My husband and I recently visited the village of Peki’in, 40 minutes from our home in the Galil. It was incredibly moving to meet Margalit Zinati, the 86-year-old lone surviving Jew of Peki’in, and to visit the cave where some speculate Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai hid from his Roman oppressors. I love that every single corner of Israel not only has such a wealth of geopolitical and religious history but that we feel a genuine spiritual connection and link to the Land we now call home.
When the Second Temple in
Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, a few families survived the starvation
and massacres and managed to flee to other areas in Israel. Twenty-four
families of kohanim thus settled in
different parts of the Galil, including three places near where I live, but
these villages today (Kfar Yasif, Shraram, and Arrabe) are strictly Arab
(Muslim, Christian or Druze).
Peki’in, high on a mountaintop in
the Galilee, is another village settled by Jews from the time of the Second
Temple. Three families of kohanim
came to live there as well. Without a Temple to serve, the kohanim were now-unemployed. The Talmudic sage Rabbi Yehoshua ben
Haninah transmitted Torah in Peki’in. The synagogue served as his house of
study. It was destroyed by an earthquake in 1837 but rebuilt in 1873. Two
stones in the synagogue are said to have been brought by the kohanim from the destroyed Second
Temple, and they can be seen there to this day.
There is a discussion in the
Talmud between Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (known as the “Rashbi”).
Rabbi Yehuda praised the Romans for their architecture and engineering. Rabbi
Shimon bar Yochai, one of Rabbi Akiva’s greatest disciples, was a strong
opponent of the Roman regime, and retorted that the Romans were self-serving
and brought immorality and hardship. When the Romans got wind of the
conversation, they sentenced the Rashbi to death for sedition. Rabbi Shimon bar
Yochai avoided capture and spent several months hiding with his son Rabbi Elazar
in different places in the Galilee, finally settling in a cave in Peki’in where
they hid for 13 years. The cave was close to a spring and a carob tree, which
provided their sustenance.
To preserve their clothes, father
and son buried themselves up to their necks in sand, only wearing their clothes
on the Sabbath, and learned Torah all day, every day. It was in this cave that
the Rashbi studied Kabbalah and wrote the holy Zohar, the original book of Kabbalah. With the death of Emperor
Hadrian, the decree against the Rashbi and Rabbi Elazar was nullified, and
after 13 years they finally emerged from the cave that had served them so well.
Today considered a holy site, the
cave and a huge carob tree (perhaps an offshoot of the original?) are visited
by Jews and Arabs alike. The Arabs refer to the place as “Bnei Yakov” (sons of
Jacob). The opening is narrow and the cavern is mostly blocked off by boulders,
said to be the result of a major earthquake. Candles, coins, oil and hastily
written supplications are placed at the entrance to the cave by pilgrims and
tourists.
Over time, much land was stolen
from the Jews. In modern times, things did not get any better. The Jews were surrounded
by Druze, Christian, and Muslim neighbors, but some years were peaceful. The
Jews assimilated, not in religion, but in adopting Arab dress and language and were
generally influenced by Arab culture. These Jews were known as “Mustarabim.”
Unfortunately, Jewish homes and
land continued to be misappropriated. In the 1920s, there were 50 families
still in Peki’in, and a Jewish school was built. In the 1930s, during the Great
Arab Revolt, several Arab pogroms resulted in Jews being terrorized and
murdered. Many surviving Jews fled Peki’in in the years 1938-1940, never to
return. This was the only time in Peki’in’s history that the town was devoid of
Jews since the days of the destruction of the Temple.
Ironically, almost all of the
remaining Jewish property was legally sold to Arabs in the 1940s by the Jewish
Agency/Jewish National Fund. Disregarding Peki’in’s important historical Jewish
legacy, they decided that, for the remaining Jews’ own safety, it was best for
them to settle elsewhere. The Agency used the money from the property sales to
buy land to establish “Peki’in Hachadasha” – a “new” Peki’in village located a
few miles away.
Only a single determined, heroic
Jewish family returned to Peki’in in 1940, the Zinati family, direct
descendants of one of the three priestly families who came from the destruction
of the Second Temple in Jerusalem to Peki’in so many generations ago. The Zinati
patriarch had been rounded up by a gang of Arabs and taken to the town square.
The mob said he was a waste of a bullet and prepared a bonfire and kerosene to
burn him alive. It was only through the intervention of a Muslim neighbor who
saved his life at the last possible moment that he survived.
Life became increasingly
difficult, and when the school closed down, the Zinati children were sent to
boarding school in Jerusalem, with only the parents remaining in Peki’in. The
son eventually married and left to raise a family elsewhere. Only the Zinati
daughter, Margalit (born in 1931) who by now had finished school, remained in
Peki’in with her parents. At that point, she decided her own fate: she would
never marry. She felt obligated to care for her parents as they aged, and she
knew that if she got married, she would be forced to live with her husband
outside of Peki’in. She was determined to keep a Jewish presence in Peki’in
alive, no matter what the cost.
The last Jew of Peki’in, Margalit
Zinati, is not going anywhere. She still receives visitors daily. She wakes up early
and hobbles to the synagogue, greeting her neighbors in Arabic along the way.
There, she takes a broom and begins sweeping the synagogue interior, as well as
the courtyard with its enormous mulberry tree. She loves the tourists and
Israelis who flock there to see a living testament to a nearly forgotten era.
She entertained us in her heavily-accented Hebrew, reminiscing about her childhood,
her neighbors, and Jewish life in Peki’in. She points out the artifacts in the
synagogue that were brought by the displaced and exiled priests from the Holy
Temple over 2,000 years ago when they fled Jerusalem.
She explains that she is still
getting over a bout of pneumonia, but she bends without much difficulty to pick
up some fallen mulberries off the courtyard ground, walks to an outdoor sink
and washes them off, offering us a handful of the fruit. Her eyes twinkle, and
she beams with pride over her role as caretaker of such an important place. She
shows us pictures from numerous awards ceremonies where she was honored, and
brags that she was chosen to light the torch for Israel’s 70th Independence
Day celebration earlier this year.
She showers her visitors with
blessings, and they repeatedly wish her “good health, until 120.” As we get
ready to leave, she escorts us from the courtyard. “Of all the Jews, only we
returned,” she says. “The other families were too scared. We’re not afraid of
anyone. We fear only Hashem above.”
