West Bank Clan Faces Today’s Stresses : Arab Cave Dwellers Retain Life Style of Jesus’ Time

The Abu Sharq clan is Arab by nationality and Muslim by religion. But in some ways it has a more realistic grasp of the first Christmas than most Christians have.

The Abu Sharqs live in caves near here, much like the one in which tradition holds that Jesus was born in Bethlehem about 2,000 years ago.

They are among an estimated 5,000 modern cave dwellers on the West Bank of the Jordan River, whose life style has changed remarkably little from that of precursors who for three millennia have inhabited the same natural caverns that dot this area.

The cave where Jesus is said to have been born now lies beneath the main section of Bethlehem’s 1,600-year-old Church of the Nativity.

The New Testament account of Jesus’ birth makes no mention of a cave. But the fact that this site has nonetheless been revered as his birthplace since at least the 2nd Century is the strongest proof that it is the actual spot, according to Father Jerry Murphy-O’Connor, a professor of historical geography at Jerusalem’s Ecole Biblique, the oldest Roman Catholic graduate school in the Holy Land.

“You see, it’s pre-Constantinian, which means a local tradition,” he said. “You’re not inventing stuff to make tourists happy, which is what happened in the Byzantine period (4th Century) when you had millions of pilgrims coming here.”

Like those untold millions before them, tourists visiting the site this week file down steep stone steps through ancient brass doors into a grotto that will comfortably hold about 30 people.

A small altar maintained jointly by the Greek and Armenian Orthodox churches stands over a silver star on the floor, which is venerated as the exact place of Jesus’ birth. Five feet away, in a second alcove, is another altar maintained by the Roman Catholic Church. It is said to be the site of the manger in which the newborn infant was placed.

Icons line the walls of the Bethlehem cave, and the evenly sculpted roof is blackened from the smoke of devotional candles.

By contrast, a visitor has to be constantly alert not to bump his head on the natural, craggy interior of the Abu Sharq clan’s caves. Their ceilings are black too, but that is from wood-burning fires used for cooking.

“When I open the Bible, I can see what I read in its reality among these people here,” said Nissim Krispil, an Arabic-speaking Israeli expert on the folklore and customs of the Palestinian peasants, or felaheen, of the West Bank.

“Except for a (bottled gas) stove here and there, and some modern clothing, their life is essentially the same as it was 2,000 years ago,” he said. Krispil has written a four-volume encyclopedia on the subject in his spare time from a regular job teaching survival training to the army and youth groups.

Simple Food

Like the infant that Christians worship as their savior, the Abu Sharqs, who herd goats, share their caves with their animals. “It’s warmer for the people and it’s warmer for the goats,” the folklorist said.

They gather rain water in cisterns for drinking and washing, and the women make wheat bread in a stone oven dug into the floor of a special baking cave. Their food is simple--bread dipped in olive oil and a salty spice called zatar for breakfast, then lentil soup at night.

There are five families in the Abu Sharq clan, and each member seems to have well-defined chores. Some come here, to the Dhahiriya market, on Mondays and Thursdays to sell the extra butter and goat cheese they produce for the money needed to buy the few luxuries they allow themselves.

They also sell young goats, said 16-year-old Mohammed abu Sharq. Otherwise, he explained, the suckling kids would take all the milk, leaving none for cheese.

Mohammed completed only six years of school, the minimum the law requires. “From the day I was born I have lived here,” he told visitors the other day. “I’ve traveled a few times to Jerusalem and Hebron, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Here the life is good.”

8 Live in Cave

Mohammed lives with his father, clan patriarch Nayal abu Sharq, his mother and five brothers and sisters in one cave. A raised sector of the cave, perhaps a foot higher than the floor, serves as a sleeping area for family members, separating them from the animals below.

Pots, pans and the family’s few other possessions are stored around the walls of the cave. Stone ledges serve as sofas and armchairs. And the only wooden object in the cavern is matriarch Safiya abu Sharq’s dowry chest. The only obvious concession to modernity is the bottle-gas stove.

Newlyweds Khalil and Nijmi abu Sharq share a separate cave a few feet away. A pile of harvested wheat obscures most of one wall, and the cave smells strongly of ammonia used for cleaning and for disguising the strong odor of their animals. A kerosene lamp stands on a stone ledge, where it is kept burning at night to guard against evil spirits.

Most of the West Bank’s modern cave dwellers live in these ruggedly beautiful hills about 30 miles southeast of Bethlehem or a little further east on the fringes of the Judean Desert, Krispil said. And that’s the reason their life style has changed so little from that of their ancestors.

Few Ventured South

“People who came to visit usually came to Jerusalem and Bethlehem,” Krispil said. “Very few got this far south, so customs have changed very little.”

Just as the Muslim Abu Sharqs have an intimate conception of the physical surroundings of the first Christmas, Krispil, the Jewish folklorist, has an unusual grasp of its spirit.

Some might consider it naive, but he thinks things would be a lot better if more of his countrymen would do unto the felaheen what they would have the felaheen do unto them.

Krispil has learned to tread slowly and respectfully toward a people that he has clearly come to care for deeply. Just as clearly, the Abu Sharqs like Krispil.

Works on Relations

“You can’t have a relationship with them when you come, take from them and leave,” said Krispil, the 39-year-old Israeli father of four. “Lots of my time is spent building up relations.”

He said he brings the felaheen clothing and tries to help them in their dealings with the military government. And he said he gets much in return.

At the Nature Authority field school where he now works, Krispil explained: “They taught me how many leaves were on this plant or the next. It was all very dry. But from the felaheen I learned the folklore about the plant and how it is used.” They also taught him an Arabic dialect much richer than he had ever known.

Brings Son, No Guns

Krispil said he travels in the West Bank nowadays, during some of the worst Arab-Israeli tension in years, just as he always does--unarmed. “I never go with a weapon, because it upsets them,” he said. He often brings his 7-year-old son to the market in predominantly Arab Hebron on Saturdays, and he is teaching the boy Arabic.

“When he was 3 or 4 years old, I took him with me to the Bedouin of the Negev,” Krispil recalled fondly. “He stayed two weeks with me in a tent.”

About a year ago, Krispil mounted an unsuccessful campaign to block Jewish settlers who wanted to evict 30 families of Arab cave dwellers from the West Bank settlement of Sussia, a few miles east of here. The settlers contended that the cave dwellers detracted from a nearby historical site, where the remains of a 1,500-year-old synagogue still stand.

A Dissenting View

Krispil voiced his dissenting view as he showed two journalists around the now-abandoned hills.

“Look at this place,” he said, gesturing toward the ruins. “A year ago, all you saw were laundry lines strung up between stones. There were smells of people cooking and baking bread, and you saw people living their lives like a scene out of the Bible. Now look at it. There are only stones. It’s dead.

“What is happening today is that in all of the West Bank there are people in the army and the Shin Bet (security police) who only demand from them ( felaheen ) and don’t give to them.”

Meanwhile, he added, “someone who really understands the Arab mentality knows that if you do good for an Arab, he will do you a double favor in return.”