The Holy Land

by John Kelman

Failing any wealth of such material remains, we must seek for Israel in the human life of the land. Jews are there in abundance, gathered, for the most part, within their four holy cities of Jerusalem, Tiberias, Hebron, and Safed. In Hebron they are a persecuted minority; in Safed they form about half the population; in Jerusalem, where there are more than seventy synagogues, it was estimated in 1898 that out of the 60,000 inhabitants 41,000 were Jews, nearly six times the number of the Mohammedans; while in Tiberias also they form about two-thirds of the population. Besides the Jews resident in these cities there are others both in the older colonies and in the new settlements of the Zionist movement, which have been created by the generosity of Jewish millionaires. Reports differ as to the success of these interesting experiments, and the knowledge of them which can be obtained from a passing visit is a quite inadequate ground for forming any judgment. Mr. Zangwill eloquently pleads for the restoration of the land to its ancient people; Colonel Conder assures us that the Jew is incapable of becoming a thoroughly successful agriculturist, though as a shopkeeper, a money-changer, or, in some cases, as a craftsman, he prospers in his native land. Certain it is that Jews are gathering to it from Russia, Poland, Germany, Spain, Arabia, and many other countries, with what ultimate result the future alone can shew.

It would be unfair and misleading to take the present Jewish population of Syria as the representative of ancient Israel. It still perpetuates, indeed, the sects of Pharisees and Sadducees, and it still holds aloof from the surrounding population with that independence and tenacity which has marked Israel from of old. Crucified by Romans, butchered and tortured by Crusaders, oppressed and driven forth by Moslems, this marvellous people lives yet and will live on. In Europe the lot of the Jew has been and still is a bitter one. In Syria to-day the lowest and most insulting term of abuse among the Fellahin is to call each other Jews. Yet the spirit of the people is not broken by oppression, as is the spirit of the Fellahin. The Jew takes what comes and says little; but he believes in himself, his past and his future, with a faith indomitable as it is daring. Still it must be confessed that the Jew of Palestine is generally repulsive. Mark Twain’s description of them as he saw them at Tiberias is hardly overdrawn—“long-nosed, lanky, dyspeptic-looking ghouls with the indescribable hats on, and a long curl dangling down in front of each ear.” The hats are circular black felt plates, giving to their wearers a peculiar air of conscious rectitude and semi-clerical superiority; the curls are grown for the convenience of the archangel in the resurrection! The younger men and lads of Tiberias impress one as the most unpleasant-looking of all the inhabitants of the land. They are so neurotic and effeminate, and at the same time so monstrously supercilious. The Jewish quarters are famous for their excessive dirt. In the visitors’ book of the hotel at Tiberias, Captain MacGregor wrote “that the Rob Roy and myself had stopped there two nights, and that the canoe was not devoured.” This is not encouraging, and in part it is the result of mistaken methods. Many of these Jews are subsidised, and a subsidised religion is inevitably degrading. A man who receives an income for no other service to his kind than that he is a Jew is not likely to do credit to his ancestors.

In the Samaritans we have better representatives of the ancient days. No people in the land have a more pathetic quaintness about them than these few survivors of antiquity who are still met with in the streets of Nablus. They preserve the old type of features, for their blood has been unmixed for more than 2000 years. But they are fast dying out, and only a remnant of less than 200 individuals is now alive. Difficult of access, reserved, mysterious, they are the ghosts of ancient Israel, who seem to haunt rather than to enjoy their former heritage.

In the manners and customs of Syria a still more interesting memorial of Israel is found. Many of these were not peculiar to Israel, nor was she the first to cherish them. They are the forms of the general Semitic stock, of which she was but one people. But the words and ways of Israel are the only form of Semitic life with which the world is familiar, and every student of the Bible finds in these the greatest source both of devout and of scientific interest. In the towns and in Jerusalem there is still much to remind one of the life so matchlessly delineated in Scripture. Lean and mangy dogs still sniff around Lazarus at the very door of Dives. The windows of houses generally face the interior courts, and the outer walls are blank, so that every door opened after nightfall contrasts the vivid light of the interior with the “outer darkness” of the street. Still more in the country, among the Fellahin and the wandering Arabs, does one seem to live in Bible times. The gipsy-like Bedawin west of Jordan are certainly degraded by change of nomadic habits and by contact with the villagers; yet there is enough of their desert heredity in them to interpret many of the patriarchal stories. The Arab sitting at noon-day in the shaded edge of his tent, or walking at eventide in the fields where it is pitched, is the true son of Abraham and Isaac. When you know him better you will not improbably recognise Jacob also. Except for tobacco, gunpowder, and coffee, he lives much as Israel lived in those days of wandering to which her writings love to trace back her origin. Even these modern innovations hardly break the continuity. The Arab smokes with such enthusiasm that it is difficult to imagine his fathers without their chibouk; and his brass-bound gun might be the heirloom of countless generations. Of the Fellah and his descent, and his conservatism of the past, we have already written.

So it comes to pass that he who journeys intelligently through Palestine reads the history of Israel ever afterwards with a quite new interest. The Bible is incomparably the best guide-book to Syria; and you seem to journey through its chapters as you move from place to place. Here is the fig tree planted in the vineyard; there, the tower guarding the wine-press. Unmuzzled oxen are trampling the corn on the threshing-floor, from whence the wind drives the chaff in a glistening cloud. Women are still coming from the city to draw water, and grinding in couples at the mill. We saw the prodigal son, drinking and singing at Beyrout; and the owner of the waggonloads of corn we noted in Hauran had kept them from the last year on the chance of a drought, which would raise their prices in the market—he was the rich man of the prophets who was grinding the faces of the poor. Under the walls of Jezreel a curious coincidence brought back vividly to mind the tragic fate of Jezebel. It was there that we first saw people with painted eyes and faces; and there a horse lay dead with a pack of dogs at work upon the body. Next morning, as we parted, nothing was left but the skeleton and the hoofs. The people whom you meet are talking in Bible language. When they repeat the familiar words of Scripture they are not quoting texts, but transacting business in their ordinary way. We were told of a shepherd near Hebron who, when asked why the sheepfolds there had no doors, answered quite simply, “I am the door.” He meant that at night, when the sheep were gathered within the circular stone wall of the enclosure, he lay down in its open entrance to sleep, so that no sheep might stray from its shelter without wakening him, and no ravenous beast might enter but across his body. In the north, an American was endeavouring to persuade a stalwart Syrian lad to try his fortunes in Chicago. The boy evidently felt the temptation, but he turned smilingly towards the middle-aged man at his side, and, pointing to him, answered, “Suffer me first to bury my father.”

But of all our experiences there was one which recalled the ancient life most vividly, and on that account it may be related here. We had camped over night near the village of Tell-es-Shihab in Hauran. In the morning we mounted our horses amid a crowd of villagers, and started for the village. The men protested loudly, and when we told them we were going only to search for inscriptions, they assured us that there were none. In spite of their opposition we rode on, followed by a tumultuous chorus. A chance remark led finally to an invitation from the headman of the village to his menzil, or reception hall. It was the mention of the name of Dr. Torrance, of the Tiberias Medical Mission, who, on one of his journeys, had cured this sheikh of an illness. At the door our host met us, and most courteously invited us to enter, bowing and touching our palms with his. The hall was dark, with the great stone arch characteristic of Hauran architecture spanning its centre. Smoke had coloured the arch and the rafters a rich dark brown, from whose shadow swallows flitted continually out into the sunshine and back again. We were seated on mats, spread with little squares of rich carpet round three sides of a hollow place in the floor, where a fire of charcoal burned, surrounded by parrot-beaked coffeepots. This was the hearth of hospitality, whose fire is never suffered to go out; near it stood the great stone mortar, in which a black slave was crushing coffeebeans. The coffee, deliciously flavoured with some cunning herb or other, was passed round. But the conversation which followed was the memorable part of that entertainment. In the shadow at the back the young men who had been admitted sat in silence. The old men, elders of the village community, sat in a row on stone benches right and left of the door. The sheikh made many apologies for not having called upon us at the tents—he had thought we were merchantmen going to buy silk at Damascus. Then followed endless over-valuation of each other, and flattery concerning our respective parents and relations. “How long would we stay under his roof? surely at least till to-morrow or next day? No, one of us had to catch a steamer at Beyrout? But any steamer would wait for so great a general,” etc. Until finally our leader came to the delicate subject of inscriptions, and was made free of the town, and immediately guided to the Egyptian slab mentioned on p. 87. It was a perfect specimen of intercourse with Arabs, and it dazed us with its ancient spell. There is no possibility of hurry. You must despatch your business by way of a discussion of things in general. Compliments were as rife and as conventional as those of Abraham and the children of Heth at Kirjath-Arba, and they were received and given without any pretence of taking them seriously. The elders sat silently leaning upon their staves, except now and then, when one of them would slowly rise and expatiate upon something the sheikh had said—perhaps about camels or the grain crop—beginning his interruption almost literally in the words of Job’s friends:—“Hearken to me, I also will shew mine opinion. I will answer also on my part, I also will shew mine opinion.

SITE OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF SAMARIA.

The remains of the ancient city are on the olive-clad hill to the left.