The Goat and the Olives:
The Story of the First Catholic Church in Birzeit
12 June 2001
Social Palestine in the mid-nineteenth century, whether
considering the Bedouin communities of the Judean Hills and the Negev Desert or
the village districts in the fertile valleys, consisted largely of agrarian
order and familial unity. In the
hills of what is today the north-central West Bank, the chief tenants of this
life were, respectively, agricultural crops, specifically olive oil, and family
religion and honor. By the
1850’s, the Catholic Church had begun to spread outward from its central base,
the “town” of Jerusalem, to the neighboring environs.
In several nearby villages, the presence of Christianity – principally
Greek Orthodoxy – dated back for centuries.
With increasing converts from other Christian denominations, the Latin
Patriarchy established a church in the villages Ram Allah and Jifna, among
others. Before long, the majority
Christian village of Bir Zeit, neighbor of Jifna, sought a Catholic Church of
its own. Indeed the village sheikh
was a recent convert himself.
The story takes place during the season of the olive
harvest in Bir Zeit, usually around the beginning of October. The entire population generally spends a week in the fields
and hills, picking olives, sorting and preparing them for oil.
In most household kitchens, you would find a pile of raw olives perhaps
taller than a man awaiting transformation to a year’s worth of olive oil for a
particular family. These were the days of the Ottoman Turkish occupation of the
region. The presence of the
occupiers was rarely felt in everyday life, except that every month each village
had to collect a tax of money and/or foodstuffs for the Turkish army.
The village sheikh (essentially the mayor) was responsible for collecting
this tax from the villagers and resolving any of the town’s disputes.
Any disputes which could not be settled internally were judged by
traveling Ottoman magistrates, who made their rounds to the villages every month
or so.
One day a woman came to the sheikh of Bir Zeit complaining
that her goat had been stolen from her as she returned from the field.
Knowing the route she took home, the sheikh had a suspect in mind.
There was one particular troublemaker on the outskirts of the village; a
bit of a loner and outsider. Many
times when the sheikh would come to collect the foodstuff tax, this man would
give the honorable mayor a runaround to avoid paying his share.
This time, as usual, the sheikh was unable to approach the troublemaker
about the missing goat, though the former was certain of the latter’s guilt.
The sheikh waited for the roving Ottoman judge to arrive
and lend his embedded powers of justice. Together
with the Turkish official, the sheikh went to the home of the troublemaker.
But the brash old man was stubborn and confident.
As a landowner of this village, he said, I am a respectable man and you
may not dishonor me by searching my house unless you compensate me one thousand
gold Qirsh. This was an extremely
hefty sum, but the sheikh, too, was confident and called the bluff of his
adversary. He paid the one thousand
gold Qirsh and he and the Turkish officials began to search the house.
But an exhaustive inspection revealed no missing goat.
Just as he was about to leave the troublemaker to his triumph, the sheikh
caught a glimpse of the mammoth pile of olives on the kitchen floor.
No doubt with a smile on his face, the sheikh walked over to the olives,
reached his hand inside the mound, and indeed removed the woman’s lost goat.
Guilty as suspected, the troublemaker was cast at the mercy of the
Ottoman judge. His sentence was as
ironic and humiliating as it was severe. The
troublemaker was ordered tied to an olive tree for two weeks, where he had to
live and eat with the goat he had stolen. At
the end of this period, he was cast out from the village, never allowed to
return. His house and land were
confiscated as a symbol of his lost honor.
All of a sudden possessing an extra empty building in the village, the opportunity arose for putting it to the collective benefit of the village. It was actually the Catholic priest of nearby Jifna, in whose mass the Birzeiti Catholics had until now participated, who suggested the building be turned into a place of worship. And so it came to be, at the consent of the sheikh and the villagers, that the house of a dishonored goat-napper became the first Catholic Church of Bir Zeit.
*** This story is from an oral translation of a first-hand historical text on Bir Zeit, written in the late 19th century by a member of one of the village’s most prominent Christian families and a relative of the sheikh in the story. Many thanks to my flatmate Yassin Musharbash for his translation skills.