ruins of ancient synagogue, Gush Halav/Jish, courtesy, IsraelImage.net |
During the time of Joshua,
Gush Halav/Jish was allotted to the tribe of Naphtali. When the Land of Israel
was ruled by the Greeks, the town was called “Giscala”. Located in the center
of an olive-growing district, the town was famous for its production of large
quantities of fine oil as well as fine raw silk. It was also a center of milk
and cheese production, owing to the town’s name which means “Milk Bloc”. It is
said that two of the leaders of the Sanhedrin, Shemaiah and Avtalyon are buried there and according to Jerome, it
was where the apostle Paul's parents lived. It was the native city of the
patriot Yohanan ben Levi, better known in history as John of Giscala, an
oil merchant who, during the first Roman-Jewish War (66-73 CE), tried to keep
his fellow citizens from engaging in battle with the Romans, but when the town was
captured and burned by them and the surrounding pagan population, he rose up
and, falling upon the assailants with his army, defeated them. He then rebuilt
Giscala, making it more beautiful than it had been before, and fortified it
with walls. He seems also to have secured the means by seizing and converting
into money the grain gathered from Upper Galilee for the emperor. Giscala held
out the longest among all the cities of Galilee. Finally Titus attacked it with
1,000 horsemen. But it being the Sabbath, John requested a truce, and secretly
escaped in the night with his warriors. The city surrendered the next day, and
Titus had the walls razed and the fugitive inhabitants massacred (67 CE). After
the destruction of the Second Temple, during the days of the amoraim and tannaim,
Gush Halav/Jish remained a largely Jewish town. It was even mentioned in the
Mishnah and had strong commercial ties with the Phoenician/Israelite city-state
of Tyre. One of the most prominent of the tannaim who live in Gush Halav/Jish
was one Eleazar b. Simeon,
described in the Talmud as a very large man with tremendous physical strength.
He was initially buried in his hometown but later reinterred in Meron, next to his father, Shimon bar Yochai, credited as the
originator of kabbalah.
On the summit of the hill on which Gush Halav/Jish
stands is a Phoenician Maronite church
with the remains of an ancient synagogue
beneath it. At its foot, near a spring,
are the ruins of a second synagogue,
excavated by German archaeologists Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger in 1916, in
which an Aramaic inscription was found on a column mentioning a certain Yose
ben Tanhum and dated to between 250–551 CE. It was destroyed in the earthquake
of 551 but was rebuilt soon after. In a nearby mausoleum, archaeologists also found several skeletons, oil lamps
and a glass bottle dating to the fourth century CE as well as several
Jewish-Christian amulets.
In 1172, the Jewish
traveler Benjamin of Tudela found
about 20 Jews living in Gush Halav/Jish. Ishtori Haparchi attended a
megilla reading when he visited in 1322. Gush Halav continued to have a strong Jewish
community at least until the 15th century.
In October 1948 when the
town was taken by the Israeli army, the Muslim Arabs left and the Phoenician Maronite
inhabitants of the neighboring Kafr Birʿim came to settle in the village soon
afterwards. Since then, the majority village population has been Phoenician
Maronites.
In December
2010, a hiking and bicycle path known as the Coexistence Trail was inaugurated, linking Jish with Dalton, a neighboring Jewish village.
The 1 ½ mile trail, accessible to people with disabilities, sits half a mile above
sea level and has several lookout points, including a view of Dalton Lake, where rainwater is
collected and stored for agricultural use.
Today Jish
is known for its efforts to revive Aramaic as a living language. In
2011, the Israeli Ministry
of Education approved a program to teach the language in
Jish elementary schools. Maronites in Jish say that Aramaic is essential to
their existence as a people, in the same way that Hebrew and Arabic are for Jews and Arabs.
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