By Jerry Klinger
BEIT SHE’AN, Israel — Sculptor Sam Philipe and I dedicated the Lion’s Trail – Beit She’an in the north of Israel on Sunday, October 29. It was a surreal parallel of reality, courage, and life that refused to give up. The mayors of Beit She’an, Kiryat Shemona, Beit Jann, and the Council Rep from the Golan Regional Council came to join us. Each of their communities is under attack by Hezbollah. Each of their communities has a Lion. Each of their communities determinedly endures.
The Lion’s Trail—Beit She’an is a powerful symbol. It is nine feet tall, eleven if you include the Jerusalem stone base. The Lion is sited prominently at the northern entrance to Beit She’an on the Route 90 roundabout. The Lion is looking north towards Tiberias, 40 kilometers away. The Jordanian border is only 8 kilometers to the east.
Beit She’an is one of the oldest settled sites in Israel, dating from the fifth millennium BCE. It is a crossroad between the Jezreel and Jordan Valleys, with verdant farming land and water nearby. The Egyptians conquered Beit She’an because it sat astride a major access road to the north for them. In the 15th Century BCE, a coalition of 300 local Canaanite rulers united to overthrow the Egyptians. They met in a major battle that determined the region’s fate for centuries. April 16, 1457 BCE, the Canaanites were defeated on the plain below the Canaanite City of Megiddo.
Megiddo is central to later Christian and Islamic end-of-times writings. They believe that at the end of time, before the return of Jesus or Mohammed, there will be a great battle. It will be fought before the Walls of Megiddo. The battle will be the final struggle of light vs. darkness—Armageddon.
The Egyptian tide eventually receded. Beit She’an returned to Canaanite control when a new major attacking force emerged from the direction of Egypt: the Jews under Joshua. Beit She’an held out but was forced to accept Jewish settlement in the area. The Biblical era began.
Centuries passed. Beit She’an became Jewish after King David conquered the city. David had a particular animus to Beit Shean. King Saul, his predecessor, had been defeated by the Philistines on Mt. Gilboa, a few miles south of the city. The city celebrated by beheading Saul and hanging his body, along with that of his son Jonathan, from the city walls to rot. David, not king yet, gathered a group of fighters about him and retrieved the body in a daring night action. David never forgot nor forgave the perfidy of the Canaanites. He returned as King to destroy them and their city.
Beit She’an became a regional administrative center under David and his son, King Solomon.
Tensions grew between the ten northern Tribes of Israel and the Jewish monarchy and theocracy-centered Jerusalem. After Solomon’s death, civil war permanently separated Beit She’an from Jerusalem.
Beit She’an remained in the Northern Jewish alliance until it was conquered by the Assyrians in the 8th century BCE. Waves of conquerors followed; the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Arabs in the seventh century CE. The Arabs spread Islam by the sword.
Under the Romans and Byzantines, Beit She’an had reached its pinnacle of influence and economic power. The Arab conquests continued Beit She’an’s decline, doing little to revitalize the lands after a devasting earthquake in 749.
Jews lived in and around Beit She’an throughout these periods, albeit in diminishing numbers, until there were no known Jews left.
Yet, the Jews never left the land.
Since Joshua, Jewish communities have dotted both sides of the Sea of Galilee to the north of Beit She’an. Following the Romans’ destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., Tiberias emerged as a major Jewish religious and cultural center, not Beit She’an. It remained so for the next 2,000 years. Some of the Jewish communities along the Sea became important in Jesus’s life and the newly emerging religion, Christianity.
Beit She’an never recovered beyond an impoverished, underpopulated backwater village of little consequence. Two events changed Beit She’an’s modern history.
Beit She’an had been ruled by the Ottomans (Turkey) since the 16th century. With the coming of the Hejaz railroad in the early 20th century, a road that ran from Istanbul to Damascus to Medina, the Turks recognized Beit She’an’s key military and economic potential and invested heavily. The second major catalyst to economic growth and revitalization began with the return of the Jews and Zionism.
But the Turkish vision would never be. Britain and France defeated the Ottomans, who were allied with the Germans, during WWI. The British were given the Mandate of Palestine. It encompassed Beit She’an and a huge tract of land to the East, Trans-Jordan (modern Jordan). In 1920, the British gave Trans-Jordan, despite its majority Palestinian population, to Hashemite Bedouins as a separate Kingdom.
Tensions in the Beit She’an area grew as Arabs and Bedouins jockeyed for power while the “Sick man of Europe,” the name given to Turkey and its Ottoman empire, teetered. Cultural and historical religious animosity of Islam to the reintroduction of Jews, especially Zionist Jews, did not sit well with them.
Small groups of Jews from Kurdistan settled in Beit She’an in the early 20th century. They were followed by Ashkenazi Jews who purchased land nearby and established Kibbutzim for ideological and defensive reasons.
Arab Mandate Palestinians did not like the British any more than the Ottomans. 1920, 1929, and 1936, they rioted against the British and their hated neighbors, the Jews.
The 1920 Arab riots impacted Jews in other parts of Mandate Palestine more than in Beit She’an. Nevertheless, the Jewish population continued to grow. By 1929, about 250 Jews were living in Beit She’an. Arab animosity towards the British and the Jews grew even more. Jewish urban life in Beit She’an became precarious.
When the 1936 Arab riots broke out, there were only ten Jewish families left in Beit She’an. One year later, Jewish Beit She’an physician Dr. Yoseph Lehrs answered his door and was shot dead. He was the last known Jew left in Beit She’an after more than 40 years of Jewish return.
Beit She’an was Judenrein again.
Beit She’an became a military center for Arab army action against the nascent state of Israel during its 1948 War of Independence. Though the United Nations had declared Beit She’an to be in Israel when the Mandate was partitioned, Israel had to capture Beit She’an. The Arabs fled.
Beit She’an was repopulated by Jewish refugees, forced from their homes in the Muslim world of North Africa and Iran, victims of ethnic cleansing.
Today, Beit She’an is a city of 30,000 Jews with a 3,000-year history of Jews living there.
The Lion’s Trail – Beit She’an – dedication text reads.
“And Manasseh had in Issachar and Asher Beth Shean, and it’s towns…” (Joshua 17:11)
The Jewish people have lived here for over 3,000 years.
Donated by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation in cooperation with the Bet Shean municipality
Sam Philipe sculptor, May 2023
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Jerry Klinger is the President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation.