The Samaritan Shavuot: A Seven-Day Celebration of the Feast of Weeks

Editor's note: The origin of the Samaritans, and the date of the schism between Samaritans and what became mainstream Judaism is debated. For one view of the Samaritans and their early history, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans. Most significantly, for the Samaritan community, only the five books of the Torah are canonical. These books appear in a form different from that in the Masoretic text, an issue we will explore in the future. It is noteworthy that some of these differences are attested among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Samaritan community possesses a text of Joshua written in Arabic and dating to the medieval period; it is not canonical and diverges radically in places from the rabbinic Joshua.

For the sake of clarity, the readers should know that we do not refer to ourselves as Samaritans, but as “the Sons of Israel, Keepers of the Truth of the Torah.” Nevertheless, since we have been called Samaritans from ancient times until the present, we make use of the term when discussing ourselves with members of the the outside world for simplicity’s sake. Thus, I adopt this convention here as well.

This year, 2014 in the Christian calendar, 3652 in the Samaritan reckoning (we count from the entrance of the Israelites into the Promised Land under Joshua), the week of Shavuot falls out from Monday June 2 through Sunday June 8.

In Samaritan interpretation, Bet El or Luz is another name for Mount Gerizim in Shechem [Nablus].

We identify Mount Morayah as Mount Gerizim in front of Aalon Moorah [Elon Moreh] in Genesis 12:6.

The Samaritan Book of Joshua ch. 24 describes Joshua establishing the Tabernacle on Mount Gerizim. Chapter 43 describes the Tabernacle in Shiloh as an alternative worship site built by the rebel priest, Eli.

This idea that the mountain of God is also the future Garden of Eden has some Jewish sources as well; see, for example, Ezekiel 28:13-14.

Although the service begins at midnight, the Samaritan day begins at sunset.

Like the Jews, we do not pronounce the Tetragrammaton (four-letter name of God). The term Shehmaa is the Aramaic version of the same locution used by Jews, Hashem, meaning, “the name.” Once in each prayer we pronounce The Name only by its four letters, one by one י־הוה, and this is the ancient use of The Name in the Samaritan cult.

The Samaritan pronunciation of Elohim, God.

The translation comes from, Benyamim Tsedaka (translator and editor) and Sharon Sullivan (co-editor), The Israelite Samaritan Version of the Torah: First English Translation Compared with the Masoretic Version (Eerdmans, 2013). The final piece of the commandment that describes the location of the mountain is referred to as “the seven location witnesses.”