How Our Family Got Here Through All The Challenges

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

I've always wanted to tackle this, and time's a-wasting.  Before mankind kills itself off, I want to look at our human genealogy. (Oops, the announcement that Israel hit Iran's nuclear facility and Trump is pulling an Obama.-(6:35pm Thursday ) ; It's official, The War between Iran and Israel.  Israel has been been hitting Iran with wave after wave this evening.  The latest is that  Iran's top military leaders have been killed.)  Retaliation will be coming soon. 

Our genealogy   is awesome!  Our version of the world's beginnings is from my religion of Judaism, and I think it's awesome, too.  It's a wonderful explanation for man then and even now, so that all minds can understand it.  This explanation is for my children, grandchildren and great-grandson and all else of this new generation of technical and awesome mechanical tools and computers. 

Mankind has been around eve since about 10,000 years ago along with the Mammoths who gave us meat.  We weren't the top- grade production of mankind yet.  The models were getting there, though.  

It happened more like 6,000 years ago that man with our type of thinking came into being.  Exactly 5,785 years ago, appeared Adam, a full-fledged man.  Now, like a robot, how could he produce his own kind?  The plan was to take his DNA from his rib-bone to produce his co-worker and mass production, and that human was called Eve.  Pretty clever.  It was Adam who carried the DNA of both sexes, meaning the Y haplotype and the Mt haplotype  to continue onwards from one model to the next in line model.  Eve only had to carry on her own line of Mt haplotype  to be repeated with each generation.  Everything else the duo needed to survive existed before they came into existence.  They were given a wonderful existence in a garden of plenty, but they needed a challenge to develop their brains which were pretty empty.  They had no experience in their life so far.  

It suddenly occurred to Eve where she was, and things could improve.  She was the impetus for their development of food and housing, since she was the baby-carrier of their future people who bore both of their haplotypes in a balanced amount in their veins. Her body changed slightly each time with hormone production.  Adam and Eve blinked and realized that there were man-eating animals in their existence, but plenty of food if they worked at it-still being able to pick much fruit from trees like they had first done to survive.  

Their first production models were Cain and Abel who fought each other, and they were both strong, but In the story of Cain and Abel, Cain killed Abel. Cain was jealous that   HaShem-God,  accepted Abel's sacrifice, but not his. Cain then murdered his brother in the field. In the biblical story of Cain and Abel, Cain was a farmer, and Abel was a shepherd. Cain was described as a worker of the ground, tilling the soil and cultivating crops. Abel, on the other hand, was a keeper of sheep, tending to flocks and ensuring their well-being.  Cain, the firstborn,  a farmer, and his brother Abel,  a shepherd.  made sacrifices, each from his own fields, to God, their maker.   God had regard for Abel's offering, but had no regard for Cain's. Cain killed Abel and  (G-d) cursed Cain, sentencing him to a life of transience. 

 In the beginning, hunters migrated following the herds in order to have food.  Later, the farming community migrated in finding better soil to grow the flora AND fauna used as food.  

               Abram/Abraham and Sarai moving to Canaan

A descendent of Abel was Abraham, whose model was tapped by G-d to understand that life, this line of humans, had only one G-d called Ha-Shem (the name).  All other models had surmised that it took many of them to make their creation.  Abraham's creation was about 1948 BCE, in the 2nd millennium BCE (before the common era). That was 3,973 years ago.  Abraham and his family before and after were also shepherds herding sheep, using the meat, milk, and covering of wool for clothing as well.  They also learned to forage and kept adding information to those brains of theirs.  Each generation was getting smarter and smarter.  Their experiences were recorded in their brain as part of their memory.  

Here is Jacob and his 4 "wives."Leah , Rachel with one of her two sons, and their handmaids, with their children.  Jacob is the younger son of twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob).  Jacob was the 3rd of the patriarchs of ours.  The other twin was Esau; and the story goes that Jacob took Esau's birthright away to keep for himself, another long story more exciting than  a fictional novel.  

      12 sons of Jacob (1791 BCE) or {3,816 years ago} from sisters Leah and Rachel and each handmaiden of sisters

Their production line included Isaac and then Jacob of each generation, and Jacob had 12 sons and finally a daughter.  Luckily, they weren't the only ones producing.  The world was getting more and more populated with this human line.  Another line, who also existed for a long long time, were called Neanderthals, but they were dying out. They got to a point of not being able to mentally take on  the challenges given them, and they couldn't solve their problems to continue existing.  However, their DNA was carried in many of the humans in small amounts.  According to the Jewish Bible, Jacob was born in 1791 BCE. This is based on the Exodus's dating of Abraham's birth around 1951 BCE, with the birth of Isaac 25 years later in 1851 BCE and Jacob's birth 35 years after Isaac's, according to Armstrong Institute. Some Jewish sources also provide the birth year as 2108 from creation, according to Chabad. 

  Jacob of the Bible lived from approximately 1836 BC to 1689 BC. His life spanned the period between the birth of Isaac (1896 BC) and the death of Jacob (1689 BC), according to a chronology published by Bible Truth Publishers.  This is a different calendar than our Jewish one, so is off about several hundred yearsfrom ours.                                                      

Moses, son of Amram and Jochebed of the tribe of Levi (3rd son of Jacob and Leah)  (1391 BCE) or 3,416 years ago, was from Abel, a shepherd, and he did take on the challenge of his people being held by Egyptians as slaves, and could react to the messages of Ha-Shem given to him in order to free the people.  He led the people out of Egypt and back to Canaan, which had altered greatly after their 400 year hiatus.  Another challenge to  stimulate the brain!  Moses was a Levite.  

There is also research exploring how environmental factors and experiences can lead to epigenetic changes - modifications to DNA that don't change the sequence but can affect gene expression. This is a field of active research, exploring how experiences might influence the way our genes are used.  These changes, which can be influenced by environmental factors and lifestyle, can turn genes "on" or "off" and impact how they function. 

Epigenetics refers to how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. These changes don't alter the DNA sequence itself, but they can modify how the DNA is read and used. 

• Stress and trauma: Experiences like stress and trauma can leave lasting epigenetic marks. Our ancestors have had, throughout the ages, more stress and trauma than anyone up to 
• this very minute.  I believe that's why Balfour wrote his Doctrine, not realizing that other 
• parts of his English government were already giving away the Jewish Homeland he hoped
• to help to achieve.  

Some epigenetic changes can be passed down to future generations, meaning that a parent's lifestyle or environmental exposures can influence the health and development of their offspring. 

• Epigenetics refers to the way your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work.
• Epigenetics turns genes "on" and "off."
• Your epigenetics change as you age, both as part of normal development and aging and because of exposure to environmental factors that happen over the course of your life.
• Epigenetic changes can affect your health in different ways.

One thing that caused me to think about this is the way our young children can manipulate our cell phones and TV so well.  They have taken to these devices like a duck takes to water.  All the time we seniors hem and haw at what to do and need guidance.  Many now go without the use of a phone or even a TV set.  They can't do it!  The question is, has this epigenetic capability caused the youngsters, some even at age 5, to be so capable?  Are our children born knowing???

Through all our challenges to continue living, we have taken them on with the feeling of guidance from our G-d, our creator, the maker of the universe.  May we always live up to the challenges and continue on.  The slings and arrows from others shall not deter us in our mission to set a good example-like of the Golden Rule of Life.  We've been toughened up to slough it all off and keep on going.  

Time lines are important.  I think of the fact that the USA was created in 1776, which was only 249 years ago, and look at their clothing back in their day, or their transportation of ships.  Our minds have developed tremendously since then so that now we've started visiting other planets! 

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Anti-Semitism Acts Out Again in Middle of War-Torn Ukraine and Why

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                   

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The fact that Ukraine, a country practicing anti-Semitism heavily during WWII, by aiding the Nazis in slaughtering hundreds of thousands of their Jewish neighbors, also had perpetrated multiple pogroms against Jewish communities in different periods.    

They've also been reactive in these same ways to Blacks and Indians living in Ukraine and trying to get out;  There were many Indian medical students there who have been treated shamelessly in these uncertain moments, and they have complained to their Indian ambassadors.  I suppose they were uneducated about how Jews had been previously treated there.           

 I find that when Ukrainians and others, when under stress, have turned against Jews viciously, using them as their scapegoat.  It never helps their situation, and I would have thought only laid heavily on their shoulders as guilt. Don't they realize that Zelensky had given them comedy, taken away their stress?  Certainly they knew, and it mattered little when times were good.  That helped to get him elected President of Ukraine, and the fact that he was not a tainted politician; not a politician at all!  Now that they might die, they are striking out once again, against Jews.  

The  historical people known as Vikings, who hailed from Scandinavia in Northern Europe, are well-known today for their exploits in the west. But the merchant-warriors also made their way into Eastern Europe, where they helped found a medieval federation in territory now known as Belarus, Ukraine and part of Russia. Their loose federation of principalities called Kievan Rus survived for nearly 400 years, finally collapsing during the 13th-century Mongol invasion.

For four centuries, Vikings held sway over parts of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, with the greatest expansion happening under Prince Oleg the Prophet. 

    A Chabad Jewish fellow who has been studying Torah, before the War of Ukraine-Russia

Well, the guilt wasn't there with this group of Ukrainians who are the 3rd generation since the WWII, and they, I thought, were free of those past horrific slaughterings of innocent Jews, a minority people of Ukraine.  Not so, again, under terrific stress of attack upon themselves, they have turned once more to old behaviors, passed down through the generations through environment and genetics, maybe even from passing Vikings in the area, of instant instincts of attack, kill, blame, scapegoat the nearest minority people-Jews, etc.  How long will it take Ukrainians to rid themselves of these urgings of anti-Semitism?  A thousand years?  

You'd think that looting would be the last thing on Ukrainians minds, but not so.  That's the way Vikings also reacted; slaughtering and killing to gain what they had come for-the loot.                                     

And this is what my son and I are rewarded with after calling our congressman and demanding that they count us in by not receiving Russian oil, which Biden announced this morning that the USA will do; not receive anymore Russian oil.  

NGO says hundreds of Jewish families physically attacked by Ukrainian looters, some of whom had worked in a local Jewish orphanage.                        

Memorial at Babi Yar: which is a ravine outside Kiev where tens of thousands of Jews were killed in September 1941.  The horror of the massacre together with the fact that no memorial was ever erected until the 1980s in memory of the Jewish victims, turned Babi Yar into a symbol of anti-Semitisms.  It was used by the Soviet poet, Evgeni Yevtuschenko in his poem, "Babi Yar" in  1962, later incorporated by Shostakovitch into his 13th symphony.  It was also the subject of a novel by Anatoly Kuznetzov.  

Rabbis decided to stay with their communities, have reported shortages of basic goods. Rabbi rules say that in current crisis, Jewish Ukrainians may leave cell phones on during Shabbat, a Shabbat under heavy security.  Here they knew that they were targets to the Russians if, G-d forbid, they entered, but never realized possibly that they had to beware of their own neighbors in today's war.  

"By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

Hundreds of Jewish families in Ukraine were forced to flee their homes not due to the Russian invasion, but because of Ukrainians looting their properties and physically attacking them, Hebrew-language news site 0404 reported Sunday.

The Lev Layeled NGO told 0404 that Jews in the town of Zhytomyr were threatened, harassed, and physically beaten by locals looking to take advantage of the chaos caused by the fighting between Ukraine and Russia.

The Jewish outreach organization Chabad and Lev Layeled manage an orphanage and children’s homes in Zhytomyr and its outskirts.

“On Thursday, the Ukrainians who worked at the orphanage began looting and beating the local Jews,” Lev Layeled said in a statement.

“The Ukrainian authorities called Chabad and told them they needed to [flee] urgently in order to save their lives.”

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of Israel and Rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm of Zhitomir, Ukraine, with two of the 90 children who were evacuated from Zhitomir’s Chabad-run Alumim children’s home on Feb. 24. (Credit: Hadas Porush/Pool Photo)

The organizations scrambled to organize evacuation buses for the children in their care. They were successfully taken to Romania, and then flown to Israel.

But due to the presence of the Chabad institutions in the town, Jews from surrounding communities continued to pour into Zhytomyr seeking refuge.

“The situation deteriorated even further, as hundreds of Jewish families found themselves harassed and beaten by Ukrainians there,” the organization said.

“We got a call at 6 a.m. this morning, asking again for help as more and more families are coming forward to leave everything behind and save their lives — not only because of the bombing, but because of the locals turning against them.”

While Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly invoked the Holocaust in order to urge Israel and Western countries to support Ukraine’s military resistance, the Eastern European nation of Ukraine has a long history of antisemitic violence."

Resource:

https://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/5429204/jewish/140-Refugees-From-Ukraine-Childrens-Home-Arrive-Safely-in-Israel.htm

Netflix:  The Last Kingdom;  Vikings

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-last-kingdom-how-historically-accurate-is-the-netflix-drama/

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-last-kingdom-how-historically-accurate-is-the-netflix-drama/

Update:3/12/22

The problem with expressing empathy for the Ukraine

The Ukrainian people played a willing and major role in the destruction of European Jewry before, during, and after the Holocaust. Op-ed.

Ron Jager 

09.03.22 10:00

 

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HolocaustUkrainian JewryRon JagerUkraine War

KyiviStock

Let it be clear: I unequivocally condemn Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine. Russia is grossly violating international law and the principles of the UN Charter. The violence and loss of life that have occurred in various parts of Ukraine over the past days is totally unacceptable.

With that being said, the Ukrainian people played a major role in the destruction of European Jewry before, during, and after the Holocaust.

According to the American Jewish Committee, Jews in the Ukraine today generally do not face acts of violence or public condemnations of Israel, although there are reports of looting and threats in Zhitomyr. Instead, “Antisemitism in Ukraine exists in its old ‘traditional’ and cultural form: the notion that Jews control all money, the media and government, they are greedy, murdered Jesus, and ‘suck our blood,’” said Samuel Kliger, AJC's Director of Russian and Eurasian Affairs. The Eastern Orthodox Church of the Ukraine tends to reinforce classical beliefs of anti-Semitism. It has never expunged the deicide charge from its doctrine and sells copies of the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion in gift shops.

For many Jews, the Ukraine evokes memories of pogroms, antisemitism and Nazi collaboration. Between 1.2 million and 1.6 million Jews were killed in the Ukraine during the Holocaust. Moreover, Ukraine has been reluctant to reckon with its role in the Holocaust, including the massacres of Jews by Nazis with the help of eager local Ukrainian collaborators. Almost a million Ukrainian Jews were killed between 1941 to 1944 and buried in thousands of mass graves, including 33,771 Ukrainian Jews who were systematically shot dead and executed by machine-gun fire in a two-day massacre in a ravine just outside Kyiv known as Babyn Yar.

The Jews of Kyiv gathered by the cemetery, expecting to be loaded onto trains. The crowd was large enough that most of the men, women, and children could not have known what was happening until it was too late: by the time they heard the machine-gun fire, there was no chance to escape. All were driven down a corridor of soldiers, in groups of ten, and then shot. A truck driver described the scene:

“One after the other, they had to remove their luggage, then their coats, shoes, and over garments and also underwear … Once undressed, they were led into the ravine which was about 150 meters long and 30 meters wide and a good 15 meters deep … When they reached the bottom of the ravine they were seized by members of the Schutzmannschaft and made to lie down on top of Jews who had already been shot … The corpses were literally in layers. A police marksman came along and shot each Jew in the neck with a submachine gun … I saw these marksmen stand on layers of corpses and shoot one after the other … The marksman would walk across the bodies of the executed Jews to the next Jew, who had meanwhile lain down, and shoot him”

This sordid chapter in Ukrainian history is left out of the public discourse, creating a general apathy about the Holocaust. (Ed. note: When I headed a youth village whose students were mostly Russian immigrants, not one of the highschoolers from Kyiv had ever heard of the Babyn Yar massacre).

Alongside that apathy, Ukrainian lawmakers have pushed to celebrate some Nazi collaborators as war heroes, trumpeting their anti-Communist battles while ignoring their complicity in Holocaust crimes. The Ukraine continues to resist joining the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the 32-country organization that coordinates international educational efforts. It also has not adopted the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism.

In the early 1920s, thousands of Jewish child refugees flooded into Moscow from the Ukraine, fleeing a terrifying series of pogroms. Legendary Jewish artist Marc Chagall remembered giving art lessons to some of the refugees at a Jewish orphanage outside the Soviet capital. He recalled the horrifying atrocities they spoke about — their parents murdered, their sisters raped and slain, and the children themselves chased out in the cold, threadbare and starving. Unlike the Holocaust, this earlier wave of anti-Semitic violence has largely been forgotten by history. Yet at the time, it was front-page news.

From 1918 to 1921, more than 1,100 pogroms killed over 100,000 Jews in an area that is part of present-day Ukraine.

One of the earliest recorded pogroms, perhaps the largest single mass murder of Jews in modern history up to that point in time was the pogrom of Proskuriv, a Ukrainian town on February 14, 1919 with 911 listed deaths which historians estimate is only one-third of the actual number of Jews murdered.

The Nikolaev Massacre was a massacre which resulted in the deaths of 35,782 Soviet citizens, most of whom were Jews, during World War II, on September 16–30, 1941. It took place in and around the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv (also known by its Russian name, Nikolaev) and the neighboring city of Kherson in (current) southern Ukraine

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum tells the story of one survivor of the Einsatzgruppen (paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass-murder, primarily by shooting) in Piryatin, Ukraine, when they killed 1,600 Jews on 6 April 1942, the second day of Passover: As conveyed by an eye witness survivor:

“I saw them do the killing. At 5:00 p.m. they gave the command, "Fill in the pits." Screams and groans were coming from the pits. Suddenly I saw my neighbor Ruderman rise from under the soil … His eyes were bloody and he was screaming: "Finish me off!" … A murdered woman lay at my feet. A boy of five years crawled out from under her body and began to scream desperately. "Mommy!" That was all I saw, since I fell unconscious."

Untold numbers of Ukrainians were collaborators: According to German historian Dieter Pohl, around 100,000 Ukrainians joined police units that provided key assistance to the Nazis. Many others staffed the local bureaucracies or lent a helping hand during mass shootings of Jews. Ukrainians, such as the infamous Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka, were also among the guards who manned the German Nazi death camps. According to The Simon Wiesenthal Center (in January 2011) "Ukraine has, to the best of our knowledge, never conducted a single investigation of a local Nazi war criminal, let alone prosecuted a Holocaust perpetrator.”

My father, Joseph Jager, of blessed memory, a Holocaust survivor, was born in Košice, Slovakia. His family had originally emigrated from the Ukraine before he was born. After the war, he had heard from distant family members, that Ukrainian Jewish survivors who had returned from the concentration camps to their villages in the Ukraine were murdered by local Ukrainians after expecting to be given their homes back, now occupied by local Ukrainians.

In recent years, the Ukrainian government has not objected to Israel being singled out and condemned by the United Nations and has voted on numerous votes against Israel.

Ukrainian complicity in the genocidal murder of Jews over the past century has been documented without question.

I harbor genuine ambivalence in expressing empathy for the Ukrainian people.

Ron Jager grew up in the South Bronx of New York City, making Aliyah in 1980. Served for 25 years in the IDF as a Mental Health Field Officer in operational units. Prior to retiring was Commander of the Central Psychiatric Clinic for Reserve Solders at Tel-Hashomer. Since retiring has been involved in strategic consultancy to NGO's and communities in the Gaza Envelope on resiliency projects to assist first responders and communities. Ron has written numerous articles for outlets in Israel and abroad focusing on Israel and the Jewish world. To contact: medconf@gmail.com Website: www.ronjager.com