How Taxes and Labor Changed Ancient Israel and Our World Today

Nadene Goldfoot                                   

Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, a place now called
the Temple Mount.  It was built as a shrine for their ark, sacred vessels and offerings.   In it was a hall, shrine, and inner sanctum which was the HOLY OF HOLIES. It had a court for worshippers.


The Temple was completely destroyed by Nebuchadnezar, the Babylonian in 580 BCE.

It was rebuilt as the 2nd Temple from 538 BCE to 515 BCE by returned
Jews from Babylon by their King Cyrus.  

                                                                       
King Solomon was our greatest king from 961 BCE to 920 BCE, and was the son of King David.  It was Solomon who was able to build the Temple and created a place that was the center for the belief in ONE GOD.  He was known for his intelligence and ability to make wise decisions.  Wisdom was what he was known for.
It was his wisdom in things pertaining to how we are to treat each other and follow the law of Moses, and he was determined to build the temple and establish this as their religion. 
                                                   

      One time two women came to him, each claiming to be the mother of a baby they brought with them.  They wanted him to decide which one was the real mother.  He said to his guard, cut the baby in half and give each half to the women.  The real mother screamed,"  Don't do that!  Then give the baby to her.  Solomon had found the real mother.  The woman who said not to cut the baby was the real mother.  Everyone was satisfied.  This is an example of his wisdom. 
                                                       

Temple in Karnak, Luxor, Egypt
Didn't Johnnie Carson joke about this place in his monologues?In the sands of Egypt lies the massive Temple of Karnak, a temple dedicated to a variety of Egyptian deities. To get an idea of how big this structure is, think of the size of a football field. Now think of 150 football fields put together. The Temple of Karnak is even larger than this at over 200 acres! One of its original names was Ipt-Swt, which meant ''Selected Spot.'' The temple is located in the ancient city of Thebes in Egypt, the axis mundi, or center of the world, in Egyptian religion. The specific site of the temple was legendarily the mound of earth that Atum, the creator god, created himself, the other deities, and the world on. This site, which was built on and expanded for about 2,000 years, has a long and complex history. 

Every country around had such a Temple.  Solomon would have known about it.  It was the thing to do.   Moses would have seen it.  He was born in Egypt.  It was like not being a real country until you had a temple, and so he went at it with gusto.  He established communication with the king of Lebanon and used their Cedar trees and had help from there.  He had to use the free labor of his own people to build the Temple.  Taxes went up in order to afford everything for the Temple.  Taxes and labor became a burden for all the people, and the northern tribes were hurt the most.  They tried to get Solomon to lower his expectations and lower the taxes and labor but he didn't do it.

  Solomon died in 920 BCE.  His son, Rehoboam, inherited the throne of Israel, ruling over all 12 tribes.  He remained king from 933 to 917BCE.  This is interesting because this means he had taken over before Solomon's death.  Perhaps Solomon had been ill, or the historians were confused as to the dates.
                                                       

   The 10 tribes of Israel  had been in forced labor with Solomon and this was extending with his son, Rehoboam.  Jeroboam was the superintendent of this forced labor during Solomon's reign, and was an Ephraimite. from the tribe of Ephraim, a leading tribe of the 10.  He led a revolt against this burden of taxation and forced labor put on his people my the kings.  At first the king was able to stop the revolt and this forced Rehoboam to escape to Egypt to find refuge there. 

When Solomon died, he led a delegation of the northern Israelite tribes which met King Rehoboam at the city of Shechem and demanded changes in the system of taxation and forced labor.  Their request was refused.
                                                         

This meant that the northern tribes declared their independence and anointed Jeroboam as their king of the 10 northern tribes, ceding from Judah and Simeon and some of Benjamin.  . 

Jerusalem was the capital of the tribe of Judah that they had now left and was kept as their capital.  They had not been involved with as much trade and the outside world as Ephraim and the other tribes had been, and were a poorer but bigger tribe. 

 The northern tribes used Shechem as their capital. Shechem is today's Nablus where many Arabs reside.  They chose this place because it was on an isolated elevation dominating a wide countryside.  It had an acropolis with a casemate wall within which was the royal palace in the Assyrian style.  Inscribed ostraca were found by excavators in the store-rooms and also ivory nlays recalling the "ivory house" built by King Ahab which withstood the siege of the Syrians but fell in 721 BCE to Sargon II of Assyria .  

In those days, people were taken away and replaced with other kinds of people.  The Northern tribes were taken eastward and many wound up in today's Afghanistan, Pakistan, parts and India and even now are scattered throughout the world in their attempt to find refuge from the terrorists who occupy their land, al Quada and the Taliban.  

The Assyrians replaced our 10 tribes with people of the Cutheans.  Who were these Cutheans?  
"In the Talmud, a central post-exilic religious text of Rabbinic Judaism, the Samaritans are called Cutheans (Hebrew: כּוּתִים‎, Kutim), referring to the ancient city of Kutha, geographically located in what is today Iraq."
                                   

Today's Samaritans celebrating Sukkot on Mt. Gerizim.  This is
the holiday of remembering the Exodus and making little huts to
sleep in on the way to Canaan from Egypt.  Ephriamites were
there, one of the 12 tribes of Jacob (Israel).  

The Cutheans then intermingled with some remaining people of the 10 tribes, and they in turn became the ancestors of the SAMARITANS, found later in history.  Today the Samaritans claim descent from the tribe of Ephraim, who were of the royal line of the northern tribes living in Tirzah, their capital. So they may have some DNA from Ephraim, but mostly from the Kutim (Cutheans) of Iraq.   

 They later moved over to Penuel, a town across the Jordan River to its eastern side. After that they again had to move, this time to a town called Tirzah.   The land of the northern tribes was later called Samaria and Tirzah remained its capital. 

This happened in 880 BCE when Omri became their king.  Omri had bought a hill from Shemer that became their capital.  Tirza was 25 acres in size.   

When Moses had taken their last census, Judah numbered 76,500 people, having gained 1,900 from the 1st census.  Simeon had 22,200 and Benjamin had 45,600.  These were the numbers at the end of the EXODUS.    Ephraim had 32,500 at the end of their 40 year trek and had lost 8,000 along the way.  Yet they remained a very important tribe, now thought to be the Pashtun's Afridi tribe in in Pakistan with some in Afghanistan. "The Afridis and other Pashtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistan have also been alleged to be the descendants of the lost Jewish tribes such as the Efraim.  However, DNA and other research towards validating such claims has been inconclusive.  I can tell you right now that more people need to be tested, especially from Afghanistan. 

Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan

                                                       

The thing that impresses me so much is that many of the 50 million tribal Pashtuns, a group of our former 10 Lost Tribes of Israel of which so many claim to come from King Saul, Israel's 1st king of the tribe of Benjamin, have retained so many of our customs.  So many of our customs of today's Jews are becoming forgotten customs by people in the USA except with the orthodox in general. A few of the important holidays are still being remembered by the Conservative and Reform group of Jews, but not many customs, such as lighting candles on Friday night.  Then again, the freedom that these countries like the USA have given us have caused much intermarriage, and often it takes two parents to decide on our continuing practices.  
                                                    

Lighting candles 30 minutes before sundown
starts Shabbat to be kept till 3 stars appear in the sky the
next evening.  A time of peace, to do no work, to pray.
I can guarantee that this reminds you who you are.  

The environment is not conducive to doing something out of the ordinary like lighting candles on a Friday night  in a secular society, evidently.  In America, Friday night is the night to swing, and Jews are to remain a little different but it's hard to maintain.   If people of one culture all live in the same neighborhood with a communal synagogue or synagogues to attend, it helps.  Our culture was about completely wiped out in Russia by their atheistic government.  It's amazing that with religion not allowed to be practiced in that country that so many Russian Jews did opt to move to Israel and live.  They were not about to convert to Christianity.  

By 1492 CE, Spanish Jews were confronted with the king's edict that they had to convert to Christianity or leave the country, THE SPANISH INQUISITION.  Jews who could not leave due to elderly parents, jobs, businesses, went underground, even going through baptism if forced, and then were in bigger trouble.  The government's religious group would torture people to get to the truth;  ARE YOU A JEW?  We were spied upon.  People watched to see if we did anything "Jewish." It was a time when a religion used torture and hatred; we see this all throughout history, actually.  Religion has been the world's #1 Topic of Importance.  ARE YOU A MEMBER OF OUR RELIGION? This is whether it be the Christians or the Muslims, Jews have been picked on to convert to their religion.  It hasn't been a topic like if we support weather changes, or if we support women leaders, or if we support working every day of the week or not, it's our religion that they can't tolerate.  
                                                     

The much feared line-up of Jews
Taking Jews away in 1941 in Europe to be killed
in gas chambers during the HOLOCAUST.  Jews
were good people.  They worked hard, created businesses,
were not criminals. Many German Jews were integrating in their
German society, which possibly was to their detriment.
They were seen as detestable competitors such as
how people viewed them during the Middle Ages.
 They were hated for being Jewish,
and so forced to wear the yellow star of David to their death.
6 million Jews were slaughtered in this way.

Today, it is in vogue to not believe in anything, if you look at the drop in attendance in our religious houses of worship. Then I see how the Pashtuns have kept enough of their past culture as to be spotted by educated people such as Dr. Shalva Weil of Hebrew University in Jerusalem and others to be practicing our Jewish traditions!  They also have kept an oral tradition going about their origins as well.  I'm afraid the Holocaust has wiped out much of our knowledge about our own Jewish family history that came from Europe.  So many records are just marked as coming from Russia, and it discounted the countries of the PALE OF SETTLEMENT such as Lithuania and Poland as being their past country of origin.  
                                                       

So I admire very much the mothers of the Pashtuns for educating their families in every generation about their ancestors.  They had to do this for at least 200 years longer than Judah's mothers did.  It's usually the mothers who teach the children in such things while the fathers might be involved in passing on skills in work to provide for the family.  You know, today we don't even have a father involved in doing just that, not in our Western civilization, anyway, and this is a tragedy.  
                                                         
                                                           

 
I see the difference in the two groups, the northern tribes and the southern tribe or tribes, was Babylon.  By being taken there, Judah remained pretty much in touch with each other and they developed a bond and a strong interest in their Torah and the brightest of the brightest studied it with all their heart, being taken away then from their beloved Temple.  
                                                            

They wrote a special book of their studies called the Babylonian Talmud.  Another one in Jerusalem was also being written by the people left there.  This kept them in constant touch with their customs, rituals and belief system.  
                                                     

Since the northern tribes were no longer connected to Jerusalem when they divided themselves from the southern tribe of Judah who maintained the Temple, they did not feel the anxiety and frustration that had built up for the Judeans.  Miraculously, they kept their love for their religion and continued to believe in ONE GOD in a new environment that was so different and believed in many many gods, a polytheistic world.  We know how hard that was, and so they developed strict rules that were all combined into what they called their Pashtunwali, their Talmud. 
                                                          

Neither the north or the south could stand alone against the world's empires.  If they had stayed together, they may have kept the Assyrians and Babylonians at bay.  How that could have altered world opinion of these people who stubbornly continued to believe in one G-d.  What changes might we have seen in the world?  Many are now pretty shaken up over the fact that Israel is again in existence after a 2,000 year lapse.  The rabbis are saying that no Messiah is about to appear until the north and the south are united once again.  Christians have been waiting for the Jews to get a red heifer without a touch of any other color!   Both might usher in more changes in the world.  If we  Jews build the 3rd Temple now-that will usher in more than just a change. 


Resource: The News Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnak
http://www.barmazid.com/2016/08/afridi-tribe.html