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A Bad Time to Be a Samaritan
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A Bad Time to Be a Samaritan
Middle Eastern sect fights to survive


By Conal Urquhart
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

December 15, 2003

Mount Gezirim, West Bank - When the apostle Luke told of Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan, the Jews of this region regarded the Samaritans as a sect to be shunned. Nearly 2,000 years later, the Samaritans are fighting for survival, having dwindled to a community of a mere 600 or so, and it is they who have ostracized Sophie Sedaka.

Sedaka, 28, would seem to be an advertisement for the Samaritan community. As one of Israel's best-known actresses, she is one of the most prominent of the sect, now one of the Middle East's tiniest religious minorities.

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But the Samaritans have a shortage of women. In an effort to preserve the community and its "purity," women - but not men - are forbidden to marry outsiders. Those who transgress are cut off completely. Sedaka transgressed, and now is treated by her sect as a foreigner.

In biblical times, the Samaritans followed their own interpretation of Judaism and their kingdom, Samaria, rivaled Judea as a power in the region. But under centuries of rule by outsiders such as the Romans, Ottoman Turks and others, the Samaritans adapted to life as a minority. They kept their distinct Jewish traditions, avoiding later innovations in Judaism, such as the Hanukkah holiday. And they maintained their ancient language, akin to Aramaic.

Unlike most of Israel's Jews, though, the Samaritans never left this region. Living for centuries among the majority Arabs here, they adopted the Arabic language and established a place amid the Palestinian community.

In the decades-long conflict between Jewish Israelis and Arab Palestinians, the Samaritans have stayed strictly neutral. They carry both Palestinian and Israeli identity documents and often have Hebrew and Arabic names.

The one-time Samaritan kingdom has shrunk to just a couple of surviving communities. Many live in Mount Gezirim, a village on the Samaritans' long-sacred hill, outside the city of Nablus. Others live in Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv.

Sedaka was born in Mount Gezirim and brought up in Holon. Like other Samaritan children, she attended Israeli secular, rather than religious schools, and would return home each day for three hours of religious education with a priest.

She felt tightly embraced by her community and its faith. "It was very special being a Samaritan. They have kept their religion for 5,000 years," she said.

Still, parts of Samaritan ritual - such as separating women from men during their menstrual periods - seemed to her an abnormal departure from the secular world around her, she said.

When Sedaka was age 8, her elder sister eloped with a Jew, and the entire family, she said, was ostracized. "In the holidays, people visit each other but no one would visit us. Everyone looked at me as if I was different. They thought that, because we would keep contact with our sister, we would also be infected," she said.

A decade later, feeling like a foreigner in her own community, Sophie was working as a waitress in a Tel Aviv cafe when she met a man. When he tried to date her, "I ... told him that I wasn't allowed to have a non-Samaritan boyfriend," she said. "Later he came back to me, amazed, and said he had just read all about the Samaritans in an encyclopedia."

They started seeing each other in secret, never sitting together in public place but eventually it became a problem. "He said to me, 'Do you want to be a Samaritan or do you want to be with me?' I told him that I wanted to be with him," she said.

To marry in Israel it is necessary to be an orthodox Jew, and Sedaka began a conversion course in secret. Although her knowledge of Jewish rituals and the Torah was superior to most Israelis, she said her rabbis told her that it was easier to convert Muslims to Judaism than Samaritans because Muslims "at least believe in Jerusalem." A main point of contention between the Jews and the Samaritans is that Jews believe that Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem while the Samaritans believe it happened on Mount Gezirim near Nablus.

After 18 months of instruction, she told her parents of her plans to marry. The argument was loud and angry, she said.

Sedaka and her husband have since separated, but she had a daughter and began an acting career that has landed her roles in soap operas and dramas, and as a children's television presenter.

Yefet Cohen, a Samaritan priest and curator of the sect's museum on Mount Gezirim near Nablus, the Samaritan spiritual home, defended the rule that Samaritan women must marry Samaritan men.

"We are afraid we will lose our religion if we do not keep separate. Women must marry a Samaritan otherwise they will be cut off from everything," he said.

The rule is a defense of tradition, Cohen said. "We are the oldest society but in the face of everything modern we have managed to keep our values. We have Internet, television and beautiful homes. This does not contradict with our values and traditions. We lead lives like anybody else during the week and then on the Sabbath, the whole community comes here and it is like being in heaven."

The loss of any Samaritan is terrible, Cohen said, because it reinforces the community's fear of extinction. "There is always a reason behind their departure. They are brainwashed or cheated or there is some other outside force. Once they go, nobody will accept them in their home. They can come here but as a foreigner," he said.



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