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Marginal Jewish Sects In Israel (II)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Mordecai Roshwald
Mordecai Roshwald
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University Burnaby, British ColumbiaCanada
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Extract

The Samaritans summarize their basic religious beliefs in five tenets:(1) The Lord is the one and only God and there is none beside him.(2) The only prophet is Moses and no other prophet was or will be beside him.(3) The only Holy Book is the ‘Torah’…(4) …the only Holy place in the world is Mt. Garizim the Blessed Mountain, not Jerusalem…(5) The Day of Judgement of the Lord will be according to the laws of the Old Testament, then every man will be judged and punished for his sins.’

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , July 1973 , pp. 328 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

page 328 note 1 Quoted from an English booklet (in stencil), The Samaritans by Ben-Ezzi, Jacob (Shafik) Cohen, the Samaritan Priest in Nablus, 1965, PP. 5–6. This somewhat elaborate enumeration expresses the Samaritan tenets of belief more clearly than the roughly equivalent, but rather succinct, formula which is often quoted: ‘I believe in You, O Lord, and in Moses, son of Amram, Your servant, in the holy Torah, in Mount Gerizim Beth-El and in the day of vengeance and recompense.’Google Scholar

page 328 note 2 For a more elaborate discussion of the point, see Gaster, Moses, The Samaritans (Oxford University Press, London), 1925, pp. 90–2.Google Scholar

page 329 note 1 For the text of this Tenth Commandment, in Hebrew and in English translation, and a thorough analysis of the problem, see Gaster, Moses, op. cit., appendix III, pp. 185–90.Google Scholar

page 329 note 2 The text quoted adds ‘and the resurrection of the dead’, which is strange for it appears in the Samaritan eschatology, though in a somewhat different way from the Jewish beliefs. The quotation is from Kuthim, 61 b, English translation in The Minor Tractates of the Talmud, vol. 2 (The Soncino Press, London 1965), p. 621.Google Scholar

page 330 note 1 According to Gaster, M., op. cit. p. 14, it was the Jewish historian Josephus (Flavius) who first identified the Cutheans with the Samaritans (Jewish Antiquities, ix, 14, 3). The names are interchangeable in the rabbinical literature, Kutim (Cutheans) being predominant.Google Scholar

page 330 note 2 A careful reading of the context in 2 Kings xvii will demonstrate that the Shromronim, or Samaritans, referred to in verse 29 can very well mean not the new foreign settlers, but the exiled Israelites, the former residents of Shomron (Samaria), whose ‘houses of the high places’, or sanctuaries, were taken over by the newcomers to serve as abodes of their own deities. It is rather strange that this possible interpretation has eluded scholars dealing with the Samaritans.Google Scholar

page 331 note 1 See Gaster, M., op. cit. p. 5.Google Scholar

page 332 note 1 op. cit. pp. 17–18.Google Scholar

page 332 note 2 See Gaster, M., op. cit. p. 8.Google Scholar

page 332 note 3 Significantly, in the Lexicon Mikrai (Lexicon Biblicum) published in contemporary Israel (Tel-Aviv, 1965) two possibilities are mentioned with respect to this controversy: either that the Samaritans tendentiously changed the text, or that the Jews did so. (Vol. I, p. 206, ‘Gerizim’.)Google Scholar

page 334 note 1 See Gaster, M., op. cit. pp. 28, 90.Google Scholar

page 334 note 2 See Ben-Sasson, H. H. (ed.), Toldot Am Israel (History of the Jewish People), vol. I, The Ancient Times (the relevant part of this volume written by H. Tadmor), Tel-Aviv 1969, pp. 169–170. The above conclusions are partly based on Aramaic papyri recently discovered in Wadi Daliye.Google Scholar

page 335 note 1 The Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 76a. Quoted from the Soncino Press English translation, Seder Nashim, vol. IV (London, 1936), p. 387.Google Scholar

page 336 note 1 The Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 76a. Quoted from the Soncino Press English translation, Seder Nashim, vol. IV(London, 1936), p. 387.Google Scholar

page 336 note 2 The Babylonian Talmud, Hullin 6a. The Soncino Press English translation, Seder Kodashim, vol. II (London, 1948), p. 23. For a full discussion of the changing and deteriorating attitude of the Talmud to the Samaritans,Google Scholar see Montgomery, James Alan, The Samaritans, 1907, republished in New York 1968, chapter x, esp. pp. 188–94.Google Scholar

page 336 note 3 See Montgomery, J. A., op. cit. p. 24.Google Scholar

page 338 note 1 I have not been able to obtain accurate statistics about the total number of Samaritans or their distribution between the two communities. An Israel Government publication of 1969 refers to a total of 400–250 in Sichem (Nablus) and 150 in Holon. The booklet of Jacob Ben-Ezzi (Shafik) Cohen, the Samaritan Priest in Nablus, of 1965, speaks of ‘about 400 people and upwards’. According to the oral information I received in 1969 from the Secretary of the community in Holon, there are 420 Samaritans –220 in Nablus and 200 in Holon.Google Scholar

page 340 note 1 See Sefer Hahukim (Book of Laws), 573. The following quotation was translated by the present writer from the original Hebrew text.Google Scholar

page 342 note 1 Ben-Sasson, H. H. (ed.), Toldot Am Israel (History of the Jewish People), vol. I, The Ancient Times (the relevant part written by H. Tadmor), Tel-Aviv, 1969, p. 169.Google Scholar

page 342 note 2 Lexicon Mikrai (Lexicon Biblicum), vol. 2 (Tel-Aviv, 1965), p. 859, ‘Shomronim’.Google Scholar

page 342 note 3 The information supplied by the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Jerusalem.Google Scholar

page 344 note 1 These suggestion are made, with no intention of a scientific pronouncement, by Leslau, Wolf, Falasha Anthology (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1951), in the Introduction p. xii. The Encylopaedia Britannica (1960), vol. 9, p. 42, ‘Falashas’, suggests that the Falashas are of ‘Hamitic stock’.Google Scholar

page 344 note 2 See Leslau, Wolf, op. cit. Introduction, p. ix.Google Scholar

page 344 note 3 For an English translation of Falasha prayers, see Leslau, Wolf, op. cit. pp. 112–40.Google Scholar

page 344 note 4 Ibid. Introduction, p. xxi.

page 345 note 1 For a detailed account of Falasha festivals and fasts, see Leslau, Wolf, op. cit. ‘Introduction’, pp. xxviii–xxxv.Google Scholar

page 345 note 2 About Jewish traces in Abyssinian Christianity, see Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 1, p. 58b.Google Scholar

page 347 note 1 This picture of the Falasha standard of living, as well as much of the subsequent account of the communal and political problems of the Falashas in Ethiopia, are based on the article of Salpeter, Eliahu, ‘Bikur etzel Hafalashim’ (‘Visit among the Falashas’), Ha'aretz (Hebrew Daily, Tel-Aviv), 17 July 1959.Google Scholar For a lively and moving witness account about the Falashas, see Messing, Simon D., ‘Journey to the Falashas’, in Commentary, vol. XXII, 07 1956.Google Scholar

page 348 note 1 See ‘Benjamin Gitye versus the Chief Rabbinate and the Religious Council, Jerusalem’, High Court of Justice case no. 359/66, Judgments of the Supreme Court of Israel, vol. 22, part I, no. II (1968).Google Scholar

page 350 note 1 The following account of the rabbinical attitude is based on the analysis of the judgment in the case of ‘Gitye versus the Chief Rabbinate and others’,op. cit. pp. 304–6.Google Scholar

page 351 note 1 Citation from a declaration of Rabbi Katzenelbogen, Vice-Chairman of the Religious Council, Jerusalem, quoted in the above judgment, op. cit. p. 305.Google Scholar