As many of you know, this past weekend marked the beginning of the Jewish Passover, or Pesach. Exodus chapter 12 describes how God instructed His people, who were enslaved in Egypt, to gather in their homes, and each household should sacrifice a lamb, whose blood they should put on the lintel, so that God will know to "pass over" that house, when his "destroyer" comes to kill all the first-borns in Egypt (verse 23). For the seven days after the passover feast, they are to eat only unleavened bread as a way to remember the haste with which they fled Egypt (verse 39).
When the Temple still stood in Jerusalem, this feast would be celebrated as it is prescribed in the Torah: each family would sacrifice a lamb and eat it that evening. But after the Temple was destroyed (first by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, then again by the Romans in 70 CE), sacrifices could no longer be offered, and so Jews celebrated the Passover with a Seder dinner, during which the story of their deliverance from Egypt is recounted with the symbolic meal.
The Passover just described is basically what most Jews in Israel and the Diaspora celebrated this past weekend, but there is a group of Jews who still carry out the biblical Passover, sacrifice and all. These are the Samaritans, who for centuries have maintained their own Jewish community around Mount Gerizim, which they consider to be God's holy mountain. The Samaritans' origins go to 722 BCE, when the Assyrians conquered the northern half of Israel, deported many of its residents and replaced them with foreigners who merged with the Israelites left behind. The Jews in Jerusalem were suspicious of this mixed population, and later after these southern Jews had themselves been deported (to Babylon) and returned to the Holy Land, they were all the more displeased to find that the Samaritans had fashioned themselves as the keepers of Israel's religious traditions.
The Samaritans were thus marginalized but still persisted, even building their own temple on Mount Gerizim, which they believe to be the site of the binding of Isaac (Gen 22) and also of Joshua's twelve memorial stones (Josh 4:20-24). They also regard only the Torah sacred scripture. The emnity continued between the Jerusalem Jews and the Samaritans, such that the Gerizim temple was destroyed in 128 BCE, but the latter continued to worship. In several places the New Testament attests their prevalence but also their "outsider" status. When Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well, she asks, "'How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?'" (John 4:9). Then just to clarify things, the gospel writer add: "For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans." Similarly, in Luke , it is a Samaritan (of all people) who stops to help the beaten man (Luke 10:33).
All this introduction leads me to the point that the Samaritans have persisted to this day, and they continue their Passover sacrifices as they have for centuries -- except nowadays fanny-pack-wearing tourists show up to take pictures, which they post on blogs with an oversimplified summary of a centuries-old religious tradition. (Yes me!...minus the fanny-pack, of course.) The spectacle was described by Fr. Murphy-O'Connor (whom you may remember for his sensual description of Mt. Tabor from "Day Four [cont.] and Five" of Emily's visit) thus: "Unfortunately crowds of tourists tend to turn a dignified ceremony into a rather vulgar circus." Who can turn down a vulgar circus? Certainly not me; so my friend Rodney and I hopped on a bus organized by the Ecole Biblique (see blog post from 12 Oct 2007) and made our way to Gerizim.
Mount Gerizim itself is located in the middle of the West Bank and looks directly over the city of Nablus, which lies in the valley between Gerizim and Mount Ebal. Here is a view of Nablus and Ebal from the top of Gerizim:
The sacrifices used to take place on the summit of Mt. Gerizim, where the Samaritans had built their temple, but they were displaced from the peak when a Byzantine church was built there. The ruins of that church, which was octagonal and dedicated to Mary the Mother of God, are still preserved as you can see here:
And here's is yours truly among the ruins atop Gerizim:
Nowadays the sacrifices happens in a small village just below the peak, which you see here:
Now to the main event. Here is the pavilion where the sacrifices -- about 35-40 sheep in all -- took place. This picture was taken before the festivities began and things got crowded. Soon after this shot was taken heads of household, each one with his sons and a sheep, gathered on either side of this channel, by which the blood will run into the fire of the main altar, which you can see in the lower right corner. Non-Samaritans were not allowed in this area during the sacrifice, so we took our seats in the chairs you see in the back.
Here is the altar, where God's portion (the fat, entrails and blood) will be dedicated.
The pavement beside the channel sloped up to where the priests were gathered. They were distinguishable by their vestments, and although they did not slaughter any animals (that was the job of each head of household for his family), they received a portion of each sacrifice, namely the right foreleg. Speaking of sacrifice, in the background of this picture you see some of the guests of honor:
Here are some more priests in their vestments. The one in the green on the far right was the high priest:
Here are some of the sheep being brought forth. All this while, the priests and the laity are chanting back and forth. Then the high priest began to chant by himself and each family held down its sheep. All of a sudden the laity begins chanting again -- rather loudly this time -- and clapping and you got the feeling that this was the moment of the slaughter.
Here is the view from our seats shortly after the sheep were killed. You can already see one fire in the back had been started. At this time we saw on the ground that they were skinning the sheep. What you see in this picture is basically the entire Samaritan population that remains in the world (around 400, we guessed). Here's a warning that the next photos will include some of the dead sheep. I've kept out the really graphic ones, but some viewers still might want to skip the rest.
So once the sheep were skinned, they were put up on hooks and dressed. Each head of household cut away the fat and pulled out the entrails, which were sent to the altar to be burned as a dedication to God.
Here was the man right in front of us with his sons nearby. Each time he cut off a portion for the altar, he gave it to one of his sons who took it to the altar. You could tell it was an honor to take such dedications to the altar and it really emphasized for me the familial aspect of the whole festival.
And here is that altar with the buring fat and entrails rising to God. The wooden skewers you see in the background were the last step of the dressing: the gutted sheep were skewed (careful not to break any bones) and prepared for roasting and eventually feasting.
Here is one of the several fire pit behind the altar where the sheep would be roasted. Already you can see them drying out the skins. One of the priests told us that they would roast the meat on the skewers until about midnight, then feast, and then around 3 am whatever had not been eaten would be thrown into the firepit to be burned, since nothing of the feast can remain until the next morning.
Needless to say, it was a memorable evening. And actually it wasn't too crowded because it was one of the rare years when the Samaritan Passover and the mainstream Jewish Passover were on the same day. (Usually they're several weeks apart.) So many of the Israelis who would have been here were celebrating their Seders elsewhere.
Just some thoughts that I keep coming back to: (1) the whole evening was controlled chaos. I'm so used to solemn Western liturgies, and this was very different. Besides the sacrifices, so much else seemed to be going on: people meeting and greeting and celebrating, priests talking with dignitaries, etc. It really felt like a celebration; (2) it was interesting to see how integral the laity was in the whole evening. There were so many priests on-hand, but all the rituals were performed by the heads of household. But both were integral in the events of the evening, and even though you could identify the different groups, there was a lot of mixing; and (3) I keep thinking about how family-based the whole evening was. Fathers including their sons in every aspect of the sacrifice. (The wives and daughters were nearby but unfortunately not involved in the rites.) I wish we could have stayed longer to see how this family and community celebration continued during the feast itself.
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