I’m posting from a two day tiyul (trip) with Pardes (where I’m learning this year). We’ve gone up to the galil to learn some texts in the mishna and Gemara in the place where these texts were written and where many of their stories take place. We walked yesterday on a part of what is called shvil hasanhedrin (the trail of thd Sanhedrin) which is a 70 km trail following the ten locations where the Sanhedrin met after the temple was destroyed.
This morning we met with an individual in the town of tzipori who told us the story of digging in his backyard to build a guest house when he came across a sealed grave with the hebrew inscription of rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi. He had found in his backyard the location of the grave of one of the rabbis in the Talmud that had been until then unknown. This was a small cave with five sealed caskets and one open space that had been closed and sealed from grave robbers. There is a story in the Talmud that rabbi yehoshua ben Levi went straight to heaven and skipped being buried so perhaps the open space is his.
Grave entrance for Rabbi Yehosha Ben Levi