ANTI-SEMITISM: A POSITIVE EFFECT FOR JUDAISM'S EXISTENCE

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

                   Moses and the burning bush that wasn't burning up but voiced a message to him

Jacob and his  two wives, Leah and Rachel, sisters that were his 1st cousins, , and their two Egyptian handmaidens, Bilhah and Zilpah,  lived about 4,000 years ago in a day when G-d spoke to man and man heard him and reacted.  Moses, b: in 1391 BCE-d:1271 BCE,  heard his voice from a strange burning bush.  Islam has Mohammad, b: 570 CE-d:620 CE,  hearing an angel and reacting.  Christianity's emphasis is not the obeying of the voice of G-d but of Jesus b: 5 BCE-d: 29 CE, believing him to be the son of G-d. " In John 10:27, Jesus says “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Every single believer knows the voice of God, it's just whether or not they actually attribute it to God. For most of my life I've heard the voice of God very clearly, but it wasn't until a few years ago that I knew it was Him."

Solomon's Temple destroyed by Babylonians in 586 BCE

Rabbinical ruling was that prophecy had ended with Ezra and Nehemiah; that is to say, at the end of the Biblical period of the 5th century BCE..  That period ended along with the Prophets who listened to the voice of G-d.  They were the last 12;  Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.   

Today man speaks of his conscience telling him what to do or not to do, but this is never really a common conscience shared by all, as we have rulers who have been mad, bloodthirsty beasts such as Caligula and Nero, and their voice couldn't be my voice that we hear.   With the anti-Semite, it's what they've been taught to hate; and that was the Jews.   It's those that hear voices in their heads telling them to do bad things when we have to contact a psychologist or psychiatrist. Luckily most of us do have that inner voice or conscience that tells them to do something good. 

Throughout history, Jews have been the scapegoats of other nations, as UN history shows that they continually blame Israel for their ills, so Jews are  blamed for all their problems.  Because of this, anti-Semitism has been keeping them apart from the rest of society.  They are the only people that have lasted as a people for over 3,000 years despite being kept apart during certain eras like after 70 CE.  If we were to have planned this at the beginning of time, to keep a people together for 3,000 years, there is no way we could have done it.  It's one of the mysteries of life as to how it has happened.

Judaism came to Abraham in belief in one G-d, though not by name but by creed, and this belief and way of behaving was passed down to his wife, Sarah and their son, Isaac, who passed it down to his son, Jacob, who passed it down to his 12 sons, who were the fathers of 12 tribes.    They  became a clan who was family and religion.  They developed their own social customs and this finally reached a descendant, David who was born in about 1185 BCE, who became King of Israel from 1010 to 970 BCE, and whose son, Solomon inherited the Empire.                                     

By 70 CE, their nation had been cut in half by the Assyrians, attacked by the Greeks and then later the Romans occupied and destroyed it, causing them to be Jews without a country. In fleeing from Jerusalem, some went to Spain and became the Sephardic Jews, speaking Hebrew-Spanish called Ladino; and some stayed in the area becoming the Mizrachi Jews, and some were in Rome and then in Germany, speaking Hebrew-German called Yiddish and were the Ashkenazi Jews.    Jews suddenly found themselves hated for their religion by this era, with the Romans backing the new religious fever of Christianity and Emperor Constantine becoming part of it.  This caused great harm to Jews, disliked as Christianity reached the shores of newly found countries that Jews tried to live in, for this new religion was not kind to Jews. 

              Celebrating Passover with the man from Bethlehem
   

The irony is that Christianity centers on Jesus, who was said to be a Jew, son of Mary and Joseph of Bethlehem. Aspects of Christianity is borrowed from Judaism.  David's Psalms is a good example.  Islam also borrowed from Judaism many of its creeds as Mohammad came in contact with many Jewish tribes living in Arabia after 70 CE.  They would be reading aloud outside their tent, and he heard their stories. The politics of those days turned people against the Jews who brought them these aspects of their religion. 

Jews lived in Poland for 800 years but they were never regarded as "Poles."  Even today, Lech Walcsa calls them the "Jewish nation" living side by side with the "Polish nation."   Jews were never part of the German "Volk";  they were never quite British, nor Ukrainian, nor Russian.  

Ghetto in Venice where Jews had to live, 500 years old

Jews were kept together, sometimes forcefully, as in ghettos, marrying each other through the generations.  As they had developed their beliefs, they had no desire to marry outside of their religion anymore than Others wanted to marry with them. At first they had skills others didn't have, causing them to be welcomed in new struggling countries as they could read and write and do math and knew about trading.  Then, as people learned these things,  they were always the 2nd class citizen or less, such as becoming homeless without any rights.  The rights they had been first given caused friction with the Others who were competing with them.  

As the 1700s approached and people were moving into the new land of America, where all were immigrants except for the native population, Jews felt equal.  They faced anti-Semitism but of a different kind. This USA had no established church, no official religion.                                 

Judaism, therefore, is not merely tolerated, it has equal status--at least in theory according to American law,  but not in practice, for Jews from Dutch Brazil,  when they first tried to enter New York in 1621 in a small boat, were at first refused because they were Jews. It was Peter Stuyvesant who refused them entrance, and chances are that he had never known a Jew.   Anti- Semitism still exists here as well, growing worse as time has marched on.  Where countries have had official religions, Jews have become 2nd class citizens because of not being  a member of the state's official church.  

 By the 1930, a few Jews were beginning to marry outside their faith.  For this entire period, they had been marrying only people of their own faith, and this was decided at first if their fathers were Jewish, they were Jewish, but this later changed to the rule that if their mothers were Jewish, they were considered Jewish.  Conversion did go on, from the time they were in Italy not too long after 70 CE throughout the ages, but never on a big scale.  The Romans had seen to that with laws they had passed since the 3rd century CE..

Therefore, Jews today have made it here with ancestors dating back to before 70 CE in Israel which is a miracle in itself as people that lived through that epoch in time were lucky to get out of the burning city of Jerusalem and escape with their lives.  

       Found: Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, the Pashtuns

Now we have the period of coming together again with Israel's re-birth on May 14, 1948.  Jews are returning from the 4 corners of the earth to live in tiny Israel.  Even the Lost 10 tribes have been found of which it's believed that the Pashtuns of Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of India are those sought-for people.  Some have already visited in Jerusalem.                           

            Pashtuns visiting in Jerusalem, our very distant cousins 

"The Bible mentions the Assyrians settling the Lost Tribes in Gozan, which is one of the names of the Amu Darya, a major Afghan river, identified as such by Rav Sa’adia Gaon. Medieval writings by Jewish travelers to Afghanistan mentions the Israelite origins of the Pashtuns. In more recent times, the connection between Pashtuns and Israel has been documented and discussed in documentaries by Simcha Jacobovici, as well as books by Rabbi Eliahu Avichail and Israeli president Yitzhak Ben- Zvi. Recently, the Internet has given us the ability to contact Pashtuns directly and do extensive research, which has confirmed the sources above."

Even this is a miracle.  Could one expect to find the cousins of today's Jews being in such a distant place and of a different religion?  They were able to maintain certain customs of their Jewish/Israelite days which led such PhDs as Shalva Weil of Israel  to find out all she could about them.  .

The problem with Hamas will keep the Pashtuns from Israel.  The Hamas Covenant, published in 1988, characterizes the Arab-Israel conflict as an irreconcilable one between Muslims and Jews and between Islam and Judaism.  It quotes the following Islamic prophecy:  "The time will not come until Muslims fight the Jew and the rocks and the trees cry, "Oh, Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me.  come and kill him."  Perhaps the countries of the Abrahamic Accord can change the Hamas minds.  

Anti-Semitism kept us all together till we could gain our state of Israel back again. It's cost us millions of lives through the ages.  When I think of all the bottlenecks (a genealogy term)  we've gone through with so many of the Jews almost wiped out, and then growing again from a few, I realize that Jews who are here today are but a handful of the families that started on the Exodus with so many lost to us.  The Holocaust did the biggest number where 6 million were slaughtered. Of those left, the male Y haplogroup shows that there are but a few that are of the Jewish males such as the Cohen gene, J1, E, Q, etc.  I'm counting all the losses due to anti-Semitism.   

Aliyah as a core value of the State of Israel can be seen in its national anthem, Hatikvah, "The Hope", which was adapted from a poem by the 19th century Jewish poet, Naftali Herz Imber.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQCu9kl68Tg

As long as in the heart, within, A Jewish soul still yearns, And onward, towards the ends of the east, an eye still gazes toward Zion;

Our hope is not yet lost, The hope two thousand years old, To be a free nation in our land, The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

Kol od ba’le’vav p’nima,Nefesh yehudi ho’miyah.

U’lefa-atei  kadimah,

Ayin le’Tziyyon tzofiyah.

Od lo avda tikva-teinu,

Ha’tikvah bat sh’not al-payim

Lih-yot am chofshi b’ar-tzeinu

Eretz Tziyyon v’Yerushalayim. 

-Hatikvah

Resource:

https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-haplogroup-we-be.html

https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2018/09/what-haplogroup-do-pashtuns-be.html

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/national-anthem-of-israel/

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/the-afghan-pashtuns-and-the-missing-israelite-exiles-543181  

https://www.docsonline.tv/ancient-history-timeline/?gclid=CjwKCAiAvOeQBhBkEiwAxutUVLNNsUFWQ246kdX72eGxthUCi_q-a-7UVKbeq_EB_QTNj-PouFoxVhoCVmYQAvD_BwE

 The Vanishing American Jew, Alan Dershowitz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Zion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_HaAliyah

HOW TO KNOW THE MOSHIACH

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                                       

Aluf Bar Kokhba, thought to be the Messiah in 132 CE

    Jews have been under duress many times throughout the centuries and the hope has always been to be delivered from these horrific situations by the Moshiach/Messiah.  The name messiah or in Hebrew, Moshiach, has gone through a transition in itself, from being just the annointed one such as a king who has received Divine sanction or a High Priest.  In post-exilic times such as the Babylonian Exile when Nebuchadnezzar carried away the Tribe of Judah majority population to Babylon in 597-586 BCE and they were kept there for 70 years, the word Messiah came to mean anyone with a special mission from G-d, like the patriarchs, prophets, the Jewish people, even someone such as King Cyrus the Mede  of Persia who sent the Babylonian Jews back to Jerusalem.  

After the exile there was a prophetic vision of the universal establishment of G-d's kingdom associated with the ingathering of Israel under a scion of King David's house who would be the Messiah.  While Rome occupied Jerusalem 100 years before Romans burned down the Temple and Jerusalem, the hope of the Messiah was very strong.  
                                                      

King David was said to be a gingy; having reddish hair. 

He was expected to be a descendant of King David who would break the alien yoke and establish a Golden Age.  King David  ruled from 1010 to 970 BCE.  He was a descendant of the kinsmen of Naomi  and Boaz of the tribe of Judah.  This probably means a direct descendant, and David had at least 9 wives; perhaps more, but not as many as Solomon had for he had a 1,000.  RASHI, the biblical commentator, was a direct descendant. RASHI (Rabbi Solomon Yitzhak-ben Isaac) was born in 1040 in France, and many Jews of today are his descendants.  I have him on my own tree due to DNA findings.   

1  kinsman of Naomi Boaz b: in Bethlehem
.. +RUTH of Royalty b: in Moab d: in Bethlehem
. 2  Oved Obed Judah b: in 11th century BCE
..... 3  father of David; Jesse b: in Bethlehem
......... +Ithra's Daughter d: in father J1-Arab line
......... 4  Zeruiah
......... 4  [1] King of Israel David b: 1030 in 1000 BCE Bethlehem d: in 960 BCE
............. +Bathsheba b: in Giloh, Judah
......... *2nd Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
David's son was King Solomon.  After he died the kingdom split into two parts, the North, which was taken by Assyrians in 721 BCE, and the South, which were the tribes of  Judah and parts of Benjamin.  Solomon's descendants ruled from the House of David with his son, Rehoboam to Zedekiah when Judah fell and many were taken to Babylon.  
                                                         

Aaron was the 1st priest
selected by Moses of the Tribe of Levi,
full brother of Moses

This is the Age of DNA.  Many Jews carry the DNA Y haplotype of the Cohen line.
Cohens were the direct descendant of Aaron, the brother of Moses, who was a Levite.  A descendant of Aaron might have the surname of Cohen or perhaps not.  They will have the DNA tag of being a J-M267 or something very close to this.  

The Book of Samuel describes God's repudiation of a monarchic line arising from the northern Tribe of Benjamin due to the sinfulness of King Saul, which was then bestowed onto the Tribe of Judah for all time in the person of King David. So David was from the tribe of Judah, the one most remaining today, for Jews are from Judah.  The Moshiach will be a Jew with the male haplotype of J-M267.  This is my deduction, not a prophecy.  I might add that some of us Jews do have different haplotypes, but mostly run in the E, R1, G, I, J1, lines.  
                                                   

There was a widespread Jewish Revolt going on from 115 to 117 CE and the Messiah was wanted then.  During the last revolt against the Romans  after the end in 70 CE, appeared Aluf (General) Bar Kokhba (Simeon Bar Kosiba) nephew of Rabbi Eleazar of Modiin and reputedly of Davidic descent, who fought against the Romans in order to re-take Jerusalem and did in 132.  He held it for 3 years, a miracle in those days against the strongest army of the world, but was killed in battle.  Everyone thought he was the Moshiach.  

Since then there have been many appearing at bad times thought to be the Moshiach.   
                                                 

  
Maimonides (Moses Ben Maimon or RAMBAM) wrote a letter to the Yemenites in 1172 describing the messianic doctrine and included this in his 13 articles of faith for Judaism so we are to have this faith. He was a philosopher, halakhist and medical writer who died in 1204 who had left Spain for Palestine.   It was he who established our 613 rules or precepts from the Torah.  

"And if a king shall arise from among the House of David, studying Torah and occupied with commandments like his father David, according to the written and oral Torah, and he will impel all of Israel to follow it and to strengthen breaches in its observance, and will fight God's wars, this one is to be treated as if he were the anointed one.

 If he succeeded and built the Holy Temple in its proper place and gathered the dispersed ones of Israel together, this is indeed the anointed one for certain, and he will mend the entire world to worship the Lord together, as it is stated: "For then I shall turn for the nations a clear tongue, so that they will all proclaim the Name of the Lord, and to worship Him with a united resolve (Zephaniah 3:9)."                                            

Pictured is a rendition of Solomon's 1st Temple

              Building the 3rd Temple is something that remains to be done.  When I 
made aliyah in 1980, I met my 3rd cousin, Stanley Goldfoot, who was involved
in doing this.  He belonged to a Temple group who had blueprints for the Temple,
and I learned that others were working on all the aspects needed to be done. 
This is a hot potato issue.  I highly doubt if they will build on the Temple Mount
where Muslims have built over the spot where the 2nd Temple had stood.  The 
Temple Mount is policed by our next-door neighbor, Jordan.  A war would break
out if Israel did.  Is the Temple group planning on building and having if finished
by 2021?  

Even though the eventual coming of the messiah is a strongly upheld belief in Judaism, trying to predict the actual time when the messiah will come is an act that is frowned upon. These kinds of actions are thought to weaken the faith the people have in the religion. So in Judaism, there is no specific time when the messiah comes. Rather, it is the acts of the people that determines when the messiah comes. It is said that the messiah would come either when the world needs his coming the most (when the world is so sinful and in desperate need of saving by the messiah) or deserves it the most (when genuine goodness prevails in the world).                          

This belief was upheld until our age of computers. and of creating 

Rips created a Bible Code for the computer by

 feeding the  Torah into a computer. 

                                          

A common modern rabbinic interpretation is that there is a potential messiah in every generation. The Talmud, which often uses stories to make a moral point (aggadah), tells of a highly respected rabbi who found the Messiah at the gates of Rome and asked him, "When will you finally come?" He was quite surprised when he was told, "Today." Overjoyed and full of anticipation, the man waited all day. The next day he returned, disappointed and puzzled, and asked, "You said messiah would come 'today' but he didn't come! What happened?" The Messiah replied, "Scripture says, 'Today, if you will but hearken to his voice.'"

A Kabbalistic tradition within Judaism is that the commonly discussed messiah who will usher in a period of freedom and peace, Messiah ben David, will be preceded by Messiah ben Joseph, who will gather the children of Israel around him, lead them to Jerusalem. After overcoming the hostile powers in Jerusalem, Messiah ben Joseph, will reestablish the Temple-worship and set up his own dominion. Then Armilus, according to one group of sources, or Gog and Magog, according to the other, will appear with their hosts before Jerusalem, wage war against Messiah ben Joseph, and slay him. His corpse, according to one group, will lie unburied in the streets of Jerusalem; according to the other, it will be hidden by the angels with the bodies of the Patriarchs, until Messiah ben David comes and brings him back to life.

^{Kabbala was an avenue in Judaism from the 1600s, found in Safed,} 

^{Palestine.Little} did they realize how prophetic this would be about hostile powers in Jerusalem, or

^{expecting Temple worship to be re-established.}  

The last Messiah heard from was in 1889 when a pseudo-messiah declared himself in Yemen.                         

Through use of a Bible Code, a rabbi has discovered 2021 to be the year that the Moshiach will appear from his interpretation.  This is the Age of the Ingathering of Jews from all corners of the world to Israel, and that Israel has been re-born.  It is the Age of DNA as well.  It's also an age when Israel faces extinction, having a bottleneck of survivors from the Holocaust and now facing extinction from Iran's threats.  Muslims do live by a code of honor of needing to warn a country before they attack it.  They have warned.  It is the Age of Atomic weaponry with the Atomic bomb and Hydrogen bomb.  It is normal for Jews to hold in their hearts the hope of the appearance of the Moshiach to bring peace to this planet and change people's hard hearts to contented ones, but without the use of drugs.  

Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.shalomfromg-d.net/2019/06/03/where-does-messiah-come-from/?gclid=CjwKCAjw9vn4BRBaEiwAh0muDOM1cK9D5VXscZS6dbIfG4UsXZ6N0Gm1T4f2B0x-KcRcBT3_r3nwihoCwcYQAvD_BwE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah