The Comfort of Kin: Samaritan Community, Kinship, and Marriage

431 Pages·2014·3.889 MB·English

by  Monika Schreiber

The Comfort of Kin
Brill’s Series in Jewish Studies
Series Editor
David S. Katz
VOLUME 51
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bsjs
The Comfort of Kin
Samaritan Community, Kinship, and Marriage
By
Monika Schreiber
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Portrait of the Allṭīf family, Mount Gerizim September 2006. Photo courtesy of the
Allṭīf family, Mount Gerizim.
Library of Congress cataloguing data
Schreiber, Monika, author.
 The Comfort of kin : Samaritan community, kinship, and marriage / By Monika Schrieber.
  pages cm. — (Brill’s series in Jewish studies ; 51)
 Revised version of the author’s dissertation—University of Vienna (Austria), Institute of Social and
Cultural Anthropology, 2009.
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
 ISBN 978-90-04-27424-2 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-27425-9 (e-book) 1. Samaritans.
2. Minority families—Israel. 3. Israel—Ethnic relations. I. Title.
 DS129.S37 2014
 305.6’96817—dc23
2014007363
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering
Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities.
For more information, please see brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 0926-2261
isbn 978 90 04 27424 2 (hardback)
isbn 978 90 04 27425 9 (e-book)
Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior written permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided
that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive,
Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
The writing of this book was made possible by the
kindness and generosity of the Samaritans. It is to this
great community that I dedicate this book.
∵

Contents
Acknowledgments  viii
Author’s Note  x
List of Figures  xii
List of Tables  xiii
List of Charts  xiv
Introduction: Who Are the Samaritans?  1
Part I
Samaritan Ethnicity and Community  17
1 A Community of Faith  19
2 An Accidental People: A Survey of Samaritan History  38
3 A Community of Practice  87
4 No Exit, No Entrance? The Bounds of Community  136
Part II
Samaritan Family and Marriage  157
5 It’s All in the Family: From Ethnic Identity to Practical Kinship  159
6 Bintī li-ibn ʿammhā—My Daughter is for Her Cousin:
Samaritan Marital Preferences  180
7 Too Close for Comfort? A Critical View of an Ancient Legacy  243
8 Single, Samaritan, Male: A Local Discourse on Minority and
Choice  285
9 The Family Politic  334
Epilogue: Will the Samaritans Endure?  360
References  369
Index  392
Acknowledgments
This book is the revised and updated version of my doctoral thesis, which was submit-
ted to the University of Vienna, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, more
than four years ago, in early 2009.
First, I must thank the members of the Samaritan community, without whose coop-
eration the thesis could not have been written. They have given generously of their
time and hospitality, accepted my questions and my eavesdropping, and allowed me to
participate in their personal memories, opinions, assessments, hopes, and doubts.
Misinterpretations of what I have heard and seen are entirely my fault, but I have not
deliberately distorted or made up statements. For various reasons, I cannot thank eve-
rybody by name. Still, I cannot resist mentioning Lily and Yefet ben Ratson Tsedakah
in Holon, who have treated me as a family member for many years. And I shall always
remember Batyah Tsedakah, of blessed memory, with respect and gratitude.
The late Ferdinand Dexinger, Professor at the Vienna Institute of Jewish Studies,
instilled in me an interest in the Samaritans, facilitated my first contacts with people
in this community, and provided access to out-of-the-way sources. Andre Gingrich at
the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology in Vienna introduced me to social
anthropology as an undergraduate and encouraged me to embark on the study of the
Samaritans for a master’s thesis in the early 1990s as well as for the subsequent
Ph.D. Wolfgang Kraus, at the same institute, supervised the Ph.D. with interest and
patience. Finally, the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe supported the work on
this book through its Small Grants Programme to Prepare Theses for Publication.
For most of my professional life, I have been a part-time anthropologist, making my
living in another profession and squeezing my scholarly ambitions somewhere into a
work routine that differs considerably from that of the anthropological universe. This
has had certain advantages: my work experience as a librarian in the field of Jewish
studies has combined with my anthropological training to yield a multidisciplinary
perspective of the sort I could not have achieved as a full-time anthropologist. On the
other hand, it has delayed the completion of this work far beyond the intended time,
so that my final thanks go to those whose patience and indulgence have been repeat-
edly tested: Jennifer Pavelko, Katie Chin, and Julia Berick at Brill; David S. Katz for his
readiness to include my book into Brill’s Series in Jewish Studies; Robin Nobel and
Jennifer Spiegel at the Rothschild Foundation in London; the copy editor, Gene
McGarry, who has read and edited more than one draft of this work and given invalu-
able advice, not only regarding the subtleties of the English language; and my husband
David, who can take credit for having nudged me to complete the Ph.D. in the first
place and who has provided the technical support badly needed for the statistical anal-
ysis and graphical documentation of the Samaritan family and marriage. Neither he
acknowledgments ix
nor our children, Daphne and Raphael, have ever known me without this project.
Obviously, they too needed a lot of attention, which I have gladly given to them. Thus,
in place of the apologies to neglected loved ones with which acknowledgments often
conclude, I apologize to the book, which has long been clamoring to be set free, and to
all those involved in its production for having spent with my family so many hours in
which I could have been writing.
Author’s Note
The chief languages in use in the Samaritan communities are Hebrew and Arabic; in
addition, a number of handbooks of religious law and practice are preserved and stud-
ied in Aramaic, and several families have names of Aramaic derivation. When translit-
erating words and proper names into English, I have followed in the main the systems
prescribed by the Library of Congress for Hebrew (which also serves here for Aramaic)
and Arabic. In some cases the same sound is transliterated differently depending on
whether it appears in an Arabic or Hebrew word: ṣ and q in Arabic, versus ts and ḳ in
Hebrew. If a name or word has a common English equivalent, as in the case of biblical
names, I have generally used it; likewise I have used the English names of the books of
the Bible.
All translations into English from the Hebrew, Arabic, German, and French are
mine; thanks are due to Klaus Neundlinger for preparing a translation of parts of the
Italian edition of the Kitāb al-Kāfī (see chapters 3 and 7).
Every effort has been made to trace and contact holders of copyright and rights of
privacy and to obtain their permission for use of the photographs. The author apolo-
gizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections
that should be incorporated in future editions of the book.
Throughout the book, genealogical diagrams and family trees support the narrative.
They are composed of the following symbols:
male individual or patrilineal group of descent
female individual (Samaritan descent)
female individual (Jewish descent)
male individual, deceased, or patrilineal group of descent, extinct