A tour into Druzeland.

I was invited to join a trip to the Galilee last week. This region makes up one third of the country and is an area with mountains getting higher and higher towards the north. The Galilee runs from the Jordan Valley across the Yizreel plain towards Acco by the Mediterranean. It continues north along the coast to the Lebanese border and follows it towards the east until it reaches the foot of Mt Hermon. From there it continues south down the Hule Valley, the Sea of Galilee and into the Jordan Valley towards Beit Shean.
No other part of Israel has such a variety of people, religions and traditions. Here we find Jews, Moslem Arabs, Christian Arabs, Druze, Circassian Moslems and people belonging to the Bahai religion.
Our trip was about the Druze. They are 1 million people all together living in Lebanon, Syria and Israel. The two Druze villages on Mt Carmel are the most southern ones while all the others are situated on mountains in the Galilee. There are 100.000 Israeli Druze.

Their religion started about 1000 years ago from a Moslem Shi’ite background in Egypt.
Since the death of Muhammed all the different groups within Islam are based on who is considered the divine leader of the faith. From the beginning it resulted in the split into two main branches of Shi’ah Moslems and Sunni Moslems and continued to split within these two main fractions. The Isma’ilism is the second largest within the Shi’ah community.
Al Darazi was an Isma’ili missionary who claimed the divinity of Fatimid Caliph al Hakim. He was supported in his beliefs by Hamzah ibn Ali who also proclaimed himself to be the cosmic intellect. The Druze faith grew out from the religious philosophical teachings of Hamsah ibn Ali. They probably got their name from Al Darazi. Following the death of Caliph al Hakim the sect was subject to persecution and disappeared from Egypt. They settled in the mountain regions of what is today Lebanon, Syria and Israel.

It is not easy to get a clear overview of what they really believe as the community is closed for newcomers and as their religion is secret and revealed only to the religious among them, but still there are a few things that explains the basic of it.--- They are not Arabs and not Moslems. From 1050 on the community has been closed to outsiders. They believe that people living today are reincarnations of those who lived back then. If they didn’t join in the first place there is no reason to try now. They are not allowed to marry non Druze.

They recognize all three monotheistic religions, but claim that ceremonies and rituals have caused people to turn from pure faith. Therefore there are no rituals in the Druze religion. They have no fixed daily liturgy, no defined holy days and no pilgrimage obligations. The religious among them do not eat pork, smoke nor drink alcohol.
Their community is divided into the religious and the ones that are not, but there are no missionaries among them. Women can achieve high rank as they are considered better “spiritually prepared”.
As the Druze are always a minority in the countries in which they live they join forces with the strongest group surrounding them
.
I have always enjoyed the company of Druze people. They are very friendly and hospitable. They do not complain but see it as their responsibility to take care of themselves, therefore they always come up with new ideas concerning how to make a living. The Druze in Israel have started the production of furniture, carpets and fabrics that are unique to their villages.

One of the families we visited told us that there are nobody in their village that are unemployed. The head of the family said that in order to make enough money to survive they have to change “strategy” all the time. His family decided to work with tourism. In the beginning he rented out some rooms for over night visitors and prepared traditional Druze breakfast for the guests. Now he has rooms for rent, Jeep tours in the surrounding mountains, he gives lectures about Druze and their religion, he has opened a restaurant with homemade, traditional food and he receive groups for cooking lessons. He said that to be flexible is a must, and that if we wish to have Druze food but don’t want to come to his restaurant he will come to us and cook the meal out in the open together with us. I thought he was joking, but he said that to cook out in the open was a new “hit”. “We, teach people which herbs to pick and how to mix them with the food that we make. There are lots of wild spices growing in our surroundings.”
This man had invited 45 tourist guides to eat a full meal for free in his restaurant. He served at least ten different vegetable dishes together with grilled chicken and some kind of cooked minced meat. It was all delicious.

We left his house hoping that the future would bring a possibility for us to be a blessing to him by filling up his restaurant with paying guests.

Elin Elkouby