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The
history of Taybeh dates back 5000 years ago as one of the most
ancient places in Palestine established originally with the name
Ofra mentioned 11 times in the Old Testament and later called
Ephraim mentioned in the Gospel of John 11:54.
"Jesus therefore
walked no more openly among the Jews; but went thence unto a country
near the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim..."
4th century
Oral history tells us that Helen,
mother of the Emperor Constantine, made a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land and made her camp in Ephraim. From there she entered Jerusalem,
eventually finding the sacred cross of the Crucifixion. Later she
would sponsor building of the Nativity and the Ascension churches;
and yet another in Taybeh on ‘Gideon’s Hill’ where Jesus also stayed
right before his crucifixion. While the stone chapel honouring St.
George would not survive the future centuries, elegant ruins today
mark the Old and New Testament presence of the Lord, the devotion of
St. Helen of the New Rome, and the perseverance of those first
followers who accord today’s inhabitants their precious heritage.
The Emperor Constantine was the first to declare Christianity legal
in the region and put a stop to the persecutions of Christian
people.
11th – 12th
century
In the Islamic era, Holy Land Christians paid tax
(Jizzieh), so many converted to Islam at the time to escape the
burdens imposed on them. Entire villages changed faith, and their
churches became their mosques.
Others took their faith as a
way of life and remained devout to their beliefs, Ephraim earning
the village rename of Ephra (in the vernacular of
the day meaning
unpleasant) as a consequence.
But,
indication suggests Taybeh retained its special qualities. In the
late 12th century Muslim ruler Salah Eddin entered
Palestine. Met by Ephra’s greeters at his camp near Ramallah, the
Sultan was impressed by the small band of Christians who had dared
to invite him to their village. Finally visiting them, the
munificent leader could not reconcile the beautiful setting and warm
reception he received with the offensive name. So he changed it once
again – to Taybeh’ – the Good – by which it is still called today
because he called the people of the area Taybeehn.
19th – 20th
century
Residents of Taybeh, long worn by
political strife especially after the establishment of the state of
Israel, began exiting the village. Coinciding with the development
of mass means of transportation and the great flow of the Earth’s
desperate and poor to ‘new worlds’, emigration from Taybeh also
began. Residents (called Taybaweyeh) travelled by caravan to Haifa
and Jaffa where they boarded ships for freedom. Still others moved
to Jerusalem where commerce moved more freely. Today village
resilience is further stratified and diluted. With traditional
economic and social paths wiped out by oppression and the
emigration-option making persistent hardships increasingly
unacceptable to a people with choice, ‘abandonment’ mentality
appears. What was a level society deteriorates quickly over a short
period of time – by as much as 60% in less than 30 years. The
societal fabric in Taybeh today is exposed, threadbare, and
vulnerable as never before.
Economy & Society Today
Taybeh village is located on the West
Bank ridge inside the Occupied Territories of Palestine, about 25
km. north of Jerusalem. Historical lands number 24,000 dunums (dunum
=1000sq.) and stretch from north and west of the village all the way
to the Jordan Valley. A storybook landscape of olive groves, rolling
hills, arable plains, and desert, Taybeh can easily claim to one of
the loveliest natural setting in Palestine.
Agriculture and the exchange of
products formed Taybeh’s ancient and modern economies.
Traditionally, villagers grew fruit and produce, raised livestock.
Surplus was exported and battered for other merchandise. Cash
products included dried figs, grapes and wine, cheese, olives, and
especially olive oil. Markets were mainly local (Palestine,
Trans-Jordan). Imported items included clothes & textiles, spices,
salt, tobacco. Taybeh was a mercantile centre whose traders and
merchants moved on as threats to traditional ways moved in. Farm
lands to the east and the south-east of the village historically
sustained villagers and agriculture continued as a mainstay well
into this century. Until recently mainly all the Taybaweyeh lived
off the land. But after 1967 ever meagre subsistence-farming all but
ceased owing to Israeli confiscation of land and water resources.
Since then almost nothing is grown except olive trees.
Enforced repression of life-rights
has ghettoized Taybeh: Population, steady or above 4000 (as recently
as 1967), is now under 2000 and falling. Direct forces and attrition
have worn down the village in every way. A telling illustration of
the impact resulting emigration has had on the community. Taybeh’s
expanse of olive groves (one of the region’s oldest and finest),
covering 4000 dunums and numbering some 6000 mature trees, has, as a
result of population losses, fallen into neglect. The
spirit-sustaining oil and staple fruit is scavenged or paid to
pickers from other villages that do the work residents no longer
manage on their own. Local families receive a fraction of the fruit
and the oil from their own trees. Pickers keep the bulk for
themselves, including the jiffet (oil left in the husks after
pressing, and used for heating fuel in winter, or for the soap
production), brokering the surplus to a waiting market.
It is known that the
majority of those who go to jobs work outside the village; 40% of
the work force is travelling to jobs mainly in East Jerusalem,
Israel or the neighbouring Israeli colonies. Although there are no
exact figures, over 60% of Taybaweyeh are unemployed due to the
continued closures imposed by the Israeli army for security
purposes. Few have travel documents which need to be issued by the
Israeli authorities who refuse in almost every case to issue them.
So travel outside the village is risky (getting caught could lead to
imprisonment and/or hefty fines) and interruptions in work and pay
are common. The remainder work in Ramallah and its satellites, as
unskilled labour, or to provide basic services for their village.
Within the Palestinian
economic spectrum, wages are low. A teacher earns less than
$450/month which is a third of the salary of a teacher in the
Israeli colony built on Taybeh’s confiscated land; unskilled
labourers often earn more than professionals. During good weather
months a construction worker can take the equivalent of $800 a
month. However, this is offset by wet weather months where there is
no work. Additionally, every Palestinian citizen pays Israeli market
prices for food, clothing, house-hold products on incomes averaging
more than 300% less than what Israelis on social-welfare receive.
VAT tax (17%) is added to every purchase. School tuition, gasoline,
medicine, marriage etc. cost more than the real potential for
earnings.
Taybeh is parochial and agrarian, the last Holy Land
Christian enclave for whom the Church has played a pivotal role.
Three denominations and churches are extant in Taybeh and the
village population is numbered along those lines: Eastern (Ruum
)Orthodox, 560 people at
St. George Greek Orthodox Church
(rebuild in l929-1932);
Melkite (Greek Catholic), 310 people at St. George
Church (build in l964 but Melkite worship was founded in the village
in 1869);
Roman Catholic, 530 people in
the Western Catholic Church dedicated to "The Last
Retreat of Jesus" (inaugurated l971).
Also there is
a small monastery build by a monk, Fr.
Frant Jacques.
In these communities within a
community the whole church is witnessed in its array of East-West
rites, and Oriental and Byzantine splendour.
Israeli Jewish colonies pose another
ominous threat to Taybeh’s Christian future. Ofra, Ma’ale Efraim,
and Rimmounim colonies are, in the face of almost no local
resistance, planning broader confiscations of land owned by or
nearby Taybeh (Ma’ale Efraim is building some 650 new homes; Ofra
has cut a new road almost to Village perimeters). A brand new
illegal colony called Ammon has been getting bigger every day since
2003. Relative isolation, a beautiful landscape and weakened,
discouraged people, clearly fuels the pretext for greater
exploitation of Taybeh’s resources by the local Christian community
in Palestine and provide an alternative for migration to other
lands.
Religious Value
Taybeh has attracted many religious
figures over time; most notably, Charles de Foucauld, whose writings
led to the establishment of the ‘Little Brothers and Sisters of
Jesus’ community of faith. In 1903 this French mystic retraced the
Lord’s ‘silent’ life in the Holy Land, where he spent a year in
prayer and solitude in the village of Taybeh at the Ruins of the
Byzantine church which was his desert home.
Today Taybeh remains a spiritual
spring to those seeking the authentic way of indigenous Christian
life in the land of its origin. Pilgrims find Taybeh a haven to the
spirit of faith. The great potential of this ‘quiet destination is
both mainstream and alternative. It legitimizes real faith
pilgrimage while endorsing contemporary trends. The religious
marketers trace the routes and landmarks of the archaeological
church – Taybeh can provide the pilgrims with both the
archaeological history of the church with the Byzantine ruins of St.
George, as well as the living church, the Christian Taybaweyeh
unbroken since Christ, are above all here, highlighting the precious
value of this Gospel site that is the last of its kind in the world.
Note: The
history of Taybeh is based on oral history and information submitted
by Amara Architects for the ELLAHI group. |
