CONHECENDO OS SAMARITANOS DA BÍBLIA! Quem são os samaritanos?

Shalom! And welcome back to Israel with Aline. Today we are going to the region of Samaria and we are going to meet the Samaritans. Did you know that the Samaritan people of the Bible still exist today? We will learn a little about their origins and stories. We will even enter a Samaritan synagogue and today, according to the Samaritan calendar, it is the Passover and that is why we were invited to participate in the Samaritan Passover ceremony, which is done as it was in Biblical times. They even continue to make the sacrifice of the Passover lamb. So get ready because today’s video is going to be full of history and full of news. So if you are ready, let’s get started! Let’s start here at Mount Gerizim, wich is the mount of blessing, according the Bible itself (Deuteronomy 11:29) and is the holiest and most important place of the world for the Samaritans. But who are the Samaritans and how did they come about? To understand this part of the story, we have to go back three thousand years in history. When there was a great Jewish kingdom and within it lived all the twelve tribes of Israel. Until in 930 B.C. With the death of king Solomon, this great kingdom will be divided into two kingdoms. The Northern Kingdom will be called the Kingdom of Israel and will get the majority of ten of the tribes of Israel and the Kingdom of the South will be called the kingdom of Judah but everything will change in the year 722 BC with the Assyrian invasion. they destroy the kingdom of Israel and go and take the ten tribes of Israel who lived there and send them into exile and so we know them as the ten lost tribes. And the Assyrians also bring other peoples from the region to live in the place where the tribes of Israel lived. According to Samaritan tradition, They are the remnants of the Kingdom of Israel. It means that when the Assyrians expel the ten tribes, they don’t expel all of them, but that part of the tribes of Manasseh, Ephraim and Levi continued to live in this region and that they are the Samaritans. The Bible itself tells us that yes, there were remnants of the ten tribes of Israel that never been expelled, but part of the kingdom of Judah, the southern kingdom especially after the return from the exile in Babylon. They believed that the Samaritans were mixed with populations brought by the Assyrians and that they were not one hundred percent part of the people and tribes of Israel. And so begins a feud between the Samaritans and the rest of the people of Israel who lived in the Kingdom of Judah. The Samaritans have as their holy book the Samaritan Torah, which is the Samaritan Pentateuch, and he is almost identical to the Jewish Pentateuch, It means the first five books of the Jewish Biblie, with two major differences. The first is the language. We will see later in the synagogue, but they write their books, in Samaritan to this day, and the second difference is is the Mount Gerizim, which is is the mount where we are now. The Bible, both Jewish, Christian and Samaritan Everyone agrees that when the people of Israel enter the promised land together with Joshua, this one is the mountain of blessing and that Mount Ebal, which is right in front of us, it is the mount of the curse. But, according to Samaritans, this hill (Gerizim) is much more that it. They believe that here
is the sacrifice of Isaac, that here was the tabernacle of the people of Israel and that here is the place chosen by God and not Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. And because of the holiness of this place for Samaritans, they build here in the fifth century. that is in the Persian era of Israel, they build exactly here a huge temple. it was 20 meters by 21 meters, and in the archaeological excavations, when when this place was found, it was seen to fit the biblical description of a Jewish temple. The stones for example, are placed stone on stone without any cement between the stones, without any type of sealant. In the same way that it was built also the Temple of Jerusalem and this huge Samaritan temple, its walls were eight meters high and the internal and the internal didn’t have any division of rooms and neither of spaces, as well as the Temple of Jerusalem. Also, the internal area it was a big space and the division was made by the “parochet” a cloth and that’s we find here also this space without any division. At the time that this is a Samaritan temple, and this Samaritan temple is going to be even greater in the Hellenistic period. It means about two thousand and two hundred years ago, they enlarged the place. And this whole area external is part of this Samaritan expansion of the Hellenistic period. Unfortunately, the Samaritan temple will be destroyed, but the place remains being sacred to them until the today. And in the Byzantine period, there was also built here a octagonal church which we are seeing now, it looks like this circular building here in the center. This area that we are seeing is also sacred to Samaritans, because, according to them, here to the place that Joshua (Joshua 4:4) will build the altar of twelve stones, we know that he comes to Mount Gerizim with the people of Israel and according to Samaritan tradition, this is the exact place where he makes this altar. Let’s walk together now to “givat olam” which in Hebrew means the eternal hill. And according to Samaritan tradition this is the spiritual center of the world. I know that at it is impressive to think that the place is so simple. Today in day, but for the Samaritan people, this is the spiritual center of world. And the most impressive place of all, in my opinion, is this so simple here. According to Samaritan tradition here is the place of the sacrifice of Isaac. According to Judeo-Christian tradition, the sacrifice or near-sacrifice of Isaac takes place at Mount Moriah, today in Jerusalem, but for the Samaritans this passage happens here here on Mount Gerizim and more specifically at this point behind this fence. And here at the foot of Mount Gerizim we see that there is a spreading city which is huge, this is the biblical city of Shechem also known in Portuguese as Siquém so we see how sometimes there are biblical places so close to each other. Now we are going down from the historical part of the hill and we go to “kiryat luza” which is this modern part where most of the Samaritans live nowadays. And here we already see the entrance to the most important synagogue of this place. And like all the Samaritan synagogue, we are going to enter barefoot. And look how cool it is, look who is here in the synagogue now is a group of Jewish visitors who came to know Samaritan culture and history, the two boys standing at the bottom, they are Samaritans and we and we see how good relations are today between peoples. Another example of the coexistence among peoples is that the Samaritans send their children to study in the Israeli education system. It means, that they study side by side with Jewish students and also part of the Samaritans. They serve in the army of Israel. It means that they defend the State of Israel. Here they have opened a Samaritan Torah for us to see, the sacred texts and the whole synagogue is written in Samaritan. Despite this, the largest part of them are trilingual. They speak both Hebrew and Arabic, as well as of course their language, which is Samaritan who also the Semitic language. Behind that green cloth is the “Aron hakodesh”, that is the location where the Torah and the holy books are kept on a daily basis But now they are going to leave the synagogue and we go to the place where the main event of today will take place. And here we can already see the preparations for the Easter sacrifice, which it will happen in a little while. As you can see behind me, they have already lit the fire and it is really a mess, people coming, arriving, getting ready because in a little while, the sacrifice itself will begin, and let me show you what is on the other side. what is on the other side. If those holes there are for putting the animals to cook so we can eat then later, this is where the remains are burned. We know that nothing can be kept from one day to the next, (Exodus 12:10) and for this everything that is not eaten today and also the parts that cannot be eaten they are going to be burned here and the main part, which is the sacrifice in itself. It happens down here in these ditches. And today a total of sixty lambs are going to be sacrificed, it is really going to be a huge ceremony, and people from all over Israel are coming here to participate and to watch. The moment is coming guys, we can already see that the animals are arriving. In total as we said, there will be sixty lambs there will be sixty lambs sacrificed. And the Samaritan community as you can also see on the aerial pictures, they are all dressed in white with the exception of some priests that are wearing clothes of different colors. and the Samaritan priests are also descendants of Aaron. Aaron the brother of Moses, who lived over three thousand two hundred years ago. And gathered here, the whole Samaritan community, which are around eight hundred and fifty people. But how can this be when in Biblical times it is estimated that they were around a million people? What happend is that, unfortunately, in the Muslim period, especially at the time of the Turkish-Ottoman empire (1517-1917), they are going to be massacred by the governments of the time. And they are going to be a hundred people at the end of the season, at the end of the Turkish-Ottoman period. the Samaritans were a total of one hundred people. And since then the community has returned to grow up. And it grew relatively quite a bit in the period of the State of Israel and so we are actually seeing the rebirth of the Samaritan community. And most of the Samaritans today live in two cities: one is here on Mount Gerizim, and the other is in Holon, wich is near Tel Aviv. And now the Passover ceremony is beginning. Now is the time of sacrifice but in respect and sensitivity to everyone, we are not going to put the pictures of the sacrifice itself, but in a second you will see the the people celebrating the post sacrifice. Now they will take them, mark their foreheads and pass them around with plates full of unleavened bread and also bitter herbs as it is written in the book of Numbers (Numbers 9:11) which has a paschal lamb, the bitter herbs, and the unleavened bread. Back here we can now see the fire burning, because they are going to start to clean the lambs: the skin, everything that is not going to be eaten is going to be put on this fire and be burned. And the meat will be taken to the holes where it will be roasted for some hours. At midnight the Samaritan community will go back to that place to get the meat, to take it, to their homes to eat. And everything that is not eaten, has to be burned. So if there is any food left at home, they will bring it back here to burn in this same fire. Because, according to biblical tradition, everything has to be either burned or eaten. I hope you have enjoyed learning little bit more about the Samaritan tradition here in Samaria. Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel for more videos from this very special place. A kiss, Shalom and until next time.