Remembering the Beginning

The year was 1974 and the Yom Kippur War had just come to a very sad and tiring close.  And a number of idealistic young people realized that the Land of Israel was calling for its children to come home.  For seven years, the Biblical Heartland had been under Israeli control but so little had been done to settle the land.  These early pioneers realized that G-d was calling them and they acted.

Beginning in 1974, seven different attempts were made to create a new community in Samaria where no Jews had lived for centuries.  Each time, the government of Israel forced them to leave.  But finally, in December 1975, they succeeded.  After thousands had gathered at Sebastia, an Ottoman-era abandoned railway station, the Government relented and allowed 30 families to settle in a nearby army camp.  That was the beginning of the community of Kedumim. 

I was in Israel during that fateful December and planned to be among the thousands who converged on Sebastia.  But I overslept the opportunity.   Two weeks later, I hitched a ride out to the army camp that housed the fledgling community of Kedumim and spent the weekend there, sleeping in a very cold tent.  Some time after that, I visited the Sebastia railway station and absorbed the feeling of miracle that seemed to pervade the place.  And today, after living in Samaria for 35 years, I can honestly say that it all began then, in that place, in Sebastia.

So when we set out on Tuesday to hike to Sebastia, we will be reliving experiences that I and my generation took part in as we built these communities.  I remember when there were no Jews in Samaria, but our children do not remember that reality.  When I say Sebastia to my friends, we smile and recall the early days, when there was nothing here and we helped create the something that we see today.  When I say Sebastia to the younger generation, so many of them think only of the ruins of the ancient city of Samaria which the Romans renamed Sebastia in the second century,  They are often ignorant of how Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria began.

There will be old-timers there that day who will tell their story to all who will listen, young and old.  It is a tradition that deserves to be preserved, not just in the history books but in the lives and experiences of the young people who came in their wake.  Today, people often move to Judea and Samaria because they love the sense of community, the ability to live where our forefathers lived, or to settle a new place.  And while the challenges remain, especially the security ones, the challenge of starting from scratch has, thank G-d, become irrelevant.  Our enemies may not recognize it yet, but we know that we are here to stay.  Those early pioneers started something, having no idea if they would succeed.  Today, we can say with pride, we did succeed.  Thank G-d!