Monday, December 9, 2024

Coming From A Family Of Sheep-herders: The Jewish People

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                

Abraham, and his son, Isaac, and his son, Jacob, were all shepherds in eastern lands from Israel-probably lands  along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, since Ur, where Abraham came from was near the mouth of the Euphrates. Their tribe could have originated even more eastern, like in Persia, for that matter.   Jacob had told the Pharaoh of Egypt that they were a family of shepherds, and that their families had been shepherds.  (Genesis 47-3)  "The meadows don sheep and the valleys cloak themselves with fodder, they shout joyfully, they even sing!"  Psalm 65, David.    

According to the Bible, the land given to Jacob in Egypt was called GoshenWhen Jacob and his family moved to Egypt to join their son Joseph, they settled in the region of Goshen, the land emptying into the sea.  Goshen was considered a good area for grazing livestock, which was important for Jacob's family who were shepherds.  The Egyptians generally disliked shepherds, so living in Goshen allowed Jacob's family to maintain a separate identity and not mix in socially.                                    

 Most likely these shepherds carried the Y haplotype of J1, or J2.  Somewhere along their route, they may have  met up with the Q line as well, all shepherds seeking pasture for their sheep.                                                         

      Abraham's journey from Ur to Canaan.  The HyksosInvaders from western Asia who took control of northern Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period. The pharaohs claimed the Hyksos were foreign invaders, but some historians believe this was propaganda. Modern scholars believe the Hyksos were migrants from the Levant who moved into Egypt over centuries.  

Joseph, 11th son of Jacob and 1st son of  Rachel, his mother,  became Viceroy to a Pharaoh. It was he who received the grazing land in Goshen, which was the beginning of Israelite settlement in Egypt.  The story of  Joseph has been dated during the Hyksos domination of Egypt which was the 18th to 16th centuries BCE.  

                               

Elimelech and his wife, Naomi, and their son, Mahlon and Chilion,  lived in ancient Moab in the Eastern part of the world, actually in southern Transjordan, today's Jordan.   It was bounded by the river, Heshbon in  the North, and the river Zered in the South, the Jordan and Dead Sea to the West, and the Syrian Desert on the East. They were sheepherders, and related  to the Israelites.  They were historically descended---like the Ammonites---from Lot, a more ancient relative.                                

Lot was the son of Abraham's brother, Haran.  Lot had traveled with Abram from Aram (Syria) to Canaan, but their hired shepherd helpers had a fight over pasture land for Lot's sheep and Abram's sheep, and so they thought it best to part company in order for each to have enough pasture for their growing herds.  Lot settled in Sodom  where he was captured by 5 kings attacking the country together.  Abram came to his rescue when Lot's  shepherd on a camel arrived and asked for help.  

  Naomi had come from Bethlehem in Judah and had gone to Moab in a famine period where they had lived.  After Elimelech and her sons died, she returned to Bethlehem with her daughter-in-law, Ruth.  Naomi played the matchmaker by introducing Ruth later to her cousin, Boaz, and they married.      Boaz had fields of wheat.  The poor were allowed to glean, to pick up the droppings from the harvest, for themselves.  Ruth did this for the two of them, so they could make bread.                                         

                       Boaz and his friends

Boaz was a good catch, a man of property.  Ruth was a Moabite.  She had married Mahlon, but when he died, she wanted to stay with Ruth, who she was very attached to.  Ruth had been so good to her, she was like Ruth's loving mother.  They decided to go back to Bethlehem and cast their lot  because Ruth had family there, and Ruth had had enough of the Moabites.  Her own family had also died as well. (Lot (Gen. 19:37) The Moabite language was similar to biblical Hebrew.  

During the patriarchal era, the Moabite line settled in their land which had been captured  from the Rephaim/Emim (Deut.2:10-11).  During the Exodus Period, part of this Moab territory came under the rule of the Amorite monarch, Sihon, but after his defeat by the Israelites, was occupied by the Israelites and his land became an object of contention between Israel, Moab, and Ammon. The Moabites united into a single tribal kingdom.  However,  they had started as a clan,  divided into smaller tribes.  Of course, they were shepherds.                                                                                                 

                   David had protected his sheep from wolves with his sling.  He knew he could take down Goliath; had lots of self pride in his capabilities.  

Boaz and Ruth had a son named Obed or Oved.  Oved had a son named Jesse who married the daughter of Ithra.  They had 8 children, the last named David who grew up to be the King of Israel from 1,000 to 960 BCE.  He was born in Bethlehem.   David spent his early childhood as a shepherd.  David was 8 generations away from Judah, son of Jacob.                         

                  Saul killed by Philistines in battle at Mt. Gilboa

At the age of 25, David became the armor-bearer of Saul, friend of Saul's son, Jonathan.  He meant he was a soldier with Saul and fought against the Philistines.  He did so well that he earned the right to marry Saul's daughter, Michal.  Saul became jealous of his son-in-law and it became so serious that David had to leave town and seek refuge with the king of Gath, Achish. Gath was a Philistine city, home of Goliath!  David captured this city.   He only returned to Israel after Saul and 3 of his sons had been defeated and killed at the battle of Mt. Gilboa.  David settled in Hebron in Judah and declared himself king of Judah.  Hebron is the town belonging to Abraham who bought a plot of land with the Cave of Machpelah that he used as a place for their burial.  Abner, Saul's general, sided with Eshbaal, Saul's remaining son, even crowning him king at Mahanaim.  

Judah became the remaining state  of Israel of the 12 tribes stemming from Jacob's 12 sons.  They became the Jewish people.  Judah, one of the 12 sons, had a name change to Israel. 

Jews are important to the world because the "Old Testament" Tanakh to Jews, was written about them, and that led to the New Testament, starting with the gospels of 12 Jews who had started a new religion, Christianity from their original religion of Judaism.  Jews have barely survived, being 0.02% of the world population; or known to be 2% of the USA and re-establishing Israel after waiting for over 2,000 years with another 6 million Jews.  Muslims' history is found in the Tanakh as well, for Mohammad was born in 570 CE, and he had met Jews during his life, as some tribes of Jews were then living in Arabia.    During the 1800s CE there were many living in Palestine, there to see many Jews return from foreign lands and join their families who had never left.  

Jews have won 22% of all Nobel Prizes awarded between 1901 and 2023, which is 110 times their proportion of the world's population. Some notable Jewish Nobel laureates include: 
  • Albert Einstein: Won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 
  • S.Y. Agnon: Won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966 
  • Henry Kissinger: Won the Nobel Prize in Peace in 1973 
  • Isaac Bashevis Singer: Won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978 
  • Elie Wiesel: Won the Nobel Prize in Peace in 1986 
  • Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres: Won the Nobel Prize in Peace in 1994 
  • Bob Dylan: Won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 
  • Gerty Cori: The first Jewish woman to win the Nobel Prize, studying carbohydrate metabolism with her husband 
Jews have won Nobel Prizes in all six of the Nobel Foundation's awards:
  • Chemistry: 37 winners
  • Economics: 38 winners
  • Literature: 16 winners
  • Peace: 9 winners
  • Physics: 56 winners
  • Physiology or Medicine: 60 winners 
  • These same Jews were ones kept out of medical school for fear that other religions would   
  • not have a chance to become doctors, evidently; so there were quotas on Jewish students.  
  • By 1924, there was a quota on Jews allowed to enter the USA and become citizens.  

 The Holocaust slaughtered 6 million Jews.  Now, the world has turned on them, even in the USA where anti-Semitism is running rampant.  As a Jew, I shake my head in wonderment  why the hatred, and is it because they have stuck to their promise of believing in one G-d instead of the many offered during Greek and Roman days, making them "different?"  They have been trying for almost 4,000 years to maintain their ethical law, their mores, never trying to force their beliefs onto others, but just being an example of family life as a way to be happy unto themselves and to others.  That's how we were charged to believe and not to change.  The Golden Rule in our schooling:  Don't do to others what you don't want to happen to you....yes, the negative side of the Golden Rule others have been taught.  That's what we try to remember and live up to:  

                                                                 

           Senior Home Life:  Regardless of Religion, welcome if a Senior somewhere:    Medicare, medicaid, the important words to know about.  So many of us are on United Insurance plans, and the head CEO, Andrew Witty,  was just assassinated.  You can't lower prices by shooting the insurance man.    I ask again, when will people learn?  We couldn't afford to live without insurance today.  Frankly, I don't know how they can afford to cover us!  All prices are too high!!!

Well, now, I see the world about to fall apart with the hatred in full swing again.  Will people ever learn?  I have hope, even while living in an Assisted Living Center where I'm surrounded by wonderful people I adore who give their hearts and souls to our care.  If only the rest of the world were as lovely.  These people, made up of new immigrants and old, young and old, have what it takes to be wonderful citizens of any country.  I'm so glad to have the opportunity to meet and to know them.  There is hope for the future.  They are so like shepherds caring for their charges; us residents.                 

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

  

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