A QUESTION WRAPPED IN A CONUNDRUM: WHY DO JEWS PUT PEBBLES ON GRAVESTONES?

After a number of questions on the e-mail, I realized that I didn't have the slightest idea why I always left a pebble when I left a Jewish gravestone. Many rabbis I asked didn't know either. They said, "We just do it."

Two other responses were common. The first was that you left a pebble behind to console any relative who would visit the grave later. The other answer was that the early Jews were nomads who buried their dead in the desert sand, marking the site with large stones to keep away wild beasts. Then it would be a mitzvah (a blessing), for passers-by to add another stone to the pile.

The only problem with the "wild beasts" solution lies in Genesis 23, when Abraham's wife Sarah, dies in Hebron. "Abraham said . . . I am a stranger and sojourner; give me a possession of a burying place." ... He asked Ephron, for "the cave of Machpelah ... for the full price." There "Abraham buried Sarah, his wife." In Genesis 25:5, we learn that Abraham eventually joined Sarah, and, later, his descendants Jacob, and Joseph, the ruler of Egypt.

The only biblical support for the "empty desert" theory lies in Genesis 35:7 where we learn that while the tribe was still nomadic, Jacob's wife, Rachel, died in childbirth. "And Joseph set up a pillar on Rachel's grave, while on the way to Ephreth (now called Bethlehem)."

This puzzle has been around for such a long time. As early as the 16th century, a Hebrew scholar wrote in answer to the same question, "We do this as a comfort for the bereaved, because it indicates that others share their sorrow."

Whichever choice one adheres to, gravestone visitors need a sturdy implement to knock down the pebbles from the gravestone of a Jewish celebrity. When I visited Sholem Aleichim's stone (Fiddler on the Roof), it took more than 10 minutes to remove them from every nook and cranny. (Of course, I very scrupulously put them all back when I was done.) The same intrusive rocks can be found on graves of many other well-known Jews. The reknowned musician Leonard Bernstein's bronze placque in Green-wood Cemetery is always littered with pebbles.

Another factor to be considered, at least in New York,is the melting pot composition of our city. I was busy recording the stone of a Chinese child, when I saw an African-American woman placing a pebble on a stone of what appeared to be a Catholic monk. When asked her why,she told me that she had seen her Jewish friends doing it, and thought it was such a nice idea,that she had started doing it herself.

However, it is just possible that the real answer comes from archaeological studies. A article entitled Sacred Stones in the Desert, appeared in the Biblical Archaeology Review. Archaeologists in the Sinai and Negev deserts have documented 142 independent masseboth or "standing stones," appearing throughout these lands. Uzi Avner, the author writes: "They are unmistakably purposeful arrangements of carefully selected crude stones,set vertically into the ground, individually or in groups.. . . The Bible makes it clear that these standing stones had a pervasive, if ambiguous, cultic significance in early Israelite religion."

What I now consider the best answer to the question is that placement by Jews of a stone on a burial site is a unconscious memory of those ancient days, when it stood for the House of God as Jacob described it. It therefore, represents a wish that the soul interred there should be residing in that House.

The article referred to is by Uzi Avner, "Sacred Stones in the Desert." (2001).In the Biblical Archaeological Review, Vol. 27, pages 31-35.