Erich Isaac

While the destruction of Jewish communities in Gaza and expulsion of their population proceeded remarkably peacefully, the dramatic exception, involving a bitter clash with the forces sent to evict the residents, took place at Kfar Darom.

Kfar Darom carries a special resonance for Jews, stemming from both recent and ancient history, which may have contributed to the resistance being focused in that community. While part of Gush Katif, its roots went deeper. Modern Kfar Darom was established at the close of Yom Kippur in 1947. A group of religious youth (ha-Noar ha-Dati) founded it as a kibbutz located a mile and a half from the Deir el Balah railroad station. It was a risky venture given Arab hostility, fanned at that time to hot hatred by the Arab leadership. These young people named the kibbutz Kfar Darom after the ancient Jewish regional center whose name derived from the geographic designation "darom" or "south."

Within a year the invading Egyptian army struck at Kfar Darom. For an amazing seven weeks the small group of villagers held out under repeated attacks. Finally, with supplies gone, breastworks and trenches all but demolished by Egyptian fire, the remaining defenders withdrew one night in a well-nigh miraculous escape through enemy lines. Twenty years later, after the Six Day War, the village was reestablished and when, after the withdrawal from Sinai, the Israeli government created a buffer settlement bloc in the Gaza Strip, Kfar Darom became part of that settlement bloc, which became known as Gush Katif.

But Kfar Darom's connection to Jews goes back much further. In the period of classical prophecy "Darom" was applied to the south of Israel in general (e.g. "...oh mortal, set your face towards Teman and proclaim to Darom,” Ezekiel 21:2). Today's (now destroyed) Kfar Darom was the heart of an area that in Talmudic times was recognized as a center of halachic thought. The second generation Tana (Mishnaic sage) Rabbi Eliezer bar Yitzhak taught there before the Bar Kochba uprising. The Talmud often simply attached the appellation Daromna to the name of sages from this area, e.g. Rabbi Ya'akob Daromna; R. Joshua Daromna etc. In the Gemara it was said that he who searches for wisdom ought to go to darom ("Yadrim" B.b.25). The term Ziknei Hadarom (Sages of Darom) became a term for a category of rabbis, whether from the environs of Kfar Darom, or by extension, elsewhere.

Thanks to Ariel Sharon, Kfar Darom will now be renamed in "honor" of Arafat or some Hamas murderer of Jews.

Erich Isaac is a retired geography professor at CUNY.