- JUDAH
- BETAR
- BETHLEHEM/RACHEL'S TOMB
- DEAD SEA
- GAZA AREA
- HEBRON AREA
- KADESH BARNEA/WILDERNESS OF SIN
The tribe of Judah was descended from the fourth son of Jacob and Leah. According to Biblical accounts, “Judah” (יהודה ) had acquired his name after Leah exclaimed “This time will I praise the Lord” (“Heb. transl. “Odeh et Adonai” יהוה אודה את). In Joshua 15, Judah is said to have received a large inheritance which stretched right across the land from the western shore of the Dead Sea westward to the Mediterranean and from Bethlehem southward to the desert, and included the lite of Kadesh Barnea (verse 3), which lay about fifty miles south of Beersheba, and west as far as Gaza, Ashdod, and Ekron (verses 42-47). 
The fortress of Betar practically lies on the border of Judah and Benjamin. It was an ancient city of some importance at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. It was, moreover, the seat of a Sanhedrin. During the revolt against Rome (132-135 CE), Shimon Bar Kokhba, the leader of the revolt, made Betar the chief base, giving shelter to large numbers of Jewish refugees from the Roman onslaughts. Upon the suppression of the Revolt, Betar was closely surrounded by the Romans under Julius Severus, and was besieged for two and a half years (132-135). When the stream, Yoredet ha-Ẓalman, ran dry in summer, the city began to suffer from want of water. Betar was destroyed on the Ninth of Ab in 135 CE, exactly 65 years to the day after the destruction of Jerusalem. The killed were left to decay in the open field; and only after the hatred of war had abated was it made possible to give them burial.After the Arab conquest and occupation of Israel in the 7th century, Arabs settled on top of the ancient Jewish town and they called it by the Arabic name “Batir”. They later became fellaheen. In 1874, the noted French archeologist Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau discovered there a Latin inscription mentioning detachments of the fifth (Macedonica) and the tenth (Claudia) legions, the very ones which had been called from the Danube to put down the revolt of Bar Kokhba. A Roman garrison was left at Batir just because of its strategic importance.
After the War of Independence, Batir found itself just a few hundred yards from the armistice line inside Arab-occupied Judea. Beginning in 1950, Jews began to return to the area and the town of Mevo Betar was founded near the location of Batir by native-born Israelis and olim from Argentina of the right-wing Betar movement, almost adjacent to the armistice line, just a few miles west of Batir, on the Israeli side. This armistice line was erased after the Six Day War but much of the land on the outskirts of both towns remained barren. It wasn’t until 1985 that the religious, and still growing, community of Betar Ilit was founded a few miles south, over the “Green Line”.
In Biblical times, Bethlehem was called "Ephratah". In I Chron. 2:19, Ephratah is the wife of Caleb from whom Beth-lehem descended. The matriarch Rachel died on the northern outskirts of the city while giving birth to Benjamin. Throughout the centuries and to this day, her grave has been a venerable holy site for Jews throughout the world. Bethlehem is mentioned among the cities of Judah in Josh. 15:60, in a passage which is missing in the Hebrew text, but which has been preserved in the Septuagint. Bethlehem is the scene of the story of Ruth who became the ancestor of David, and it was through him, a native of Bethlehem, that the messiah would spring forth, ushering in an era of peace and justice.
During the days of Herod, and after, Bethlehem achieved a historic importance as the traditional birthplace of Jesus, and as such has been the goal of pious Christian pilgrimages throughout the centuries, even today. As early as the second century a stable in one of the grottos close by the town was pointed out as the birthplace of Jesus. Constantine built a splendid basilica over the site and it is still admired by modern travelers. Since the Arab conquest in the 7th century, Arab Christians from the Arabian peninsula settled in the city, and in the process, Arabized its name to Bayt Lahm. Less than a handful of Jews lived there. In the 12th century, the traveler Benjamin of Tudela counted 12 Jews in Bethlehem.
[Much (though not all) of the following was written by author Nadav Shragai of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.]
Just as the Basilica has become venerated by Christian pilgrims, so too has the Tomb of Rachel been for Jews. It was visited by Rabbi Ovadiah di Bertinoro in the second half of the 15th century and by the sixteenth-century, the Arab historian Mujir al-Din regarded Rachel's Tomb as a Jewish holy place. The building received its distinctive shape in 1622 when the Turkish governor of Jerusalem, Mohammad Pasha, permitted the Jews to wall off the four pillars that supported the dome. Thus, for the first time Rachel's Tomb became a closed building, which also simultaneously prevented Arab shepherds from grazing their flocks at the site. Yet according to one report, an English traveler claims this was done "to make access to it more difficult for the Jews."
Since the 18th century, there has been a Muslim cemetery on three sides of the compound mainly belonging to the Bedouin Taamra tribe, which began burying its dead at the site due to its proximity to a holy personality. Members of the Taamra tribe harassed Jews visiting the tomb and collected extortion money to enable them to visit the site. One of the scribes who managed the accounts of the Sephardi Kolel during the eighteenth century reported on the protection money that the Jewish community had to pay. According to him, the payment was to the "non-Jews and lords of the lands who are called to effendis...(15,000) Turkish grush...and these are the people who patrol the ways of Jaffa Road, Kiryat Yearim, the people of the Rama, the site of Samuel the Prophet, the people of Nablus Road, the people of the Efrat Road, the tomb of our matriarch Rachel...so they would not come to grave-robbing, heaven forbid. And sometimes they complain to us that we have fallen behind on their routine payments and they come scrabbling on the gravestones in the dead of night, and they did their things in stealth because their home is there. Therefore, we are compelled against our will to propitiate them."
In 1796, Rabbi Moshe Yerushalmi, an Ashkenazi Jew from central Europe who immigrated to Israel, related that a non-Jew sits at Rachel's Tomb and collects money from Jews seeking to visit the site. Other sources attest to Jews who paid taxes, levies, and presented gifts to the Arab residents of the region. Dr. Ludwig August Frankl of Vienna, a poet and author, related that the Sephardi community in Jerusalem was compelled to pay 5,000 piastres to an Arab from Bethlehem at the start of the nineteenth century for the right to visit Rachel's Tomb. Taxes were also collected from the Sephardi Jewish community in Jerusalem to pay the authorities for various "rights," such as passage to the Western Wall, passage of funerals to the Mount of Olives, and for the protection of gravestones there, as well as payment to the Arabs of Bethlehem for safeguarding Rachel's Tomb. Rabbi David d'Beth Hillel, a resident of Vilna who visited Syria and the Land of Israel in 1824, testified about a Muslim cemetery in the region of Rachel's Tomb. "No person is living there, but there was a cemetery. On the opposite hill there is a village whose residents are Arabs and they are most evil. A stranger who comes to visit Rachel's Tomb is robbed by them." In 1827, an official of the Sephardi Kolelim in Jerusalem, Avraham Behar Avraham, obtained recognition from the Turkish authorities for the status and rights of Jews at the site. This was, in practice, the original firman (royal decree) issued by the Ottoman authorities in Turkey recognizing Jewish rights at Rachel's Tomb.
The firman was necessary since the Muslims disputed ownership by the Jews of Rachel's Tomb and even tried by brute force to prevent Jewish visits to the site. From time to time Jews were robbed or beaten by Arab residents of the vicinity, and even the protection money that was paid did not always prevail. Avraham Behar Avraham approached the authorities in Istanbul on this matter and in 1830 the Turks issued the firman that gave legal force to Rachel's Tomb being recognized as a Jewish holy site. The governor of Damascus sent a written order to the Mufti of Jerusalem to fulfill the Sultan's order. A similar firman was issued the following year. In 1841, Sir Moses Montefiore obtained a permit from the Turks to build another room, with a dome, adjacent to Rachel's Tomb in 1841 to keep the Muslims away from the room of the grave and to help protect the Jews at the site. A door to the domed room was installed and keys were given to two Jewish caretakers, one Sephardi and the other Ashkenazi.
Jewish caretakers managed the site from 1841 until it fell into Jordanian hands in 1948. In 1856, fifteen years after Montefiore had built another room to Rachel's Tomb, James Finn, the British consul who served in Palestine during the days of Turkish rule, spoke about the payments that the Jews were forced to pay to Muslim extortionists at some of the holy places including Rachel's Tomb: "300 lira per annum to the effendi whose house is adjacent to the site of crying" (the Western Wall) for the right to pray there and "100 lira a year to the Taamra Arabs for not wrecking Rachel's Tomb near Bethlehem." In spite of all the danger, Jews continued to make their way to the site.
By 1905, Bethlehem was an entirely Christian city, with a Jewish population of 1, a doctor, according to the English traveler Elkan Adler, and Yehoshua Burla, the father of author Yehuda Burla, was the caretaker of the Tomb of Rachel. The last caretaker was Shlomo Freiman who often spoke of Arab harassment of Jews at the site in the closing days of the British mandate. He was prevented from having any access once the site came under Arab occupation after the War of Independence. After the Six Day War, Jewish pilgrimages began again. On October 19, 2010, the anniversary of Rachel’s death, some 100,000 Jews visited Rachel's Tomb.
The Dead Sea region was probably most famous for the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gamorrah. It is told that when Lot and his family fled the destruction of Sodom, they were warned not to look back lest they’d be turned into a pillar of salt. Lot’s wife, however, defied the warning. Consequently, she was turned into a pillar of salt. Whether this story was true or not, could be debated. But when Bedouin settled in the area beginning in the 7th century, they named a free-standing rock formation that was in the shape of a woman and located near Sodom, “Lot’s Wife”. And so it is named today.
During the time of Joshua, the Dead Sea served as the eastern boundary of the tribe of Judah and part of the eastern shore served as the western boundary of the tribe of Reuben. In the period just before the destruction of the Second Temple, this area was home to the Essenes. Their stronghold of Masada was the site of the Jews’ last stand against the Roman armies. After the Jews’ defeat, the area remained clear of Jews until the 20th century, during which time, it became the domain of the Bedouin. It was they who discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls in nearby Qumran which was supposedly written by the Essenes.
Throughout history and up until 1922, the whole of the Dead Sea region lay within the boundaries of the Land of Israel. Between 1917 and 1922, this area, along with all the territory on both sides of the Jordan, was designated as the Jewish National Home as was Arabia designated the Arab National Home. But when the British colonial authorities created the Kingdom of Transjordan, carved out of Palestinian territory, on the east side of the Jordan River, the Dead Sea found itself evenly split between two countries. Since the involuntary split, the half of the Sea lying in Western Palestine entered a period of development with Jewish resettlement in the area and the creation of the potash works in the southern coastal area which led to the rapid development of Sodom as a home for employees of the Palestine Potash Company. Moshe Novomeysky, a Jewish engineer from Siberia, won the British government tender for potash mining on the Dead Sea's northern shore. As with Sodom on the southern shore, the marshland surrounding the plant was drained and housing was built to accommodate employees of the plant. The company, chartered in 1929, set up its first northern plant at Kalia and produced potash, or potassium chloride, by solar evaporation of the brine. It employed both Arabs and Jews. The Arab workers came mostly from Jericho and relations between the two groups were good. Thus, Kalia was spared the violence during the Arab riots of 1936-1939. Nearby, Bet Haarava, named after the Biblical village of the same name, was established in 1939 by Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany through the offices of Youth Aliyah. David Coren, later a member of the Knesset, was amongst the founders. During the War of Independence, the Jewish villages found themselves occupied by forces of the Arab Legion of Transjordan who threatened their destruction. The leadership of Kalia decided to negotiate with them in an attempt to be spared but despite negotiations, the imprisonment of Jews at Naharayim and the Kfar Etzion massacre led David Ben-Gurion to call for the residents' evacuation and their consolidation in the southern portion of the Dead Sea, under Israeli control. Residents of both Kalia and Bet Haarava fled by boat on 20 May 1948, and the two kibbutzim were destroyed by the Jordanians. When the war had ended, Israel was left with only the southwestern quarter of the Dead Sea area. The northwestern quarter, now under Arab occupation, remained unpopulated save a Jordanian military camp. The members of Bet Haarava were temporarily housed in kibbutz Shefayim, and ultimately split into two groups which in 1949 founded the kibbutzim of Gesher HaZiv and Kabri in the Western Galilee.
After the Six Day War, the northern quarter was restored to Israel. Kalia was re-established as a paramilitary Nahal settlement in 1968, the first in the area. Civilians temporarily settled in the deserted Jordanian army camp in 1972 while planting the first date palms and building permanent houses. The completed homes were populated in 1974. Beit Haarava was re-established in 1980 as a paramilitary Nahal outpost, and was fully turned over to civilians in 1986.
---GAZA AREA
This piece first appeared in http://english.katif.net/index.php?id=209&sub=2. Since it was written before the expulsion in 2005, I acquired permission from the author to change the last section to make it more relevant to today.
The earliest mention of Gaza in the Bible occurs in Gen. 10:19 where it is described as the southern terminus of the land of Canaan. The Philistines, a se.a-faring people from Crete, had begun to settle in the area during the time of Abraham and, in later centuries, developed a powerful confederacy which was dominated by their five principal cities that included not only Gaza, but also Ashkelon, Gat, Ekron, and Ashdod. These kingdoms lasted until the reign of David and Solomon.
At the time of Joshua, “Gaza with her towns and villages unto the River of Egypt and the Great Sea (located today around el Arish) (Josh. 15:47), was allotted to the tribe of Judah. It was the scene of Samson slaying the Philistines in the Temple of Dagon. Solomon conquered Gaza, which by then contained a mixed gentile population, making it part of the southern limits of the Kingdom of Israel. Centuries later, it would trade in slaves with Edom, a practice which the Prophet Amos fiercely condemned.
In the Talmudic period, it was a pagan city, but the local Jews made it into a center of Talmud. Soon, other communities sprang up in the surrounding area until Talmud centers were established in towns and villages stretching from Rafah to Yavneh. In 508, a synagogue was built in Gaza attracting pilgrims from all over Israel and the Diaspora. According to the 10th century Karaite scholar Sahl ben Matzliah, Gaza was one the three cities in the Land of Israel that served as a place of pilgrimage (the others being Tiberias and Zoar).
Byzantine rule, which began shortly after the beginning of the Talmudic period, was very harsh toward the Jews but the communities of Gaza and Rafah flourished. With the Arab invasion in the 7th century, the Jews of Gaza actually fought alongside the Byzantines. However, the Arabs took it in 634 and, as the first Arab settlers began to migrate to Palestine as a whole, so to did they settle in Gaza. Gaza and Rafah continued to thrive under Arab rule although the surrounding communities began to decline. Gaza became a center of Masorah under a certain Rav Moshe. The Spanish linguist Dunash ben Labrat lived there for a time and during the 11th century, Rabbi Ephraim went from Gaza to the important rabbinical community of Fostat in Egypt.
The Crusader invasion in 1099, under their King Baldwin III, destroyed the community in Gaza (although visitors still described one there) and most of the surrounding area. The mixed gentile populations were also driven out with the exception of the Christians. But those in Rafah managed to survive the onslaughts and even served as a place of refuge for Jews fleeing Crusader atrocities elsewhere. But during the later Crusader period, even Rafah was abandoned.
The Mamelukes of Egypt conquered Israel in 1291, and in the 14th century, the Jewish community of Gaza revived. Arabs also came to settle in the town which soon contained an Arab majority. This was a comparatively peaceful period. Gaza grew and achieved some level of prosperity. The cultivating of wine and raising of cereals were occupations that the local Jews engaged in. The city also became one of the important centers for the Samaritan community along with Jaffa, Tulkarm, and certainly Shechem. Over the years, they migrated to other parts of Israel and the Levant, dwindling the community.
In the 15th century, the Mameluke authorities in Palestine began to oppress the Jews with a heavy burden of taxes as well as other types of social restrictions. Sometimes, the Arabs joined in the oppression. Jerusalem was hit harder than any other city in the country. This began the custom of Gaza, and sometimes Hebron, serving as a place of refuge for Jews fleeing from the oppression of the authorities. What was Jerusalem’s loss was Gaza’s gain and by the 1480s, the community prospered under its Chief Rabbi Moses of Prague.
The Ottoman conquest in 1516 benefited the Jews of Gaza, and even Rafah briefly revived. For centuries, the rabbis of Jerusalem debated whether Gaza and the surrounding area was part of the Land of Israel according to halacha. This same debate also centered around Jaffa, Haifa, and Acre. However, the rabbis must have ruled in Gaza’s favor as the local farm owners were obligated to observe the Biblical laws of agriculture – laws which could only be applied within the borders of Israel.
Among the many individuals who have visited, or lived in, Gaza since the Ottoman conquest:
David Reubeni, false messiah who claimed to be a representative of a Jewish kingdom in Arabia. In
1523, he visited Jerusalem and also preached the coming redemption to the Gazan Jews.
Najara, prominent rabbinic family from Damascus, settled in Gaza in the 16th century and
contributed to the local rabbinate. Yisrael ben Moshe Najara, author of “Zmirot Yisrael”, was
Gaza’s Chief Rabbi and president of the tribunal in the middle of the 17th century. He was buried
in Gaza and was succeeded by the son Moshe Najara II.
Rabbi Abraham Eliakim, respected Gazan rabbi, lived around 1601.
In 1619, a plague had broken out in Hebron forcing many Jews to seek refuge in Gaza as well as Jerusalem.
Eliezer Arha, one of the Hebron refugees, was so revered by the community, that he became Gaza’s
Chief Rabbi.
Rabbi Abraham Azulai of Fez, also from Hebron, cabalistic author and commentator, wrote his
cabalistic work “Hesed l’Avraham”. He later returned to Hebron where he died.
Samuel ben David, Karaite scholar who, during his pilgrimage to Palestine in 1641, visited Gaza and
described the community in detail.
Nathan Ghazzati, mystic. He was a native of Jerusalem and son-in-law of a rich and pious German
Jew, Elisha Halevi haAshkenazi. A fanatical cabalist, he convinced the mystic Shavtai Zvi that he
was the messiah, thus starting a movement later to become known, as the Shabbateanism. Gaza
was the center of this movement which Nathan proclaimed to be the new capital of Israel. He
died in Sofia.
Rav Tzedakah, 17th century rabbinic scholar.
Castel, prominent rabbinic family who settled in Palestine shortly after the expulsion from Spain in
1492. They soon settled in Gaza and, like the Najaras, the Castels became the ruling rabbinical
family in Gaza throughout the 18th century. They were also skilled craftsmen. Abraham Castel
was Gaza’s Chief Rabbi during Napoleon’s invasion of the country in 1799. In contemporary
history, the artist Moshe Castel was a descendant of this family.
With Napoleon’s invasion, Gaza was the first to fall. He had been known to be a friend to the Jews and invaded Palestine in order to reestablish the Jewish state. But the Jews weren’t convinced of his actions and reports from Gaza noted the terrible abuse the local Jews were suffering at the hands of the French soldiers, at times joined by the local Arabs who had, long ago, become more fanatical. They, therefore, fled in numbers, mostly to Hebron. Some Jews remained in Gaza for several more years afterwards, however, but owing to continued Arab persecutions, even they fled, settling in Jerusalem. By the first decade of the 19th century, the old Jewish community had vanished. Several years later, the Arabs expelled the small Samaritan community. From that time until the late 1870s, no Jew or Samaritan would dare live in the city. The area from the River of Egypt to Jaffa was given over to swamps, and Arab marauders and bandits.
At the close of the 1870s, a group of Jews managed to settle in Gaza. They were, in the main, barley merchants who traded with the bedouin for barley which they then sold to the breweries in Europe. But the presence of a reestablished Jewish community bothered the Arabs and in 1890, the Jews of Gaza became victims of a blood libel. In that year, a couple of local Jews had employed an Arab boy as a servant. One day, the boy was playing with another boy who owned a camel. Unfortunately, they both had guns, a custom in Arab society, and tragically, the servant accidentally killed his playmate. Almost immediately, the victim’s next-of-kin killed the servant. Shortly afterwards, the Jews informed a Turkish judicial tribunal in Jerusalem of the incident. But due to intense propaganda from the local Arabs, the authorities became convinced of the age-old belief that Jews needed gentile blood for Passover and that they, instead, had killed the boy. The Jews were arrested and thrown in jail. This caused an international incident as these people were under foreign protection, as so many other Palestinian Jews were at that time. To ease the situation, the authorities promptly set them free prompting the Arabs to then force the Turks to restrict Jewish immigration to any part of Israel. Arab immigration continued unhindered.
An attempt to revive the Jewish community of Rafah occurred between 1905 and 1913, when Jewish leaders and institutions tried to purchase land in and around the town. (Likewise for Khan Yunis in the 30s which, then, had a Jewish population of 3.) All had failed due to legal considerations and Arab hostility. In 1920 and 1921, many Jews fled Gaza after anti-Jewish rioting by Arabs. In the 1929 riots, the rest were driven from their homes and the Arabs, thereafter, banned Jews from living there. The ancient synagogue was used as part of a mosque and the cemetery was used as a garbage dump. This is the situation to this day. The community was now dispersed throughout Palestine but they made their contributions to Israeli society. Marcel Liebowitz, a native of Gaza, became a successful film distributor in the 30s, working with local and international film companies.
Due to the British military presence and the accompanying opportunities of employment, Arab immigrants poured into the area as they did the rest of Palestine, without any hindrance from anyone. Such immigration continued until the War of Independence.
By 1946, a Jewish group succeeded in renewing the Jewish presence in the area, and outside the Arab populated areas, purchased a plot of land that became the kibbutz of Kfar Darom, built on top of the ancient Jewish town of Darom which flourished in the Talmudic era. After the 7th century Arab conquest, this site was renamed Deir, later lengthened to Deir el Balah.
Rafah had a sinister revival at this time. With the struggle against the British after World War II, many Jews were arrested and along with Acre, Rafah served as prison camp for Jewish leaders as well as for soldiers of the Haganah, the Irgun, and Lehi. During the War of Independence, the Jews of Kfar Darom were expelled as were the few Jews who lived in Khan Yunis. A story was told of one Abu Ish, Mukhtar of a neighboring Arab village who had gone to Gaza City on business. An Arab Muslim, he was a descendant of 7th century Jewish refugees from Arabia. Because of his ancestry, and because of his village’s good relations with the Jews, he was accused of being a Zionist spy and, without any trial or investigation, was promptly hanged in the public square.
Toward the end of the war, the entire area was conquered by Egypt and it soon became known as the Gaza Strip. Arab refugees, of which Israel was not the cause (that’s the subject of a different booklet), swelled its population. Indeed, Israel was busy fighting for survival and at the same time, caring for the Jewish refugees from Palestine as well as from the neighboring Arab countries. Between the end of the war and the beginning of the Six Day War, Jews were banned from entering the Gaza Strip. Instead, the place was used as a springboard for raids by the fedayeen. The Suez Campaign of 1956, in spite of its international condemnation, stopped all that with Israel’s recapture of the Strip. The international community forced Israel to relinquish the Strip the next year – a mistake that would come back to haunt it 10 years later. In 1967, due to a massive Arab build-up on its borders, Israel made a preemptive strike, thus saving itself from annihilation. All historic Jewish land was back in Israel’s hands within a week, after a 19 year separation. Gaza City was still off-limits to Jews (a ban that exists to this day), but three years after the War, Kfar Darom was reestablished. This time, the Jews were determined to keep their long and historic presence in the area and by the end of the 70s, 3 more communities were established – Netzer Hazani, Atzmona, and Ganei Tal.
Before the expulsion of 2005, the Jewish presence in the Gaza area has grown to 25 communities centered around the bloc of communities of Gush Katif (without harming the local Arabs, God forbid). Before the first intifada in 1987, Jews and Arabs in the area mixed more or less freely, security permitting. Jews often went into the Arab cities for visits and the Arabs were often employed by the local Jewish communities. When the intifada broke out, all that changed, although many Arabs were still employed by the Jews. After the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the Gazan Jews were threatened, once again, with expulsion. When the second intifada broke out in 2000, all contact between Arabs and Jews was cut off completely and the local Jews had to put up with gunfire and bombs directed at them as well as 4000+ Kassam rocket attacks on their communities. The rising toll of Israeli battle deaths in the Strip is a tragedy beyond words. Just like it is along the Lebanese border.
Demographics is another problem. The Strip is burgeoning with an Arab population. Arab refugees make up, probably, the majority of the local population – refugees of whom Israel was not the cause – and they account for much of the Arab growth rate. They were counted in every census along with the non-refugee Arabs in annual population censuses. It was as though Israel was concerning itself over a problem it didn’t create.
In spite of everything, the Gazan communities had the will and motivation, not to mention thousands of years of local Jewish history, to continue to grow and flourish. In spite of the Oslo War, the community grew to over 8000, and the largest of the communities, Gan Or and Nve Dekalim, had expanded. The Gazan communities considered themselves to be the breadbasket of Israel, contributing around $40 million to the Israeli economy.
Beginning in 2004, the threat of expulsion was renewed by the Sharon government which, as it turned out, was more concerned with expelling Jews than protecting its citizens. The term the government used was “disengagement”, as if disengagement from the Arabs meant to disengage from an entire region of the country. From that time until the day of the expulsion, Sharon made sure that the coming expulsion would go smoothly. During this time, the army and the police became like the SS and the Gestapo respectively and any activist who organized demonstrations against the expulsion would be arbitrarily arrested. Just as during the months leading to the expulsions from Sinai, Israel ceased being a democracy. In August of 2005, the residents of Gush Katif were thrown out their homes. Their only crime was being Jewish. This was the fourth time they were expelled since 1920 when Arab mobs drove out the local Jews. In many respects, this is still the situation today vis a vis the Israeli authorities as the SS and the Gestapo would routinely harass the peaceful Jews of Judea and Samaria.
---HEBRON AREA
In ancient times Hebron was known as "Kiryat Arba”, after its reputed founder, Arba, father of the Anakim. The patriarch Abraham resided at Hebron and purchased a burial site in a cave known as Machpelah where Sarah was buried. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Leah were afterward buried there as well. During the time of Moses, the spies passed through the city on their way to a valley to the north, the Valley of Eshcol, named after one of Abraham’s allies (Numbers 13:22-23). From this valley, two of the spies cut a large cluster of grapes which they carried back to the camp of the Israelites as proof of the fruitfulness of the land. Since the beginning of the Ottoman period, this valley was often identified as Wadi Tuffah which was famous for the size of its grapes. Hebron and its territory became a city given to the tribe of Judah. It was, at first given to Caleb, and then to the Levites of the family of Kohath. David lived there where he was anointed as king over Judah. And there he stayed until he conquered Jerusalem, where he was anointed king over all Israel.
Many Jews returned to Hebron after the Babylonia Captivity. But few, if any inhabited the city after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. A small Jewish community formed in later centuries and, under early Arab rule, beginning in the 7th century, they even built a synagogue on the site of Machpelah. But the community was driven out by the Crusaders which renamed the city, St. Abraham and the synagogue at Machpelah, the Church of St. Abraham. But in spite of this, Machpelah continued to attract Jewish visitors and pilgrims from all over Israel as well as from the Diaspora and this aroused the curiosity and wonder of the Christian settlers. In c. 1171, Benjamin of Tudela found only a single Jew in Hebron, but regarding Machpelah, he relates: "…The natives erected there six sepulchers, which they tell foreigners are those of the Patriarchs and their wives, demanding money as a condition of seeing them. If a Jew gives an additional fee to the keeper of the cave, an iron door which dates from the time of our forefathers opens, and the visitor descends with a lighted candle...” Rabbi Pethahiah of Regensburg visited the city and the cave shortly afterward and relates a similar description. R. Samuel bar Shimshon, who explored Palestine in 1209-10, stated that the visitor must descend by twenty-four steps in a passageway so narrow that the rock touches him on either hand. He makes no mention of a Jewish community in Hebron at all. In 1267, when Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman came to Hebron to inquire about purchasing a burial plot there for himself, a renewed, though very small, Jewish community had already been formed. It wasn’t until after the Crusader occupation had ended that Jews began to return to Hebron in any appreciable numbers. But this time, the Arab Muslims, who gained authority over the land, were more strict in Islamic law than they were before the Crusader period and this drastically stunted the growth of the Jewish community. The Arabs had converted the Crusader church into a mosque and only allowed Jews to ascend to the seventh step leading to the Cave where the patriarchs were buried. In the 14th century, Ashturi Farhi visited Hebron, and later, came a company of Venetian Jews who introduced the art of glass making to the city. In the 14th and 15th centuries, some Jews lived there while pilgrimages to Machpelah increased. In 1489, Rabbi Ovadiah di Bertinoro visited Hebron and even briefly served as its Chief Rabbi. In the early years of the Ottoman conquest, the Arabs totally plundered the community, but the situation soon stabilized and later, a Karaite community was even formed alongside the Jewish community. In addition, the city became the home of the 16th century Cabbalist author from Safed, Eliahu de Vidas; his gravesite can still be seen today as part of the Rabbi’s Plot section of the Jewish cemetery.
In the 17th century, the community began to flourish, if not materially, then religiously and scholarly and in spite of the periodic Arab persecutions. Solomon Edni (1622) was the author of "Melechet Shlomo" at a time when Avraham ibn Hananiah was Chief Rabbi of Hebron. Avraham was the father-in-law of Rabbi Moshe Halevi, the author of “Y’dei Moshe” and halukkah shaliach to Turkey and Greece. Contemporary with Halevi was Rabbi Avraham Conque, an outspoken supporter of the messianic pretender Shavtai Zvi.
Chief Rabbi Israel Zvi (1701-31) founded a prominent yeshivah in the city. But during his reign and afterwards, the Jews of Hebron suffered from a series of misforturnes as the locals would harass, extort money, and persecute. Often, there were Arab civil wars in the area and Jews would suffer from the wrath of both sides of the conflict. Most eventually lived behind the walls surrounding their neighborhood. Over time, this neighborhood was dubbed by the Spanish name “El Cortijo” (the court). In the middle of the century, Abraham Castel became Chief Rabbi and he was followed, in 1772 by Aaron Alfandari. During this time, Ḥayyim Abraham Israel Zvi became prominent among Hebron Jews. He was the grandson of Avraham Azulai and author of "Be'er Mayim Ḥayyim". In c. 1785, Mordecai Ruvio succeeded Alfandari as Chief Rabbi. He was followed by David Melamed (c. 1789) and then by Yom Tov Eliakim. At the end of the century, Judah Divan, the son of the notable Rabbi Amram Divan, author of “Zivche Shlamim”, achieved prominence in Hebron.
In c. 1823, a group of Habad Hasidim arrived in the city and set about to form their own community. They added greatly to the prestige of Hebron Jewry, but the next year, there was a minor property conflict over ownership of the Avraham Avinu Synagogue between the Jews and the Karaites who were represented by their leaders in Constantinople. This conflict, however, soon passed. At this time, the leader of all of Hebron and the surrounding area was a certain Sheikh Abd el Rahman who would not permit anyone to persecute the Jews – unless he wanted their property. He ruled from Dura (the Biblical Adoraim) and in 1834, he led a rebellion against Ottoman authority. Ibrahim Pasha was sent to crush the rebellion causing the local Arabs, under Abd el Rahman, to flee to the hills. The Jews did not because they felt they had not reason to. However, with his seemingly tacit approval, Ibrahim’s soldiers set about to plunder their property anyway, killing five in the process. He then placed an armed guard around the Jewish quarter and the whole community was sunk into poverty. Toward the end of Ibrahim’s rule, the Chief Rabbi of Hebron was Hayyim haLevi Polacco and during his tenure, the reign of Ibrahim came to an end (1841). Abd el Rahman, triumphantly, entered Hebron, but four years later, one of the many Arab civil wars that have historically erupted in the area took place, this time between Abd el Rahman and his brothers. Once again, Jews were persecuted by both sides. This was followed, again, by an era of stabilization.
Since the death of Chief Rabbi Polacco in 1847, those who held Hebron’s Chief Rabbinate were the following: Hai Cohen, Moses Pereira (1852-64); Eliahu Mani (1864-78) who founded the Knesset Eliahu Synagogue; and Raḥamim Joseph Franco (1878-1901). In 1890, Hebron’s Jewish population reached a peak of approximately 1,490 but it began to decrease afterwards. Since 1901, Jewish Hebron was ruled by Hezekiah Medini, formerly, the Haham Bashi Wakili (chief rabbi) of Karasu-Bazar in the Crimea.
---KADESH BARNEA/WILDERNESS OF SIN
For centuries, it lay in ruins but in 1842, it was, once again, brought to world attention by the archeologist John Rowland. His discoveries concluded that it lies midway between Al-'Arish and Mount Hor in a great treeless limestone plateau. The spring of clear water, which rises at the foot of a limestone cliff, has been called, by the Arabs "Ain-Ḳadis", "spring of Kadesh." Jews began to return to the area in 1980 with the establishment of Nitzanei Sinai nearby, in what is now known, as the Sinai Peninsula. Due to the peace treaty with Egypt, in 1982, Prime Minister Menahem Begin ordered the Israeli army, acting in the form of the SS, to destroy and expel the Jewish inhabitants of the town, as they were ordered to do with the rest of the Peninsula. In 1986, the whole of Nitzanei was relocated to the western Negev in an area between Eilat and Rafiah.
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