PEOPLE the world over readily associate the Holy Land with religious pilgrimage. Lesser known is Palestine's annual call to devotees of beer in the Christian village of Taybeh.
Sunday saw Oktoberfest celebrated in Taybeh. Hundreds of visitors were able to relax for a day and forget about occupation and checkpoints, with the faces of international men and women of the cloth changing from serious to slightly buzzed as the aft
ernoon progressed.
"The beer is wonderful," enthused Father Jones Iragesen, a German Benedictine monk from Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem, who was accompanied by four other monks. "But this is my first and last beer because I am the driver."
While Bavarian and Palestinian music groups played on a stage, Fr Iragesen and others stressed the event was not just for enjoying the Taybeh Brewing Company's golden nectar but also to show solidarity with the local Christian population, now comprising only 2 per cent of the overall Palestinian population because of large scale emigration to the United States and other Western countries.
Squeezed between the growing Hamas power base, Israeli occupation and an economic downturn, Taybeh, which has only 1,200 residents, loses about 200 people a year to the West. Although surrounded by Muslim villages, it has, however, kept its identity by hosting the beer bash every October for the last four years.
"This is the only purely Christian village in Palestine," boasts Mary Michael, a teacher. "This festival lets the world know the village of Taybeh is on the map and all these visitors give us the feeling we are not so isolated."
A highlight of the festival was the launching of Taybeh's non-alcoholic beer, which has a malty taste and a label in green, the colour of Islam.
(The Scotsman can confirm it is indeed non-alcoholic.)
"We've been working on the non-alcoholic beer for a few years, but we were encouraged to do it after the (2006] election of Hamas," says Nadim Khoury, Taybeh's founder and director.
Marketed after the Islamic hardliners' rise to power, the alcohol-free version of Taybeh beer has a label inscribed only in Arabic.
