Sunday, February 16, 2014

Jews: A People Founded By a Religion

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                    

Jews are very complex.  Were the English founded in England by the Episcopalians of the Protestant Christian religion?  No, not by the Catholics, either.  Britain,  in 1,200 BCE saw  small villages  first being formed then.  France was called Gaul. The Celts came from Central Europe and settled in Gaul around 2,500 B.C. By 1,200 BCE, the Celts were being colonized by the people of Gaul.   The Celts  were iron workers and dominated Gaul until 125 B.C., when the Roman Empire began its reign in southern France.   Celts were early Indo-European people  who lived from the British Isles and Spain to Asia Minor.  They were to become the Scots, Irish, Welsh, Cornish or Bretons (from Brittany).  From 58 to 52 BCE, Gallo- Roman civilization began when Julius Caesar conquered Gaul.  By then Jerusalem was occupied by the Roman soldiers and a civilization of  the past 1,300 years was coming to a halt.  

Moses had been born before in 1391BCE  and died at age 120 in 1271 BCE.   He was his people's greatest teacher and died before entering Canaan, the land his ancestor, Abraham, had lived in more than 400 years before. Our history shows that Joseph, one of Abraham's sons by Rachel, had been in Egypt and had the high status of being the Pharaoh's right hand man.   Joshua led the Israelite slaves into Canaan. Thus, the Jewish people were of the state of Israel, like Americans are to the USA, and they were of one religion, Judaism.  Moses had led them to Canaan because of religion as G-d had been guiding him there.

As far as DNA goes, Moses's brother, Aaron, had many children.  Aaron and his children were picked by Moses to carry on religious duties, that of the Cohen in the Temple.  Today, the Cohen gene has been found and is Y haplotype J1C3d, which is shared with some Arabs as well of which each shows it's connection to either the Arab line or the Jewish line.  The Arab line we figure comes from the older ancestors of Moses, that of either Esau or Ishmael which goes way back to Abraham.  The story of our family indeed fits in nicely with the DNA discovered in the two groups' genes.  The people of Israel were basically of one family, the family of Jacob, son of Isaac, who was the son of Abraham.  They intermingled with other slaves held in Egypt during their 400 year stay, and later on intermarried with the remaining population of Canaan after they had fought for the land.  Now they were a nation.

I'm finding out that only 1 out of 4 people in an over 2,000 people study knew that the earth rotated around the sun, a study done by the National Science Foundation in the USA.  I would bet that less know and actually have read about our history in the 5 books of Moses, which are:  Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

In our Jewish history, which was written down in the Torah (5 books of Moses) during a period of time when many nations had already evolved and had writing in its culture,  the genealogy is told of Moses's family and ancestors.  It tells how others other than the family left Egypt with Moses who were also slaves there.  When someone is freeing slaves, no one is going to be a slacker and stay and slave away in a foreign country.   Though the present day  Egyptian Director of Egypt's  museum, Zawi Hawass,  denies that Jews were ever there as slaves, our records tell otherwise.  He knows everything there is to know about Egypt's Pharaohs, but not much about our history at all in this case.
What is one man's worker is  to that worker, a slave when they do not receive wages.  Especially when they are held and guarded and cannot leave.  Besides, our Torah doesn't say we built the pyramids, but says we built the storage of food cities.  The Egyptians recorded our entrance to Egypt with the mural painting shown above.  It's as good as a photograph and has lasted throughout the ages.  Below is a mural of circumcision, something Moses told his people to do as a sign of the covenant they accepted.  That's another thing that made Jews stand out from other peoples.  Greek athletes had many games of which Jews were participants, and they all played naked.  Jews were marked.  Today at the Olympics, flags and announcers tell where the athletes are from instead.
                                                                       
                                             Circumcision in Days of Jewish Slaves
That is told about when after they left Egypt, the Pharaoh had a change of heart, probably thinking of all the things he wanted done and had just lost all his workers, so he sent his solders after them to bring them back. Instead, the soldiers were drowned in the sea when chasing after the escapees.

This is the story told to us from the time we could sit up and listen to our parents during Passover, a holiday celebrated ever since then for the past 3,000 years.  We don't just tell the story in  front of a fireplace.  We gather our family members together and have a huge feast with each food reminding us of a part of the story we tell.  It's am amazing and wonderful experience that we all love and look forward to each year.  It is our history.

With the mingling of marriages in Egypt with other slaves that must have happened on purpose or accidentally, and with the fact that since then we have had to wander all over the globe in search of a peaceful existence, our DNA has added a few other haplogroups to the male line but not many.  During this whole period of time, we have been a people who became the scapegoats of the world, so were held up as being "different."  It's like we were purple people eaters or something, so different we were.  Therefore, people didn't want their children marrying us, and we in return didn't want to marry outside of our faith, though it happened occasionally, depending on circumstances.

We had our own language, for one thing.  Jews who left Jerusalem when it fell to the Romans in 70 CE were taken to Rome as slaves most likely, and then through time managed to get to France which was on the Mediterranean and of course Germany.  Being scapegoats there as well because of being a different religion, they eventually had to migrate into eastern Europe and finally into what Catherine the Great of Russia II called "The Pale of Settlement," the land she allowed Jews to live in.  This group spoke Yiddish, a mixture of Hebrew and German.  Another group had made it to what used to be called Iberia, then called Spain.  They spoke a mixture of Hebrew and Spanish.  The Mizrachi Jews who only traveled a little further away from Jerusalem but stayed in the Middle East spoke Hebrew and Arabic after 620 CE.  Jews had even gone back to Egypt and were living there again.  We all shared the same customs, holidays and prayers.  We were all Jews, yearning in daily prayers to return to Jerusalem.
                                                                         
So Jews are different from Christians and Muslims in this way.  We are  nationalistic in our religion.  We promised never to forget Jerusalem.  We have adapted to life outside of Eretz Yisrael, yes, but remain a religion mixed with nationalism.  Also, we are the oldest of the 3 religions.  Judaism was well over 1,000 years of age before Jesus was born, and about 1, 920 years old when Islam was created.
                                                                           
The miracle happened that prophets had spoken about.  Israel was created again on May 14, 1948. Jewish prophecy came true!  This was enough to shake up all the religions.  So, after over 2,000 years of wandering, and after starting to regain the Lost Ten tribes who had been carted away in 721 BCE by the Assyrians, and regaining those taken to Babylon in 597 and 586 BCE we see all the pieces coming together.  Jews are HOME!!  Yes, we are different.  We kept our promise to keep the faith and  to return home.

Resource:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Museum
http://www.care2.com/causes/egyptian-museum-director-hawass-avoids-1-year-jail-term.htmlhttp://www.care2.com/causes/egyptian-museum-director-hawass-avoids-1-year-jail-term.html
http://resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/questions/history.html#Prehistoric
http://aam.govst.edu/projects/tanstett/French%20timeline.htm




3 comments:

  1. http://virtualjerusalem.com/holidays1.php?Itemid=12149 15 Comments by American Presidents.

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  2. Jewish people are converts, had nothing to with Egypt either, simply these pseudo chosen people of god, their skin would not stand a chance against the sun.

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  3. Unknown who isn't brave enough to use his name, you simply don't know or want to know anything about the Jewish history. A good number of Jews never left Israel when others did in 70 CE. Many who left were able to find their way to other places to live in the area and are now called Mizrachi Jews, Mizrachi meaning Egypt-of the east. Those that went to Spain and then Portugal are called Sephardic Jews. They remained Jews and did not convert to anything else. Those of us whose fathers and leaders of their group were led to Europe and we are Ashkenazim Jews. We remained Jews, though a few men did marry non Jewish women who did the converting-to Judaism. As for skin-since Israel was created, 67 years have gone by and it isn't the sun that bothers our Jews living there. I lived in Haifa and Tzfat and the sunshine was fine-the weather was hot, especially in other locales in Israel, but it takes humans only a few months to adjust to climate changes. I adjusted to living in Anchorage, Alaska, too with its 30 degree F below climate and lived there 15 months when teaching. You say we had nothing to do with Egypt? You are behind times in reading history. I think you rankle at us being called by "The chosen ones.'' Our story is that many peoples were approached first to accept the 10 Commandments and they turned it down. We must have been the last asked and we accepted the responsibility of accepting all 10. We don't see ourselves as being any better than others, but try to follow these 10 commandments given to us through Moses who was given them by G-d.People all over the world respect these 10 commandments. Even Mohammad must have thought they were pretty good. Why don't you do a little research and see if Islam also teaches the same 10? And Unknown, people should bee looked upon by what they value in their morality, not by their skin color. Do they value all life? Do they value their parents? Etc.

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