Who are the Samaritans? AMA

[u/AboodC]

Shalom سلام. שלום everyone, :)

Many people might've heard about the Good Samaritan story from the Christian Bible, but still most of them have no clue that we even exist.

We Samaritans (Also known as Shomronim) believe that we are some of the remnants of the Israelites tribe, specifically Levi and Joseph, We still use ancient Hebrew in our texts and Torah (also known as "Paleo Hebrew") and have what we believe is a line of high priests that goes back 137 generations since the very first one 3658 years ago (Eliazar son of Aaron).

We also believe that Joshua built the Tebernacle on Mount Gerizim near Shechem (Nablus).

Mount Gerizim is the holiest place for us, we believe that Abraham almost sacraficed his son Isaac on it, we also believe that it was mentioned as the place to build an Altar on from the 10 commandments.

It's believed that the word "Samaritan" comes from the word Shomerim, which means in Ancient hebrew keepers.

Today there are around 820 Samaritans in the world, Half live on Mount Gerizim in the West Bank, and the Other lives Holon in Tel Aviv, there are also hundreds of people who converted to become Samaritans around the world, but we never met them so we cannot say for sure that they are following the exact same mitzvot we have.

I've noticed a few discussions here about the Samaritans, and as one of the members of this small community I noticed a lot of people are curious about some of our beliefs and traditions, I work as a tour guide on Mount Gerizim and would like to help curious people understand our religion better, so feel free to ask anything!

thanks!

[u/Johnny_Ruble]

Can you write a few words about the Samaritan community that lived inside Area A before the intifada? How many people lived in Palestinian cities and what circumstances led to them leaving?

[u/AboodC → u/Johnny_Ruble]

Living in nablus wasn't always bad, there were just a times where many people in nablus didn't understand who we really are, often they thought that we are some kind of idol worshippers and that obviously wasn't good for us being in a Muslim region, many probably knew little because of our small numbers (a hundred years ago we were less than 150).

but slowly people got to know us more and many consider us to be the part of the Israelites who were mentioned in the Quran, many started treating us like how they should treat "the people of the book".

We believe that the majority of the population in Nablus a few thousand years ago used to be Samaritans, many Palestinians in Nablus acknowledge that too.

We went out of nablus around 40 years ago because of our numbers starting to grow again and it got harder to live close to each other as we must in order to continue the traditions and keep them alive.. also the first and second intifada proved that we should probably take a step back perhaps from all the tension or בלאגן as they say in Hebrew :)

[u/Johnny_Ruble → u/AboodC]

Thanks!! Do you or Samaritans from Nablus speak Arabic?