The Real Good
Samaritans
or
Israeli Israelites without Jerusalem nor the Prophets
To follow the discussion on video go to
All familiar with story of Good Samaritan
A headline on
a local news feed this week:
Good Samaritans Help Rescue 14 From
Sinking Ship In Newport Beach
The 41-foot boat began to
sink, just outside Newport Harbor, officials say. As the harbor patrol arrived,
helpers were already at the scene.
Besides a name
for a hospital, few know what it refers to:
Jesus answered, "A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he
fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving
him half dead. By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw
him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also,
when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a
certain Samaritan, as he
travelled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion,
came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine…(took him to an
inn, paid the expenses) Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a
neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?"He said, "He who showed
mercy on him."Then Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."— Luke 10:30–37, World English Bible
Open to
multiple interpretations-explanation of “Neighbor”. But Samaritan, for Jesus,
was not a pagan or foreigner-he was a cousin to the Jews, as distinct from the pagan
Canaanites ( swine before pearls, bread to dogs)..
II.When
I was a student, in
Israel, I set out to find out who were these people-related to Jews, yet not Jews.
I had relatives
in Holon, who I would visit from time to
time. One Shabbat, I decided to walk across
Holon to the Samaritan community. One half had lived there among Jews, had been
absorbed as citizens of Israel, and were, essentially, Israelis.
This
account from BBC http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180828-the-last-of-the-good-samaritans#:~:text=By%201919%2C%20there%20were%20only,most%20ancient%20in%20the%20world( 2018)
Benyamim
(Benny) Tsedaka, a scholar, historian and ambassador-at-large for the Israelite
Samaritans. He explained that “There were two ancient kingdoms: Judea (Jews)
from the south, and we were the tribes from the north. We eventually separated,
but our origins are identical.” . . . They’re one of the world’s oldest and
smallest religious groups and their songs are among the most ancient in the
world.
The Samaritan
center is in Samaria-Shomron- Hence- Shomronim-in Greek-Latin-
Samaria-Samaritan. Shamerim-the watchers, in their own terminology.
How did they
get to my relative’s town?
The Samaritans and Holon
On the turn
of the 20th century, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi,( later, President) a
Jewish immigrant from the Ukraine, rented a room in a Samaritan owned house in
Jaffa. Developing a strong friendship with the landlord, he studied the
Samaritan culture and history, and eventually became an expert in the field.
Later, as the second president of state of Israel, he used his influence to
allocate a plot in Holon for Samaritans who wished to live in Israel.( from https://dannythedigger.com/samaritan-holon-community/)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Samaritans_synagogue_Holon.jpg
Entrance
to the synagogue in Holon.
At another
time, I went on a tour of the West Bank ( Judea/Samaria-Yehudah v Shomron) just
a few years after the Six-Day war. We came to Nablus- which is derived from the
Roman name : Neapolis( Naples, but without the pizza !). But it is the region
of the capital city of ancient northern kingdom of Israel, Shechem. The
Samaritan settlement there is called “Kiryat Luza”.
That is very
significant. It is hinted at in many places in the Bible, and seems to be
corroborated by archaeological remains, that Shechem was the first city
settled by the ancient Israelites—before the Exodus. Story of the rape of
Dinah and the revenge of Simon and Levi. It is also the site of two significant
mountains- Har Eval and Har Gerizim- The mount of curses and the mount of
blessings. There are archaeological remains of an ancient altar on the
hillside.
Link to image of altar
It here that
the ancient center of the Samaritans lies.
Our group came
to them on the holiest day of the year: Yom Kippur. But this was one month
after our Yom Kippur- quite clearly, the Samaritans had their own calendar.
Everyone was
fasting- including the little children- again, an indication that their halakha
is not ours.
Also, I was
intrigued to see how may of them looked very similar.
If Jews are
cousins , Samaritans are kissing cousins. A very close knit community with a
very small gene pool.
Video on Samaritans
The Holon and
Nablus communities were separated in 1948, the Holon Samaritans becoming “
Israeli”, the Nablus Samaritans “ Palestinians”, but I believe that since 1967,
the Nablus community has more closely identified with Israel proper.
A few year
later, when I lived in Israel, I went to visit the home of an active leader in the Holon community,
probably the same Tzedakah who was mentioned in the above article. At the
entrance to his house, there was an embroidered Shma ( rather than on
parchment). In discussing the status of the woman in the house, he talked about
the laws of “niddah”, ritual separation after menstruation. They follow the
Biblical restriction of 7 days; Jewish practice is an additional 7 days. On the
other hand, the separation is much more severe. The woman must live in separate
quarters and can not touch anything , such as the kitchen dishes, as they
become impure for the man. On the one hand, it sounds severe, but in practice,
it is marked as a holiday for the woman—the man needs to cook and take care of
the kids, while the women go off by themselves to picnic!
In 722, BCE,
the northern kingdom, Israel, was finally destroyed by the Assyrians. The
population was exiled ,and, in Assyrian style, scattered throughout the empire,
which extended as far as todays’ Afghanistan and the borders of India. The
Assyrian method was divide and scatter, preventing the conquered peoples from ever becoming a 5th column in their
midst. Ever since, we have been waiting for the “ Lost Tribes” to return. Lost
for good by assimilation. The Assyrians repopulated the territory with people
from other conquered territories, who later Jews would call” Kuti”( foreigners
from Mesopotamia). Thus in Jewish records.
Many from the
northern kingdom escaped to Judea, which lasted as an entity for another 150
years and they were absorbed into the Judean population; they brought with them
much of the teachings of the north. Much of the Torah reflects language and
style of the north. It is to be assumed, that a sizeable segment were not
exiled, but remained. Biblical accounts claim that the new settlers were
attacked by wild beasts, and out of fear, adopted the Israelite belief in God
to protect them. That is the Jewish account.
The Samaritans
claim that they are not descendants of the foreign invaders, but rather of the
tribes of Ephraim, Menasseh, and Levi. It also appears that one of the priest
of Jerusalem left and settled in the north to become the Cohen to the Samaritans
at the Temple they now built
In 586 BCE, the
people of Judea were conquered and exiled. Babylonian policy, to our benefit,
was to resettle conquered peoples as a block, keep them intact, and thereby,
become more productive for the Empire. The exiled Judeans apparently did very
well. 50 years later, the Persian King Cyrus, declared that all exiled peoples
could return to their lands, a move that proved very beneficial for all sides
and kept the conquered nations loyal.
It is here that
the split begins. Tensions arise between the Samaritans and the newly returned
Judeans ( just as there had been tension before the destruction of the two
communities. By the time of the major return and reconstruction under Ezra and
Nehemiah, around 480-440 BCE, there are full blown conflicts and the split
between the two communities widens. They go their separate ways both under the
Seleucid Syrians and the Romans. While Jerusalem and the Temple had always been
central to Judea, the Samaritans insist, till today, on the sanctity of Har
Gerizim as the site of the original altar.
At one point,
they were very numerous, as much as a million by the Byzantine period. However,
persecution by the Byzantine emperors decimated the population and destroyed
their Temple by the 6th century. While Jews were also heavily persecuted,
they had already established themselves heavily through out the Roman and
Persian worlds, and thus fared better in the long run. While Jews still
numbered in the few millions over the centuries, the Samaritans dwindled to
about 100 people at the start of the 20th century. Even today , they number only about a total of
700!
IV.What do
we know about their origins?
Modern DNA
research tells us that we are amazing closer to each other than either is to
the Palestinians ( who are a close 3rd to us) :
“ The mitochondrial DNA
results, which show maternal history (i.e. your mother’s mother’s
mother, etc.), reveal no major difference between the Samaritans, Jews, or
Palestinians in the Levant who were also sampled. These three groups have
relatively similar maternal genetic histories. However, the story of the
Y-chromosome, which shows paternal history (i.e. your father’s father’s
father) is quite different. Indeed, not only are the Y-chromosomes of the Jews
and Samaritans more similar to each other than either is to the Palestinians’, the
Y-chromosomes of the Samaritans show striking similarities to a very specific
Y-chromosome most often associated with Jewish men. Although the Samaritan
type is slightly different from the Jewish type, it is clear that the two share
a common ancestor, probably within the last few thousand years.
As a result, Shen and
colleagues argue that the traditional hypothesis, that the Samaritans were
transported into the Levant by the Assyrians and have no Jewish heritage, is
largely incorrect. Rather, these Samaritan lineages are remnants of those few
Jews who did not go into exile when the Assyrians conquered the northern
kingdom of Israel in 721 BC. Those who remained in the Levant may have take
non-Jewish wives, which would account for the genetic admixture on the female
side. But according to the authors the Y-chromosome clearly shows that the
Samaritans and the Jews share common ancestry dating to at least 2,500 years
ago. https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/more-than-just-a-parable-the-genetic-history-of-the-samaritans/
V. Distinguishing features of Samaritan Religion:
Their Bible- The 5 Books of Moses only. They have a version of Joshua, but it is not considered a Holy text in the same sense. None of our prophets, nor Psalms, or Proverbs or the rest of the Bible.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gerizim_Samaritan_Torah_IMG_2121.JPG
Their text is very similar
(mostly small scribal changes) except in regards to references to Gerizim:
Samaritan Pentateuch contains this text at Exodus
20:17:an amendment to the 10 Commandments:
And when it so happens that LORD
God brings you to the land of Canaan, which you are coming to possess, . . .
you write on the stones all words of this law. And it becomes for you that
across the Jordan you shall raise these stones, which I command you today, in
mountain Gerizim. And you build there the altar to the LORD God of you. .. .
The mountain this is across the Jordan behind the way of the rising of the sun,
in the land of Canaan who is dwelling in the desert before the Galgal(Gilgal),
beside Alvin-Mara,( Alon-Moreh?) before Sechem (Shechem).[27]
There is a similar reference to
Har Gerizim in their copy of Devarim.The current assumption is that much of the
text may reflect a variant of the Torah as formulated in the north. If so, then
we have a precedent for a common text before the destruction of Jerusalem and
before the destruction of the northern kingdom.
Retention of the Biblical Hebrew
script:
The Samaritan
alphabet is close to the script that appears on many Ancient Hebrew coins and
inscriptions.[8] By
contrast, all other varieties of Hebrew, as written by Jews, employ the later 'square' Hebrew alphabet, which is in
fact a variation of the Aramaic alphabet that Jews began
using in the Babylonian captivity following the exile of the Kingdom of Judah in the 6th
century BCE. During the 3rd century BCE, Jews began to use this stylized
"square" form of the script used by the Achaemenid Empire for Imperial Aramaic, its chancellery script[9] while the
Samaritans continued to use the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, which evolved into
the Samaritan alphabet.( Wikipedia)
Shma as a
mezuzah on the door- in stone:
Shma Yisrael as chanted by them:
Key principals:
The principal beliefs of Samaritanism are as follows:[13][14][15]
·
There is one God, Yahweh, the same God recognized
by the Hebrew
prophets. Faith is in the unity of the Creator which is absolute unity.
It is the cause of the causes, and it fills the entire world. His nature can
not be understood by human beings, but according to his actions and according
to his revelation to his people and the kindness he showed them.
·
The Torah is the only true
holy book, and was given by God to Moses. The Torah was created
before the creation of the world and whoever believes in it is assured a part
in the World to Come. The status of the Torah in Samaritanism as the only holy
book causes Samaritans to reject the Oral
Torah, Talmud, and all prophets and
scriptures except for Joshua, whose book in the Samaritan community is
significantly different from the Book of Joshua in the Tanakh/Old Testament. Essentially, the
authority of all post-Torah sections of the Tanakh, and classical Jewish Rabbinical works (the Talmud, comprising the Mishnah and the Gemara) is rejected. Moses is considered to be
the last of the line of prophets.
·
Mount Gerizim, not Jerusalem, is the one true
sanctuary chosen by Israel's God. The Samaritans do not recognize the sanctity
of Jerusalem and do not recognize Mount Moriah.
·
The apocalypse, called "the day of
vengeance". At the end of days, in which a figure called the Taheb
(essentially the Samaritan equivalent of the Jewish Messiah) from the tribe of
Joseph, be it Ephraim or Manessah, who will be a prophet like Moses (though
some say he will be Moses) for forty years, and bring about
the return of all the Israelites, following which the dead will be resurrected. The Taheb will then
discover the tent of Moses' Tabernacle on Mount Gerizim, and will be buried
next to Joseph when he dies.
·
Also ( Jewish
Encyclopedia) The resurrection, which will take place after the death of the
Taheb, and will be accompanied by the final judgment, 
, when the righteous will go into the garden of
Eden, and the wicked be burned with fire.
Festivals and observances[edit]
The Samaritans preserve
the proto-Hebraic script, conserve the institution
of a High Priesthood, and the practice of
slaughtering and eating lambs on Passover eve. They celebrate Pesach, Shavuot, Sukkot[16] but
use a different mode from that employed in Judaism in order to determine the
dates annually.[17] Yom
Teru'ah (the Biblical name for "Rosh Hashanah"), at the beginning
of Tishrei, is not
considered a New Year as
it is in Rabbinic Judaism.
Passover is particularly important in the Samaritan community,
climaxing with the sacrifice of up to 40 sheep. The Counting of the Omer remains largely
unchanged; however, the week before Shavuot is a unique festival
celebrating the continued commitment Samaritanism has maintained since the time
of Moses. Shavuot is characterized by nearly day-long services of continuous
prayer, especially over the stones on Gerizim traditionally attributed to
Joshua.
During Sukkot,
the sukkah is
built inside houses, as opposed to outdoor settings that are traditional among
Jews.[18] Samaritan
historian Benyamim Tsedaka traces the indoor-sukkah tradition to persecution of
Samaritans during the Byzantine
Empire.[18] The
roof of the Samaritan sukkah is decorated with citrus
fruits and the branches of palm, myrtle, and willow trees,
according to the Samaritan interpretation of the four
species designated in the Torah for the holiday.[18]
The restrictions of Yom Kippur are more universal in
Samaritanism, with even breastfeeding and the feeding of children being
disallowed.[citation needed]
In the Samaritan tradition, the tallit is a gown worn
over their clothes during most holy days, and the tzitzit are
considered the 22 "buttons" on the right lapel of the gown, and the
corresponding loops on its left lapel.[citation needed] The tzitziyot are always
in the same color as the gown, which is usually white.
Video
The seder at Gerizim
VI. From a Jewish viewpoint, are they Jews- or not: There is
an entire Treatise( Minor) of the
Talmud_Masechut Kutim-Tractate of the Kutim( Samaritans).
The Samaritans in some of their ways
resemble the Gentiles and in some resemble Israel, but in the majority they
resemble Israel.
It then gives a list of things which one
may or may not do, in terms of their status as pagans or Israel:
Why are Samaritans forbidden to enter the Jewish
community? Because they have become mixed up with the priests of the high
places. R. Ishmael said: They were originally genuine proselytes. Why, then,
are they forbidden? Because of the illegitimate females13[Since
they are a mixed people, they include females who may not have been born to
Israelite mothers and in turn their offspring are non-Israelite since their
status in this respect depends upon that of the mother.] and because they
do not perform the levirate duty to a married woman.14But perform
ḥaliẓah instead. Cf. I, 11
When may they be received into the Jewish community? When
they have renounced Mount Gerizim and acknowledged Jerusalem and the
resurrection of the dead.15[That the Samaritans denied the
doctrine of resurrection is recorded in Sanh. 90b (Sonc. ed., p. 606, n. 1).]
From then onwards one who robs a Samaritan is like one who robs an Israelite.
[62a]
Music-sample
of Samaritan worship ( similar in rhythmic pattern to Yemenite Jewish chant)
and for a beautiful fusion of
Samaritan and Middle Eastern music:
Popular
singer Sofi Tsedakah-introduction
source for more information
