by Bruce Feiler
Ultimately we settled on a guiding principle: Our goal was to place the biblical stories in the historical and cultural context of the ancient Near East. Time and again, rather than focus on every story in the text, or even every interesting story in the text, we decided to concentrate on stories that could be enhanced by being in the places themselves. The story of Jacob and his brother Esau wrestling in Rebekah’s womb, for example, while fascinating on many levels, struck us as not likely to be enriched by traveling to a specific location. The stories of Sodom and Gomorrah, by contrast, and the crossing of the Red Sea might easily take on new meanings by visiting their settings. In Judaism, the traditional process of analyzing scripture is called midrash, from the Hebrew term meaning search out or investigate; in Christianity, this process is referred to as exegesis, from the Latin word meaning the same thing. In effect, what Avner and I undertook was topographical midrash, a geographical exegesis of the Bible.
In that spirit, we decided to begin our travels in Israel with a bit of a long shot. Our destination this morning was Shechem, the first place Abraham stops in Canaan and the next place the Bible mentions after Harran. The text makes no mention of what route Abraham, his wife, Sarah (she’s actually called Sarai at the moment, as he is still called Abram), and his nephew Lot took to Canaan. Based on road patterns in the ancient world, one of the most logical places for him to cross into the Promised Land would have been a natural ford in the Jordan River just south of the Sea of Galilee, where the Damia Bridge is located today. Though we were already in the Promised Land, we decided to ask if the Israeli Army would let us walk across the bridge to the Jordanian side, then walk back, seeing what Abraham might have seen. Avner explained this idea to the sergeant, who remained at attention. After hearing the explanation, the officer removed his walkie-talkie and relayed our request.
The border post was astir that morning. It was a small crossing—the Jordan here is narrow enough for a horse to jump—but tidy, decorated with cacti, olive trees, and oleanders. The gate was blue and white. Every few minutes a Palestinian truck would approach, ferrying oranges, honeydew, or polished limestone. The driver would dismount and hand over his papers, which the guards would stamp and return. Then the guards would roll open the gate, the truck would pass, and the whole process would start again. We were just becoming lulled by the routine, when suddenly we heard static on the walkie-talkie. The sergeant removed it and held it for us to hear:“I don’t care if they write a book about the Bible,” the voice said. “I don’t care if they rewrite the Bible itself. But they’re not going to do it in a military zone, and they’re not going to do it on my bridge.”
The sergeant replaced his walkie-talkie and shrugged. “Sorry,” he said, “only Palestinians.”
We returned to the highway and turned west toward the mountains. Shechem is located at the northern edge of the central spine of mountains that traverse much of Israel and the West Bank. Our goal today was to travel down this spine, visiting first Shechem and then Bethel, the first two places Abraham stops. The following day we would travel farther south, to the Negev, Israel’s desert region and the setting of Sodom and Gomorrah. Avner suggested we use this time to discuss the historical background of the patriarchs’ encounters in Canaan.
As we left the Damia, the road began to climb almost immediately, from six hundred feet below sea level along the Jordan River to two thousand feet above in less than twenty miles. The terrain changed just as quickly, from bleak desert crumbs to garden-fresh greenery. Vendors began to appear, hawking tomatoes, cauliflower, and radishes bunched like roses. My ears began to pop. Deviations like this are commonplace in Israel, a country one-quarter the size of Scotland with as much geographic diversity as the British Empire at its peak. That diversity—and the strategic challenges it poses—may also be a central factor in why Abraham came here in the first place.
For much of history, the narrow strip of land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean has been a curiosity, the foyer to the world, a place to pass through but not to stay. The Egyptians called it “Kharu,” the Greeks and Romans “Palestina.” The Syrians called it “Canaan.” Whatever they called it, everyone coveted it, though none could control it. From its inception, the Fertile Crescent was structured like a modern American shopping mall, with two anchor stores on either end linked by a string of smaller, more vulnerable stores that were completely dependent on their larger neighbors for their economic well-being. In this case, Egypt and Mesopotamia were the anchors, and as they went so went Canaan.
One reason for this dependency is that even though Canaan contained some of the world’s biggest cities, these cities were never able to organize themselves into a coherent political body. Instead they were clients of the great powers, divided and conquered by their own crippling mix of mountains, valleys, coastline, and desert, as well as their lack of water. As Avner pointed out, “The Egyptians used to joke that Canaan was ‘that poor country dependent on rain.’ ” This reality sets up one of the crueler ironies in the history of the Bible. Geography prevented the development of a great empire in Canaan, but it was that lack of an empire that may have allowed God to promise the land to Abraham. In other words, the Promised Land, a place that for three thousand years has proven notoriously difficult to control, became the Promised Land in large measure because in the preceding three thousand years no one had been able to control it either.
Besides being true to ancient geographic conditions, the biblical story is also remarkably true to current ones. The State of Israel can be roughly divided into three sections—the head and shoulders of the Galilee; the torso, made up of the central hills, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv; and the legs and feet of the Negev. The 1937 British plan to partition Palestine gave Jews only the head and shoulders, with a bit of coast. The UN mandate of 1948 added the legs and feet. The central hills, excluding Jerusalem, were originally given to the Arabs and have been fought over ever since. Jews have based their claim to the land largely on the Bible. The central spine of the country was home to most of the major episodes in the Five Books, also called the Pentateuch, from the Greek word meaning five-book work. These sites include Shechem, Bethel, Hebron, and Beer-sheba. The Palestinian claim was based largely on the fact that they were living in these areas before Jews began immigrating in large numbers in the nineteenth century. In recent years, some Palestinians have shifted their claim, saying they were also on the land before the patriarchs arrived in the nineteenth century B.C.E. Palestinians, they now say, are direct descendants of the Canaanites.
About an hour after we left the Damia we arrived at the checkpoint outside Nablus, the Arab name for Shechem, which was handed over to the Palestinians in the mid-1990s. As one of the first cities in the nascent state, Nablus has been a constant site of tension and, after canceling two trips to the area over safety concerns, we decided to rent a car from a Palestinian company in East Jerusalem to save ourselves from being stoned. Our car had Palestinian license plates—white instead of yellow—and several stickers with Arabic writing. They seemed to work. The Palestinian border guide was much friendlier than the Israeli had been and sat on our hood and smoked a cigarette while Avner telephoned our escort. “The Palestinians are just so appreciative that an Israeli came to visit,” Avner said.
In a few moments we were joined by Suher, an official at the local tourist authority who was one of the Palestinian tour guides Avner had trained in Jewish history. She was demure, and a little nervous. She had been sent to town seven months earlier. “I don’t consider living in Nablus living,” she confessed. “It’s very different from Jerusalem. Gossip here is at a very high level.” She drove into town, which was crowded with white concrete slab buildings bedecked with rugs hanging out to air. Fruit trees dotted the central square, which was bustling and well manicured, though the telephone boxes had no telephones. Across the street was a large institutional building that had been the British headquarters, then the Israeli headquarters, and was now the Palestinian headquarter
s. An enormous portrait of Yasser Arafat hung from the roof, giving the town the feel of a place poised between democracy and dictatorship.
After a few minutes we arrived at the site of ancient Shechem. Compared with other archaeological sites, this one was fairly run-down, with grass growing over untended mounds of dirt and a graveyard of old auto parts encroaching on the city wall. Excavations show that Shechem was a thriving community as early as the fifth millennium B.C.E., but wasn’t fully developed until the nineteenth century B.C.E., reaching prosperity a few hundred years later. The lack of significant remains from the time of Abraham has led some to speculate that Shechem might have been added by later editors of the Bible.
Either way, Shechem’s prominence for biblical writers is clear. After arriving in Canaan, Abraham passes through the land “as far as the site of Shechem,” which is located alongside the “terebinth of Moreh,” a term usually interpreted to mean “wise oak tree.” God once again appears to Abraham and renews his promise:“I will give this land to your offspring.” Abraham expresses his appreciation by building an altar on the site.
We walked around for a few minutes, and Avner pointed out the city gate and a number of storehouses, as well as a temple and altar from the early second millennium B.C.E., the time of the patriarchs. The Canaanite altars were in town, he noted, while the mention of the oak in Genesis suggests Abraham camped outside the walls, a position consistent with his status as a migrant. The existence of several altars inside the city walls suggests that seminomadic clans might have been welcome inside the city, the two communities—Canaanites and proto-Israelites—living side by side. For Suher, this was welcome news, archaeology that could be used to mend, not divide. But even she couldn’t avoid drawing political conclusions.
“We believe this is a very important place, a Canaanite place,” she said. “We believe that Canaanites, they are Arabs. That supports our rights on this land.”
“So you believe the Arabs were here before the Israelites,” I said.
“We believe that, very strongly.”
“How do you make the connection?”
“The Canaanites are Arabs, from Saudi Arabia, from Hejaz. I know that we, the Palestinians, are also from the Arabs.” Though historians don’t necessarily agree on this point—most say Canaanites were drawn from all over the Near East, not just Arabia—I asked her if this idea would have an impact on the future.
“I don’t know if we can make real peace,” she said. “I don’t know if we will ever settle who was here before the other. But we can live together. We are human. The land is for those who build it. For those who live on it. The Romans were here, but it’s not their land. They went back to their country. If we leave the land, we don’t deserve it.”
“In other words, the Israelites left, so it should be your land.”
“Yes. But the Jews are much more clever than we are. They believe in this land more than we do. I don’t know why. They, their children: they are very serious about this place.”
“So what’s your dream for Shechem?”
“I love this place,” she said. “I don’t know why. I would love to clean it, to bring more people here. To bring children here. It’s a feeling. Maybe because we are raised to love this place, to love our history. It’s a history of pain. This place has seen a lot of pain. I hope it will go away.”
We said good-bye at our car and turned south toward Bethel, the site of Abraham’s next layover. We were passing through one of the poorest pockets of the West Bank, a rocky, agricultural no-man’s-land. Small trucks and taxis choked the road, which was dotted with mosques and coffeehouses that blocked the view of ageless olive groves. The taxis came in a variety of shades—Mello Yello, mango, Tang—everything around, but not quite, New York City yellow-cab yellow. The road signs were all in Arabic—no Hebrew, no English, no neon. Drenched in sun and dust, the landscape looked like paper, toasted, its edges singed by fire.
In time the hills became more rolling and the olive green a bit more plentiful. We veered around Ramallah on an Israeli bypass road and rolled to the gate of Bethel, a modern Jewish settlement in the midst of Arab domain. Such communities are the tinderbox of the Palestinian-Israeli relationship, an ever-shifting frontier of faith that triggers passions and hatreds that could only be aroused by the potent braiding of faith, family, and text.
We waited for the yellow gate—twice as big as the one on the border with Jordan—and proceeded inside the community. Suddenly we were in Israel again. The buses were red, the signs were in Hebrew, the children wore kippahs, or skullcaps, on their heads. Yet the place felt different, tense. The school, the playground, even the bus stops were protected by fences. The entire place was swathed in barbed wire. It was a voluntary ghetto, a Wild West outpost of choice, not force.
We drove up the hill and decided to stop by the director’s office, which was in a Quonset hut. The secretary, whose hair was hidden in a net as per Orthodox tradition, looked at us skeptically, as if to say, “Are you for us or against us?” After a brief negotiation, the director agreed to meet us for five minutes. We stepped into his office, which was lined with maps and blueprints. He had a grimace for a face, and a scar across his cheek. I asked him why he was here. “We are here because of the Five Books,” he said. “We are living in Bethel, on the road of the patriarchs, and this is our contract.” He placed his hand on the Bible, which sat prominently on his desk. Of all the places Abraham visited, why did he stop here, I asked. “I cannot tell,” he said. “It’s not a high place. It’s difficult to defend. If there’s a possibility to ask Abraham why, we will ask.”
Back in the waiting room, Avner remembered that he knew an American couple in town. The husband, a guide, was working, but his wife invited us to stop by their home. It was a modest home, barely large enough for the couple, their five children, and several thousand books. “They’re my husband’s,” explained Fern Dobuler, who, like him, grew up in a moderate Jewish household on Long Island. “When we first became religious, I had all these questions. Every time Abby couldn’t answer one of them, he went out and bought a book.”
Fern was garrulous and gesticulative, in a Catskills-real-estate-broker sort of way. A phys-ed teacher by training, she balanced her athleticism with her religious need for modesty by wearing a long skirt made of sweatpant material and covering her head with a New York Yankees cap. She met her husband in college in New York, where both were active in a pro-Zionist group. One year Yitzhak Rabin, then the Israeli ambassador to the United States, paid a visit. “If you really want to help,” he told them, “move to a settlement and be a pioneer.” Others delivered similar messages. When Abby’s grandmother was dying, she made them promise: “Don’t forget you’re Jews. Don’t forget Israel.” A week after she died, Fern gave birth to a daughter and slowly the couple embraced a more traditional brand of Judaism—saying daily prayers, resting on Shabbat. Eventually they came to Israel for a summer.
“We had three children at the time,” Fern said. “We rented an apartment in the Old City. It was fabulous. My kids went to the Western Wall by themselves. You could smell history in the air. We came back to New York and every single Friday night Abby would start to cry. ‘I wish we could live in Israel. A Jew belongs in Israel.’ It was like Chinese water torture. He just wore me down.”
The following year they sold their house, their two cars, their real-estate business, and moved back. “At first it was very hard,” she said. “We had to learn how to put on gas masks. My oldest son sat in school for a year unable to understand anything. I kept saying, ‘What did I do to my kids?’ It was hard for me, too. I missed my friends. I missed my house. I missed my central air-conditioning. I lay on my bed at night, saying, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t do this.’ My father thought Abby had brainwashed me.”
Worse, their money soon ran out and they had to flee the high prices of Jerusalem. “We drew a circle with a half-hour radius,” she said, “and started looking at communities. We knew it had to
be religious. We wanted something established enough to have teenagers. We wanted a place new enough to have young children. We wanted diversity. This place just fit the bill.”
“There’s one thing you didn’t mention,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “The Bible is not the reason we came to Bethel, but once we were living here, every time Bethel was mentioned in the weekly Torah portion, only then did I feel part of the community. Part of the extended Jewish people. I remember the first time they read the part where Abraham builds an altar in Bethel, and I thought, That’s where I live!”
The feeling only grew, she said, once they realized the grave political situation. “Until they had the bypass road, there wasn’t a day we would drive without being stoned. It was extremely unpleasant. Once, when my sister-in-law was here, somebody dropped a cinder block on the car. Not a rock, a cinder block. The whole ceiling on the passenger side caved in. I had been sitting in the back with my sister-in-law, who fell to the floor, shaking. If I had been sitting in the passenger seat I’d probably be dead.”
I suggested that she seemed remarkably free of anger.
“I don’t hold the anger,” she said. “You can’t live that way. You have to live a normal life. I just don’t want to give up any more land. I don’t want to give up my home.”
“Do you feel living here has brought you closer to God?”
“Yes. Because I see purpose in our living here. If I didn’t, it would be very hard. I wonder how anybody who’s Israeli and not religious can stand it. If they don’t have that connection to God, with all the aggravation and hardship, why stay here?”
“Why do you stay here?”
“I stay here because Jews belong in the land of Israel. God gave us this land, and it’s not up to us to give it back. When we stood at Sinai as a Jewish people and said, ‘We accept the Torah,’ we didn’t just do it for that generation in the desert. We did it for all future generations.”
