Nestled deep within the Samarian Hills of the West Bank is a quiet, pleasant village by the name of Taybeh. Though only a short distance from the cities of Ramallah, Nablus and Jericho as the crow flies, the few winding roads that thread their way between rocky hills and olive groves to the village give it a far more secluded character, even within the increasingly close knit landscape of the Holy Land.
The History of Taybeh Oktoberfest
In the mid 1990s, two brothers of the Khoury family of Taybeh returned home from abroad to launch the first microbrewery in Palestine, founding Taybeh Beer. Today the beer is exported internationally, and the brewery competes in microbrew festivals around the world. The village of Taybeh has also celebrated more than a dozen annual Oktoberfest gatherings, where people enjoy local beer and watch performances by Palestinian and international artists: designers, singers, rappers, Dabke dancers, henna artists and more. Other business and social service projects have grown alongside the Oktoberfest, helping young Christians live and work in their community.
The Village of Taybeh in Christianity
Though Taybeh may not appear on many maps or the itineraries of most pilgrimages, it is a place of great importance to the past, present and future of Christianity in the Holy Land.
Taybeh has been identified as the Biblical village of Ephraim, also known as Ophrah, a city of Benjamin described in Joshua 18:21 to 23: "Now the cities of the tribe of the children of Benjamin according to their families were Jericho, and Bethhoglah, and the valley of Keziz, and Betharabah, and Zemaraim, and Bethel, and Avim, and Pharah, and Ophrah."
In the New Testament, Taybeh (then Ephraim) is mentioned as the city to which Christ retired after the raising of Lazarus, in preparation for His Passion, in John 11:54: "Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews; but went thence unto a country near to the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim, and there continued with his disciples."
The Meaning of "Taybeh"
This Biblical city acquired its Arabic name during the time of the Crusades, when the villagers were considered Tayibe ("the goodly" in Arabic) after entertaining the Islamic leader Saladin. Of particular note in this story is that, as today, all of the villagers were Palestinian Arab Christians rather than Muslims. In the long centuries of Muslim and Ottoman rule that followed, Taybeh remained a quiet hilltop village, visited only occasionally by Western travelers and pilgrims who recorded their journeys in journals , among them the Blessed Charles de Foucauld.
The Denomination of its Christians
Today, the village of Taybeh has earned the distinction of being the last entirely Christian community in the Palestinian Territories, and one of the very last in all of the Middle East.
With a population of fewer than two thousand, Taybeh remains very much a village. It has a modern, functioning civic government, yet the culture of the community still moves through the traditional system of extended families known as hamouleh. There are three parishes representing the three major Christian denominations of the Holy Land: Catholic, Greek Catholic (better known as Melkite , those who celebrate the liturgy in the Byzantine and Greek Orthodox tradition while remaining under the Catholic Church), and Greek Orthodox.
The First Church
A fourth church on a hilltop in the eastern part of the Old City could better be described as the "first church," as it is the ruins of an early Byzantine church from the fourth or fifth century, dedicated to Saint George the Martyr, that was also used in the Crusader period. The people and churches of Taybeh continue to look after these ruins, which are both a historical and archaeological treasure and an interdenominational shrine for the local Christian community.
On your next visit to the Holy Land, be sure to stop in Taybeh along the pilgrimage route to taste a Taybeh Beer.
We at Bethlehem Handicrafts are proud to put the Holy Land in your hand by giving you the finest original Bethlehem olive wood carvings, crafted with care in the Holy Land.
Made by Christian Hands. Loved by Christian Hearts.
Read Now: The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem
0 comments