Thursday, November 29, 2018

The Change of Attitude Towards Migrant Refugees; Depending on IF THEY ARE JEWISH OR NOT

Nadene Goldfoot                                           
                                                                   
        England: population 46 million with 300,000 Jews in 1933-1939
Jewish children from Germany 1939 arriving in London on Kindertansport

Mosaic just published an article that discussed another article about Kindertransport, the act of when 10,000 Jewish children from Germany and Austria were rescued by Great Britain on the eve of World War II.  The population of England in 1939 was 46 million.  300,000 were Jews as counted in 1933.   I had read about this great good deed several years ago in a book titled, "INTO THE ARMS OF STRANGERS, stories of the  kindertransport by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer.  
                                                  

This certainly was an iconoclastic act by Great Britain since their history with Jews has not been all that great.  For instance, England had expulsed all the Jews from England for 365 years from 1290 to 1655.  England had been very active during the Crusades and had their king in Jerusalem, slaughtering the Arabs and Jews as well since Europeans couldn't distinguish who was who.  For that matter, they had ridden through Europe slashing all the Jews they found on the way to Jerusalem, too.  It was during the 3rd Crusade from 1189 to 1192  had the wide support of England  which led to attacks by crusaders on the Jews living in England's York in 1190.  
                                                    
1920 Mandated Palestine-with the lost 80%
England managed to give to Abdullah

When World War Ii's build-up started in Germany in the 30s,  London wasn't allowing any Jewish adults into their country.  At the same time, they were holding the mandate awarded them from World War I which gave them the power over Palestine.  The League of Nations had decided at the end of WWI that the Ottoman Empire was to be divvied up by the allied powers of which France, Russia and England held mandates, and that Palestine was to become the Jewish Homeland, and England was to help them do so.  "The Acre-Haifa zone was intended to be a British enclave in the North to enable access to the Mediterranean. The British later gained control of the brown zone and other territory in 1920 and ruled it as Mandatory Palestine from 1923 until 1948." They didn't help the Jews, instead going against the vote by giving 80% of the future homeland to a Saudi prince, Abdullah who needed a country to rule.  This is how Jordan was created.  England was actually assisting Arabs to enter Palestine while keeping the Jews out at a time they needed a refuge  more than ever! 
                                                      
USA closed the door on the ship, the St. Louis
full of Jews seeking entry on June 6, 1939.

My uncle just made it here on the SS Washington that left Germany in May 1939.  He may have been the last Jew to get out.  "Some 900 Jews who fled Nazi Germany in 1939 on the MS St. Louis,which planned to stop in Cuba and then continue on in an attempt to gain entry into the United States, were unable to enter due to strict immigration quotas.  254 died in the Holocaust after returning to Europe"  


"The ship was going to go from Germany via Cuba to the United States thereafter. The Cuban government held their documents on the way from Germany to Cuba, which basically stranded everyone on the ship. Even though these people had applied for visas, the United States would not grant them entry. The ship afterward went from port to port in Europe letting off passengers. 

No free country was allowing Jews to enter!  No one held walk ins about it with banners, either.  No one cared except the few Jews living in the USA at the time.   Countries had a number of different reasons.  One was that Jews didn't have baptism records.  Another such as the USA had stopped large immigration of Jews from Europe already and was more worried about the job situation for USA citizens, so made it very difficult.  An incoming refugee had to have an American take all economic responsibility and be the sponsor of the person.  

Therefore, Great Britain was willing to rescue children but not their parents.    Would the 300,000 Jews living in England be able to take them all into their homes and raise them?   
                                                   
Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright, born about 1937, on the cusp of  eventual death for Jews by the Nazis,  is an American politician and diplomat. She is the first female United States Secretary of State in U.S. history, having served from 1997 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Albright emigrated to the United States in 1948 from Czechoslovakia with her family.  Her parents
had converted to Catholicism in 1941.Was it a situational decision like the Spanish Jews did during the Spanish Inquisition or was it a religious decision?    German occupation started in 1938.
 On 15 March 1939, the German Wehrmacht moved into the remainder of Czechoslovakia and, from Prague Castle, Hitler proclaimed Bohemia and Moravia the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

Our former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, was just such a Jewish child, but was able to come to this country with her parents. There are many people nowadays discovering their inheritance of Jewish genes through DNA testing.  Some genes come from the Spanish Inquisition days found in Mexicans and other Spanish held lands while others might be like Ms. Albright.  

"Mrs. Albright, who was raised as a Roman Catholic and later converted to the Episcopal Church, has said she discovered only recently that her family in Czechoslovakia was Jewish and that more than a dozen relatives, including three grandparents, were killed in the Nazi Holocaust. She was 2 when her parents escaped the Nazis.." At age 10 she was in Switzerland.  "Mrs. Albright's parents left Czechoslovakia in March 1939, 10 days after the Nazis had invaded the country, and spent the war years in Britain. The revelation of her origins has again provoked questions about the nature of the Jewish identity." 

"Albright's family emigrated from the United Kingdom on the SS America, departing Southampton on November 5, 1948, and arriving at Ellis Island in New York Harbor on November 11, 1948. The family initially settled in Great Neck on Long Island. Korbel applied for political asylum, arguing that as an opponent of Communism, he was under threat in Prague."  I wonder why he didn't want to remain in England.   

By taking on the 10,000 children, England could glorify themselves in history of their good deed of saving lives.  They could sweep their refusal of taking in adult refugees under the table.  No one brought it up.  

I shudder today seeing all the refugees fleeing horrible conditions such as in Syria seeking refuge.                                
Eastern European Jews during Holocaust
had to wear the yellow star of David for identification of being Jewish
The kiss of death.  6,000,000 perished.  


Did anyone scream about Jewish children being rescued but without their parents who everyone knew would be killed at the onset of WWII? 

One Jewish boy on the Kindertransport, Alexander Gordon,  was already living in an orphange by age 7 because his father had died and his working mother couldn't support her children. He had graduated high school  1938 and wanted to emigrate to Palestine being his older brother was already there.  "Since the British restricted immigration to Palestine, there were only a limited number of affidavits, and the Mizrachi, an Orthodox Zionist organization,  had to make a choice of whom they would send for aliyah.  He hadn't made the cut.  He managed to be accepted on Mizrachi's farm 80 miles from Berlin.  The on October 28, 1938, all the workers were lined up.  They were teens all born in Germany with Polish backgrounds.  The Gestapo was there.  They took those over 18.  Again, he didn't make the cut, but eventually wound up on the Kindertransport and to safety. 

 They sure screamed when the USA tried to follow their laws in dealing with a massive onslaught of refugees from Central America that had to be held in conditions not meant for children and had tried to do the right thing by placing these children in  better waiting conditions for a short period of time.  The idea of a short separation seemed to be the worst thing possible to happen to the opposing political party.  The government only planned for a short separation.  The Jewish parents of children on the Kindertransport had to realize there would be no hope of reconnecting with their children again.  Most adults would be 
killed.                    
                                                        
Anti-Semitic graffiti in Seattle, Washington this week.  

Man tried to run down Jews leaving a Synagogue, got arrested this week in Los Angeles. 
New anti-Semitism showing up at Columbia's Teachers College
in New York City, New York. 

Will it ever end? 
 Has the time from 1939 to 2018  changed?  79 years have passed and anti-Semitism is become worse than it has been  once more. 

Using Israel's creation is no excuse for an anti-Semitism that has been around since the ancient Greek days and seen most visibly since New York was once called New Amsterdam.  Even Saudi Arabia today is beginning to see the profit of making friends with this new neighbor in the neighborhood who could help them all in a battle with their own enemy, Iran.  


                               
 Resource: https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2018/11/the-holocaust-the-fiction-of-international-law-and-the-necessity-of-a-self-reliant-israel/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/08/news/conversion-of-albrights-jewish-family-followed-a-welltrod-path.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Czechoslovakia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/madeleine-albright-prague-winter_n_1460500.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/jewish-refugees-in-the-us/514742/
https://blog.newspapers.com/st-louis-refugee-ship-forced-to-return-to-europe-june-6-1939/
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-population-of-europe-in-1933-population-data-by-country
THE SOURCE by James A. Michener

ABRAHAM, WHO ROCKED THE RELIGIOUS WORLD

Nadene Goldfoot                                           
Abram with his niece, Sarai who is his wife.  Sarai is bringing Hagar, her Egyptian handmaid
to Abram.  Hagar  gives him a son, Ishmael.  Sarai then later gives Abram a son, Isaac. From
Isaac came the Jews and from Ishmael came the Muslims. 
In the 2nd millennium BCE, which is over 4,000 years ago, Abram was born to Terah, people of the Ivrim (Hebrew speakers) migrating from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers westward.  They settled in Ur of the Chaldees, a city in today's Iraq.  Terah was an idol maker.  Idols were being fashioned all over the world as objects giving off protection to the owners from the many dangers in the world that people were constantly facing.
                                                     
Idol Hadad of Syria
with such a face he should scare off any dangers lurking about 

One day when Terah was out of their house, Abram decided to play with the idols stacked up from his father's workshop.  He accidentally knocked one over and of coarse, it broke.  When his father came home and saw he was going to lose money with a broken idol lying in a heap, he turned on Abram and asked him what had happened.  Abram replied that the larger idol in the corner had pushed that one over.  Terah lashed out that Abram was lying and that he knew they were just clay objects!  It dawned on both at that moment that idols were just clay objects and that they were duping their clients.  Any protection was all in their clients' heads.                                  
Baal of the Phoenicians 

Abram felt that there was a power in the world.  He had many questions in his mind.  Who made the world?  How did people come to be?  The people he knew believed in many gods; gods who controlled the forces in the world.  When they were really scared, they would even sacrifice people to these gods.  Much of the world thought like this, no matter where they were even though they had no contact with each other.

Abram is only known about through the writings by Moses which is in the Torah, the 5 books of Moses which most people know about in their Old Testament or "Bible."  This telling of the history of the Jewish people tells how Abram's name was changed to Abraham after having a flash of understanding.  Abram had visions and experiences in his praying to his singular G-d as he came to think of this power controlling the world.  We're finding that some physical conditions can cause such experiences.  Perhaps this is the way G-d communicates with people, an alteration in the body in some manner.   At any rate, what Abram did caused a complete alteration to man's thinking, and we went from a world of polytheism to a world controlled mostly by monotheism.  
                                                    
There was a moment that Abram was asked by G-d to sacrifice his son, Isaac and he prepared to do it, being it was the one and only G-d asking him.  He was stopped just in the nick of time in the act, finding out that there was to be no more of sacrificing humans and that this had been a test of loyalty.  This was a break in common practice of sacrificing people, at least in this one culture.  

Abram decided that the environment he had been surrounded by in Ur was not compatible with his new religious philosophy, so he took his family and moved away.  It would take many years before other people  came to accept such an utter change in attitude toward  understanding the world and beyond.  
                                                
"Polytheism and Egyptian religion.
Pictured is a god of half man and half animal. 

"Abram had visited Egypt.  His wife's handmaiden was Egyptian.  That was a polytheistic country.  As in the rest of Africa, the people of ancient Egypt were polytheistic throughout the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom. That means that they believed in many gods. Some of these gods were Ra, Anubis, Seth, Osiris, Isis, and Horus."
     


The Assyrians who attacked Israel in 722-721 BCE also believed in many gods. Our 10 tribes northern tribes were thrust into an environment of polytheism after being freed of slavery for 400 years in Egypt and being freed by Moses who introduced monotheism.  About 1341 BCE was the time of the Exodus.  Moses died in 1271 BCE.  The Israelites had been monotheistic for 620 years before the Assyrian attack.  They were going through much temptation already from the surrounding neighbors who were polytheistic and idol worshippers.  They were primed for slippage back into this life again.  
                                                       
Greek gods

The Greeks believed in a world above beyond the sky called Olympus over their own Mt. Olympus between Thessaly and Macadonia in Greece,  populated by a king, queen and many other gods.  They ate ambrosia and drank nectar.  They were:   ZeusHeraPoseidonAthenaApolloArtemisHestiaDemeterHermesAphroditeAresHephaestusDionysus, etc.  Today this belief is called a mythology.  "Around 700 BCE, the poet Hesiod's Theogony offered the first written cosmogony, or origin story, of Greek mythology.  This knowledge comes 1,300 years after we know about Abraham's monotheistic belief.  
                                                                     

T
The Romans came along and adopted this belief from the act of overtaking the Greeks.  Here are the top 5 gods they both believed in:

  • Zeus (Jupiter, in Roman mythology): the king of all the gods (and father to many) and god of weather, law and fate
  • Hera (Juno): the queen of the gods and goddess of women and marriage
  • Aphrodite (Venus): goddess of beauty and love
  • Apollo (Apollo): god of prophesy, music and poetry and knowledge
  • Ares (Mars): god of war.       
  • The Romans went one step beyond the Greeks.  " There arose a body of rules, the jus divinum (“divine law”), ordaining what had to be done or avoided."   
  • Greek- Roman gods even came down to earth and mated with humans, producing half-gods with extra skills, more like creating a Superman.  Such a demi-god was "
  • Dionysus: son of Zeus and Semele, a mortal. Later on he became a god, part of the Olympians when Hestia gave up her seat for him.                                        
  • A chanukiah, menorah of 8 candles to celebrate the 8 days of this holiday
    commemorating overcoming the Greek Syrians and cleaning out the temple-getting rid of  the idol, Jupiter Greek Syrians had placed. 
    The Seleucids, a Hellenistic royal dynasty,  Greek Syrians, seemed to be a blend of both Greeks and Romans.  Their Syrian king Antiochus III, lived from 222 to 186 BCE.  
  • They did such things as put a statue of Jupiter into Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem and expected a monotheistic people to suddenly accept their belief and worship this idol.  Thus we have coming up our holiday of Chanukah which commemorates the cleaning out of the Temple and getting rid of that horrible idol, Jupiter and other idols and getting the people back to their own basic beliefs, as they were being submerged in this foreign religious polytheism. 
  • The Celts:  Of what became Great Britain and parts of Europe also believed in this pantheon of gods controlling their world. They were people who had come in contact with the Roman world and the coming Christian one.   They all could not conceive of a single power, probably because they had come to realize no man could do everything needed to support their own civilization.  They go back to the Iron Age (1200-1000 BCE)  with their beliefs.  One way they differ from the rest of the world is that the Greek and Roman gods looked like people.  Egypt and the rest of the world had rather grotesque science fictional types as gods pretty much.   The later the belief, the more human form was prevalent.                              
  • Taranis (with Celtic wheel and thunderbolt), Le Chatelet, Gourzon, Haute-Marne, France
    The Celts also worshiped a number of deities of which little more is known than their names. Classical writers preserve a few fragments of legends or myths that may possibly be Celtic.
  • According to the Syrian rhetorician LucianOgmios was supposed to lead a band of men chained by their ears to his tongue as a symbol of the strength of his eloquence.
  • The first-century Roman poet Lucan mentions the gods TaranisTeutates and Esus, but there is little Celtic evidence that these were important deities.     
    Thor, king of the Norse gods
    If you are watching THE VIKINGS on TV, you should understand
    their religious beliefs 
Scandinavians also were embroiled in a pantheon of gods.  "Norse mythology is the body of myths of the North Germanic peoples , stemming from Norse paganism and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia and into the Scandinavian folklore of the modern period. ... The cosmos in Norse mythology consists of Nine Worlds that flank a central cosmological tree, Yggdrasil.

They also had a kind of Olympus populated by many many gods. 
1. the hammer-wielding, humanity-protecting thunder-god Thor, who relentlessly fights his foes;
2. the one-eyed, raven-flanked god Odin, who craftily pursues knowledge throughout the worlds and bestowed among humanity the runic alphabet
3. the beautiful, seiðr-working, feathered cloak-clad goddess Freya who rides to battle to choose among the slain; 
4. the vengeful, skiing goddess Skaði, who prefers the wolf howls of the winter mountains to the seashore; 
5. the powerful god Njörð, who may calm both sea and fire and grant wealth and land;
6. the god Frey, whose weather and farming associations bring peace and pleasure to humanity;
7.the goddess Iðunn, who keeps apples that grant eternal youthfulness; 
8.the mysterious god Heimdall, who is born of nine mothers, can hear grass grow, has gold teeth, and possesses a resounding horn;
9. the jötunn Loki, who brings tragedy to the gods by engineering the death of the goddess Frigg's beautiful son Baldr;" and more. 

Abraham was one in a million.  He had made a quantum leap in faith.  Only one Pharaoh before his time had become monotheistic in a way, worshipping the sun as the god.  "Akhenaten the Heretic 1352–1336 BC. Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten and defied tradition by establishing a new religion that believed that there is but one god; the sun god Aten."  It's interesting that Abram lived in about 1948 BCE, almost 600 years before Akhenaten.  One wonders how the belief hadn't reached Egypt by then as things spread today.  It was not to be later in the days of communication to hapen.  

Abraham's god was unseen, as Moses verified.  Abraham believed in kindness and one unseen G-d.  He maintained his beliefs and taught them to his family in a world of polytheism, idol worship and human sacrifice.  He was selected for his stiff-necked courage to stick to these principals and he changed the world.  

Resource: https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Places/Mount_Olympus/mount_olympus.html
https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/greek-mythology
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Roman-religion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_mythology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_mythology
https://www.chabad.org/holidays/chanukah/article_cdo/aid/102978/jewish/The-Story-of-Chanukah.htm
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2014/10/following-in-footsteps-of-abraham.html

Monday, November 26, 2018

Ancient Middle East Newspapers : STELES Used to Write About Israel: Verification of Existence

Nadene Goldfoot                                           

We have more verification of Israel's presence in ancient days.  The method of keeping history was to write on steles.  One dated about 1208 BCE written in Egyptian hieroglyphs was the Merneptah Stele.  The last 3 of 28 lines tells of a victory over Israel saying, "The Canaan has been plundered into every sort of woe:  Ashkelon has been overcome;  Gezer has been captured;  Yano'am is made non-exisent.  Israel is laid waste and his seed is not."  This stele wasn't discovered until 1896 and is now kept in the Cairo Museum.  Steles tend to be used for bragging by the royal families.  The main thrust of this stele is to tell about Egypt's victories over Libya but had room to tell about Israel as well. The stone is granite; usually used today for tombstones.  The top still holds its original coloring of red, yellow and blue. "It was carved in the 5th year of Merneptah of the 19th dynasty."  Merneptah was the son of Ramesses II and father of Seti II.  What is wonderful is that we have people who can read this early method of communication.  


The line which refers to Israel is:
iiz
Z1s Z1s
r
iAr
Z1
T14A1 B1
Z2s
f
k
t
G37
[a]
b
n
O1
r
t
N33B
Z2
f





ysrỉꜣrfk.tbnpr.t=f
Israelwaste[negative]seed/grainhis/its


"The hieroglyphs that refer to Israel instead employ the throw stick (the determinative for "foreign") plus a sitting man and woman (the determinative for "people") over three vertical lines (a plural marker):" 
The "foreign people" "sign is typically used by the Egyptians to signify nomadic groups or peoples, without a fixed city-state home, thus implying a semi-nomadic or rural status for 'Israel' at that time."
                                                          

Another stele is the Mesha Stele. This was made around 840 BCE by King Mesha of Moab.  It relates how their god, Kemosh,  had been angry with them and had allowed them lose the war with Israel.  Finally, their god relents and helps Mesha to throw off the yoke of Israel and restore the lands of Moab.   It was discovered in 1868 to 1870.  The stele tells about "
                                                 

  • "How Moab was oppressed by Omri King of Israel and his son as the result of the anger of the god Chemosh (Omri: 887-876 BCE) (Ahab: 876-853 BCE) 
  • Mesha's victories over Omri's son (not named) and the men of Gad at AtarothNebo and Jehaz;
  • His building projects, restoring the fortifications of his strong places and building a palace and reservoirs for water;"
Stele written in Moabite language

The stele agrees with our writings in Kings.  "The inscription seems to parallel an episode in II Kings 3; 4.  Jehoram of Israel makes an alliance with Jehoshaphat king of Judah and an unnamed king of Edom (south of Judah) to put down his rebellious vassal Mesha; the three kings have the best of the campaign until Mesha, in desperation, sacrifices to his god Kemosh either his eldest son or the eldest son of the king of Edom; the sacrifice turns the tide, "there came great wrath against Israel", and Mesha apparently achieves victory. " Note that the Moabites practiced human sacrifice during this period which is during Israel's 12th king all of which never practiced such bloody slaughter since Jacob was stopped in the act of sacrificing Isaac and told that was not expected anymore.  Israel had had as kings:  Saul, David, Solomon, Jeroboam, Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri, Omri, Ahad Ahaziah and then Jehoram  (853-843 BCE).  Abraham was born at the beginning of the 2nd millenium and Isaac was his son, who  was the father of Jacob.  It was Jacob whose name was changed to Israel after a development of mental growth caused by a wrestle with an angel in about 1800 BCE.  
                                                   

The Tel Dan Stele was found right in Israel.  It's broken but readable.  It was created in 870-750 BCE. This archaeological  find was a new one from 1993-1994 digs and can be seen in the Israel museum.  Old Aramaic using the Phoenician alphabet is the language used.  In it, an unnamed king is boasting about his victories over the king of Israel and his ally, the king of Judah (the king of the House of David").  This is a first in finding that David was a Judahite outside of the Hebrew bible (Tankah).  King David was of the tribe of Judah.  It was left where it was found by Hazael of Aram-Damascus, now Syria.  He was an important regional person in the late 9th century BCE.  He's the unnamed king on the stele.                                 
writing on Tel Dan Stele, Old Aramaic using Phonecian alphabet by a king of Damascus.

"In the second half of the 9th century BCE (the most widely accepted date for the stele) the kingdom of Aram, under its ruler Hazael, was a major power in the LevantDan, just 70 miles from Hazael's capital of Damascus, would almost certainly have come under its sway. This is borne out by the archaeological evidence: Israelite remains do not appear until the 8th century BCE, and it appears that Dan was already in the orbit of Damascus even before Hazael became king in c. 843 BCE."

As for Israel, Jehoram's son, Jehu became king of Israel in 843 BCE and lasted until 816 BCE.  


It's a good thing that Israel was conquered once in a while, or no one would ever write about them.  Like today, heads of state like their subjects to know of their successes, not their failures.  Note that in our history book, the Torah and Tanakh, our writers wrote about both, our successes and failures.  



Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_military_history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteenth_Dynasty_of_Egypt_family_tree
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesha_Stele
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Dan_Stele