Peki'in Village

Jewish roots run deep in Peki'in Sunday, February 21, 1999   6 Adar 5759   Updated Sun., Feb. 21 20:36 By HAIM SHAPIRO (February 11) - The village of Peki'in, between Upper and Lower Galilee,   is the only place in the country where Jews have lived continuously from the time of the Second Temple. Located on a hillside, Peki'in is picturesque as well as noteworthy. Its new and old homes, many still boasting bits of masonry with Jewish symbols, bear silent witness to the village's Jewish past. I visited the village most recently with Amnon Gofer, the tour coordinator for the Hacienda Hotel, a new family spa in Ma'alot. Gofer explained that the hotel intends to combine a full range of sports and spa activities with excursions in the region. In the past, whenever I visited Peki'in, we always drove in on the main road and stopped at a restaurant where a seemingly ageless Druse woman appeared to be permanently positioned on the floor, making an endless supply of pitot on the iron brazier beside her. My visit with Gofer, however, was on a clear, brisk night. We arrived by car to a road above the center of the village and made our way downhill through a series of passageways too narrow to be called alleys. It seemed almost by chance that we came upon a giant carob tree, said to be hundreds of years old. The tree shelters and conceals the tiny cave that Shimon Bar-Yohai is said to have hidden in for 13 years, during the Roman persecution of the Jews. The cave, if it may be called that, is really just a crevice in the rock where the sage hid during the day. He came out only at night to drink from the nearby spring and eat the fruit of the carob tree. Today both Jews and non-Jews visit the cave, light candles on the small shelf inside and slip notes into cracks in the stone. From the cave it is just a short walk further downhill to the small fountain and square at the center of the village. Many of the homes are painted with symbols such as fish. In the square itself, as Gofer remarked, you could easily imagine yourself in a village in Italy, except that there is no cafe. Gofer said that he had asked the shopkeepers why they did not open a cafe, and they had answered that they feared the envy of their neighbors. Near the square is the synagogue that was built in 1873. However, it is decorated with Jewish symbols from the Talmudic period - a menora, a shofar, a lulav and the shovel used in connection with the Temple rites - which seems to indicate that it replaced an earlier building or series of buildings. When we arrived, the synagogue was locked. The keys are in the hands of Margalit Zeinati, a member of the only Jewish family living in Peki'in in 1948, when the State of Israel was established. We had seen the synagogue before and had no desire to bother Zeinati at night, but we did visit another Jewish inhabitant of the village, Ilan Hai, whose mother was a Zeinati. Hai was born in Hadera, where most of the Jews of the village fled during the Arab riots of 1936. His home is filled with creations he carved from olive wood, which seem to fall into a category somewhere between furniture and sculpture. Hai recalled his mother's stories of how an Arab neighbor had hidden the family in a cistern when gangs came from outside the village searching for Jews. He also spoke of the blissful periods when he and his family returned to the village for holidays such as Pessah or over summer vacation. Since my visit, Hai has acquired a large home which he is transforming into a visitors' center. One room will be a studio for his woodworking and the other will be a coffee shop. Slowly but surely, he seems intent on restoring a Jewish presence in Peki'in. © 1995-1999, The Jerusalem Post - All rights reserved