When the legendary pioneer Yaacov Mirkin passed away, his grandson Baruch Mirkin, the protagonist of Meir Shalev's best-selling novel The Blue Mountain, buried him on his own land and turned his family estate into the “Pioneer Home,” a cemetery for the valley's pioneers, a booming (and controversial) business. In this cemetery, ex-pioneers who have left Israel are offered, for a hefty price, to be buried next to the real pioneers, a status bought with money. The booming business of the cemetery, unheard of before, stands in contrast to the decaying village and attests to the changes society undergone:

Private cemeteries, profit oriented, could hardly be imagined until recently, but now provide a way for secular Israelis to avoid the Orthodox rabbinate and assume control over their departure from the world. Death rituals and burial were not officially part of the status quo but became another part of the Orthodox monopoly in Israel, largely uninterrupted until the 1990s. The social, economic, and demographic changes described earlier also had influence on burials when, on one hand, FSU immigrants not recognized as Jews had nowhere to be buried and, on the other hand, secular Israelis demanded services compatible with their worldviews and rejected the uniform Orthodox service. Burial and funeral alternatives began to emerge as an answer to the immediate needs of immigrants and secular demands for new rituals and services and the freedom to choose the way they depart from their loved ones. The new alternatives created by secular entrepreneurs – motivated by ideology, profit, or a combination of both – provided a variety of burial and funeral services that would reflect the worldview of the deceased and the family, their aesthetic preferences, or, in some cases, their status.