The Samaritans of Mt.Gerizim

If you are a Christian visiting Nablus, from the very moment you find out that in the city there is a community of Samaritans, the reassuring image of the good Samaritan comes to your mind and there it lingers. And you don't know why it is so, beacuse you actually never knew a thing about the Samaritans and never saw one in your lifetime. In fact, the Samaritans form one of the oldest and smallest religious communities in the world. They are 650 altogether and they are all concentrated in the Holy Land. Half of them live in the area of Neve Marka, in Holon near Tel Aviv, Israel, while the other half inhabits the Samaritans’ holiest place on earth, which for once is not city, but a mount: Mount Gerizim, in Nablus, Occupied Palestinian Territories.

And so there I am, hiking and sweating in the white summer heat the holy mountain crowng to the west the city of Nablus. Opposite, there is Mount Ebal, capped with the military installations from where IDF army units start their regular night time incursions to the city. In my bag, there's a bottle filled up with the water I took in the morning from Jacob’s well, thinking my pious grandmother back home will highly appreciate. To my grandmother’s disappointment, I am actually drinking - it’s 35 degrees and that’s the only I have - the water of the well where, according to St. John’s Gospel (4: 7-11), Jesus met a Samaritan woman on his return from Judea. At Jesus' time, Jews and Samaritans loathed each other candidly; Jews even refused to drink out of bowls used by Samaritans. This is the reason why the Samaritan woman was puzzled by Jesus’ request for a drink. To thank her, Jesus promised her ‘life-giving water which whosoever shall drinketh…shall never thirst; but…shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life’. The hatred between the Samaritans and the Jews, a recurring them in the Bible, also underpins the central theme of Jesus’ famous Parable of the Good Samaritan, which stirred my sweaty mid-day pilgrimage: a Samaritan helps a Judean who had just been attacked on his path by thieves, displaying a love for his fellow man which superseded sectarian division.

Two thousand years after Jesus trod these boards it seems the same lesson needs to be taught anew: As I approach the top of the mountain, i bump into an IDF checkpoint, where three bored Israeli soldiers with M16s stop me and check my documents. The Israel-Palestine conflict has not spared the Samaritans, who are actually caught between the two warring parties. Their position is neutral, tough: Samaritans do not do military service under Israeli flag and do not take part to Palestinian mob. They have cordial relations with both the Palestinian Authority and the state of Israel, speak fluently both Arabic and Hebrew, and they hold a passport which allows them to move freely in the Territories and in Israel. ’We stay out of politics’ - the high priest, whom I later meet at his house, tells me – ‘We want peace. But the only thing we do for peace is to pray, pray every day that peace will come soon’. In substance, the IDF controls access to the mountain beacuse Mt Gerizim overlooks Nablus and because it is linked to a small Jewish settlement and to the only-for-the-Jews highways heading for the major Israeli towns and cities.

The authority in the village is the high priest Husney W. Kohen. He is also the director of the small but fine and comprehensive Gerizim center & Museum (Nablus, Gerizim Mount, P.O.B. 172, Tel. +972 92388814), which occupies the ground floor of his own house. With the support of a genealogical tree, Mr.Kohen shows me why the Samaritans form one of the oldest religions in the world. As the other monotheistic religions, they too originate from Adam, but the Samaritan tradition stems from Moses, whom they consider the first High Priest. Since then, 135 generations of high priests have followed. And as the position of high priest is heridatary, I am shaking in my sandals as I realise I am talking to the depositary of a tradition which is almost three thousands years old.

Samaritans hold five tenets: one God; Moses as the first High Priest; one, and only one holy book, the Torah; the holiest place on earth is Mt.Gerizim; eventually, they believe the Messiah will come on the Last Day on Mt.Gerizim. The duty of every Samaritan is summarised in this line: ‘Love me and keep us’, meaning love God and keep the word of the Bible. Accordingly, Samaritans follow a strictly literally interpretation of the five books of the Torah, the Pentateuch. Unlike the Jewish, they exclude altogether the Talmud and all other codes. To keep close to the letter of the Torah, every Samaritan speaks and reads ancient Hebrew, the lingua franca of the Israelite kingdom, and writes using the ancient Hebrew script. They celebrate all and only the feasts explicitly provided for in the Torah (thus excluding Hanukah and Purim), following à la lettre the practical indications contained therein. (As a vegetarian, I'll spare you the description of the rites, which involve the sacrifies of sheep and which the high priest described me with a wealth of detail.) This also applies to Sabbath, which Samaritans observe with a rigour that would make even the most Orthodox Jew blanch.

Just like the letter of the Torah is their spiritual locus, Samaritans’ geographical locus is Mt. Gerizim, for which they have fought and died by the thousands during the centuries. The sacredness of this place relates to different circumstances. God took the sand with which he crafted Adam from this place; when the Universal Flood covered the entire world, Mt. Gerizim was the only place on earth spared by the waters. Eventually, Samaritans maintain that Abraham tried to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22) on Mount Gerizim, not on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (....on the same metre square from where some centuries after Islam’s prophet Mohammed was to ascend to the sky, and where today the Dome of the Rock is built).
I am glad to know that the Samaritans have enjoyed something of resurgence since 1917, when the number of devotees fell to the worrying low of 146. As the tradition is patriarchal, both father and mother must be Samaritan. The problem is that, in recent years, the community run out of women. To amend this vital problem, Samaritans 'imported' some from the outside world. Today there are 30 from Israel, 4 from Turkey and 4 from Ukraine. But to marry a Samaritan man and to become part of the community, these girls had to go through a long training period and espouse first, and fully, the Samaritan religion, become fluent in ancient Hebrew, study the Torah etc…

When I leave Mt.Gerizim is Friday afternoon and the streets are almost empty. The villagers are busy cooking the food for the next day, Sabbath. On my way back to the gloomy checkpoint, I run into an unexpected creature: a blond, tall, western looking girl in tight, short-to-knee jeans carrying a large plate of roasted chicken and potatoes. I go alittle bit into raptures, when I realise that she must be one of the Ukrainians! And I leave as I arrived, forgetful of checkpoints, M16s and all that nonsense, in my head only the image of the good Samaritan…