Saving the Samaritans: Looking for Love

The Globe and Mail has a fascinating piece on how Samaritans are seeking brides from the Former Soviet Union to save their community. Their community numbers little over 700 people and their children are beset with a number of genetic problems attributed to strict rules of endogamy. To save their community, some Samaritan men are seeking wives through marriage agencies from the Former Soviet Union. According to the article:

In one version, whispered among the women who gather on street corners to gossip the afternoon away, Mr. Cohen was a lonely man who couldn't find a local woman, forced to look for companionship at a faraway marriage agency. In the other, told by his approving father and some of the other village elders, Mr. Cohen's journey to meet and bring back a bride named Alexandra Krasyuk may just save the Samaritans from extinction. ...

Into this sick and dying community have stepped two Slavic women who may as well have arrived from a different planet, Alexandra from Ukraine, and Lena, an Israeli citizen born in Omsk, on the plains of faraway Siberia

The article then highlights that the marriage of outsiders has been met with some resistance:

"I'm against this marrying of Russian women or any others. Their traditions are very different from ours," Mr. al-Teef said, promising that he will go to great lengths to make sure that his own bachelor son marries within the community. Birth defects, he said, are part of life and occur in every part of the world.

"The most important thing in religion is purity, and women are half of religion. I'm worried that these women brought up in Eastern Europe will not commit themselves to the laws of the Samaritans."

His views are common here, though High Priest Elazar says no one has yet questioned his decision to his face. The controversy, however, lightens with the arrival of a healthy newborn Samaritan. Eighteen months ago, Lena and her husband, Raghai, gave birth to a son, Adam.

Even the most conservative of Mount Gerizim's gossipers can't hide their delight at seeing their numbers grow. It is, the local residents say, the first "new Samaritan" born in 3,600 years.

"He is a Samaritan, 100 per cent," Mr. al-Teef said, his harsh words for the boy's mother suddenly forgotten. "It's a gift from God."

The Samaritans numbered in the hundreds of thousands in the past and now survive in two small communities: one in the West Bank and the other in Israel. The Globe and Mail article provides an insightful piece into their origins and beliefs.