Benot Ya'aqov

... More >

locates the event elsewhere: when Joseph was sent by Jacob to join his brothers in Shechem he traveled on the old royal highway through Samaria to Shechem and from there went on to Dothan, where he found his brothers and was sold by them to the merchants (Genesis 37,12-28).

The Crusaders, harking back to the old tradition, named the place Jacob's Ford and believed that it was here that Jacob wrestled with the angel - though this too was in contradiction to the Bible, which sets the incident at the ford on the river Jabbok (now Nahr ez-Zarqa), between Amman and Jerash in present-day Jordan (Genesis 32, 24f.). In 1178, to defend the crossing, King Baldwin IV built the castle of Chastellet, which was destroyed by Saladin only a year later.

On various occasions in the 20th century the Benot Ya'aqov Bridge, the only one over the upper Jordan, has been of strategic importance. From here British forces twice advanced into Syria, during the First World War, when Syria was held by the Turks, and in the Second World War, when it was controlled by Vichy France. In June 1946 the bridge was blown up, along with ten other bridges, by the Haganah, the Jewish underground organization, in protest against British policy in the mandated territory.

A road now runs over the bridge to the Golan Heights.