Commenting on Net Flicks' " THEY ARE EVERYWHERE" (About a French Jew and His Therapist -about being Jewish)

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                       

 January 10, 2015:  4 young men in a grocery store in France buying food for Shabbat who were murdered by an attack of terrorists; Yohan Cohen, Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham, and Francois-Michel Saada.  Meanwhile, some 1,000 people held a vigil for the victims Saturday. They sang France's national anthem La Marseillaise to underscore their united stance against the perceived threat of Islamic fundamentalism on the republic's fundamental values.  This was in 2015.  Today is 2021 and anti-Semitism has grown worse throughout the world, and especially in France.  

By pure accident, I clicked on They Are Everywhere" in my Netflicks' webpages looking for a new item to watch.  It's listed as a comedy.  If so, it's very deep.  I was deep in the listing, and saw this title.  My first thought was that this was a reference to Jews, as perhaps I'm getting slightly paranoid, or maybe because I have been writing about our history, past and present.  Most people would think, aliens from outer space.  

It turns out to be a movie or video from France that came out in 2016 about a young French Jewish man talking to his therapist about his feelings about his Jewishness.  I was hooked, watching till the end.

After going to bed, the program played over in my head.  Whether I was awake or asleep, it bothered me and I was writing away in my mind my response to it.  So here I am now, awake and it's after lunchtime.

No Jew anywhere should be going through the mental anguish this young man so honestly portrayed in his video, a study of himself, I presume.  He did an excellent job portraying little vignettes  or larger scenes of what was probing at him.  

                                             

It happens when families withhold information about their history which needed to be shared.  Young Jews today have no idea, according to this Frenchman or Americans I know of this age, why they are Jewish.  Many have been skipped over in the bar-mitavah experience.  Many still, even though they've been bar-mitzvahed, remain ignorant about their past families' histories.  He wondered why we were so hated.   We don't withold on purpose, we're just so busy with our own lives.  We don't think about it.  Well, I have news for everyone.  Schools aren't doing it.                      

You have to go back even further to realize how outstanding Abraham was.  He lived in a time of polytheism and he had come up with belief in an unseen G-d, one only!  It was a wild idea.  He knew it and moved out of town and into the country-side where he could teach his children properly, away from dis-believers.

For so long, especially since WWII, we have had it hammered into our heads that Judaism is a religion.  It is a religion, the one in which Christianity and much later, Islam came from, as their daughters.  But that's not all it is.  it doesn't stop where other religions have stopped.

                                             

 Jacob and his 12 sons, 2 wives, 2 of wives' handmaidens
 

 Judaism is also an inherited religion due to DNA as well, and that young people may not realize.  It came from Abraham first, then a relative of Abraham by the name of Jacob who had 4 women bear him 12 sons who carry these genes to us.  Along with the genes was the deal that this line of inheritance would go from a Jewish mother to her children.  Of course, genes do the same thing.  

No one wanted to talk about this during WWII as the Germans had the right idea for the wrong reasons.  They wanted to kill all Jews.  What is a Jew?  Such a good question.  The Germans figured that if you had one grandparent, you yourself were Jewish.  They were figuring right if that was a Jewish grandmother, so you can see how easily they managed to wipe out 6 million of us within a few years.   And, by the way, why did Hitler want to kill all us Jews?  I say that we were seen as competition;  and the Germans were jealous when in bad economic years Jews, a hard working people, were still keeping their stores open and their people employed.  A few Jews were in the banking business, something handed down from not being allowed into any craft businesses by Christians.  The only way to earn a livelihood was by lending money, a job seen as unfit for the rest of the world.  Note that Einstein, good in math, got out of Germany just in time and high-tailed it to the USA.  

Judaism had become a culture, even having its own language of Hebrew and then Yiddish or Ladino or Arabic, as the cases may have been.  We're from the Empire of Israel which was a long-established land, from the time of King Saul through king David and then his son, King Solomon and on and on till 70 CE when the Romans burned down our 2nd Temple and destroyed Jerusalem.  

Since then we've been people without a country for over 2,000 years, living in other countries and usually not as welcome guests. However, some had never left, living in places not important to the Romans.   That's why we've needed our ancient country back again.  It laid there ever since the Roman days growing wild with weeds, becoming ruined with swamps, and the only people around were those agents sent by their countries to collect taxes from a few natives trying to grow food on this arid, dry or swampy piece of land not fit for any farmer but inhabited more by mosquitoes.  Now we have Israel.                                                                                            

They were saved by religious Jews returning who thought this land was like gold, so full of history it was for these returnees.  They paid the natives their asking price outright-no haggling, anything to gain their land once more.  The Jews had left their fill of pogroms and hatefulness of the cold lands of Europe.  They had waited almost 1800 years!  Enough!  Diy ai nu !                        

For a cousin of mine with both parents being Jewish, the cousin has 29,992 DNA matches with other people from 2nd cousins and upward.  The cousin's parents also shared DNA matches as well, unknown to any of us but discovered in the DNA testing.  This is not a surprise.  We are an endogamous people.  Our family shows that; intermarriage throughout the ages doubling up on DNA on certain chromosomes.  It has its advantages, like intelligence, and its disadvantages with childhood diseases.  

DNA testing is used by many of us being we lost so many relatives in the Holocaust and wonder if anyone made it out alive.  Also, for the physical disability reasons left from genetic diseases it is of great value.  We know our beginnings, we like to find out just where "Russia" was on the census.                                     

Our purpose on earth was told to us by Moses, also a relative of Abraham and Jacob.  He documented our history in his writing that took him the 40 years he had to travel on the EXODUS from Egypt back to Canaan.  The Torah, it is called, consists of the 5 books of Moses.  That is the beginning of what is called, THE OLD TESTAMENT used by many Christians as it's the first part of their book.  The Torah by Moses also contains the 613 rules that the Israelites (now the Jews) were to follow. 

We were to be the light, to light the way for other people, and for starters, we had priests, called Cohens (with the Cohen gene of J1) who were the direct descendants of Aaron, brother of Moses.  The 2 sons of Moses had died young, leaving no descendants.  Most of us Jews have DNA relatives through modern technology today and find that the majority of them are Cohens.  Some surnames such as Hochfeld are a branch off the Cohen branch, changed for reasons unbeknown now, but perhaps for safety's sake.  

I'm sorry to see that there are those American Jews or French Jews who do not see themselves as connected to Israel, for only Israeli Jews can claim this.  I claim that Jews from the Galut (other than Israel) missed out on studying the history of Israel somehow from beginning to now.  There are those Jews we've never known about in unknown lands who are now approaching and claiming their right to live in Israel; Jews that have been hidden away for centuries, now becoming known.  It all has to do with our religion and why we're Jewish, something to be very proud of.                                              

        Those French Jews who made aliyah to Israel-family groups with children.  From 2000 to 2009, more than 13,000 French Jews made aliyah, largely as a result of growing antisemitism in the country. A peak was reached in 2005, with 2,951 olim. However, between 20–30% eventually returned to France. After the election of Nicolas Sarkozy, French aliyah dropped due to the Jewish community's comfort with him. In 2010 only 1,286 French Jews made aliyah. In 2015, a total of 7,835 French Jews moved to Israel. This dropped to about 5,200 in 2016 and 3,500 in 2017.

if families did not do a good job of setting examples through observance of Judaism and all the lovely holidays we have that are good resources for teaching, what did they expect from their children while living in the Galut?  How many therapists are deluged with Jews wanting help today, I wonder besides this video telling us that it's happening?  The pressure of Hitler was off and peace has reigned since 1945 and look what has happened.  The pressure of their religious responsibilities had also come off. For them, maybe, but not for others that didn't have a France or USA for a safe harbor offering citizenship to people with none.  They needed an Israel.  

Resource:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/01/10/details-about-victims-of-terror-attacks-in-france-emerge/21567281/

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