Haifa, July 8.—In the early days of May there is annually celebrated at
Tiberias a festival in honour of the Rabbi Mâir, at the large shrine
built above his tomb, within a few hundred yards from the sulphur baths.
Thither, having terminated my visit to the Druses, I determined to
repair to witness the nocturnal ceremonies.
I was escorted to the extremity of the village of Hattin by a band of
young Druses, firing guns and singing complimentary odes, who thus
sought to speed with honour the parting guest, and soon found myself
crossing the plain and entering upon the steep descent that leads to the
shores of the lake. It was a soft, balmy evening, about sunset, when I
reached Tiberias, and found the whole population in movement.
The distance from the town to the tomb of the rabbi is about a mile and
a half along the lake shore, and the road was crowded with merry groups
of Jewish men, women, and children in gala dress, all flocking to the
place of meeting. The two or three boats of which the lake can boast
were even put into requisition, and were slowly drifting down, their
large sails hardly filled with the gentle breeze, and packed to
overflowing with women and children. Tiberias contains between three and
four thousand Jews, and certainly more than half that number must have
turned out, to say nothing of those attracted from Jerusalem, Safed, and
other places. As those who inhabit Tiberias are nearly all Sephardim, or
Spanish Jews, the men wear the Oriental dress, while the women indulge
in a costume in which the Western fashions seem grafted on those of the
East. The visitors, who were for the most part Ashkenazim, or German
Jews, could easily be distinguished, as they always appear in the
clothes to which they are accustomed in eastern Europe. It must be
confessed that the flowing robe of Asia is preferable to the long coat
or gabardine of Russia and Roumania.
The men usually walked, but a favourite method of locomotion among the
women was donkeyback, and very comical they looked, sitting astride very
wide pads, with their skirts well up to their knees, and their necks and
wrists and foreheads bedizened with ornaments, while their wigs were
often a perfect garden of flowers. However pretty some of the faces of
the younger members of the female community might be—and they could not
compare for good looks with the Druse girls—nothing can compensate for
the abominable practice which prevails among them of shaving their heads
and wearing wigs of black hair, which come low down upon the forehead,
and the falseness of which no attempt is made to disguise.
It occurred to me upon this occasion, as I contrasted their chevelure
with that of the Druses, to speculate on the custom of Druse
hairdressing, which is nothing more nor less than that square cutting
across the forehead of locks drawn over it which has been so much in
vogue in England and America for the last fifteen years, popularly
called “banging,” and which was supposed at first to be copied from the
well-known picture of Raphael as a child. I have since inquired of some
fashionable young Syrian ladies, and the younger ones assured me at
first that the Druses must have copied this from the Parisian fashions
lately introduced at Beyrout—an obvious impossibility. On applying to
older ladies, however, they confirm the curious fact that this banging
has always been a custom with the Druse people. The fine ladies of the
present generation have little guessed whom they were imitating in
setting saucers upon their own heads and those of their little ones, and
snipping their hair around them just above their eyes. Nothing could
exceed in vulgarity the tinsel ornamentation of the Jewish head-dresses,
and, to increase the effect, various pigments were apparently used by
many of the ladies to improve their complexions.
As this festival takes place in the height of the bathing season, the
shore of the lake at this point presented an appearance of unwonted
animation. There were some thirty or forty tents pitched round the
bath-house, which an enterprising Syrian has leased this year from the
government, and whitewashed; he even went so far as to offer to build a
carriage-road at his own expense for the mile and a half which it is
distant from the town, so as to accommodate patients who had no tents of
their own; but this was the thin edge of a wedge of civilization at
which the authorities took alarm, and he was sternly forbidden to spend
any of his own money for the public convenience in the manner proposed.
The result is that the bathers are all obliged to live in tents or mat
huts, which are unbearably hot during the day, or ride from the town and
back again for every bath.
Patients from all the neighbouring parts of Syria now mingled with the
Jewish crowd, and streamed up the short ascent which leads to the tomb,
the terrace of which was already thronged. Passing through an archway, I
entered a courtyard where the usual circular dance was in progress, the
performers being exclusively male. The bedizened females sat in groups,
feasting on good things they had brought with them, and smoking
narghiles. Their small children were tricked out gaudily, and by the
light of numerous flaring lamps the general effect was quaint and gay
enough.
Ascending from this scene of revelry up a massive stone stair, I entered
a chamber where the tomb of the rabbi was surrounded by a wooden
enclosure, inside of which were sundry rabbis and their neophytes
praying, with the swaying motion of the body peculiar to that act of
worship, the whole brilliantly lighted with lamps. There was in the
centre of this chamber, which was crowded, an immense chandelier, of
which only a few lamps were lighted, and beyond it I was ushered by a
Jew, who volunteered to be my guide, into another room, stifling hot, in
which sat the chief rabbi himself. Here a man was perpetually shouting
in a stentorian voice something which I failed to understand. The chief
rabbi, however, to whom I was introduced, explained to me that he was at
that moment selling by auction the privilege of lighting the bonfires
which were soon to blaze in honour of the deceased rabbi and Simon Ben
Jochai, who, however, seems to be buried elsewhere. This privilege was
put up at two napoleons each, and the first finally went for three, a
fact which the rabbi announced to the audience in a sonorous Hebrew
chant. Then the other lighting privilege was bought for a little less,
the money, according to my informant, being given to the poor. After
that a dozen more sales were made, simply for lamplighting, the amounts
bid averaging half a napoleon.
Then a sort of procession was formed, and the crowd surged out down the
steps to the courtyard, in the centre of which were two columns, each
surmounted by a sort of large saucer. The excitement now became great,
the dancing stopped, and men and women joined in noisy acclamations. A
man bearing aloft an iron cradle full of flaming rags, which had been
lighted by the highest bidder, placed them in the saucer at the top of
the column and poured a bottle of kerosene oil upon it. People now came
forward with offerings to be burned. These consisted, for the most part,
so far as I could judge, of old handkerchiefs and scarfs. The theory is
that they should be articles of value, covered with gold and silver
embroidery, and that, after they have been committed to the flames, the
residue of gold and silver which remains should be scraped up and given
to the poor; but I doubt whether the residue of the rags which I saw
would amount in value to ten cents. Then the second bonfire was lighted,
and as both piles blazed up and shed their lurid glow over the eager
faces of swarthy men, with their long ear-curls, and bedizened women,
the scene was in the highest degree novel and picturesque. The
proceedings were not, however, characterized by the gravity and harmony
befitting the occasion.
As I looked down upon the crowd from the steps upon which I was
standing, I observed suddenly a violent commotion, which soon culminated
in blows and sharp cries, and the crowd began to surge violently to and
fro. I failed to discover the cause of the disturbance, but it was
speedily interrupted by a strong body of Turkish police, who rushed in
brandishing their muskets and laying about them with the butt ends. The
riot speedily subsided under this opportune display of energy, and the
ringleaders were hustled off with commendable promptness.
Meantime a somewhat similar ceremony was taking place in the adjoining
courtyard, where some wicker lamps were being lighted. The pilgrims who
filled this court were Ashkenazim, and in their more European clothes
they were by no means so picturesque a crowd. It is a singular fact that
the Sephardim should be confined to one court and the Ashkenazim to
another. There is, indeed, very little sympathy between the two great
branches of the Jewish race in Palestine. They live for the most part in
different cities, and have but little intercourse with each other. Thus,
nearly all the Jews in Tiberias are Sephardim, while those at Safed are
Ashkenazim.
The ceremonies which I have just described are a mild edition of what
was to take place on a far larger and more important scale at Meron a
week later, but as these latter differ in no important respect from
those which I witnessed, I did not think it worth while to stay for
them. Jews come from great distances to take part in the burnings at
Meron, where a great number of bonfires are made in honour of the
numerous celebrated rabbis who are buried in the neighbourhood; and here
I was assured that articles of great value are consumed, and the
festivities are of a much more noisy character, and last through the
whole night instead of winding up before midnight, as was the case at
Tiberias. I did not even prolong my stay till this hour, satisfied with
having assisted at ceremonies which prove that the Jewish in not exempt
from that tendency which characterizes all other religions, of pandering
to the grosser tastes of the masses.