In the entirety of Eretz Yisroel, there is only one place where Jews are said to have lived uninterruptedly since the days of the second Bais Hamikdosh until our time. The unlikely candidate for such glory is tiny Peki’in, a Galilean village that presently boasts a population of about 5,500 Druze, Arabs, and Christians, together with the place’s one last remaining Jew, Margalit Zatani. According to the tradition of the Peki’in Jews, their forebears came to live there when the Bais Hamikdosh still stood, and the kohanim of the village claimed descent from kohanim who had served in its holy precincts. Traditionally and historically, Jews have always lived there; even when driven out in the recent past, they always returned. No generation has passed without a Jewish presence. Rabi Shimon bar Yochai’s Cave Peki’in has a long history. It is mentioned by name in the Zohar, Josephus mentions it as lying on the northern border of the upper Galilee, and the Gemara mentions it by another name, Tekoa.

Why does it have the unique privilege of providing non-stop residence to Jews over the millennia? Perhaps because it is the site of the place where Torah was studied in unique intensity for thirteen years. Medrashim identify Peki’in as the place where Rabi Shimon bar Yochai and his son Elazar fled to when they escaped Roman retribution and spent thirteen years hiding in a cave. Kohelles Rabbah (10:11) states: “Rabi Shimon bar Yochai and his son were hidden in a cave of Peka for thirteen years during the time of shemad.” According to the Pesikta Derav Kahana (Vayishlach) they hid in “a cave in Beka,” which is similar to the Arab name of Peki’in, Al-Buqiya. Residents of Peki’in proudly show visitors a cave with an ancient carob tree growing at its entrance. Even Peki’in’s non-Jewish residents revere the cave as a holy site, leaving candles, coins, and containers of oil at its entrance, and in tacit admission of the cave’s Jewish roots they identify it as the cave of Bnei Yaakov.

The cave is mentioned in travelers’ reports going back hundreds of years.seabreeze air duct cleaning ct “There are Jews in Peki’in, fifty householders who work fields and vineyards,” Rav Simchah of Zalazitz wrote in the 1760s. air purifier wts lowyatThere is a carob tree of Rabi Shimon bar Yochai which is old and barren. hunter hepatech air purifier for medium- sized roomsThe non-Jews regard it as holy; if a branch falls off they do not use it for any purpose.” Rav Menachem Mendel Rabin wrote about it in his famous travelogue of the Galilee, published 120 years ago: “We went quickly to daven Shacharis at the mouth of the cave where Rabi Shimon bar Yochai and his son, Elazar, hid for thirteen years.

The carob tree is still standing at the entrance to the cave. We davened there with a minyon under the carob’s shade and recited Zohar at the cave’s entrance, but did not enter. We also took from the leaves of the carob into our bags as much as we could carry, for it is known and famous to be a wonderful, valuable segulah for everything, and good to keep in one’s house. But the meshamesh warned us to not touch the fruit, for someone who takes of them will not be innocent and endanger his life.” The archives of the Akko kehillah have preserved a letter sent from Peki’in in 1893, warning that Christians were willing to pay 200 liras to buy the holy cave for themselves in order to use it for their nefarious purposes. “We, speaking in the name of the whole kahal of our community of Sephardim, who work the land… turn to you to get the money that this should not come about, to buy the land under the cave and the holy tree, the location of Rabi Shimon bar Yochai and his holy companions,” the letter pleaded.

At the bottom of the document is the round seal of the Peki’in kehillah of those days that comprises the image of a tree surrounded by the inscription: “An image of the carob and spring of the holy tanna, Rabi Shimon bar Yochai.” Surrounding this, an outer circle of script states, “The seal of the holy kahal who work the land in thevillage ofPeki’in that is near to the holy town ofTzefas.” Nowadays, the cave and carob tree are still a well-known place for saying tefillos and Tehillim. On Lag Ba’omer, many Jews make a point of traveling to this kever to honor Rabi Shimon bar Yochai on his yahrzeit. In addition to the cave, Peki’in is also home to the traditional kever of Rabi Yosi from Peki’in, which is surrounded by greenery near the Al Balad spring. Another tradition locates his kever near Tzefas. In addition one can visit the kevorim of Rabi Yehoshua ben Chananyah in the south and Rabi Oshaya Ish Tiriyah in the west. In times of need, Jews of Peki’in had no shortage of places to daven and to light candles right by their doorsteps.

Another famous site is the ancient shul of Peki’in, sited, according to tradition, on the ruins of the beis medrash where Rabi Yehoshua ben Chananyah taught his talmidim. In 1873, the shul was renovated after an earthquake. More recently, two stone tablets dating back to the Bayis Sheni were discovered covered with mortar in the inner wall of the shul. One is engraved with depictions of a menorah, lulav, esrog, and shofar, and the other with the depiction of an aron hakodesh. According to local tradition, these stones were brought here from the remnants of the Bais Hamikdosh and placed in the shul wall as a zecher of the churban. Despite being home to four different religions (the Druze have a secret religion of their own) the residents of Peki’in generally got along well with each other. Jews were respected for being the oldest original inhabitants of the village. On Yomim Tovim, groups of non-Jews would come in to give their Jewish neighbors seasonal greetings, down a quick cup of coffee, and hurry out to give the next crowd of neighbors a chance.

Funerals were attended by all, and everyone came to be menachem aveilim. During the British Mandate period, the Jews of the village were in danger of being ejected from their ancestral home for the first time. During the 1929 Arab riots, the Druze muchtar (head) of the village, Abdullah Chiyar, prevented gangs from entering. At night, he used to drive around the village with a gun to give the Jews peace of mind. The Arabs of Peki’in never participated in anti-Jewish actions at the time, even though some had relatives in the gangs. A 1931 census found that the village’s population of 799 included 52 Jews; their numbers had increased to 70 at the outbreak of the Arab revolt in 1936 when many Jews sent their children to relatives in other towns. In 1938, the security situation worsened and during May that year, the last six families left. Some families used to return temporarily to work their land. On one such occasion, when the Tuma family of Peki’in had temporarily returned to work their fields, a neighboring Druze family heard that an Arab gang was about to enter the village to kill the Jews and hid the Tuma family in her house.

When gang members entered to search the house one of the Jewish babies began to cry. To silence her, her grandmother covered her mouth with her hand until she lost consciousness. After hostilities broke out in 1948, Syrian soldiers arrived at the Zinati home one Shabbos night and told them they must leave within 24 hours. Despite the plea of a friendly Druze neighbor, Machmad Achmad Machmud, the family was sent away that Shabbos and the whole village accompanied them as they left. When the car carrying them reached Jewish controlled Nahariya, border guards thought they were Arabs and wouldn’t let them pass until someone identified them. For centuries, the Jews of Peki’in dressed like Arabs. Two years later, when the Zinati family returned from their Nahariya exile, the Machmud family returned their possessions to them intact and gave them the keys to their home and the shul. In recent years, the Jewish Agency and the Keren Kayemet (JNF) bought twelve deserted buildings in the middle of the village to try and stabilize its Jewish population, and various organizations bought a few houses.

In October 2007, violent riots in the village broke out. Dozens of masked Arabs armed with bars, stones, and axes, prowled through the village’s streets searching for victims, and the Jewish residents cowered behind locked doors and windows. Ilan Tuma-Shechter (a descendant of the Tuma family, a family of kohanim that originally lived here) climbed on his roof and saw a ring of violence drawing around him. “I felt in danger of my life,” he recalled afterwards. “I said, ‘This is it, Ilan, you’re going to die. You don’t have much time left.’ I cried out to Hashem, Shir hama’alos, esa einay el Hashem, me’ayin yavo ezri. I prayed and waited for a miracle.” Below, many dozens of Arabs were whistling and yelling, Itbach al Yahud, kill the Jews.” “We were indoors and heard the crowd outside screaming at the top of their voices, Itbach al Yahud,” said another resident, Devorah Zilcha. “We realized we were in big trouble. Yanon, my husband, dragged all the furniture in the house, the cupboards, and beds, to block the entrance to the house…