Snow flurries drifted to the ground on Mount Gerizim overlooking
Nablus on Thursday, as mourners gathered to bury the spiritual leader
of the Samaritans, who passed away the previous day.
High Priest Elazar ben Tsadaka ben Yitzhaq was born during a snowstorm
83 years ago, one mourner said. On Thursday, as he was being laid to
rest at the holiest site in the Samaritan religion, the snow began to
fall again.
According to Samaritan tradition he was the 131st holder of the post
since Aaron. This is not be accepted by all historians, but the office
may well go back to the Hellenistic period, which would still make it
the oldest office in the world. One account in Josephus suggest that
it is an offshoot of the Zadokite high priests in Jerusalem from
around the time of Alexander the Great.
Mourners took shelter from the storm inside the community center in
the hilltop neighborhood of Kiryat Luza, where much of the
ethnoreligious group of 730 lives. Nearly all the rest live in Holon's
Neveh Pinchas neighborhood.
Inside, well over 100 men gathered in a somber, eerily quiet ceremony
around the casket holding Elazar, who will be replaced as head priest
by his cousin Aharon Ben-Av Hisda Cohen.
The Samaritans are a tiny, largely misunderstood sect that practices a
religion that is a close parallel to Judaism. Samaritans believe
theirs is the true religion of the Israelites and follow their own
Samarian Torah, written in an ancient form of Hebrew largely alien to
modern Israeli eyes. Today's Samarians trace their lineage to
Israelites who have lived in northern Samaria before the Babylonian
exile, and they still view Mount Gerizim, not Jerusalem, as the center
of their religion.
Elazar ben Tsadaka ben Yitzhaq was eulogized by the Palestinian
Authority's governor of the Nablus region, Jibrin al-Bakri, before a
procession of senior IDF officers filed in, shaking hands with village
elders.
Brig.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai, head of the Civil Administration of Judea
and Samaria, stepped forward, and in Arabic, spoke warmly of Elazar.
Mordechai said Elazar was a kind, intelligent man who had a deep
connection with IDF officials in the area. Mordechai also said that in
the years he dealt with Elazar, the priest never once asked anything
for himself and always put his community first.
Mourner Menashe Tsadaka described Elazar as "a wise man in the
community who people always came to for answers."
Tzadka added that the high priest always served as a bridge between
IDF officials and the Palestinian communities in the area, something
he said was illustrated by the eulogies given both by PA and IDF
officials.
The eulogies finished, the mourners began to pray in the ancient
Hebrew that is their liturgical language. The crowd swayed and chanted
a prayer that bore little resemblance to the Jewish kaddish, but had a
moving, hypnotic cadence.
Pallbearers then carried Elazar to his final resting place in a small
cemetery on Mount Gerizim. He was lowered into the earth and mourners
quickly mixed cement and poured it atop the casket as the wind howled.
Finally, several wreaths were laid upon the wet cement.
As the procession hurriedly left the cemetery, people headed to the
shiva ceremony at the high priest's home, where over heaping plates of
rice and lamb, mourners wept for the loss of the leader of one of
Israel's tiniest communities atop the mountain that has been the
center of their religion for millennia.
--
"A grandeza requer atenção e esforço.
Lembre-se: o mato cresce sozinho, mas flores precisam de cultivo"
Magal
http://twitter.com/magal
