DANIEL Prophet Of Today's Age, and How It Was Written, Part 3

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                

What do we know of the Biblical Book of Daniel, mentioned in Ezek. 14:14. Ezekiel was a Prophet of the 6th century BCE, and most likely a member of the priestly family of Zadok who served in the Temple before its destruction in 586 BCE. He was also exiled to Babylon before Jews were exiled to Tel Abib on the river Kebar in Babylonia where he prophesied over a period of 22 years (592-570 BCE).

 Daniel was named along with Noah and Job.  He was an ancient sage; is referred to in Ezek. 28:3 (which is the source of the phrase, "A Daniel come to judgment" in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice). 

 They say "Daniel" was also found in an ancient tale discovered in a Ugaritic text as well. Ugaritic texts originate from the ancient city-state of Ugarit, located on the Mediterranean coast of modern-day Syria. Specifically, the texts were discovered at Ras Shamra (the tell of Ugarit) and nearby Ras Ibn Hani. These texts provide valuable insights into the language and culture of the ancient Near East, including aspects of Northwest Semitic religion. 

In our  Tanach (Old Testament), Daniel is listed under "Writings" and is almost at the end, coming after Esther's story.  Daniel was from the tribe of Judah living in exile in Babylon  and lived in  300 BCE.   It's writing about the future !

He has amazing and unusual experiences at the courts of King Nebuchadnezzar , Darius the Mede, and Belshazzar.  Chapters 7-12 are apocalyptic;  the visions relate to ancient times, but the reference seems to be to the 4persecuting kingdoms of Babylonia  Media, Persia and Greece.

They allude to historical events down to the period of Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria (175-163 BCE) whose wicked rule is to be succeeded by the kingdom of heaven.  His visions seems tocome to Judah at the beginning of the  Maccabean revolt ofabout 165 BCE.  The Book of Daniel contains Aramaicwriting of chapters 2:4-7; and 28 which caused a profoundinfluence on subsequent mysticism.  

                          Aramaic, the Bible's 3rd language

Aramaic was the language of the Jews from the 5th century BCE to the 11th century CE. They wrote many of their religious books in it, including the Babylonian Talmud, Targumim, Midrash, and some parts of the Tanakh.  It became the international language used by many people.   Additionally, the Hebrew square script evolved from the Aramaic script in the 2nd century BCE.

Was Aramaic or Hebrew Part of the Palestinian Arabs of Today?

Syriac-Aramaic Alphabet

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                       

Early Aramaic-alphabet

Evidently, Jesus, the Christian founder,  spoke Aramaic in his day.  This is why Christians have taken an interest in the ancient language.  The Pope came and visited with Netanyahu and mentioned Aramaic, not giving into the fact that people continued using Hebrew as well.  Hebrew was revived and used again after 1880 with the waves of Jews coming into "Palestine" in what was called aliyahs  from Russian territories who had suffered from  pogroms.  Now it's the language of Israel once again.
                                                                         

Yeshua (Jesus) in Aramaic
The letters, read from right to left, look like Hebrew to me and
would be: Yud, Shin, Vuv, Ayin.   I would call this old Hebrew.
Even I can read it as Hebrew.  

                                                                             

Hebrew Alphabet

The language of Israel was  and still is Hebrew.  It had only been used in the synagogues for centuries in prayers and the readings in the Torah and Tanakh.
                                                                         

The Hebrew letter A (Aleph) through the ages

However, Aramaic emerged as an international language, especially used for commerce from the period of the late Assyrian and Persian kingdoms of the 6th century BCE.  This is found as evidence by the many inscriptions found in Asia Minor, Egypt, India and in other places where it was never the native language.  The Babylonians, led by Nebuchadnezzar,  had attacked Israel in 597 and 586 BCE and had taken many captives.  They destroyed the 1st Temple of Solomon.
                                                                           

Hebrew, Arabic and English sign
Hebrew pronunciation:  Ya-roosh-al-eye-eem

Aramaic  was for many centuries, the  vernacular spoken in Judea.  The Romans had been occupiers much before 70 CE when they destroyed the Temple by burning it down and captured the inhabitants to be sold as slaves or used for their own as slaves. King Herod, appointed by the Romans, died in 4 BCE.  10 years later, Judea was under direct Roman administration.  The Romans suppressed Jewish life and this resulted into sporadic violence which escalated into a full-scale revolt in 66 CE.  Titus led his superior Roman soldiers to battle against the Jews and wound up razing Jerusalem to the ground in 70 CE.  Then they defeated the last Jewish outpost at Masada in 73 CE.  Finally, Aluf Bar Kochba took Jerusalem back in 132 CE but was finally killed in battle in 135 CE.  It was then that the Romans renamed the Jewish land to Palaestina, after the Phoenicians who were Israel's enemies.  They renamed Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina.

Life regained itself, however, from the Romans who caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Jews in the siege of Jerusalem and elsewhere in the country, along with the many thousands more who were sold into slavery.   Jews and Judaism survived Rome by making adjustments.  Instead of the Temple that they burned to the ground, Jews created synagogues in places they had been taken.  The Sanhedrin wass reconvened in Yavneh in 70 CE and later in Tiberias.  There was a small remaining Jewish community that gradually recovered and grew with returning exiles.  Rabbis and the synagogue became the focus of Jewish settlement.  Many remnants of synagogues have been found at Capernaum, Korazin, Bar'am, Gamla and other places.  It was our Halakhah, the Jewish religious law, that served as the common bond among the Jews and was passed on from generation to generation with our Hebrew writings and our oral laws.  .

Biblical readings had to be translated from the Hebrew to Aramaic in the synagogues for the benefit of congregants who didn't understand Hebrew anymore.  It persisted as a literary tongue for a long time and was the language of the Zohar and of later kabbalistic poetry.

This Aramaic is looked upon as intermediate Western Aramaic which was the language of the Palestinian Talmud.  We have 2 Talmuds; the Palestinian written there, and the Babylonian Talmud, written when Jews had to live in Babylonia.  The Aggadic Midrashim, Targum Jonathan and the Samaritan translation of the Pentateuch and the eastern Aramaic was included in this grouping.

Dead Sea Scrolls, found in caves at Khurbet Kumran, 7.5 miles from Jericho in 1947.
The writers, from a Jewish sect,   lived there until 68 CE.  They were from writings of the Bible and were
written in Hebrew.  There was an Aramaic version of the Book of enoch.  You can see them today in Israel where they are housed at the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem.   Their discovery has advanced the study of the Hebrew text of the bible, as the previous known oldest versions date from the Middle Ages.  

                                                                                          

The Torah, the 5 Books of Moses,
All in Hebrew

Jews who have settled in Israel since 1948 that came from the Kurdish districts of Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Persia (Iran) and Russia still spoke new Aramaic as the Nestorian Christians there did also.

Formal literary dialects of Aramaic based on Hasmonean and Babylonian  were followed by other dialects.  and Western varieties were spoken in Judea in the time of Jesus.  Old Judean Aramaic was the prominent dialect of Jerusalem and Judaea.  The Ein Gedi region was the where you found the Southeat Judaean dialect.  Samaria had its distinctive Samaritan Aramaic, where the consonants "he", "heth" and "ayin" all became pronounced as "aleph".  The Galilean Aramaic where Jesus came from in the Gospel story is only known from a few place names, , and in Galilean Targumic, some rabbinic literature and a few private letters.  It had a number of distinctive features;  diphthongs that were never simplified into monophthongs.  In the East of the Jordan, the various dialects of East Jordanian were spoken.  Around Damascus, Syria and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, Damascene Aramaic was spoken.  As far north as Aleppo, Syria, the western dialect of Orontes Aramaic was spoken. Note this was in Syria, which was then part of Israel.
                                                                     

English read from left to right
Hebrew read from right to left
it means "GOOD LUCK!"
ma--ZEL   TOV

The languages of Hebrew and Aramaic influenced each other.  Hebrew words entered Jewish Aramaic.  Aramaic words entered Hebrew.  The Christian New Testament was written in Greek.  It often preserved non-Greek semiticisms, including transliterations of Semitic words, and mistakes were often made.

No, Palestinians of today came from surrounding lands and were Muslims. In fact, the people hadn't followed Islam until Mohammad came along, born in 570 CE and died in 632 CE.  It was the 3rd religion of the Middle East.  It was those Russian Jews who came in the 1st to 5 aliyahs who attracted them since they figured they could get jobs in their building of towns in the late 1800s.  .   Their language was Arabic unless they were Christian Arabs and might have spoken an Aramaic dialect.

At the junior high in Safed where I taught English, the Arab students took Hebrew and the Jewish students took Arabic.  The students would get together later and help each other with their homework.  I don't think it was as hard for them since Arabic is also similar to Hebrew, and they all read from right to left.  

Resource: The New Standard Jewish encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_language
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Romans.html
Update 7/31/16 book:  Hidden Gospel, by Neil Douglas-Klotz, on Aramaic, history, background, definitions, a Sufi with one parent Jewish, another not.  Mostly covering the Aramaic in the 1st century BCE and CE. ; includes CDs on subject with chanting

Aramaic Found in Galilee Cemetery: In competition with Hebrew

Nadene Goldfoot                                                      

Above includes Targum which is the Aramaic translation of the Bible.  The Talmud concludes from Nehemiah 8:8 that the custom of adding an Aramaic translation to the public reading of the bible goes back to Ezra, well-established custom in the 2nd Temple Period.  All Targums are written in a somewhat artificial Aramaic, half-way between biblical Aramaic and the spoken language of Judah.  

                                                                                               

Aramaic 

The Kinneret Institute for Galilean Archaeology has found in a cemetery in the Galilee some inscriptions both in Greek and Aramaic in the old capital city of Zippori.  Zippori was the 1st capital of the Galilee from the time of the Hasmonean dynasty until the creation of the city of Tiberias in the 1st century CE.  Zippori continued to be important later.  Christians get excited over Aramaic and the Galilee because Jesus ministered around the Sea of Galilee in Capernaum most of his time. He spoke in Aramaic.""Capernaum was a fishing village in the time of the Hasmoneans, located on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. It had a population of about 1,500. Archaeological excavations have revealed two ancient synagogues built one over the other.  

This find was in the city of Zippori (Sepphoris), described by the first century CE Jewish historian, Josephus Flavius, as "the ornament of all Galilee," is located on a hill in the Lower Galilee, midway between the Mediterranean and Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), with abundant spring water and a fertile valley around it. Zippori is mentioned in many Jewish sources of the first centuries of the common era. Founded in the Hellenistic era, it was named the administrative capital of Galilee by Gabinius, the Roman governor, in the mid-first century BCE. The city did not join the revolt against Rome in 66 CE; it opened its gates to the legions of the Roman Emperor Vespasian and was thus saved. On coins minted in Zippori at that time, the city is named Eirenopolis, "city of peace." Later, its name was changed to Diocaesarea in honor of Zeus and the emperor."  Archaeologist found many beautiful mosaics in Tzippori (another spelling)  that people used to say it might have been a regional catalogue store for the ornate floors that the Romans loved!.                                   Talmud with section of Mishnah in center surrounded by commentaries from illustrious scholars  In Jewish tradition, it is best known as the hometown of Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi (Rabbi Judah Ha-Nasi) (135-220 CE) son and successor of Rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel II.  He was known as "our holy teacher".   who codified the Mishnah (the first book of the Talmud) here in the late second century CE. Visitors feel close to Jewish history and practice in Tzipori’s synagogue, with its magnificent fifth-century mosaic whose motifs symbolize longed-for redemption. The MIshnah is the legal codification containing the core of the Oral Law.  Yehuda arranged it all logically. Most of his life was spent in the Galilee, first at Bet Shearim and then at Sepphoris.  His household spoke pure Hebrew and gave the language new life.  He was buried in the family tomb at Bet Shearim, which has been excavated. "Judah was supposedly of the royal line of King David, hence, also  the title "Prince."  Nasi was a title of being head of the Sanhedrin (the ruling Jewish Council.). "

Four words have been decoded in Zippori, an ancient capital of the Galilee in Israel.  One word is Greek for Jose.  No, the Spaniards weren't in the Galilee 2,000 years ago.  It was actually a common Jewish  name ."The  name Jose (as translated by the Christian website)  is probably an truncated form of the name Ιωσης (Joses), which in turn comes from the Hebrew name Joseph (in Hebrew: יוסף, and transliterated into Greek: Ιωσηφ), but many people insist it's a form of the name Ιησους (Jesus), which in turn comes from the Hebrew name Joshua (in Hebrew: יהושע, and transliterated into Greek: Ιησους), which is obviously a completely different name."   The other 3 words were Aramaic for:
1. The Tiberian
2. Forever
3. rabbi
These were words in a cemetery, like what might be found on a headstone.  The Tiberian had to be the man who was buried and had come from the city of Tiberias.  Tiberias was founded in about 18 CE by Herod Antipas and named in honor of the Roman emperor Tiberius. who reigned from 14 to 37 CE.  It was in 19 CE that he expelled the Jews from Rome on account of a fraud perpetrated on a Roman matron sympathetic to Judaism.  4,000 young Jews were sent to Sardinia to fight the brigands.  Israel and Judah were harshly administered under his rule, during which the crucifixion of Jesus happened.

Most likely deceased in the cemetery  was a rabbi, but scholars are unsure precisely what this meant at the time of its inscription. Forever meant that the deceased's burial place will always belong to him.   This is what Motti Aviam of the Kinneret Institute has said about the find.

"The Aramaic script was widely adopted for other languages and is ancestral to both the Arabic and modern Hebrew alphabets. Accordingly, Jesus Christ, the central figure of Christianity, spoke the Aramaic dialect during his public ministry.  There is sort of a long running battle between the Pope and Netanyahu about what language was used in the 1st century CE in Judah;  Aramaic or Hebrew.  Hebrew was still spoken, but Aramaic was also used.  It was a North-Semitic language known by some as Chaldaic, and still is spoken by a few.

Aramaic is closer to Hebrew than the other Semitic languages and has influenced Hebrew considerably.  It came on the scene as an international language like English has been.  Commerce from the period of the late Assyrian and Persian kingdoms of the 6th century BCE was the reason it was used as evidenced by the many inscriptions that have been found in Asia Minor, Egypt, India and in other places where it was never native.  Aramaic was for many centuries the Palestinian vernacular, and biblical readings were translated into Aramaic in the synagogues for the benefit of  congregants who did not understand Hebrew, as we find English today.  It was the literary tongue and was the language of  the Zohar and of later kabbalistic poetry.

Ancient Aramaic was used on inscriptions of the 1st millennium BCE and in the Elephantine papyri and used at times in the Bible such as Daniel .2::4-7:28:   Ezra 4:8-6:18:  7:12-26:  Jeremiah. 10:11.

Then Western Aramaic was the language of the Palestinian Talmud, the aggadic Midrashim, Targum Jonathan, and the Samaritan translation of the Pentateuch.

Eastern Aramaic includes Syriac and the Aramaic of the Babylonian Talmud.

New Aramaic is still spoken by the Nestorian Christians in the Kurdish districts of Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Persia (Iran) and Russia and also by Jews who have settled in Israel from these regions.

The city of Zippori must have been named for Zipporah, wife of Moses and daughter of Jethro, the priest of Midian.  When Zipporah traveled to Egypt with Moses, she saved her son's life by circumcising him as told in Exodus 4:24-6.  Later, she returned to her father with her 2 sons, Gershom and Eliezer.  Then she rejoined Moses at Mount Sinai, told in Exodus 18:1.

As for the ancient city of Zippori, it had many ritual baths discovered in the excavation.  Roman culture was also evident in the findings such as the design of the town with paved streets, colonnaded main roads, theater and bathhouses.  There were many inscriptions found in the cemeteries which attests to the strong Jewish presence and the city's social elite in this late Roman period.
                                                                           

An interesting point about Hebrew is that it was being used in Israel before the Israelite conquest. This could be documented by the fact that Abraham of the 2nd  millennium BCE had entered Canaan with his wife, Sarah and others, and they most likely spoke Hebrew. They lived there until the drought that drove their family,  now with Jacob as the head of 70 into Egypt.   It was one of the Semitic languages used, the others being Moabite and Phoenician, which were all part of the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages.  The 1st Hebrew spoken was then a pre-exilic Biblical Hebrew.  After the exile, Biblical Hebrew continued to be used for over 500 years, but started to falter because of the influence of Aramaic when from 539 BCE to 331BCE was the language of officialdom  and was being spoken by many Jews.  The emergence of mishnaic Hebrew as a new colloquial language from about 200 BCE  caused the uncertainty in Hebrew usage also.  Mishnaic Hebrew was not from biblical Hebrew but probably from some pre-exilic colloquial dialect and had become a literary language through the tannaim in the 1st century CE.  It's spoken use then declined after the wars of 66 to 70 CE and again in 132-135 when Aluf Bar Kokhba made his stand against the Romans.  It was a more sober, simple and brief language than biblical Hebrew and better suited for precise expression.

Prayers during the Tannaitic Period combined Biblical Hebrew vocabulary with Mishnaic Hebrew grammar.  Almost all later styles mixed the 2 dialects.  After 200, even the Jews of Judah and Israel  almost stopped using Hebrew and wrote in Aramaic and Greek.  In about 500, a literary revival began which led to the use of Hebrew again in its written form throughout the Middle Ages.

Today Ashkenazim speak Hebrew differently from the Sephardim and Mizrahim.  Ashkenazis disregard nearly all the gutturals and all the emphatics of Hebrew.  For instance, a kametz is pronounced as an a by the Sephardi but as an o by the Ashkenazi and o by the Yemenite.  A Holam is prounounced as an o by the Sephardi but as an au, oi, etc by Ashkenazi and the Yemenite prounce it as an e or ei.   The Israel pronunciation has the vowel sounds of the Sephardi Hebrew but the consonants of the Ashkenazim except for tav.  The fact is that the Yemenite pronunciation of Hebrew has continued the Babylonian tradition whereas the Ashkenazi and Sephardi pronunciations reflect the Tiberian and  Palestinian pronunciation respectively.   Jews were taken to Babylonia in 597 and 586 BCE by Nebuchadnezzar as slaves, so it's a much older form of Hebrew.
.
Update: 2/4/16 about Abraham (in red). 
Resource:  Christianity.com@crosswalkmail.com, "Israel Insights"  Israel:  Archaeologists Uncover Inscriptions in Jesus' Language.
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/israelexperience/history/pages/archaeological%20sites%20in%20israel%20-%20zippori.aspx
http://www.goisrael.com/Tourism_Eng/Articles/Sites/Pages/Tzippori.aspx
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Judah_haNasi
http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2009/03/Jesus-and-the-Sea-of-Galilee.aspx
http://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Jose.html#.VrJKFtIrJkh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capernaum

Unfailing Hebrew After Living in a World of Languages--A People With Their Language

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                    

Writing in clay tablets 

Jews started off speaking Hebrew as Habirus, a Semitic language of Semites 4,000 years ago, and have returned to their homeland finally where they revived their language as well.  Hebrew, Moabite and Phoenican languages belong to the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages.  People were speaking Hebrew in Canaan before the Israelite conquest.
                                                                           

Ancient style from Babylonian days-Aramaic Hebrew

Before Jews were exiled by the Assyrians in 721 BCE, they were speaking biblical Hebrew which was a standardized literary language with distinct idioms for prose and poetry, full-sounding, rich in vocabulary and rhetorical devices.  It borrowed many words from the surrounding languages of their neighbors.  There seems to have been a slightly different standard language in the northern kingdom of Israel from that of Judah.
                                                                           

Possibly didn't leave spaces between words, no period, either

Nadene Goldfoot
Biblical Hebrew continued to be spoken after the Assyrian exile for over 500 years, but showed many signs of decay and uncertainty in usage.  The reasons were the influence of Aramaic from 539 to 331 BCE, the language of officialdom which was spoken by many Jews then.  Also, mishnaic Hebrew emerged as a new colloquial language from at least 200 BCE..  Mishnaic Hebrew is not derived from biblical Hebrew but was probably from some pre-exilic colloquial dialect.  It became a literary language through the tannaim in the 1st century CE.  Speaking in Mishnaic Hebrew declined after the wars of 66-70 at the fall of Jerusalem and especially after 132-135 when Bar Kokhba's fight to regain Jerusalem ended with his death.
                                                                     

Evolving letter A-aleph

The language became more sober, simple and brief than biblical Hebrew had been and was better suited for more precise expression.  The prayers  composed during the Tannaitic Period combined biblical Hebrew vocabulary with Mishnaic Hebrew grammar.  Almost all later styles mixed the 2 dialects.
                                                                         

Early Aramaic

After the year 200, even the Jews of  Palestine (now named as such by the Romans after 135) stopped using Hebrew and wrote in Aramaic and Greek.  In about  the year 500, a literary revival began which led to the use of Hebrew in its written form throughout the Middle Ages.  Starting in Palestine, writers enriched Hebrew by inventing new words  and made some daring grammatical innovations.  Hebrew again spread throughout all of European Jews.  From 900-1400, Jews of NW Europe wrote only Hebrew.
                                                                               

Dead Sea Scrolls, written around 1st century CE or a little earlier

In Moslem countries including Spain, biblical Hebrew  was used for artistic writing and Arabic for other purposes.  From 1100 to 1400 they were using a strongly arabicized scientific style.  This and biblical Hebrew was found after 1500 in Italy, then Holland.
                                                                             

Eastern European Jews use Aramaic while women and the uneducated wrote in Yiddish.  The Haskalah of 1750-1880 revived the use of biblical Hebrew.  They even wrote modern secular literature in Hebrew.  Jewish nationalism rose by 1880 with the first aliyah returning to Palestine and modern Hebrew was born.

What a trip they've had.  Because of their often time forced migrations, Jews had to pick up many languages, and of course as they coursed through different lands and stayed for a while, had to pick up the vernacular of that land.
                                                                         

Israelites led away by Assyrians from Israel

For many, their first exile was in 722 BCE by the Assyrians.  By continuing their religious practices handed down by Moses, they kept their Hebrew language as everything was said in Hebrew.
                                                                         

When the Talmud was written, they were writing in Aramaic and Targum. There were 2; the Babyloninan Talmud-before 500 CE and the Palestinian Talmud-before 400 CE; records of disussion and administration of the laws
                                                                             

Jews of Persian Azerbaijan, Iraq and Persian Kurdistan kept on speaking an eastern Neo-Aramaic.
Egyptian Jews in 3rd century BCE (300s BCE) were now speaking Greek, but with Hebraisms and Aramaisms.
                                                                             

When Cyrus conquered Jews, they had to speak Persian. in old Persian dialect, even when Persians were speaking Middle Persian/Pehlevi.
Caucasian Mountain Jews spoke a type of Tat-a type of medieval Iranian dialect, or Farsi (spoken today in Iran.
Jews in central Asia spoke Tajaiti, another Iranian dialaect.
Georgian Jews spoke the language of their Gruzinian native population but with Hebrew expressions and forms.
Jews in Arabia by 7th and 8th centuries CE wound up speaking Judeo-Arabic.  Their speech differed from the common speech with Jewish vernaculars and many variations. They produced some of the greatest Jewish works in Arabic.
North African Jews spoke Arabic.
Jews in Iraq and Yemen were speaking Arabic, the language of the land.
Jews in Khazaria would have had to have been multi-lingual speaking many languages since they were traders, business men needing Arabic, Hebrew, and the languages around Russia.
Ethiopian Jews spoke Kuarena and are or were versed in Amharic with religious ceremonies done in a variation of Ge'ez.
Jews of the Western Roman Empire who became Ashkenazis wound up speaking Low Latin which then gave way to Old French to Italian in its various dialects to Provencal, and above all to Spanish in the Castilian form which then dominated all.

1492 Sefer Torah from Spain

 This then gave rise to Ladino, which Jews of Spain spoke.
Portugese Jews moved to Marrano/Anusim colonis in Western Europe and America from 16th to 18th centuries CE.
Jews in South and Central America spoke Spanish.
Ashkenazi Jews spoke German as that was the first country after Rome that they settled in and this turned into Yiddish a mixture of Hebrew and German, starting at end of 9th century.  Yiddish with different accents was then used all over Europe and has been the language of important literature.
American, Canadian  and British Jews  speak English. I must say that when I lived in Israel (1980-1985), there were times that as an American I could hardly understand some of the British Jews with their strong accents.  They used a few different words than we did, as well for certain things.
Russian Jews have tried to move to Israel, but those left still speak Russian
                                                                       

Torah, always in Hebrew-Cohens called up first to read from it

Israelis today again speak Hebrew and frown upon using Yiddish as that was the language of the Diaspora, living outside of the land of Israel.
                                                                               

It was Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, a man from Luzhky, Lithuania born in 1858 who decided that returning Jews would speak Hebrew in their re-established state.  He himself, like all Jewish children then learned Hebrew from about the age of 5 as part of their thoroughly religious upbringing in their own schools.  He ended up finishing his education in a Russian gymnasium in 1877 when Russia proclaimed war on the Ottoman Empire to help our their fellow Slavs, the Bulgarians, to regain their independence from the Turks.  Revivals of many older lands were occurring then;  Bulgaria, Greeks in 1829, Italians in 1849 and felt that if the Bulgarians could do it, so could the Jews.  He was really the start of Zionism for he felt that the Jews must return to their land and speak their own language again.
                                                                         

He left Russia in 1878 and came down with Tuberculosis.  That stopped his plans to study medicine to be more useful in Palestine, but went there anyway in 1881.  He had been speaking Hebrew with everyone he met.  He spoke in Hebrew with his wife.  They got off the boat in Jaffa and spoke with everyone in Hebrew.  They spoke only Hebrew with their son in 1882.  Eventually, the whole state was speaking Hebrew by 1948.  .

Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
ttps://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/ben_yehuda.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Ben-Yehuda
Letters From Israel by Nadene Goldfoot

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No Semitic Race-Only Semitic Languages

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                       

There is no such thing as a Semitic race, but there are the Semitic Languages, spoken by Arabic, Hebrew and the Abyssinians of 57 million people.

Semites came from Shem, who was one of the 3 sons of Noah.  From Shem, the nations of Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, and Aram came forth.  Arpachshad was in turn father of Eber and ancestor of Abraham. Peoples speaking tongues similar to Hebew are called Semitic peoples and their languages are Semitic Languages.   

There is a connection between Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic.  Judah Ibn Kuraish demonstrated it in the 10th century.  It was described by W. Wright in 1890.  The name "Semitic" for the family is based on Genesis 10 and was suggested by A. L. Schlozer in 1781.  The Semitic family forms a branch of the Hamito-Semitic family, to which belong also the Ancient Egyptian, Somali, the Cushitic languages of E. Africa, and the Berber dialects of North Africa.

In Israel, all students study Hebrew and English and may choose to also study Arabic or French.  As a teacher of English, I was asked how many languages I spoke.  Ha!  We Americans tend to study one language only, but luckily I could say 2, being I had done a little with Spanish, another important language in the USA.  My Hebrew was taught in Sunday school of which I soon dropped as my attendance had been poor.  I had to cram like crazy before I moved to Israel with cards I made all over the house labeling everything in Hebrew.  Getting used to reading from right to left is different for an English speaker and reader.  Being left-handed, I loved it, especially the writing part.

ENGLISH         HEBREW              ARAMAIC         AKKADIAN    ARABIC     ETHIOPIC

  one (1)                ehad                        had                     edu                 ahadu           ahadu
three (3)              shalosh                     tlat                     shelashu            thalathu         shalsh
father                 ab (av) abba                ab, abba                 abu              abu             ab
mother               em, eema                  em, imma             ummu              ummu             emm
brother               ah                              ah                       ak hu               ak hu              ekhw
sister                  ahot                           hat                      ak hatu             ukhtu             ak hat, ekh

This particular language family was made up of:

1. Eastern Semitic=Akkadian Branch
    A. Old Akkadian (2500-1950 BCE)
    B. Assyrian (?- 600 BCE)
    C  Babylonian  (?-200 BCE

2. Northwest Semitic 
    A. Amorite (Syria-Mesopotamia, 18th-17th centuries) known only through personal names:
    B. Ugaritic (NW Syria, 14th century BCE, discovered in 1929.

3. Canaanite Branch
    A. Hebrew
    B. Phoenician (18th to 3rd century BCE
   C. Punic (Carthage( ? -4th century BCE)
   D. Moabite (one inscription of 9th century BCE

4. Aramaic Branch
   A. Many old dialects (9th -6th centuries)
   B. Imperial Aramaic (Persian Empire 6th-4th centuries, known mainly from Egypt
  C. Biblical Aramaic; Nsabatean (Transjordan and NEgev, 1st century BCE-3rd century CE
  D. Palmyrenian (E. Ssyria, 1st to 3rd century CE
  E. Palestinian Jewish Aramaic (Targums and Palestinian Talmud)
  F. Samaritan (Christian Palestinian Aramaic (died out before 1000 CE)
  G. Syria (2nd-13th century)
  H. Jewish Babylonian (Talmudic) Aramaic
  I. Mandean (Southern Iraq)
 J. Modern Syriac
 K. Modern Aramaic of Malula (Lebanon)

5. South Semitic
   A. Many proto-Arabic dialects (6th century BCE to 5th century CE,) with many modern dialects.  Arabic since 5th century CE.  Ancient S. Arabian languages (4th century CE)
  B. Minean, Sabean, Katabanian, etc.
   C. Modern south Arabian languages: Mehri, Shkauri, Botohari in Hadhramaut;
   D. Sokkotri on the Isle of Sokotra,
   E. Ancient Ethiopic (since 3rd century CE), Amharic (since 15th century CE)
   F. Tigre, Tigrinya, Harari, Gafat, gurage, Argobba (all in Abyssinia.

Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.jewfaq.org/alephbet.htm

Star of David: Brightest Star in the Middle East

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                      

Israel, whose icon is the Magan David, the Star of David, 2 inverted triangles creating a 6 pointed star, leads the way with its light to show the world how to treat each other and live together.  In Kabbalah, " the fact that in a triangle each of the 3 corners are connected to the 2 other ones demonstrates that the Jewish soul is itself knotted to G-d.  Torah study and observance doesn't create a connection between the Jew and G-d---it merely brings it to light. "  In Exodus we learn that we were to be a nation of priests, teachers of the Mosaic Law.

If you examine the population of Israel, it's made up of 80% Jews and 20% Muslims with some Christians and possibly another religion or two.  Israelis follow  the Ten Commandments, which is a basic part of Torah.    Citizens live  in a safe environment with freedom of religion.  That means that killing someone is against the law and leads to prison. No honor killings.   Stealing is also against the law and leads to the same place.  It's not hard to follow the rules.

Israeli law is basic and makes up  a normal society.  For the Jewish people, coming from such a society that is so old and based on the Mosaic Law, it's overloaded with lawyers because they're interested in justice, and doctors because life is of utmost importance.   You find in Israel that people are aware of and are very concerned about what's right.  A land where many can trace their heritage to King Solomon the wise,  the people are blossoming once again.  Their inventions are benefiting the whole world.  They lead the world in creating businesses.

  One big difference I see between Israel and its neighbors is that about half of the Jews of Israel come from a European period of living there.   They've been exposed to the Western world.  They are more cosmopolitan in their thinking.  Then, there they also experienced the slaughter of their family where they lost 6 million, so they have developed a distrust of the motives of other people.

Everyone is family in such a small state.  It's easy to have developed empathy for another person.  It's led to the most diverse of thinking in the political arena from extreme leftists to extreme rightists.  Peace Now has had its day.  Now Netanyahu is leading because of the need he offers in protecting Israel's citizens from harm.  As president Chaim Weizmann once said, he was a president of a million presidents!   One can see that Israel is a free nation,  for its people  feel  secure and have become leaders, not followers.

This is what Israel has had to be most concerned about; being attacked by its neighbors.  From being told they had their Jewish Homeland from the Balfour Doctrine signed November 2, 1917 and given the okay from the most powerful Arab in Palestine, Abdullah, they dared to live in a hostile world of  the Middle East.  Much of the world today  is trying to extinguish the star that has kept  shining since King David's day who ruled 1010 BCE to 970 BCE, about 3,014 years ago.

The people of the Middle East  have the history of Muslim fighting Muslim because they are divided into 2 schisms; Sunni and Shi'ite which is leading to violent hatred and slaughter.  ISIS is slaughtering Shi'ites by beheading, shooting, and all without any honor to the dead.  They have one agenda, creating an old time caliphate where everyone will follow Sunni  Sharia Law or face death.

On January 5,  1980  the Iran-Iraq war between Sunni in Iraq and Shi'ite started  which lasted for over 8  years, supposedly ending in August.  Towards the end of the war, children were used as soldiers  as each side had lost so many men and were killed easily.  Now we have in 2014 the start of another round happening in Iraq with ISIS terrorists already taking much of the state and turning it into the start of their caliphate, something that existed from 630 till 1917 where Sharia Law will rule, not Christianity, and certainly not Judaism.  There is no longer any border between Syria and Iraq.  They have taken the land from the east of Syria to within less than 50 miles from Baghdad now.  The world is  watching to see what happens.  This fight over Iraq was possible because Shi'ite couldn't get along with Sunni in their state.  No doubt like American Republicans and Democrats, there is a lot of political doctrines that differ besides religious laws to follow that make up such a difference within the 2 groups.  ISIS isn't wasting time converting by force, either.  They just kill those that are different as the TV news clips have shown.

Muslims must be in wonderment as to how Israel is so tolerant and has the recipe for living together.  It was created as a Jewish State, yes, because it is the only state in the world where Jews can live without fear of persecution.  It is the only Jewish state in the world in the midst of 49 Muslim states which differ in their way of living, being the light shining in the dark.

  In Israel Jews have freedom of expression of their customs and beliefs.  They can honor Saturday as the day of rest instead of Sunday. They are not expected to work on this day as they could be in another country.

They can speak Hebrew, their native language of so long ago that they have revived.  (It was Hebrew that was spoken by the common man, not Aramaic, as Netanyahu tried to tell the Pope recently who didn't listen). From "586 BCE, Hebrew started to be replaced by Aramaic."  This was when the Babylonians attacked Judah the 2nd and last time and took away the best leaders of the Jews. Jewish Aramaic developed.   Jewish Aramaic was different from the other forms of Aramaic both in lettering and grammar. Parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Jewish Aramaic showing the Jewish lettering, related to the Hebrew script. Aramaic was also the original language of the indigenous people of Bahrain before Islam." However, the common man of Judah spoke Hebrew in their everyday living, not Aramaic.   "Hebrew had ceased to be an everyday spoken language by around 200 CE, " "Hebrew continued to be used for literary and religious functions, as well as a lingua franca among Jews from different countries."   So Hebrew continued as the spoken language in Judah over 100 years after Jesus had died.  We find that Hebrew and Arabic have many of the same guttural sounds, so it's easy to go from one language to the other for the natives.  The roots of many words are also the same, such as Shalom and Salaam which means peace, hello and goodbye.  

    They can honor their holidays in school by coordinating class time around holiday time, and no one will be kept from being able to attend synagogue on Yom Kippur because their boss won't let them off like I was treated in the USA.  I was told that the hunters had first choice of getting a day off and not me.  (Yom Kippur is a fall holiday when American gentile hunters get to shoot deer, and the value system thought that was more important than to let one Jewish lady have the day off. )  So don't tell me it's not anything special to have our own state.

Israel was never created to teach the Mosaic Law by force like Islam is doing or intends to do as they did in the past.  Israel was to be the shining light to show the way to a more godly way of living.  By example was the Jewish way, and it did lead to Christianity with Jesus teaching perfectly Jewish ideals about 1,350 years after Moses had taught them to his people.  Then again, Mohammad (570-632) , who was in and around Medina, a Jewish city in Arabia learned about our Jewish laws and thinking then and used much he heard in his Koran that he dictated to a scribe or scribes.   So Moses (1391-1271 BCE) taught the Laws around age 81-82 and Mohammad incorporated many of them about 2,000 years after the fact.  Jews are still living by them, a way of life to follow that are over 3,000 years old already.

Meanwhile, this is what Israel gives its people: " Declares basic human rights in Israel are based on the recognition of the value of man, the sanctity of his life and the fact that he is free. Defines human freedom as right to leave and enter the country, privacy (including speech, writings, and notes), intimacy, and protection from unlawful searches of one's person or property. This law includes instruction regarding its own permanence and protection from changes by means of emergency regulations".

Some of the light of the Star of David must have been seen by Israel's neighbors though, who are at peace with her.   Egypt has honored their peace treaty since Sadat's leadership  on March 26, 1979,  for the past 35 years.  So has Jordan, who signed their peace treaty on October 26, 1994, for the past 20 years. Now a battle rages between Sunni ISIS  and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki a Shi'a who has been the head of Iraq  since April 21, 2006.  ISIS is offering fear and destruction and death.

Resource: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/788679/jewish/What-Is-the-Mystical-Significance-of-the-Star-of-David.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War
http://biblehub.com/exodus/19-6.htm  nation of priests
http://www.jewfaq.org/kabbalah.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language
http://www.jewfaq.org/alephbet.htm
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/hebrew.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Laws_of_Israel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Minister_of_Iraq