The Samaritans: A Biblical People

Badri Cohen lives in the Samaritan community of Kiryat Luza, near the summit of Mount Gerizim, above modern Nablus, biblical Shechem. The wife of a communal prayer leader, a ḥazzan, and daughter of a high priest, Badri is herself a leader of the Samaritan people (Figure 0.3). The story translated here from her spoken Arabic was collected and edited by filmmaker Moshe Alafi as part of the YU Israelite Samaritans Project. Badri’s tale is set in a simpler, even mythic, time. It happened when “she was perhaps one year old,” and before the Samaritan Passover was transformed into a tourist attraction during the early decades of the twentieth century. It encapsulates the spiritual and historical experience of the Samaritans, a window into this tightly patriarchal culture, as told to Badri by her “father and older brothers.” These kohanim, elite members of the priestly class caste, we are told, were leading participants in this unfolding drama.

The tale takes place in the city of Nablus and upon holy Mount Gerizim, the “blessed mountain,” which is believed by the Samaritans to have been “chosen by God” above all others (Figure 0.4). It is set at Passover, the high point of the Samaritan calendar, when the entire community ascends to the peak of Gerizim to slaughter, roast, and eat the Passover sacrifice—the qorban. Badri today lives near the sacrifice compound (Figure 0.5-6). She was filmed in the community center, which was built between the sacrificial compound and the synagogue. The entire Nablus Samaritan community relocated here as a result of difficulties experienced in Nablus during the Intifada of 1987.

This is a tale of deprivation, persecution, faith, and deliverance —typical of stories passed from generation to generation by “the people of Israel”—as Badri refers to the Samaritans. These descendants of the biblical Northern Kingdom of Israel, the capital of which was in Shomron, Samaria, refer to themselves as the Shemarim—“the guardians” of the Torah. In this way, they transform the geographical designation used by outsiders, Shomronim, “Samaritans.” Their will to “keep” the biblical commandments, especially to perform the Paschal sacrifice atop the Holy Mountain, is central to their identity.

Steven Fine, Editor - The Samaritans: A Biblical People

London – Boston: BRILL, 2022. – 265 p.

ISBN 978-90-04-46690-6

EISBN 978-90-04-46691-3

The Samaritans: A Biblical People - Contents

Figures

Foreword. Ari Berman, President of Yeshiva University

Greetings. Aabed-El Ben Asher, High Priest of the Samaritan Community

Preface, YU Center for Israel Studies. Steven Fine

Preface, Museum of the Bible. Jeff rey Kloha

Contributors

Introduction: From the Heights of Mount Gerizim. Steven Fine

• 1. “The Consolation of Souls, the Assurer of Hearts, and the Certainty of Truth”: The Abisha Scroll. Steven Fine

• 2. The Samaritan Tabernacle: From Sinai to the Mountain of Blessings. Reinhard Pummer

• 3. “Woe to Those Who Exchanged the Truth for a Lie, When They Choose for Themselves a Different Place”: Samaritan Perspectives on the Samaritan–Jewish Split. Stefan Schorch

• 4. “Kinsmen” or an “Alien Race?”: Jews and Samaritans from the Hasmoneans to the Mishnah. Joseph L. Angel

• 5. “But a Samaritan … Had Compassion”: Jesus, Early Christianity, and the Samaritans. R. Steven Notley

• 6. “Do You Have an Onion?”: Rabbis and Samaritans in Late Antiquity. Shana Strauch Schick and Steven Fine

• 7. “A Place in which to Read, to Interpret, and to Hear Petitions”: Samaritan Synagogues. Steven Fine

• 8. Sukkot in the Garden of Eden: Liturgy, Christianity, and the Bronze Bird on Mount Gerizim. Laura S. Lieber

• 9. “This Covenant of Peace for the Samaritans”: The Prophet Muhammad’s Encounter with a Samaritan, a Jew, and a Christian. Daniel Boušek

• 10. “These Are the Jews of Shomron Who Are Called Samaritans”: Jews and Samaritans in the High Middle Ages. Jesse Abelman

• 11. “Do You Have the Chronicles of the Kings of Samaria?”: Jewish Knowledge, Christian Hebraists, and the European “Discovery” of the Samaritans. Matthew Chalmers

• 12. Two Minorities on the Brink: Jews and Samaritans in Nineteenth-Century Nablus. Reuven Gafni

• 13. “The Priest Salama Son of Ghazal and the Tailors”: Palestinian Arab Justice and the Samaritans. Haseeb Shehadeh

• 14. “And We Shall Be One People”: Abraham Firkovich, Karaism, and the Samaritans. Golda Akhiezer

• 15. Samaritans on the American Protestant Mind: William Barton, Edward Warren, and the American Samaritan Committee. Yitzchak Schwartz

• 16. “Joined at Last”: Moses Gaster and the Samaritans. Katharina E. Keim

• 17. “To this Day the Samaritans Have Never Left Shechem and Mount Gerizim”: Izhak Ben-Zvi, David Ben-Gurion, and the Samaritans. Israel Sedaka

• 18. Passover, 1968: Johanna Spector, Israeli Civil Religion, and the Ethnographic Study of the Samaritans. David Selis and Steven Fine

• 19. Samaritan Stories in the Israel Folktale Archives: Poetics and Cultural Exchange in Modern Israel. Dina Stein

• 20. A “Samaritan Renaissance”: The Tsedaka Legacy and the Samaritan Community in Israel. Dov Noy and Steven Fine

• 21. Tales of the Samaritan Elders. Moshe Alafi and Steven Fine

• 22. Reflections of a Documentary Filmmaker. Moshe Alafi

• 23. Contemporary Jewish Artists Encounter Samaritan Culture: A Visual Essay. Steven Fine and Richard McBee

• 24. Afterword: Why the Samaritans? Steven Fine

Bibliography

Index