Nadene Goldfoot
Jews back in the biblical days had a different style of family life from our modern days. First of all, the Israelite family in the biblical period differed from the Jewish family in later time in 2 important respects.
1. It was based on Polygamy which the Torah does not outlaw. Jacob, son of Isaac, had 4 wives. As we read about our biblical history, we must remember that they reflect a polygamous society that suited their timeframe. It was a period of a very low population in the world they knew, and they didn't have to worry about overpopulating the world. Polygamy became general in the luxurious courts of the first Jewish kings and the number of Solomon's concubines is recorded, but the ideal picture of the housewife in Proverbs 31 seems to picture a monogamous household. Isaac's household (son of Jacob) was regarded as a model in later Jewish tradition and it was monogamous. Isaac had married Rebekah at age 40 and was 60 when his twin sons, Jacob and Esau, were born. He had to move his family because of famine from the Negev to the Philistine country, but did not leave the Land of Israel.
It is noted by Chabad that the taking of another wife always had its reasons.
The society reflected in the Talmud which was developed in two major centers of Jewish scholarship: Babylonia and Palestine. The Jerusalem or Palestinian Talmud was completed c. 350, and the Babylonian Talmud (the more complete and authoritative) was written down c. 500, but was further edited for another two centuries.) is essentially monogamous, only a handful of rabbis being recorded as having more than one wife. This ideal governed Jewish life thereafter. The takkanah of the German scholar, Rabbi Gershom forbidding polygamy was in about 1,000 CE gave formal sanction among Ashkenazi Jews to what was aiready generally accepted.
A number of reasons are given for Rabbi Gershom’s ban:
- It was instituted to prevent people from taking advantage of their wives.
- It was intended to avoid potential infighting between rival wives, which may also lead to the transgression of a number of biblical violations.
- Rabbi Gershom was concerned lest the husband be unable to provide properly for all his wives (especially during the difficult times of exile). The ban is intended to avoid the inherent rivalry and hatred between rival wives
- There is a concern that a man may marry two wives in different locations, which may lead to forbidden relationships between offspring.
- While it has been suggested that it was adopted from Christian practice and laws, to avoid Christian attacks against Jews who act otherwise, this argument has been assailed by many other halachic authorities.
Among the Spanish (Sephardic) and oriental (Mizrahi Yemenite) Jews, on the other hand, polygamy continued to be legal, though by no means general. In Italy, down to the 17th century, a person whose wife was barren was occasionally permitted by papal (from the Pope of Catholicism) license to take a 2nd wife. With the Europeanization of many oriental communities in recent generations, polygamy has become increasingly rare. In Israel, monogamy is now enforced by law, though existing polygamous marriages are recognized. 
Family of Benyamin Netanyahu, born October 21, 1949 in Tel Aviv Yafo, to the son of the historian, Benzion Netanyahu and Tzila Segal, with brother Jonathan born in New York on March 13, 1946 who died July 4, 1976 in Operation Entebbe as the only casualty. The mission was successful, with 102 of the 106 hostages rescued, Another brother, Iddo, was born July24, 1952 in Jerusalem and is a physician, author and playwright. (I share DNA with a lot of Segals).
Benzion Mileikowsky (later Netanyahu) was born in Warsaw in partitioned Poland which was under Russian control, to Sarah (Lurie) and the writer and Zionist activist Nathan Mileikowsky. Nathan was a rabbi who toured Europe and the United States, making speeches supporting Zionism. After Nathan took the family to Mandate Palestine (aliyah) in 1920, the family name eventually was changed to Netanyahu.
Rabbi Nathan Mileikowsky born August 15, 1879, was a Zionist rabbi, educator, writer and political activist. Mileikowsky's grandson is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He was bon in Kreva, Russian Empire (today located in Belarus), which at that time was part of the Pale of Settlement region of Imperial Russia in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed. He had married Sarah Lurie. Mileikowsky's father, Zvi, made a living from leasing an agricultural estate in a nearby village. At the age of 10 Mileikowsky was sent to the Volozhin yeshiva, where he spent eight years and was ordained. Nathan and his wife Sarah Mileikowsky (née Lurie) had nine children, including: Benzion Netanyahu (the father of Iddo, Yonatan and Benjamin Netanyahu) and Elisha Netanyahu (the husband of Shoshana Netanyahu and the father of Nathan Netanyahu).
2. It was more comprehensive, including all male descendants as well as various dependents. Whenever possible, families are seen as providing the best care and protection for their children, family represents the focus of all work, and family members are actively involved in the development and implementation of any plan. The family's culture, race, ethnicity, values, and customs were respected and carefully considered.
The panegyric or praising of the housewife in Proverbs 31 suggests a monogamous family. it is the custom of the religious Jew to read this listing of attributes at the Sabbath table before eating that praise the wife listing all the things she does for the family. It starts as saying, "An accomplished woman who can find? Far beyond pearls is her value; Her husband's heart relies on her, and he shall lack no fortune; She bestows goodness upon him, never evil, all the days of her life; She seeks wool and flax, and her hands work willingly;.......
Talmudic literature reflects, with rare exceptions, a monogamous society and the idealization of the family in the modern sense, emphasizing the duty of the father to educate his sons and train them for some useful trade; the veneration of motherhood and the biblical precepts of honoring parents. The Talmudic ideals and, perhaps still more, its legislation governed the Jewish conceptions of family life in the Middle Ages and later.
Of course this didn't seem to affect our Davidic dynasty of Kings. It seemed that the pattern was established for them to kill the preceding king and take over the throne. It was a pattern practiced by many other countries, I'm afraid, something happening during that period. They even wound up killing their own family members to gain power. Queen Athalia was the worst.
Worshipping Baal was quite bad. Baal Peor was a local Canaanite deity, worshipped with sexual orgies on Mt. Peor in Moab. The Israelites were temporarily attracted to this cult during their wanderings in the desert as told in Numbers 25.
Solomon left a son when he died. From King David to Solomon, and his sons, the line became a dynasty. In fact, that's a reason of the split of Israel into Israel and Judah. Solomon's son, Rehoboam (933-917) wouldn't change his father's platform of taxation for building.
Take King Jehoshaphat (son of Asa 874-850 BCE) who was the 1st king of Judah to make a treaty with the kingdom of Israel. Asa's line of descent went back to Abijam to Rehoboam (933-917 BCE), son of King Solomon. Jehoshaphat strengthened the ties and their DNA by marrying his son Jehoram to Athaliah, daughter of Ahab (876-853 BCE) of Israel. Previous kings of Israel were Omri, Zimri, Elah, Baasha, Nadab and Jeroboam; not a dynasty of father to son rulers, but there would undoubtedly some genes from the 12 sons of Jacob in there.
Athaliah became Queen of Judah from 842 to 836 BCE. Her mother was Jezebel. She exterminated the entire royal family except for her grandson, Joash because her son, Ahazaiah, was killed after being the king for one year.
She was a nasty queen. She introduced the Baal cult into Judah, which happened to be the most religious of the two nations of Israel and Judah at that time, for the main reason of Jerusalem lying in Judah. After 6 years of her ruling, the people revolted against her and she was put to death. Joash, her grandson, became the next king. They did not have a Jewish family set of rules.
Monogamy became firmly established in Northern Europe as a result of the ban on polygamy in 1,000 CE.
Marital relations were controlled and, in a way, hallowed by the strict restrictions connected with the menstrual period. Marital fidelity was firmly established if only because of the obvious limitations within a restricted "ghetto" society and the savage secular penalties attached to association with gentile women or vice versa. (Marital relations were not to take place during menstruation cycle and after going to the Mikva). Many religious Jews use twin beds.
"The education of the young came to be recognized as the primary duty. The intimate nature of the Jewish home observances, in particular those connected with the Sabbath, resulted from and at the same time profoundly strengthened Jewish family life. Family solidarity (the continued attachment of married children to their parents, responsibility of members of the family for one another) was developed to an extent unusual among non-Jews."
Although at the outset of modern times, occidental Jewish family life continued in the old pattern, gradual assimilation has led to an increase in divorce, a diminution in the birth rate, and the dwindling of internal solidarity, so that the family pattern has approached that of the environment. Intermarriage has occurred more often now which changes the styles of the marriage.
Jews have settled in Judea and Samaria because this was the ancient land of our fathers. Every rock and tree has history. Our blood was spilled in here. Our religion developed here. Like the Jerusalemites, they are serious about living according to commandments. Many families have been broken up by slaughter from terrorists. It's not easy living. They are making a stand by settling here.
Our ancestors kept a family tree that was very important. One could not sit on the court without their list of ancestors. We feel revitalized in searching for our ancestors now with genealogy and DNA. Jewish descent from the Royal House of David can be traced through oral tradition, rabbinic sources, historical data and/or extensive research. Most families claim descent from King David through Rashi. Several families claim descent “ben akhar ben”(father to son) in a direct line, most notably the Dayan, Shealtiel and Charlap/Don Yechia, families. If your family has an oral tradition of Davidic descent or you can provide genealogical evidence, which I can now do through Rashi, you are doing well in your searches. There have been many great rabbis and rabbinical houses that trace their ancestry back to David Hamelech (King David). This group of great scholars and leaders include: Hillel, Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi, Yochanan Hasandler, Rashi, the Rambam and Yosef Karo (Caro) as well as the more contemporary gedolim like the Baal Shem Tov, the Breslevor Rebbe and the first Lubavicher Rebbe, Shneur Zalman of Liadi, to name but a few. (I claim a connection to RASHI by DNA).
That gets me to write about rabbinical families. I found in my searches that rabbis married into other rabbinical families. This would compound their genes, increasing their connections with each other. It's said to be the cause of having a high IQ.
It seems that Jewish families have known very little of a peaceful world or one that has not tried to eradicate them because of their beliefs in the sanctity of life with one G-d and his expectations in being fair to one another. Because of what Jews had been molded into, they kept seeking THE BEST WAY OF LIFE, or even bettering the Mosaic code, for it didn't seem to be working.
Essenes emerged out of Judaism in the frantic changes occurring with Roman occupation at the turn of the century, and they were an extreme group of men living together with more rules than Moses ever gave to his population during the Exodus. They didn't live with women, but in order to continue their political-religious group, allowed men to visit their wives every 7 years with hopes of pregnancy then. They remained a small group of idealists.
Today, Most of Israel’s 250,000 Bedouin citizens, who historically are tribal nomadic Muslim Arabs, live in the Negev desert. Muslim law allows 4 wives to a husband. Many Bedouin men have multiple wives. Polygamy has been illegal in Israel since 1977 and is punishable by up to five years in prison. Many Bedouin don’t know that, because Israel has rarely enforced that law, seeing it as an internal ethnic issue. According to Israeli government data, at least 20 percent of Bedouin families are polygamous, but women’s rights advocates estimate the figure is closer to 40 percent, and 60 percent among older men. Even a Bedouin member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, has two wives. Bedouin men who marry multiple wives only register one marriage with Israeli authorities, making the problem difficult to track. Muslim marriages are carried out by Sharia courts, and multiple marriages by one man are rarely reported to authorities. Thus many married Bedouin women are legally considered single. As a result, despite its traditionalism, the Bedouin community boasts Israel’s highest rate of single mothers. Over 10 percent of Bedouin families are single-parent households. It is changing.
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonatan_Netanyahu
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/558598/jewish/Does-Jewish-Law-Forbid-Polygamy.htm
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/polygamy-persists-among-israel-s-bedouins-women-are-pushing-change-n922296
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Mileikowsky
geni.com
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