Tonight, the Samaritan community celebrated the first day of the Passover Feast, on the top of Mount Gerizim in Nablus, which lasts for seven days according to the Samaritan calendar, and during which they remember the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt.

In "Passah", the Samaritans remember their liberation and independence, as it is considered a feast of deliverance for the children of Israel. They offer sacrifices, and their meat is roasted and eaten, and what remains of it is burned until it becomes ashes. Then the Samaritans eat a very bitter plant, to remember the suffering and bitterness of the life that the children of Israel lived.

This feast falls on the fourteenth of the first month of the Hebrew year according to the Samaritan Hebrew calendar, and it is held every year on the top of Mount Gerizim. It is called the Feast of “Pan-Panth” because when God struck the firstborn of the Egyptians, He separated from the firstborn of the Hebrews.

Fourteen days before this occasion, the Samaritans perform prayers at dawn and at sunset in the Samaritan Synagogue, headed by the high priest and the imam of the community. Each prayer lasts for a full hour, where verses from the Holy Law are read that tell the story of liberation from this slavery. During these days, Preparing eight skirts in order to accommodate approximately 70 sheep, for all members of the sect living in Mount Gerizim and Holon, and during the fourteen days, firewood, poles, and wooden poles are collected to facilitate lowering and ascending the offering from the skirts.

The holiday rituals conclude with a great pilgrimage to the top of Mount Gerizim, the sacred site for this sect, to which they make pilgrimages three times a year, during the “Passage,” “Harvest,” and “Throne” feasts.

It is noteworthy that the number of Samaritans who describe themselves as guardians of the true Torah is about 800 people, half of whom live in Nablus, and the other half in “Holon” within the lands of 1948. They celebrate the Torah’s feasts, of which there are seven: Passover, Unleavened Bread, Harvest, and Rosh Hashanah. The Hebrew New Year, the Feast of Atonement, the Feast of Sukkot, and the Eighth Feast or the Joy of the Torah, and they make a pilgrimage three times a year to the top of their holy mountain, “Gerizim.”