A Jewish rabbi in Gaza? The great Gaza Yeshiva? Ancient Jewish Gazan villages? Yes, they were all real. Here are 10 surprising facts about Jews’ long relationship with the region.
1. Possession of the Tribe of Judah
The area of Gaza has been inhabited since Neolithic times. Four thousand years ago, during the time of the Jewish patriarch Jacob, it was inhabited by a tribe known as “the Avvim who dwell in (unwalled) cities until Gaza” (Deuteronomy 2:23). When Jacob divided up the Land of Israel between his twelve sons, Gaza was allocated to Judah and his descendants.
The tribe of Judah didn’t live in Gaza; it eventually passed into Canaanite hands, then was colonized by Egypt as an outpost of the Egyptian empire.
2. Ancient Greek Outpost
In the 13th Century BCE, a group of Greek sailors attacked and sacked Anatolia, Cyprus, and Syria, before attacking Egypt. The earliest mention of this group is recorded inside the mortuary temple of Ramses III in Egypt; King Ramses repulsed the would-be invaders, and encouraged them to settle nearby in Gaza instead. There, the invaders called themselves Philistines (Plishtim in Hebrew).
The Philistines differed greatly from the Israelites who inhabited the area. Though they adopted some local customs, the Philistines continued to worship Greek gods. They also ate a diet heavy in pigs and dogs, as evidenced in archeological remains of their cities, in stark contrast to Jewish settlements of the same era.
Philistines built five cities which formed a Philistine political union: Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gath and Ekron, all in modern-day Israel, plus Gaza. The ancient Greeks called the area Philistia, which later evolved into the Greek name Palestine. Gaza became an outpost of Greek culture within ancient Judah.
3. Samson and Delilah in Gaza
Philistines were relentless enemies of the Jews; the Torah describes a terrible period in Jewish history when the “Children of Israel (were) delivered…into the hands of the Philistines” who oppressed them (Judges 13:1).
One of the most heartbreaking stories in Jewish history occurred in Gaza: Samson, a hero of Israel, went to Gaza and fell in love with a Philistine woman named Delilah. Philistine leaders urged her to pretend to be in love with Samson and to find out what made him so strong: “The governors of the Philistines went up to her and said to her, ‘Entice him and find out by what (means) his strength is so great, and by what means we may overpower him, so that we may bind him, to afflict him. Each one of us will give you eleven hundred pieces of silver” (Judges 16:1).
Delilah eventually learned Samson’s secret: he possessed superhuman strength because he abstained from wine and had never cut his hair. While he was sleeping, Philistines cut off Samson’s hair then tortured him. They brought him to one of their temples to continue his torture during a great feast there. In desperation, Samson asked God for one more moment of strength, and pushed down the pillars supporting the temple, killing himself along with all the revelers inside.
4. Jewish Conquest During the Time of Hanukkah
As a Greek outpost, Gaza was a center of Hellenizing influence in ancient Israel and became a battle zone during the revolt of the Maccabees. Jonathan the Hasmonean – Judah Maccabee’s brother – conquered Gaza and moved there in the year 145 BCE, 20 years after the Temple in Jerusalem was captured and the miracle of one container of oil lasting for eight days. Gaza was absorbed into the Kingdom of Judah, ruled by the Jewish Hasmonean kings.
5. Why are There Jewish Symbols on the Great Mosque of Gaza?
Gaza became a major Jewish center during Talmudic times, boasting magnificent synagogues and a renowned Gaza Yeshiva (Jewish school). The city of Gaza was home to a large Jewish community; the Talmud also mentions a small Jewish town in the Gaza region called Kfar Darom. In 1965, Egyptian archeologists discovered the remains of an ancient synagogue near Gaza’s harbor. Beautiful mosaic floors declared that the synagogue was built in 508-9 CE, and depicted a picture of King David, with his name written in Hebrew above.
Menorah engraving at the Great Mosque of Gaza
More evidence of Gaza’s ancient Jewish roots can be found in the Great Mosque of Gaza: a pillar of this mosque contains carvings of Jewish symbols: a lulav and etrog, a shofar, a menorah, plus Hebrew inscriptions. Jewish life flourished in Gaza for hundreds of years, until Crusaders destroyed the area, putting a temporary stop to normal life in the area.
6. Famous Shabbat Song Written in Gaza
Jews returned to Gaza after the devastation of the Crusades, and once again built a flourishing Jewish community. The famous author and spiritual leader Rabbi Avraham Azoulai moved to Gaza from Morocco in the early 1600s and wrote his mystical work Chesed l”Avraham there.
Around the same time, Rabbi Yisrael Najara moved from Safed to Gaza. The popular Shabbat song he wrote, Kah Ribon Olam, is a fervent plea for God to rescue Jews from danger and exile; it beseeches the Divine to “save (Israel) Your sheep from the mouth of lions….” Its words are as true in Gaza today as they were 400 years ago when they were written.
7. 1929 Pogrom
After a decade of increasing anti-Jewish rhetoric from Arab leaders in Mandatory Palestine, armed Arab groups rose up to attack Jews in August, 1929. Anti-Jewish riots began in late August in the new Jewish neighborhoods that were springing up around Jerusalem. The riots began to spread to other areas, including the cities of Safed and Hebron, and Gaza; scores of Jews were killed.
Gaza ruins 1898 (American Colony Photograph at the Library of Congress)
After taking no action for six days during the riots, on August 26, 1929, British soldiers stepped in to stop the riots - and to remove Jews from areas where they’d lived for centuries. All of the Jews living in Hebron and Gaza were forced from their homes and forbidden by the British authorities to return.
8. Rebuilding Jewish Gaza
Jews soon returned to Gaza and established a kibbutz, or collective farm, there in 1946. They called it Kfar Darom, after an ancient Gazan Jewish town by that name. But Jewish life in Gaza was to be short-lived. In the United Nations’ proposed division of Mandatory Palestine, Gaza itself was divided between a proposed Arab state and Israel. Israel accepted the UN’s plan, but the Arab states did not, attacking Israel the moment it declared independence in 1948. In the bitter fighting that followed, Israel captured Gaza. In subsequent ceasefire negotiations, Israel gave Gaza to Egypt in return for control over the nearby cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon. At the same time, the Arab population of Gaza swelled as Palestinians moved to Gaza from the newly founded State of Israel.
Israel conquered Gaza once more during its 1956 war with Egypt, and once again gave the territory to Egypt. During the 1967 Six Day War, Israel once again conquered Gaza. In the 1970s, Jews began to return to Gaza once again: over the next thirty years, Jews built 21 new farms and towns in Gaza. Gaza became home to most of Israel’s organic farms and accounted for 15% of Israel’s overall agricultural output.
9. Making Gaza “Jew-Free”
For over a decade, Arabs and Jews lived and farmed side by side in Gaza. With the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987, however, peaceful coexistence came to a halt. In the Oslo Accords of 1993 Israel promised to evacuate most of Gaza, giving way for it to be governed by the newly-formed Palestinian Authority. That peace agreement fell apart, however, and tensions continued to rise.
Jewish children at a greenhouse in the Gadid settlement a week before disengagement (Photo Tom Gross)
In 2005, after heavy political pressure from world leaders and domestically, Israel agreed to withdraw from all of Gaza and to force every Jew living there out of the territory. Gaza was to be entirely self-governed; Israel believed that by disengaging, they would be free of the terrorism and international opprobrium that governing Gaza had exposed them to.
Starting on August 17, 2005, Israel’s army moved in to remove all of Gaza’s Jews. The process was highly emotional and took a week. A total of 1,700 Jewish families left their farms and homes in Gaza. Knowing that Jewish graves would be desecrated, Israel’s chief rabbis ordered all Jewish cemeteries to be dug up and their bodies reburied in Israel. .
Before Gaza became entirely “Jew free,” American Jewish donors spent $14 million buying greenhouses from the Jewish farmers there and donated them to Gaza’s new Arab government. Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn even gave half a million of his own money to the scheme. Within moments of the final Jew leaving Gaza, however, the greenhouses were utterly destroyed, looted and smashed while Gaza’s police officers stood watching.
10. Violence Out of Gaza
Since 2005, anti-Jewish sentiment has swelled in Gaza. With the election of Hamas to govern the region in 2007, attacks on Israeli targets from Gaza increased. In the past 18 years, dozens of Israelis - as well as many Palestinians in Gaza and in areas under Palestinian Authority control - have been killed and injured by tens of thousands of rockets launched from Gaza. (Click here for a list of casualties preceding the October 7, 2023 attacks.) On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists entering Israel from Gaza perpetrated their worst massacre since the Holocaust, killing over 1,400 people and abducting over 220 prisoners.
Long a Jewish outpost, Gaza has also been the site of some of the most intense hatred against Jews throughout history. From the ancient Philistines, to antisemitic Greeks during the Hanukkah era, to fanatical Islamist resentment today, Gaza has been a place where Jews have been targeted - and yet have managed to survive and even triumph. May it be so again soon.
https://aish.com/gazas-long-jewish-history/
1 comment:
Beautiful history lesson!
Post a Comment