My father talked about being buried in Israel for thirty years. Every year something came up, the cost, the complexity, the feeling that there was still time. He passed last winter, unexpectedly, at 74. What we found was that he had filled out the inquiry form on this page three weeks before he died. He had never called. We called instead. The team at Hekdesh walked us through everything, the plot he would have chosen , the documentation, the process of bringing him from New Jersey to Tzfat. It was handled with a dignity and patience I did not expect. I think about my father often. I think he would have had more peace in his last years if he had made that call himself. I made mine the week after we buried him. My plot is reserved. My children will not have to wonder

M.F., Teaneck, New Jersey

Reserved for herself following her father's passing

I will be honest. When I first found this website, my instinct was skepticism. A Shopify page, two Gmail addresses, a price of fourteen thousand dollars. I have seen scams targeting the Jewish community before, and I was not going to be one of them. I spent two weeks doing my research. I verified the cemetery. I called the office of the Chief Rabbi of Tzfat. I spoke with a rabbi in my community in London who had heard of the project. I called the Hekdesh team three times with three different sets of questions before I was satisfied. Every question was answered. Every time I pushed, they gave me more detail, not less. That is what changed my mind, not the website, but the people on the phone. My wife and I have both reserved our plots, adjacent to each other. We are at peace with where we will rest. That peace is worth more than I expected.

D. and R. L., Golders Green, London

Both plots reserved after three weeks of due diligence

My husband and I had discussed this for years. Jerusalem was always the name we said, Har HaMenuchot, the Mount of Olives. Burial in Jerusalem felt like the obvious answer. A rabbi we respect mentioned Tzfat. He spoke about the Arizal, about Rabbi Yosef Caro, about what that city represents in our tradition. He said: 'Jerusalem is where the Temple stood. Tzfat is where the Jewish soul was reconstructed after the expulsions. Both are holy. They are not the same holiness.' That stayed with me. Our family is Sephardic. Rabbi Yosef Caro is not an abstract name to us, the Shulchan Aruch is in our home. The idea of resting near him, in the city where he wrote it, is something I cannot fully put into words. The process was simple. Everything was handled by phone and email. The documentation arrived. My husband and I have adjacent plots in Tzfat. We are not afraid of this topic anymore. We talk about it with our children openly. It has brought us a quiet that I did not expect to find.

E. and A. M., Buenos Aires, Argentina

Adjacent plots reserved after rabbinical consultation