West Bank Samaritans mark Passover with blood and fireThere are photographs too.
MOUNT GERIZIM, West Bank (AFP) — Men chant in ancient Hebrew over the sheep, their white garments and knives lit by the fading dusk as they ready a sacrifice for the God of Israel in the heart of the West Bank.
The voice of the high priest crackles from a megaphone, the chanting reaches a climax and they wrestle dozens of animals to the ground, slitting their throats in a 5,000 year-old Passover ritual that may predate Judaism.
The faithful are Samaritans, a community of 710 people living in Israel and the occupied West Bank who trace their lineage to the ancient Israelites Moses led out of Egypt, an event they remember every year on a grassy hilltop near the Palestinian town of Nablus.
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UPDATE: Okay, I should have noted the glaring errors in the above. The Passover ritual is traced in the Bible back to the time of Moses, which is well under 5000 years ago, and in any case the account is legendary. The festival may have originally been a spring new year celebration associated with the barley harvest, but in the form we now have it, it is firmly anchored in the story of the Exodus.
Also, the Samaritans trace themselves to the ten tribes of Israel which were exiled when the Assyrians destroyed the Northern Kingdom in 722 BCE.
You can pretty much depend on journalists messing up Samaritan history and the various legendary versions of their origins. But this account of the modern Samaritan Passover ceremony is kind of cool.
