The Law Of Opposite Attraction: Hellenization, Democracy

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                

Alexander the Great led Hellenization into the theocracy of King Saul and King David and Solomon's territory, and just about destroyed it.   He was king of Macedonia from 356 to 323 BCE, and swept into Judea with his great personality that made a deep impression on the Jews.  Josephus describes his visit to Jerusalem where as he was invading the country, he made the people feel he was honoring them. First he honored the high priest, Jaddua and praised him with flattery.  He showered the Jews with privileges to all Jews of Judah and the Diaspora.  The cause of Alexander the Great's death is debated by historians. He died in Babylon on June 11, 323 BC at the age of 32.                                                             

Saul (11th century BCE) son of Kish of the tribe of Benjamin had been selected for rule by the Prophet, Samuel out of great leader possibilities from the 11 other tribes.  It was at a time the people were being attacked by the Philistines and Ammonites and Saul was an organizer.  He organized a trained army and inflicted defeats on the enemy.  Internally, he carried out a purification of religion by eliminating witchcraft, but he kept arguing with Samuel.  This caused Samuel to go against Saul and he selected David as his successor who was becoming very popular with the people for his army fighting.  Saul became jealous, rightly, of David, and drove David out of the country. 

Then the Philistines launched a united attack and Saul fell with his 3 sons including Jonathan in the battle on Mt. Gilboa.  Saul's death led to a temporary domination of the Philistines, but the groundwork he laid for national unity eventually proved effective in establishing a strong and independent Israelite monarchy.  Solomon was king after his father's death and the line continued for Israel till Hoshea in 730-721 BCE, while Judah  continued to Zedekiah in  597 to 586 BCE.                                              

      Greeks and Minoans and their lives

                                                                       

     Jews during Greek and Roman days not faring well at all unless complying with Hellenization.  But in 332 BCE a young Alexander the Great led a Greek and Macedonian force that swept through the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt and extended east to include Persia and part of India. He died in the process, and as a result his empire splintered into successor kingdoms. Judah, now called Judea, lay at the boundary between two of these Greek successor kingdoms, the Seleucids in Asia Minor and the Ptolemies in Egypt. Fortune favored first one and then the other, and Judea remained a buffer state between them.

How Judea ceased to be the pawn in this imperial struggle and achieve independence is a compelling story, treated in 1, 2, and 4 Maccabees and texts of the Ethiopian Bible, and that kingdom was “comparable in Jewish history only with the kingdom of David.” Under the Persians, religious worship had remained a matter of local custom, generally protected by the benign paternalism of the imperial rulers. But the form of Hellenization in Syrian-ruled areas imposed a new kind of local administration. Greek colonization, coupled with the philosophical ideals of a universal world order, called for a more thorough transformation of local customs.   Greek cities founded colonies or reconstituted older cities by imposing the nomima, laws and customs, of the parent city. These included laws and a constitution, rituals, and a religious calendar. A dēmos, or roll of citizens, was established; a boulē or city council of aristocratic leaders was appointed; and a gymnasium and ephēbeum were constructed for the education of elite boys. A universal Greek education would ensure the inculcation of Greek values, and even native texts became increasingly modeled on Greek literature.

Greek or Macadamia and Judah civilization were opposites with opposing goals, yet wherever Alexander went, he charmed the population and his Greek culture was diffused over the Mediterranean and the Middle East after the end of the 4th century BCE as a result of his conquests.  It was about at that time that Judea (for it was not called Palestine until after 135 CE) fell under Greek rule and Judea was surrounded by a ring of hellenized cities.  At the same time, the Jewish Diaspora was expanding rapidly in Egypt, Cyrenaica, Syria and Asia Minor, which were all in process of hellenization.  By the 3rd century BCE, the Jews of Egypt had adopted Greek and the Septuagint translation of the Tanakh (Bible)  had been completed.                                                    

                                                Antiochus IV Epiphanes

There was antagonism between the traditional and hellenizing Jews in Jerusalem that brought on Antiochus IV Epiphanes' attempt to suppress Judaism and the Hasmonean revolt.                                                       

                                                        The Emperor, Herod

Though John Hyrcanus and Alexander Yannai broke the power of the Greek cities in Eretz Yisrael, later these were restored and strengthened as a result of Roman intervention aided by Emperor Herod and his descendants.  

By the Mishnaic Period, (70 to 200 CE) (legal codification of the Oral Law  done by Rabbi Judah Ha-Nasi;  Jewish material life in Eretz was mainly Hellenistic even though it had ended to be the political program of any Jewish faction.  Both the Mishnah and Talmud contain hundreds of Greek words that were absorbed into Hebrew and Aramaic and tomb inscriptions were in Greek, so that must have been the spoken language of the Period.  The Mishnaic period generally refers to the time period spanning from the late first century CE to the early third century CE, during which the Mishnah, a collection of Jewish oral laws, was compiled by rabbis known as Tannaim; essentially encompassing the period where the Mishnah was being assembled and the related rabbinic traditions were being codified.

                                             King Henry VIII of England

England was also ruled by Kings and was undemocratic.  Since the office of Prime Minister evolved rather than being instantly created, it may not be totally clear-cut who the first prime minister was. However, this appellation is traditionally given to Sir Robert Walpole, who became First Lord of the Treasury of Great Britain in 1721.  

The religious group of Pilgrims   left Holland, who had been Englishmen, for America on the ship, the Mayflower, seeking a democratic life in 1620.  The Mayflower carried 102 passengers in 1620, including Pilgrims, servants, contracted workers, and English families. The pilgrims who risked their lives to settle in a strange land were more – and less – than folklore heroes. They were extreme Puritans, that is to say they disapproved of several of the rituals and practices of the Church of England that had been established by parliament at the beginning of Elizabeth I's reign.  They had no say in the matter if they stayed in England, so they up and left for better lives.                    

                        " You don't need Fema! " The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), initially created under President Jimmy Carter by Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1978 and implemented by two Executive Orders on April 1, 1979. The agency's primary purpose is to coordinate the response to a disaster that has occurred in the United States and that overwhelms the resources of local and state authorities.

Now we're almost back to a kind of kingship again with our President Trump, who is acting like one.  He's trying to overthrow the 14th article in our constitution saying that a baby born in the USA is automatically a USA citizen.  This is being used to eliminate Mexican Nationals who entered the US illegally, and he's sending them all back.  

Yet, talk about opposing values, he has been the first president to treat Israel righteously, and they were at the point of needing some understanding badly.  Sadly, there was a problem with Obama and his background, though he tried to be fair and square, his prejudice came through.  It's my opinion that Trump's son -in law, Jerad Kushner, is the guide of Trump's understandings, as Trump is not known to be a reader or historian, but relies on his listening techniques to others, and then his gut opinions.  Trump, in his first few days, has kept all his promises made when running for the office, so people should not be shocked. This part of history, Israel helped by the man least interested, though his daughter had married a Jewish man, would stand by Israel when criticized so much by his own country, defies all reason.   

Hellenization became the fad, the favorite of a religious group, undoing much of their understanding and practice to "fit in" with others.  Trump won the president's seat over people of much better character;  in fact his was one of the worst.  The Republicans and Democrats were almost divided 50-50.  In both cases, people turned around and did  a 180 which was astonishing!  

Even in sex, opposites have been attracting each other.  It may have started with Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens.  In my own DNA, I carry 2.9% of Neanderthal genes.  We've had soap operas of Abie's Irish Rose, and copy-cat versions since then-the Jewish and Catholic love stories.  

I feel the whole theory of opposite attraction is to stir up the pot.  Get opposing ideas.  G-d must adore real debates;  not the kind held during election time but real ones practiced in high schools and colleges.  It's all to get us to see 2 sides of an issue, and the possible outcomes;  trying to stretch our brains a little.  Things adored and fought for must be worthy enough.  Otherwise, why bother?  Israel's history is full of being saved at the last minute in miraculous situations, and Trump is a part of that.  

Puritans, Thanksgiving and the Old Testament

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                

The passengers on the Mayflower who were Puritans were a group of English Protestants known as Separatists, or "Saints":The Puritans wanted to establish a new church in the New World where they could practice their religion without interference from the Church of England (Yes, the Church of England is now called the Episcopal Church in the United States, and its members are called Episcopalians:). They believed the Church of England needed reform, but they chose to remain within the church. 

37 of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower were Separatists living in Leiden, Netherlands. The Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, England on September 6, 1620. The adult male passengers signed the Mayflower Compact on November 11, 1620 to establish order and civil society while waiting for a new patent to settle in New England. The passengers became the settlers of Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. The colonists were unprepared for the harsh New England winters, and about half of them died in the first winter.  The Puritan colonists of Plymouth were not called "Pilgrims" until the early 19th century. 

Traveling with the Pilgrims were about two dozen non-separatist Puritans, whom the Pilgrims sometimes called “strangers,” a few servants, and a crew of 30 sailors — 102 passengers in all. After a rough crossing, the Mayflower arrived at the tip of Cape Cod on November 10, 1620.

To understand what motivated their journey, historians point back a century to King Henry VIII of England. When the Roman Catholic pope refused to annul Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry severed relations with Rome and formed the Church of England, naming himself its supreme leader. Membership in the new church was mandatory.                               

                  First Thanksgiving in new country to become USA later

Puritans were readers of the Old Testament.  The Puritans were a Christian group that drew much of their ideology from the Bible, and their relationship to the Old Testament was complex: The Puritans saw themselves as God's chosen people, similar to the Israelites in the Bible. They believed they had escaped oppression in Europe and settled in America, their Promised Land, just as the Israelites escaped captivity in Egypt and settled in Canaan. Puritans believed that biblical types could be used to interpret their own experiences and historical situation. For example, they could identify with biblical figures like Adam, Noah, or Job to understand their own spiritual struggles. Puritans believed that their community was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, and identified themselves as the "New Israel".

They read about the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.  According to the Old Testament, the Jewish holiday most closely associated with giving thanks that Puritans would have referenced is Sukkot (also known as the Feast of Tabernacles), which is a harvest festival celebrated in the fall and considered a time to give thanks for the bounty of the land; many believe the Pilgrims modeled their Thanksgiving celebration after Sukkot. Sukkot is primarily found in the book of Leviticus, specifically in Leviticus 23:33-43, where the instructions for celebrating the Feast of Booths (Sukkot) are detailed.                                                           

       Decorating the family Sukkah before the attack that infamous Day Oct. 7th
                                                                     Sukkot's last day of celebration in 2023 was October 7th, the day that goes 

down in infamy, being young dancing people outside were slaughtered by Hamas 

terrorists, starting war events not wanted or dreamed of.  

Keeping of Sukkot is detailed in the Hebrew Bible (Nehemiah 8:13–18, Zechariah 14:16–19 and Leviticus 23:34–44); the Mishnah (Sukkah 1:1–5:8); the Tosefta (Sukkah 1:1–4:28); and the Jerusalem Talmud (Sukkah 1a–) and Babylonian Talmud (Sukkah 2a–56b).  Jews consider the 1st 5 books to have been written by Moses.  It's also called the Pentateuch by Christians;  Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.  This had been written in Hebrew, except solitary words in Genesis and Jeremiah and a few chapters in Ezra and Daniel which were written in Aramaic.  Puritans had to rely on translations of that day.  Only Jerome's Latin Vulgate of 4th century was available at this time for the Puritans.  It had been adopted by the Catholic Church.  Moses Arragel wrote it in Spanish but not until 1422.  

Puritans established grammar schools to prepare students for college and the ministry, and to read classical authors in their original languages. These schools emphasized Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.  Judah Monis, an Italian Jew, was appointed as a Hebrew instructor at Harvard College in 1720. Monis taught Hebrew for 38 years.  Puritans read the Hebrew scriptures as the Christian Old Testament. Some Puritans studied the Jewish Kabbalah to better understand the Hebrew Bible.  The Puritans believed it was important to be able to read and understand the Bible. They established schools to educate the children of the colony, and the "Old Deluder Law" required towns to pay for teachers and send children to school.

The Puritan era is generally considered to have ended by 1740, but there is no consensus on the exact date. The term "Puritan" was used to describe New Englanders well past this time, even though the label was no longer accurate. 

 

       1621 Thanksgiving Day with the help of the Indians, or they might have starved to death:  A depiction of the first Thanksgiving in 1621. Image by J.L.G. Ferris/LOC/Creative Commons, a holiday with big differences from Sukkot, however:  Pastor John Robinson was the Puritan leader in Holland who encouraged his flock to board the Mayflower.  He didn't leave, but his son did, later on.  New England is loaded with Robinsons, who mostly came from Ireland very early on.    

1.  First, the Pilgrims did not believe in fixed holidays. In the words of Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University: “If it was a good season, they would announce a thanksgiving, but it was not Sukkot.”

2. Second, there was a crucial element of Sukkot the pilgrims neglected — and that was to build Sukkot. Neither do we have any record of them shaking lulav and etrog.

3.   Third, the Pilgrims were Christians. For them, the covenant at Calvary, sealed in the blood of Jesus, would have negated the covenant at Sinai. While they might have found spiritual inspiration in what they called the “Old Testament,” they would not have observed any Jewish rituals and certainly would not have observed any Jewish holidays.

So, was Thanksgiving the American Sukkot? Probably not.  Just like Chanukah and Christmas are not the same this year at all even though both fall on December 25th this year.  One's on a lunar calendar and the other on the solar calendar, which is our universal calendar except for Jewish holidays.  

However,  Native American cultures traditionally expressed gratitude to the Creator or the natural world for the food they harvested, often incorporating prayers and rituals of thanks before consuming meals or during harvest celebrations, signifying a deep respect for the land and its bounty; this practice of giving thanks was a central part of their daily lives, not just on a specific holiday like Thanksgiving as it is understood today.  Many Native American tribes viewed the natural world as sacred and believed that giving thanks to the source of life was essential.

Resource:

https://www.voanews.com/a/6199723.html

https://religionnews.com/2021/11/24/thanksgiving-sukkot/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukkot#:~:text=Keeping%20of%20Sukkot%20is%20detailed,(Sukkah%202a%E2%80%9356b).

Differences Between Merry Old England's Sexual Morals and the New World of Boston

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                        

We forget that our first ancestors to the settle  in Plymouth Rock spoke English as they were Englishmen who had moved to Holland, and finding that and the language inadequate, moved onward on the ship, the Mayflower.  The reason they were seekers of a better life for themselves was that they had left the British state Anglican religion  for their own stricter one that followed much of what the Old Testament had to offer.  England had been a Roman Catholic country until 1534 when Henry VIII had the religion become the Church of England with a few changes to the Catholic religion.  

Laura Ulrich b: 11 July 1938 in Sugar City, Idaho, a Pulitzer Prize author.  Her parents were John Thatcher and Alice Siddoway.  She was valedictorian from Utah, but also  Harvard educated and known for her study of early America and the women.  Her other book, “A Midwife’s Tale,” was later the basis for a PBS documentary film.  Ulrich self-identifies as an active feminist and Latter-day Saint (Mormon), and has written about her experiences.  She married Gael Ulrich, now emeritus professor of chemical engineering at the University of New Hampshire. 

In the book, GOOD WIVES, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, the author shows the difference in the morality of the new immigrant from England and the new settlers already in America who were very moral, especially sexually, unlike merry old England                             

 Ulrich gives us the example of an Englishman who hopped into the bed of a neighbor after testing her gullibility, and she didn't yield but told her mother who brought suit against him.  She explains that men were called roges (rogues)  and women were whores.  "For a woman, sexual reputation was everything, for a man, it was part of a larger pattern of responsibility.  

Pilgrim punishment;  put in the stocks.  

A whore bestowed her favors indiscriminately, denying any man exclusive right to her body.  A rogue tricked or forced a woman into submission with no regard for consequences.    The words mirror traditional gender relationships.  A woman gave, a man took."  Evidently the British Isles was made up of a lot of rogues.  Not so yet in Massachusetts.

Our early settlers were very very religious.  What surprised me was the importance of the Old Testament, our Jewish Torah and Tanakh. What my husband read from the Good Book every Shabbat when we sat down about the Good wife  in Proverbs 31: An accomplished woman who can find?  Far beyond pearls is her value.  her husband's heart relies on her, and he shall lack no fortune.  She bestows goodness upn him, never evil, all the days of her life.  She seeks wool and flax, and her hands work willingly.....etc.  

...was also used by the Pilgrims.  They were big admirers of Bathsheba, King David's love and wife.  King David is the author of all proverbs, which our Jewish history tells us.  This proverb expands on the virtues of the ideal wife, so all the Pilgrim women tried to follow in her footsteps.  Scriptural models can mean quite different things to different people, thus we have the differences between Christians and Jews.  Here, Proverbs 31 stands alone as a great model of behavior, but is a hard act to follow.  The good wife is so very good!  What energy she had!

To believe in Moloch as Canaanites did was to believe and accept human sacrifice;  the opposite of what Moses brought to the descendants of Abraham-the Jews who had been expulsed from England in  1290 and not allowed back in until 365 years later in 1655.  Pilgrims had landed on Plymouth Rock by 1620.  They never met any Jews.  I wonder if they did in Holland.  That was quite the country in those days for Jews as well.  

Marranos (hidden Jews caused by the Spanish Inquisition of 1492) rather-people hiding the fact that they were Jews, started to settle in Amsterdam.  They started to settle in Holland in the Middle Ages because of the anti-Semitism in Germany. They had freedom of worship in Holland by the 17th century.  Dutch trade was expanding and that's what they were good at as a profession.  Sephardis were there first, followed by Ashkenazis later.  With the occupation of Holland by the French Revolutionary armies in 1796, the Dutch Jewry was formally emancipated.  

Also, they followed Leviticus 20, Any man from the Children of Israel and from the proselyte who lives with Israel, who shall give of his seed to Molech,(having intercourse with Canaanites who sacrified human beings- believing in false gods like Moloch-a statue)   (shall be put to death;   the people of the land shall pelt him with stones.   the Laws and Liberties of 1648 established the death penalty for adultery, yet defined the crime according to the marital status of the woman, reinforcing the old notion of a man's property rights in his wife. 

Quaker Mary Dyer led to execution on Boston Common, 1 June 1660. Public domain image by unknown artist. Mary Dyer (born Marie Barrett; c. 1611 – 1 June 1660) was an English and colonial American Puritan turned Quaker who was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony. She is one of the four executed Quakers known as the Boston martyrs.  This shows the ultimate Puritans (Pilgrims) not allowing another Christian group in their town-the Quakers. 

When Peter Stuyvesant had to make a decision of whether to let a small boatload of Jewish refugees into New Amsterdam (New York), he said, absolutely not.  He had to eat his words and change his position, or not get a paycheck from Holland. 

In September 1654, 23 Jews arrived in New Amsterdam aboard the St Cathrien. The Jews had come from Recife in Northeast Brazil, where they lived under Dutch rule. The Portuguese captured Recife from the Dutch and expelled the Jews.  (Spanish Inquisition).  
When the Jews arrived the captain of the ship sued them for the money to pay for their passage. The local court sold their belonging and imprisoned two of the party.

Peter Stuyvesant the governor of the colony was not happy to receive the Jews. He described the Jews as "deceitful" and very "repugnant". Stuyvesant asked permission from the Dutch East India Company, who the colony belonged to remove the Jews from the settlement. The board, which included several Jewish investors, refused and instructed the governor to allow the new Jewish settlers to remain in New Amsterdam.

The 23 Jews who arrived are not the first Jews, to arrive in North America, but it is the first record we have of a group of men women and children arriving to make it their permanent home.

Peter Stuyvesant (also known as Pietrus Stuyvesant), the son of a clergyman of Friesland, was born in the Netherlands in 1592. Stuyvesant served in the Dutch Army before receiving his appointment as director-general of New Netherland in 1646. He had served in the West Indies and was governor of the colony of Curacoa. 

A married man who had sexual relations with an unmarried woman risked only a fine or a whipping for fornication.  A married woman risked death.  A single woman risked only a fine or a whipping ---and of course, pregnancy!  That also happened with our ancestors.  Again, these laws were written for Jews 4,000-350,00- years ago, and the Pilgrims were trying to understand and follow literally in the 1600s CE without any rabbinical advice.  

The Pilgrims were a Separatist group, and they established the Plymouth Colony in 1620. Puritans went chiefly to New England, but small numbers went to other English colonies up and down the Atlantic.

Puritans played the leading roles in establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629, the Saybrook Colony in 1635, the Connecticut Colony in 1636, and the New Haven Colony in 1638. The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was established by settlers expelled from Massachusetts because of their unorthodox religious opinions. Puritans were also active in New Hampshire before it became a crown colony in 1691.

 Puritanism ended early in the 18th century and before 1740 was replaced by the much milder Congregational church.  Within the United States, the model of Congregational churches was carried by migrating settlers from New England into New York, then into the Old Northwest, and further.                   

Norman Rockwell painting, Walking to Church, for Saturday Evening Post, could be of anyone's religious bent.    
            

 Unlike Presbyterians, Congregationalists practice congregational polity (from which they derive their name), which holds that the members of a local church have the right to decide their church's forms of worship and confessional statements, choose their own officers and administer their own affairs without any outside interference. Congregationalist polity is rooted in a foundational tenet of Congregationalism: the priesthood of believers. According to Congregationalist minister Charles Edward Jefferson, the priesthood of believers means that "Every believer is a priest and ... every seeking child of God is given directly wisdom, guidance, power."

Congregationalists have two sacraments: baptism and the Lord's Supper. Unlike Baptists, Congregationalists practise infant baptism. The Lord's Supper is normally celebrated once or twice a month. Congregationalists do not use the sign of the cross or invoke the intercession of saints..

   The Ten Commandments in Hebrew on a Synagogue in Portland, Oregon.  Hopefully, Jewish men 13 and older can read them, and this is a Conservative synagogue.   

Today there has been arguments about showing a sign of the 10 Commandments.  "In two 5-4 votes, the Supreme Court ruled Monday it is constitutional to display the Ten Commandments on public property as long as the intent of the exhibit isn't pushing a religious agenda. After a report from The Chicago Tribune's Jan Crawford Greenburg, two advocates debate the rulings and their fallout."

Resource:  Good Wives, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, chapter 5, the Serpent Beguiled Me, p. 84-99. 

https://plimoth.org/for-students/homework-help/who-were-the-pilgrims