Israeli President Isaac Herzog has presented a special stone inscription to the Museum of the Bible’s first-ever major exhibition on the Samaritans.
The exhibition, created in collaboration with Yeshiva University, provides unprecedented access to the life, culture and history of the 2,000-year-old community.
“I’m so pleased that this inscription, which bears the mark of human faith, intention and creativity across the ages, will be part of the very first exhibition about the Samaritan Israelite community,” he said.
A large stone inscription loaned by the Israeli presidential house and the Israel Antiquities Authority is one of the six objects on loan from Israel. The Samaritan Hebrew inscription originated in the medieval Samaritan synagogue in Kefar Kalil and was published by Itzhak Ben-Zvi, Israel’s second president and a Samaritan historian.
For millennia, the Samaritans have resided in the Land of Israel beside their sacred mountain. They are descended from the Israelite tribe of Ephraim. They are mentioned in biblical and rabbinic sources, but few people know that this ancient group still survives in the present world as a micro-community.
