easter Island have become symbols of their civilizations. In more recent times, monumental structures such as the Statue of Liberty and Eiffel Tower have become iconic emblems of modern nation-states. The term monumentality relates to the symbolic status and physical presence of a monument.
Until recently, it was customary for archaeologists to study large monuments and pay less attention to the everyday lives of the societies that created them. New ideas about what constitutes the archaeological record have revealed that certain legislative and theoretical approaches to the subject are too focused on earlier definitions of monuments. An example has been the United Kingdom's Scheduled Ancient Monument laws."
Sebagai seorang Muslim, saya tidak pula bercita-cita untuk membina atau mewasiatkan untuk dibina tugu atau monument buat memperingati diri saya, memadai dengan selazim dan selumrahnya batu nisan biasa, without frills and elaborate designs. I am a simple man, I want to lead a simple life and InsyaAllah, I want to die as a simple servant to Him.
Mungkin beginilah agaknya pusara saya bila sampai saat saya disemadikan kelak. Apa pun terpulanglah kepada waris yang masih hidup, tetapi yang pasti I want it to be as normal as possible. That I will tell them...
...dengan hanya pengenalan diri yang ringkas.
Something worth sharing. Mungkin kita dah maklum, hanya sebagai peringatan:
Larangan membina dan menulis sesuatu diatas kubur merujuk kepada sebuah hadith riwayat Jabir bin Abdullah ra, di mana Nabi :saw
نهى أن يجصص القبر وأن يقعد عليه وأن يبنى عليه.
"Nabi saw melarang kita menampal (plaster) kubur, duduk di atasnya dan membina apa-apa diatasnya" (Riwayat Muslim).
وأن يكتب عليه
Di dalam riwayat Tirmudzi dan al-Nasaa’I ada tambahan “(melarang) menulis diatasnya”.
Ulama’ khilaf di dalam hukum menggunakan batu nisan di kubur, ada kalangan ulama’ yang mengharamkannya dan ada yang makruhkannya. Berikut adalah tautan yang membincangkan lebih lanjut berkenaan dengan hukum tersebut :-
SJ - 2846 : Batu Nesan
http://qazikirdandoa.blogspot.com/2009/03/batu-nisan_15.html.
Ada di kalangan ulama’ yang berpandangan bahawa tidaklah dilarang menandakan kayu atau batu di atas kubur seseorang sebagaimana kata Ibn Qudamah :
Bagi al-Khatib al-Syarbini, mengenali di mana tempat dikebumikan mayat adalah dituntut supaya memudahkan keluarga yang masih hidup menziarahnya [Mughni al-Muhtaj, 1/541].
Kebenaran ini dalam konteks menandakan dan bukan menghiasi atau berlebih-lebihan menghiasai sesuatu kubur. Sebagaimana kata Ibn Hazm, niat menandakan batu atau kayu HANYALAH bagi tujuan pengenalan sahaja! Dengan itu, isu kuburan ini hendaklah ditangani dengan hati-hati agar ia tidak membawa kepada perkara yang dilarang sebagaimana hadith Jabir diatas.
Wallahu a'lam.
Saya bukanlah seorang yang arif dalam hukum hakam mengenai monumen dan batu nisan di atas pusara, tetapi sebagai bahan rujukan, bolehlah layari http://jacksite.wordpress.com/2007/08/09/hukum-batu-nisan-dalam-islam/ Apa yang saya nyatakan di atas tadi hanyalah pandangan peribadi. Bagi diri saya, monument yang paling berharga ialah bagaimana kita boleh create a memorable niche semasa hayat masih ada dan sentiasa dikenang kerana kebaikan kita setelah kita tiada lagi di dunia. Monument yang paling indah letaknya di dalam hati...
Untuk menikmati visual kubur-kubur pelik di dunia, sila layari http://ohtidak.com/oh-koleksi-kubur-terpelik-di-dunia/.
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