Jewish Towns Populated by Arab Late-Comers: Part 2

Hillel Fendel

Historian Dr. Rivka Shpak-Lissak has embarked on an ambitious project, detailing the history of Jewish towns in the Land of Israel that are now known as Arab. Seven of her articles in this series have appeared on the Omedia website, and she says she has many more coming.

The bottom line, Dr. Lissak told Arutz-7, is that the Arab claim that they have been here for "thousands of years" is far from true. In fact, she says, most of the Galilee's formerly Jewish towns were populated by Arabs only within the last 300 years or so - erasing many signs of the towns' Jewish origins in the process. "The goal of all the rulers of the Holy Land, from the times of the Romans and onward, was always to rid the Land of the Jews," she said. "Finally, they succeeded. Many Jews simply left the Land rather than convert to Islam."

Dr. Lissak's articles on the towns of Gush Halav and Kafr Kana were summarized here.

Tzipori: Coming Full-Circle
Another important once-Jewish town is Tzipori, just north of Nazareth and Migdal HaEmek, where Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi concluded his monumental work, the Mishna. When the Supreme Israeli-Arab Tracking Committee prepared a "march of return" from Nazareth to Tzipori, to mark Catastrophe Day [Israel's Independence Day], Dr. Lissak wrote, "We should remind the marchers that Tzipori was a Jewish city for 2,000 years, while the [adjacent] Arab village Safuriya was founded only in 1561."

Tzipori was known to have been Jewish in the times of Ezra and Nechemiah, and was the administrative capital of the Galilee under the Hashmoneans (2nd century BCE). Pompei conquered it for Rome in 63 C.E., but it remained proudly Jewish; Josephus called it the "pride of the entire Galilee." Towards the end of the 2nd century C.E., the Sanhedrin (Supreme Jewish Court) relocated to Tzipori, which served as a center for Torah study and dissemination; its scholars took part in the formation of the Jerusalem Talmud.

Beginning in the 5th century, the proportion of Christians in the town increased; there is evidence of continued Jewish presence for at least another 500 years afterwards. The present-day Arab village of Tzafuriya was founded nearby in 1561, and its residents took part in the Arab riots against the Jews near 400 years later, in 1936-9. During the 1948 War of Independence, Tzipori was the site of a major battle in which the young Israeli army routed Arab forces comprised of neighboring village residents and reinforcements from Syria and Lebanon.

In 1949, the modern-day Moshav Tzipori was founded by Bulgarian and Turkish Jews, joined later by Jewish immigrants from Romania. Over 600 Jews currently live there, sometimes studying the Mishna - the marble gravesite of whose author, Rabbi Yehuda, has been uncovered nearby.

Once again, however, Arabs are trying to de-Judaize the area, Caroline Glick reports: Arab squatters from the Kablawi clan have, in recent years, built themselves an illegal village of some 20 houses in the form of storage containers on stolen Jewish land adjacent to the fields of Tzipori. Jews in the area have established a replica of the early 20th-century HaShomer (Guardsman) for the same purpose as its forebearer: protecting Jewish farming communities from Arab marauders.

Arabeh: Forgotten Jewish Roots
Another example of a Jewish-city-turned-Arab in the Galilee is Arabeh, six kilometers south of Carmiel. During the Second Temple period, it was a Jewish town named Arav, the third-largest such town in the Galilee. It was destroyed by the Romans during the Great Rebellion of 66-70, though its inhabitants had previously fled to safety. It was later rebuilt and served as a center of Torah study; Rabi Yochanan ben Zakkai, who lived there for 18 years, and Rabi Hanina ben Dosa established a yeshiva there.

When the Christians became more powerful in the Land, the Jews of Arav, together with the other Jews of the Galilee, suffered humilitation and the burning of their synagogues. Even worse occurred in subsequent centuries at the hands of the Christians and ruling Byzantines. Jewish presence in Arav apparently ended when the Arabs conquered the Holy Land in 638; even most of the Christians in the city converted to Islam. Some 300 years ago, the Moslems conducted a massacre of the Druze residents living nearby. Nearly 20,000 people live there today, most of them Moslems and some Christians. The town's Jewish roots are all but forgotten.

(to be continued)