The Moses Legacy (23 page)

Participating in the open-air Samaritan Passover celebrations on Mount Gerizim was a rare privilege. Ordinary members of the public were not allowed into the fenced-off area – for logistical and security reasons – although several thousand came to witness the event from every vantage point they could find. Apart from the seven-hundred-strong Samaritan community and the police and soldiers on security duty, the only people who were allowed in were invited guests – the media, politicians from both Israel and the Palestinian Authority and people with the right connections.

So Daniel and Gabrielle could consider themselves highly honoured just to be there.

Unlike the Jewish
seider
in which any type of kosher meat or fish can be eaten, the Samaritan feast consisted of lamb, recalling the paschal lamb that the Israelites slaughtered and ate on the eve of the slaying of the firstborn son and the Exodus.

The celebration commenced in the afternoon, well before sunset, with the Samaritans clad in white robes and white-turbaned red fezzes making fires in eight-feet-deep concrete-lined pits. Each of the five extended families in the Samaritan community had a fire pit for itself, except the largest family, which had two. The fires were fuelled by branches from olive trees, with the foliage still attached.

Even the children were joining in the fun, with boys as young as five dragging olive branches from a huge pile and throwing them into the flaming pits. The boys were dressed in white trousers and shirts rather than traditional robes and their headgear consisted of baseball caps, some of which were reversed, American-style. Even amidst this ancient and most venerable celebration, there were occasional glimpses of modernity.

Off to one side, a trench was filled with a series of barrels lined with plastic bin liners, ready to catch the blood of the slaughtered lambs. When sunset came, the lambs were slaughtered with razor-sharp knives, the entrails removed, the blood washed away with hoses and the lambs skinned and impaled on huge wooden skewers. It was at this point, or shortly before, that some of the children cried, as the lambs had in many cases come to be thought of as ‘companion animals', more like pets than livestock. But this was a rite of passage that prepared them for the concept of sacrifice to God.

After the slaughter, the skin, fat and entrails of the lambs were salted, placed on an altar of a heavy metal mesh over a fire at the end of the trench and offered up to God as a burnt offering, the Passover sacrifice.

Meanwhile, the lamb carcasses on the stakes were salted in preparation for cooking. But as the tradition was to eat the meat at midnight – when, according to biblical tradition, the Angel of Death appeared – the wooden stakes were not actually placed in the pits just yet.

As invited guests, Daniel and Gabrielle were able to wander freely amongst the crowds. Dov had not gone as far as to arrange an introduction for Daniel to the priests, much less the high priest, but Daniel and Gabrielle had been introduced to Aryeh Tsedaka, a Samaritan rabbi based in the Israeli town
of Holon. So they took advantage of the quiet time after the stakes were prepared to sidle up to him. Daniel told Tsedaka about their adventures in Egypt, and his translation of Proto-Sinaitic script and the papyrus they had found in Mansoor's office in which Ay had expressed his desire to be buried near Mount Gerizim.

‘And you think this man Ay could be the same as Ephraim the son of Joseph?' asked Tsedaka.

‘Yes,' Gabrielle cut in. ‘And his brother Anen could be Menasha.'

They were sitting a few yards from one of the fires, warming themselves against the slight chill in the evening air. Daniel looked tensely at Gabrielle. He wanted her to take a backseat role in this discussion, but hadn't actually told her that in advance. They'd spent the last few days delicately stepping around the tension that hung between them and they had not talked about the events of the eve of Independence Day. It was as if they agreed, by their mutual silence, to treat it as a big mistake, to be filed away and forgotten.

Aryeh Tsedaka sat in silence for a few seconds, weighing up Gabrielle's speculation. ‘And you bring this to me because the Samaritans are descended from the Joseph tribes of Israel?'

‘Tribe
s
?' Gabrielle repeated, picking up on the plural.

Daniel stepped in. ‘My friend here is an Egyptologist. She is not so familiar with Jewish or Samaritan history.'

‘Ah, yes. Let me explain. You see, most Westerners think that there were twelve tribes of Israel – because Jacob had twelve sons. But actually there were thirteen. Joseph was the ancestor of
two
tribes: Ephraim and Menasha, and we are descended from both of those. Except for our priests who are descended from the tribe of Levi.'

‘Is that why you call yourselves Samaritans, rather than Josephites?'

‘We actually prefer to call ourselves Israelites. Samaritans is merely an Anglicization of the Hebrew name
Shomronim
, which simply means “those from Samaria”. In fact, a more correct version of our name would be
Shomrim
, which means “the Guardians”. Because we are the true guardians of the Torah that God gave to Moses.'

‘How do the Jews react to that?' asked Gabrielle.

‘That is one of the more sad aspects of our history. The tribes of Ephraim and Menasha were part of the
northern
kingdom – that is, the Kingdom of Israel. This was distinct and separate from the southern kingdom of Judah except for a brief period of unity. We had land on both sides of the River Jordan. When the Assyrians invaded the northern kingdom 721 years before the birth of Jesus, the southern kingdom of Judah was spared because it was a vassal state at the time. But in the northern kingdom, they took 27,290 Israelites back to Assyria as captives.'

‘You know the number
that
precisely?' asked Gabrielle.

‘History records it,' said Tsedaka. ‘However, that was still a minority. Most of the Israelites remained in the land. Then, somewhat later, the southern kingdom of Judah was conquered, this time by the Babylonians, who carried off the Judeans into captivity. But then the Persians defeated the Babylonians and allowed the Judeans to return in the fifth century before Jesus. It was then that our problems began.'

‘Why?'

‘The Judeans returned in two batches. First a larger group of some 42,360 returned under Zerubbabel, with the intention of rebuilding the temple that the Babylonians had destroyed. But one wise and learned man refused to join them, because he considered the study of the scriptures to
be more important than rebuilding the temple. His name was Ezra. Some say his knowledge of the scriptures equalled that of Moses himself. But he returned later, with a smaller group of followers – some 1,500 – all of them men.'

Daniel saw the pain in Tsedaka's eyes as he spoke.

‘However, when he returned he was hostile to our ancestors, regarding them as interlopers. Our ancestors tried to befriend the Judeans and even offered to help them rebuild their temple that had been destroyed by the Babylonians. But Ezra rejected their offer. He even refused to believe that our ancestors were Israelites at all. He claimed that they were migrants from a place in what is modern-day Iraq.'

‘Why did he do that?'

‘He was a determined man who rejected anything that seemed like compromise or weakness. He may well have been sincere. He introduced other reforms, such as forbidding intermarriage between Judeans and others.'

‘Oh, so it was the purity of blood thing,' said Gabrielle with a sneer.

Daniel gave her a look to warn her off. The Samaritans too had strict rules about intermarriage, although they were now relaxing them slightly in order to repopulate and reduce the risk of genetic diseases.

‘Ever since that time, relations have been strained between us and the Judeans, or Jews as they are now called. If you look at the history of the way we were treated, it parallels the way in which Joseph was treated by his brothers and strangers. But we were also oppressed by Muslims during the Caliphate periods and by Christians during the Crusades. Having said that, things began to improve for us when Israel's second president – Yitzhak ben-Zvi – encouraged the establishment of our community in Holon in 1954. He recognized and acknowledged our connection to ancient Israel.'

A rise in the background volume alerted them to the fact that something important was happening. It was nine-thirty and that meant they were about to start cooking. The men in charge of the operation picked up the wooden stakes with the carcasses, brought them over to the pits – six or seven to each pit – and then when the word went up they quickly impaled them vertically into the dirt floor of the pits. The pits were then sealed by a burlap-covered metal grate, which in turn was covered with mud to trap the heat.

At midnight, in accordance with tradition, the ovens would be opened up and each family would then take its roasted lamb home, where the meat would be devoured quickly. Anything not eaten that night had to be burned, just as in the ancient days of Moses. But that was some two and a half hours away.

The mood relaxed again as people settled in for the long wait. Daniel took advantage of the moment to move things on in his discussions.

‘The other thing that caught my attention was a sentence on the papyrus that referred to the “Sibolet stores built by my father”.'

‘Sibolet?' the rabbi echoed.

‘Yes,' said Daniel. ‘You see in early Proto-Sinaitic, they didn't have a symbol for “sh”. And when they did want to make that sound, they used the same symbol as for the “s” sound.'

‘Your point being?'

‘That it may have something to do with the war between the Ephraimites and the Gileadites.'

‘It was essentially a
civil
war,' said Tsedaka almost defensively. ‘Gilead was basically the tribes of Gad and Menasha. It was an internal war between brothers. That too was a very sad episode in Israelite history.'

‘I know. But there was a well-known incident in that war
that has left a legacy on the English language. When the Ephraimites were losing, they tried to escape by pretending to be members of other tribes, in the hope of getting across the River Jordan. But if they were intercepted by the Gileadites, they were challenged to say the word
Shi
bolet.'

‘I know,' said Tsedaka, meeting Daniel's eyes, but giving little away as to his own thoughts.

‘And of course the reason they did that was because the Ephraimites couldn't pronounce the “
sh”
sound. So instead they said “Sibolet”. And as soon as they said that, they were identified as members of the tribe of Ephraim and killed on the spot.'

‘Pretty harsh,' said Gabrielle with a wry smile.

Again Daniel was irritated at Gabrielle's interruption, but Tsedaka seemed to take it all in his stride.

‘That's the way it was in those days.' He turned to Daniel. ‘But tell me about this lasting legacy on your language.'

‘Well, the word
Shibboleth
has been incorporated into the English language to mean any custom, phrase, collective memory or linguistic peculiarity that acts as a test of membership of a particular religion, social class, nationality, profession or group. And in fact that meaning has now been extended, so it can also refer to any belief, principle, or practice which some people hold in high esteem but others think of as false or at least out of date.'

‘I suppose you know that in our prayers we
do
pronounce the “sh” sound. Indeed, we do not pronounce the letter
shin
as anything other than
sh
.'

‘Then how can you be descended from the tribe of Ephraim?' asked Gabrielle.

Tsedaka smiled. ‘I see we have a sceptic in our midst.'

Daniel seized upon the opportunity. ‘Well, maybe between us we can banish her scepticism, Rabbi Tsedaka.'

‘How?'

‘I was wondering if you have any documents in Proto-Sinaitic script – documents that might be used to prove your origins.'

‘We have old documents in Samaritan Hebrew and Aramaic that have been translated. But none of these goes back far enough to conclusively prove our history. But there are other texts that even our priests do not understand. However, to show them to a stranger would be a leap of faith as great as that taken by Nahshon.'

Daniel smiled at the analogy. When the fleeing Israelites reached the Sea of Reeds at the time of the Exodus, with the army of the pharaoh in hot pursuit, they moaned and wailed to Moses that he had brought them out into the desert to die. Then one of the Israelites, a man called Nahshon leapt into the water, thereby showing his faith in God. At that point, the waters parted.

‘My motive is both scholarship and friendship,' said Daniel. ‘If you have any documents in the ancient script that pre-date the old Hebrew and Aramaic scripts, and if I can translate them, then perhaps I will be able to help you prove your origins.'

Tsedaka seemed to be wrestling with some inner conflict. Daniel remembered that even the
name
‘Israel' meant ‘wrestling with God'. He spoke again, desperate to persuade Tsedaka to let him see the manuscripts. ‘I know I am asking you to take me on trust. I wish I could prove to you that I have translated those other documents. Unfortunately the circumstances in which we came here makes that impossible. But you can check out my credentials. I am a genuine scholar of Semitic languages.'

Tsedaka smiled. ‘I do not have to check out anything. I know who you are well enough. I even knew your teacher, Professor Carmichael.'

Daniel was surprised at this. He looked over at Gabrielle.

‘I can tell you that there were two manuscripts older than the Torah that we had in the past, but we now only have one of them. The first – the one that is lost – is called
Sefer Milhamot Hashem.
'