Rabbi Ishmael ben Yose was making his pilgrimage to Jerusalem — one of the three annual journeys that every Jewish man was commanded to undertake. Along the way, he passed through Samaritan territory, and a Samaritan man stopped him on the road.
"Where are you going?" the Samaritan demanded. "To Jerusalem, to worship at the Temple," Rabbi Ishmael replied. The Samaritan sneered. "Why do you worship at that mountain? Would it not be better to worship at our holy mountain, Mount Gerizim, which is the true place of worship?"
The dispute between Jews and Samaritans over the proper site of worship was ancient and bitter. The Samaritans believed God had chosen Mount Gerizim, near Shechem, as the site of His Temple. The Jews insisted on Jerusalem. Neither side would yield.
Rabbi Ishmael did not argue theology. Instead, he struck at the root of the Samaritan claim. "You are still hankering after the idols that Jacob buried at the foot of Mount Shechem," he said. The Torah records that when Jacob returned to the Land of Israel, he commanded his household to put away their foreign gods, and he buried them under an oak near Shechem (Genesis 35:4).
The implication was devastating: the Samaritans' attachment to Shechem and its mountain was not devotion to the true God — it was a lingering attraction to the very idols that Jacob had discarded there. Their holy place was, in Rabbi Ishmael's telling, a graveyard of false gods. The Samaritan had no answer. Rabbi Ishmael continued on his way to Jerusalem.