Nadene Goldfoot
Skiing at Mt. Hermon
The Golan was originally an ancient town of West Bashan, one of the cities of refuge as told in Joshua 20:8. There were 3 east of the Jordan and 3 west of the Jordan. They were cities of asylum, provided for in which an accidental killer was to be safe from the vengeance of the murdered man's kinsmen, and where he was required to live until the death of the reigning high priest. It was also for political fugitives but proved inadequate protection for them. The city of refuge was a place of expiation and only operative in cases of contributory negligence. Grave carelessness could not be adequately atoned for by seeking sanctuary.
It was the capital of a region in the 2nd Temple times and had a Jewish settlement until the 5th century CE. Bashan was in the region of Transjordania, now a part of Jordan. Broadly speaking, Bashan contains Haurana, the Argob region, Golan as far as Mt. Hermon, and NE Gilead as far as the Yarmuk River.
In ancient times, it was on the trade-route from Damascus to Arabia and the Red Sea ports. It's original inhabitants, according to the Bible , were the Rephaim who were succeeded by the Amorites.
The Rephaim were an ancient people living in Transjordania in the time of Abraham as told in Genesis 14:5. Some of them apparently settled near Jerusalem in the "Valley of Rephaim. During the Exodus period, it was ruled by Og, an Amorite king of the land of Rephaim in Bashan and Gilead, called "king of Bashan." who was defeated and slain by the Israelites. Og was noted for his stature and physique. He tried to interrupt the march of the Israelites but was defeated. Israel was made up of 603,550 members when they started off, losing only 1,820 at the end of their journey to Canaan. His land was strongly fortified territory throughout the Middle and late Bronze Ages. Bashan, then noted for its oak woods and fertile pasture and sounding like Oregon, was settled by half of the tribe of Manasseh.
Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria overran Bashan in 732 BCE in the Great Assyrian Attack that started in 721 BCE. It was subsequently under the rule of the Persians in the 4th century BCE, and then the Seleucides in the 2nd century BCE, and then the Romans from the 1st century BCE.
Augustus gave it to King Herod of terrible reputation who settled Idumeans-or Edomites of Mt. Seir, descendants of Esau, hunters, of which he was one of, and Jews from Babylon there to guard the country from desert robbers.
The other Golan spoken of so often is the Western region of Bashan, named after its chief town. It was known in Greek as Gaulanitis. The upper Golan, called in the Bible as Beth-Maachah, stretched from Mt. Hermon to the Sea of Galilee, and was pasture land, sparsely populated.
The Lower Golan, which was the biblical Geshur, was rich and fertile until the Arab invasion. The name "Geshur" is found primarily in biblical sources and has been taken to mean "stronghold or fortress". The Bible describes it as being near Bashan, adjoining the province of Argob (Deuteronomy 3:14) and the kingdom of Aram or Syria (2 Samuel 15:8; 1 Chronicles 2:23)
The Golan Heights, from which the Syrians bombarded kibbutzim along the upper Jordan Valley, was occupied by Israeli troops in the 1967 Six Day War (June 5-11), and was extensively populated with Israeli settlements. Its 1985 population was 22,500 which included the Druze population.
The Golan was part of biblical Israel and remained under Jewish control until the early part of the common era. Israel officially annexed the Golan in 1981 and the US, under President Trump, recognized it as part of Israel in 2019.
Safed is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevation of 900 metres of the Hula Valley, the Golan Heights and parts of modern-day South Lebanon. In 1974, 25 Israeli Jews (mainly school children) from Safed, were killed in the Ma'alot massacre. Over 1990s and early 2000s, the town accepted thousands of Russian Jewish immigrants and Ethiopian Beta Israel. In July 2006, "Katyusha" rockets fired by Hezbollah from Southern Lebanon hit Safed, killing one man and injuring others. Many residents fled the town for the duration of the conflict. On July 22, four people were injured in a rocket attack. I lived here from 1981 to almost 1986 and taught in the junior high across the street from my apartment building.
The government approved a plan to double the Jewish population in the Golan over the next 5 years. The plan includes 1 billion shekels of spending on housing, infrastructure and other projects to attract 23,000 new residents to the Golan. Around 25,000 Israelis currently live in the Golan, along with around 23,000 Druze, who remained in their villages after Israel took the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War.
The area was part of extreme southwestern Syria until 1967, when it came under Israeli military occupation, and in December 1981 Israel unilaterally annexed the part of the Golan it held. The area's name is from the biblical city of refuge, Golan, in Bashan (Deuteronomy 4:43; Joshua 20:8).
"On the other side of the Jordan, by Jericho, to the east, they designated Bezer in the wilderness in the plain from the tribe of Reuben, and Ramoth in Gilead from the tribe of Gad, and Golan in the Bashan from the tribe of Manasseh". (3 places of refuge on the other side of Jordan-from Joshua).
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Israel AM-top Israel news
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safed
No comments:
Post a Comment