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Examining the History of Mount Gerizim: The Samaritans’ Holy Temple
Reading from a Torah scroll in accordance with Sephardi tradition. Photo: Sagie Maoz via Wikimedia Commons.
After two weeks of the most important laws of the Torah, Moses now gives instructions about what the Jewish people should do when they enter the land of Israel.
The first command concerns first fruits. Moses says that since they now have a land of their own, the Jewish people should dedicate their first harvest to God, out of gratitude.
The Torah specifies that we should take them to, “the place which God has chosen to be the repository of his name,” which was taken to mean the Tabernacle (which, in due course, would be transferred into a permanent temple). Then the Torah goes on to command them to erect two stone tablets and cover them with plaster, onto which the laws of the Torah would be written for all to see. This was an important signal that the law had to be accessible to everyone.
This would be followed by a public ceremony that would take place on the West Bank at two mountains, Gerizim for the blessings, and Eyval for the curses. The tribes would be divided into two, with half on one and the other half on the other. They would say aloud the blessings that would follow if they were true to God, and the curses that would follow if they abandoned him.
I do not like the translation of blessings and curses. Rather, I believe we should emphasize that good things or bad things will happen depending on people’s behavior. The Torah is emphasizing that for a country, a people, or a community to function effectively, the laws are not enough. The spirit of the law is what matters, and the relationship between people is what will bring blessings as opposed to what will bring curses.
Returning to the two mountains, Gerizim and Eyval, King David conquered Jerusalem roughly 3,000 years ago, and his son Solomon built the temple there. Why was no temple built on Mount Gerizim, which was specified in the Torah? Some 300 years later, the country split into two kingdoms, Judah in the South and Israel in the north. In 720 BCE the north was destroyed by the Assyrians, and its inhabitants were exiled and scattered around the empire, which extended from the Euphrates River eastwards. Other peoples defeated by the Assyrians were then resettled in that conquered territory to make sure that the original inhabitants would not re-constitute.
According to our Bible, some of these other conquered people settled in the north, Samaria, and became known as Samaritans. And they adopted the Torah as their religious authority, but built their temple on Mount Gerizim in the north.
The Samaritan version of their origins is different from ours, in that they claim they were the remnant of the Ten Lost Tribes of the North who managed to hide from the Assyrians, and reconstituted the community in the absence of the Judeans. The rivalry between the Jews and the Samaritans continued until the Roman exile, and was sometimes close and sometimes distant.
Mount Gerizim, which is near Nablus on the West Bank, remains their holy place to this day — even though their temple was destroyed by the Maccabean King John Hyrcanus, and later by the Byzantine Christians. To this day, there are still small communities of Samaritans in Samaria as well as settlements in Holon in Israel and in parts of America.
And it might seem from this week’s Torah portion that their choice of Holy Mountain was more authentic than ours.
The other is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.
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Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
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Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
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