The Mount of Olives lies east of the city of jerusalem. A long ridge, running north and south for about two miles, separated from Jerusalem by the Kidron Valley, it is slightly higher in elevation than the city itself.

The Mount of Olives in Jerusalem is an important landmark, located next to the Old City of Jerusalem. This refers to the ridge located east of the Old City. It gets its name from the olive groves that at one time covered the land.

2,652 feet

The Mount of Olives or Mount Olivet (Hebrew: הַר הַזֵּיתִים‎, Har ha-Zeitim; Arabic: جبل الزيتون, الطور‎, Jabal al-Zaytun, Al-Tur) is a mountain ridge east of and adjacent to Jerusalem’s Old City. It is named for the olive groves that once covered its slopes.

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. The desire to be buried on the Mount of Olives stemmed in part from the Segulaic advantages attributed to the burial, according to various sources.

In total, a burial in Israel is about $20,000. People choose this route because they are “from Israel and want to return home or because of the special holiness or one-upmanship of being close to the resurrection,” Miller said.

This means also that, for many Israeli citizens, burial in Jerusalem is out of the question: the government only ensures local burial, so a resident of Tel Aviv or Haifa might have to pay upward of 10,000 shekels ($2,800) for a Jerusalem interment.

Jewish cemetery

Private burial by the Jewish Burial Society (Hevra Kadisha), which includes a plot, gravesite preparation and funeral expenses, costs between $5,000-20,000, depending on plot location. Every city has its own Jewish Burial Society.