Samaritan Festivals

THE PROPHECY OF THE END OF DAYS, BY THE PROPHETS OF JUDAH IS REALIZED EVERY PASSOVER, IN KIRYAT LUZA ON MOUNT GERIZIM, SAMARIA

Due to the leap year in the Israelite-Samaritan Calendar, all the festivals will take place one month after the Jewish ones. The main festival, the Passover Sacrifice will take place on Gerizim Mountain on Friday April 26, 2002 on 12:00 noon.

Isaiah the First and Micah, two of the more prominent Yehudaic prophets of the Kingdom of Judah, foresaw the end of days in a vision, which they prophesied simultaneously and with the very same words, stating that all the nations will gather on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. In the words of the prophets:

"And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all the nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth Tora,and the word of the Lord from Yerushalayim". [Isaiah 2:2-3] [Micah4: 1-2]

In view of the divisions and internal and international discord concerning Jerusalem, in general, and the Temple Mount, in particular, it is difficult to see a real chance for the shared prophecy of the prophets of Judah to be realized before long in our days. Reality seems to indicate that exactly the opposite is true. As time goes by, the prophetic vision grows ever more distant. It would appear that the representatives of all the nations have all assembled and come to live in Jerusalem, or at least very close to it, and some within seeing distance of the Temple Mountain. In fact, however, rarely does a day go by without signs of the religious and political strife among them being observed by the general public in Israel and throughout the world, on display in the newspapers and the media.

If the dispute between members of different religions is recognized and understood, the disagreement between members of the same religion concerning possession of what could amount to several more square centimeters - or even several more square meters - of land is far less comprehensible. The Jewish nation will always claim original ownership of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the site of the Temple of the Kings of Judah, and - following the return from exile in Babylon - also the Temple of the ancestors of the Jewish community. Christians, who venerate ancient Jerusalem as the place where the bringer of their Word lived and was buried (albeit temporarily?), will argue the same claim as that of the Jews. No more deficient is the Moslem claim to possession of the Temple Mount, because its prophet arrived there in a miraculous manner. No wonder, then, that each of the three religions sees Jerusalem as its own exclusive religious and spiritual center. Of the three, it seems that Islam alone is not divided in its claims to possession; the Jews and Christians, who are all united in their views regarding Jerusalem, are divided into numerous internal divisions, each of which loathes the others, and each claims the right to commune with its historical memories and its Creator at this site. Fingers and toes of both hands and feet do not suffice to count the Christian sects who are at odds concerning small tracts of land in the Old City, at times to the point of bloodshed. Even among the rabbinical Jewish factions: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist - the Orthodox deny the rights of the other three factions to pray with them at the same time and place at the Western Wall plaza of the wall of their Temple, whose remains, except for those parts which have been exposed, are hidden within the Temple Mount.

Indeed, the nations have assembled and come to Jerusalem - all the nations said "Come and let us go up", However, in spite of their common objective, each of them comes with its exclusive ideas and views, which leave no room for the beliefs and concepts of any other religion or sect. All this demonstrates the antithesis of the prophecy foreseen eight hundred years prior to the beginnings of Christianity and 1,500 years prior to the formulation of Islam. The aforesaid is also true before we even touch the political conflict concerning the Temple Mount and Jerusalem.

In short, the time of the vision has not yet come. Nonetheless, it seems that, in recent years, the vision of the prophets of Judah is coming to pass, each year on the fourteenth day of the month [of Nissan] which heralds spring, at another mountain of God, in a more ancient center, where the fathers of the Israelite nation commenced the ritual of worshipping the one God, by setting up altars to the Lord. They then also called His name. There in the new Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim, near Nablus, the prominent heads of the tribes of Simon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph and Binyamim gathered and blessed the people entering the Promised Land. This is the site where the first ceremony, and certainly the most ancient one, performed by the Nation of Israel upon its departure from Egypt, is now held.

Pilgrimage to the Holy Site (Click on to load full-size image.) Three times a year the Israelite-Samaritan pilgrims visiting their holy sites on the peak of Mount Gerizim. On the Seventh day of Passover which called the Unleavened Bread Festival, on Shavuot [Pentacost] and on the first day of Tabernacle Feast [Soccoth]. In this picture they are visiting the place where God had forwarded Abraham's attention to a sheep to be sacrificed instead of his son, Yitzhaq [Gen. xxii.13]. The Israelite Jews believe that the story happen on Temple Mountain in Jerusalem, but not to be confused with facts, the scriptures proved that the whole Jerusalem tradition as a an Israeli religious center started on the time of David and Solomon kingship. In fact this is not the only tradition that Jews in ancient times adopted and transferred from Mount Gerizim [Deut. ixxx.11] to Jerusalem. Pilgrimage to the holy sites on Mt. Gerizim. The prayers begin at 1:00 a.m., after midnight, in the synagogue at Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim. At about 4:00 a.m., the congregation leaves the synagogue and makes the pilgrimage to the mountain top, while singing and praying. They move from station to station: [a] The first station is the Place of the Stones [The Twelve Stones, Deut. 27:4; in the Samaritan version: Mount Gerizim]. [b] The second stop is the site of the altar of Adam and his son Seth. [c] The next stop is the site of the Everlasting Hill [The Everlasting Hill, Deut. 33:15]. [d] The next is the site of God Will Provide [God Will Provide, Gen. 22:8], where Abraham saw a ram in the thicket when he was about to sacrifice his son, Isaac. [e] The following stop is the site of the Altar of Isaac. [f] The next station is the Altar of Noah. [g] The next stop is the site of the Everlasting Hill. In the past, two monuments of Jacob marked the place and this had been the third station.

The number of people performing the ancient ceremony may mislead the observing eye. Only a few hundred individuals, a last remnant of a large and ancient nation, who once populated the mountains of Samaria and the Kingdom of Israel. However, the numbers (which are gradually increasing) should not mislead you. Nonetheless, for the sake of balance, turn your eyes to the surrounding crowd, not the people bringing the sacrifices but rather the public that has come to observe the sacrifice, seeking to touch with their fingertips the margins of ancient history. They have come to see the deeds of their forefathers of 127 generations ago, as they hastily departed from Egypt. They express their joy in meeting each other.

Representatives of all peoples and nations, and religions and religious sects are to be found within this throng, which follows with curiosity, diluted with amazement and admiration, the members of an ancient people, who perform the sacrifice, as it was written and instructed. Jews, Christians, Moslems, Israelis, Palestinians, representatives of foreign embassies and just plain tourists, representatives of the Christian factions and Islamic sects stand up close, and amongst them are pagans, Indians, Chinese and Japanese as well. All see with their own eyes realistic visions, which will never be erased from their memories, of how the descendants of the Kingdom of Israel uphold the word of the Lord in his Torah on Mount Gerizim, the mountain of His heritage and dwelling place. We offer ourselves to all as a bridge to peace and understanding.

PASSOVER PREPARATIONS Cleaning the sheep to roast Israeli Samaritans have no better times in the course of the year than the days preceding Passover and the day of the Passover sacrifice. The spiritual and emotional preparations for the festival begin from Rosh Hodesh (the beginning of the new moon and new month) of the eleventh month, in an ordinary year, or Rosh Hodesh of the twelfth month in a leap year. On this evening, the prayers refer to the new month of miracles, the month in which the Lord smote Pharaoh and the Egyptians until they were compelled to let the people of Israel go forth from their land. From this Rosh Hodesh until the last Sabbath preceding Rosh Hodesh of the first month [of the year], each of the plagues are respectively mentioned in the prayers. On the first Sabbath, the plague of the crocodiles; on the second Sabbath, the plague of the crocodiles and the plague of blood is mentioned. And so on each consecutive Sabbath, the previously mentioned plagues are repeated and an additional plague is added, in the following order: crocodiles, blood, frogs, vermin, wild beasts, pestilence, boils and hail. The Sabbath and New Moon prayers also refer to all the writings, which recount the preparations for the exodus from Egypt. On the eve of Rosh Hodesh of the first month, which is the beginning of all the months of the year [Exodus 12:2], a special prayer service is conducted, and at the end, everyone blesses each other with a Happy New Year. On this evening, the Fourteen Days of the Watch over the sheep intended for slaughter also begins. Community prayers are held in the evening and in the morning and the remaining plagues are added to the prayers: locusts, darkness, and the slaying of the firstborn as are almost all references in the Torah, which include the following [grammatical] forms: rishon, rishona, rishonim [variations of the word meaning first]. On the tenth day of the month, the sheep for sacrifice are selected, and some people choose goats. All the animals selected are up to one year old, male, whole and unblemished. Each individual makes certain to guard, feed and water his sheep near his home. THE PASSOVER SACRIFICE Sheep to the oven to roast The day of the sacrifice - 18.4.2000 - has arrived. It is twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month. The whole community of Israel gathers in the magnificent square. The High Priest and his entourage of distinguished members of the community arrive at the ceremonial place, accompanied by eminent guests. The members of the congregation of Israel attend them there. Some of them, primarily the adults, are dressed in their prayer attire; while the majority, mostly young people, are dressed in the manner of those who left Egypt, wearing belted white pants and shirts, and shoes on their feet. The High Priest opens with the sacrifice prayer and announces the ritual slaughter. The sheep are brought to the altar and are slaughtered by experienced slaughterers. Members of each family check the kashruth of the slaughter for each other. Matzoth with bitter herbs are distributed to all members of the community of Israel. The sheep are then cleaned both inside and out and they are bound, each sheep on a spit and koshered by being sprinkled with salt. About two and a half hours before midnight, the sheep on their spits are put into ovens, which have been well heated. The opening of the oven is completely sealed with an iron net to stabilize the skewers and with burlap, which is immediately covered with a damp mixture of earth and bushes. The fire is stifling and the immense heat, which wafts from the deep ovens, roasts the sheep until they are well done. In the middle of the night, at the time when the Angel of Destruction went out to slay the Egyptian firstborns, the sheep are removed from the ovens, taken off the skewers, transferred onto large platters, and accompanied by singing, which has not ceased since the start of the sacrifice, the platters are brought home. There, the meat of the sacrifice will be eaten in haste with matzoth and bitter herbs. Any remains left over are brought to be burned before dawn. When the day of the sacrifice falls on a Friday, the ceremony is begun at midday and the sheep are brought out to be eaten before evening falls to prevent any desecration of the Sabbath. All the remains are then hidden until the end of the Sabbath. Then, they are brought to the altar to be burned. In the early morning, the Passover Festival prayer begins.

Samaritan Israelite Festivals 2002: