דער קערפער פֿון השם"The #Samaritans are different. They are a tiny community of around 800 souls, divided between #Holon and #KiryatLuza near #Nablus. They trace their ancestry back to the ancient #Israelites and possess a version of the #Torah that differs only slightly from our own. Their central point of departure from mainstream #Judaism is their belief that #MountGerizim, rather than #Jerusalem, is the divinely chosen place, together with their rejection of the Oral Law and #rabbinic tradition.
As I stood among them, watching ancient rituals performed with immense sincerity, hearing #Hebrew prayers and seeing #Torahscrolls carried with reverence, I could not help feeling that I was encountering not strangers, but long-lost cousins.
Their Torah is, with only relatively minor differences, our Torah. #Abraham, #Isaac, #Jacob, and #Moses are their ancestors no less than ours. Yet somewhere in the distant past, our paths diverged."
