Kever Avot at an individual family grave and the same practice directed at a site such as Rachel's Tomb near Bethlehem are structurally the same act performed at very different scales, and the larger site shows what happens when a personal devotional visit becomes attached to national rather than only family memory. Rachel's Tomb, held by tradition to mark the burial place of the matriarch Rachel, has drawn visitors for centuries because Rachel, in the biblical account, is described weeping for her exiled children, a verse from Jeremiah that later readers took as making her uniquely receptive to prayers for return and for children, so pilgrims historically came seeking fertility, safe childbirth or the return of family members in ways a private grave visit does not typically carry. Its location, in a politically contested and heavily fortified area near Bethlehem, has made access a recurring point of friction, and the tomb has been a target of violence during periods of conflict, so visiting a site built on the same devotional logic as visiting a parent's grave now regularly requires security planning that has nothing to do with the practice itself.
The tension the general practice raises, that Torah law forbids inquiring of the dead while the visit is understood as prayer to God at a place rather than a petition addressed to the deceased, is if anything sharper at Rachel's Tomb, where popular practice has historically leaned toward language addressing Rachel directly as an intercessor, a usage some rabbinic authorities have specifically cautioned against even while endorsing graveside prayer generally.