Nadene Goldfoot
Jacob and his two wives, Leah and Rachel, sisters that were his 1st cousins, , and their two Egyptian handmaidens, Bilhah and Zilpah, lived about 4,000 years ago in a day when G-d spoke to man and man heard him and reacted. Moses, b: in 1391 BCE-d:1271 BCE, heard his voice from a strange burning bush. Islam has Mohammad, b: 570 CE-d:620 CE, hearing an angel and reacting. Christianity's emphasis is not the obeying of the voice of G-d but of Jesus b: 5 BCE-d: 29 CE, believing him to be the son of G-d. " In John 10:27, Jesus says “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Every single believer knows the voice of God, it's just whether or not they actually attribute it to God. For most of my life I've heard the voice of God very clearly, but it wasn't until a few years ago that I knew it was Him."
Rabbinical ruling was that prophecy had ended with Ezra and Nehemiah; that is to say, at the end of the Biblical period of the 5th century BCE.. That period ended along with the Prophets who listened to the voice of G-d. They were the last 12; Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.
Today man speaks of his conscience telling him what to do or not to do, but this is never really a common conscience shared by all, as we have rulers who have been mad, bloodthirsty beasts such as Caligula and Nero, and their voice couldn't be my voice that we hear. With the anti-Semite, it's what they've been taught to hate; and that was the Jews. It's those that hear voices in their heads telling them to do bad things when we have to contact a psychologist or psychiatrist. Luckily most of us do have that inner voice or conscience that tells them to do something good.
Throughout history, Jews have been the scapegoats of other nations, as UN history shows that they continually blame Israel for their ills, so Jews are blamed for all their problems. Because of this, anti-Semitism has been keeping them apart from the rest of society. They are the only people that have lasted as a people for over 3,000 years despite being kept apart during certain eras like after 70 CE. If we were to have planned this at the beginning of time, to keep a people together for 3,000 years, there is no way we could have done it. It's one of the mysteries of life as to how it has happened.
Judaism came to Abraham in belief in one G-d, though not by name but by creed, and this belief and way of behaving was passed down to his wife, Sarah and their son, Isaac, who passed it down to his son, Jacob, who passed it down to his 12 sons, who were the fathers of 12 tribes. They became a clan who was family and religion. They developed their own social customs and this finally reached a descendant, David who was born in about 1185 BCE, who became King of Israel from 1010 to 970 BCE, and whose son, Solomon inherited the Empire.
By 70 CE, their nation had been cut in half by the Assyrians, attacked by the Greeks and then later the Romans occupied and destroyed it, causing them to be Jews without a country. In fleeing from Jerusalem, some went to Spain and became the Sephardic Jews, speaking Hebrew-Spanish called Ladino; and some stayed in the area becoming the Mizrachi Jews, and some were in Rome and then in Germany, speaking Hebrew-German called Yiddish and were the Ashkenazi Jews. Jews suddenly found themselves hated for their religion by this era, with the Romans backing the new religious fever of Christianity and Emperor Constantine becoming part of it. This caused great harm to Jews, disliked as Christianity reached the shores of newly found countries that Jews tried to live in, for this new religion was not kind to Jews.
The irony is that Christianity centers on Jesus, who was said to be a Jew, son of Mary and Joseph of Bethlehem. Aspects of Christianity is borrowed from Judaism. David's Psalms is a good example. Islam also borrowed from Judaism many of its creeds as Mohammad came in contact with many Jewish tribes living in Arabia after 70 CE. They would be reading aloud outside their tent, and he heard their stories. The politics of those days turned people against the Jews who brought them these aspects of their religion.
Jews were kept together, sometimes forcefully, as in ghettos, marrying each other through the generations. As they had developed their beliefs, they had no desire to marry outside of their religion anymore than Others wanted to marry with them. At first they had skills others didn't have, causing them to be welcomed in new struggling countries as they could read and write and do math and knew about trading. Then, as people learned these things, they were always the 2nd class citizen or less, such as becoming homeless without any rights. The rights they had been first given caused friction with the Others who were competing with them.
As the 1700s approached and people were moving into the new land of America, where all were immigrants except for the native population, Jews felt equal. They faced anti-Semitism but of a different kind. This USA had no established church, no official religion.
Judaism, therefore, is not merely tolerated, it has equal status--at least in theory according to American law, but not in practice, for Jews from Dutch Brazil, when they first tried to enter New York in 1621 in a small boat, were at first refused because they were Jews. It was Peter Stuyvesant who refused them entrance, and chances are that he had never known a Jew. Anti- Semitism still exists here as well, growing worse as time has marched on. Where countries have had official religions, Jews have become 2nd class citizens because of not being a member of the state's official church.
By the 1930, a few Jews were beginning to marry outside their faith. For this entire period, they had been marrying only people of their own faith, and this was decided at first if their fathers were Jewish, they were Jewish, but this later changed to the rule that if their mothers were Jewish, they were considered Jewish. Conversion did go on, from the time they were in Italy not too long after 70 CE throughout the ages, but never on a big scale. The Romans had seen to that with laws they had passed since the 3rd century CE..
Therefore, Jews today have made it here with ancestors dating back to before 70 CE in Israel which is a miracle in itself as people that lived through that epoch in time were lucky to get out of the burning city of Jerusalem and escape with their lives.
Now we have the period of coming together again with Israel's re-birth on May 14, 1948. Jews are returning from the 4 corners of the earth to live in tiny Israel. Even the Lost 10 tribes have been found of which it's believed that the Pashtuns of Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of India are those sought-for people. Some have already visited in Jerusalem.
"The Bible mentions the Assyrians settling the Lost Tribes in Gozan, which is one of the names of the Amu Darya, a major Afghan river, identified as such by Rav Sa’adia Gaon. Medieval writings by Jewish travelers to Afghanistan mentions the Israelite origins of the Pashtuns. In more recent times, the connection between Pashtuns and Israel has been documented and discussed in documentaries by Simcha Jacobovici, as well as books by Rabbi Eliahu Avichail and Israeli president Yitzhak Ben- Zvi. Recently, the Internet has given us the ability to contact Pashtuns directly and do extensive research, which has confirmed the sources above."
Even this is a miracle. Could one expect to find the cousins of today's Jews being in such a distant place and of a different religion? They were able to maintain certain customs of their Jewish/Israelite days which led such PhDs as Shalva Weil of Israel to find out all she could about them. .
The problem with Hamas will keep the Pashtuns from Israel. The Hamas Covenant, published in 1988, characterizes the Arab-Israel conflict as an irreconcilable one between Muslims and Jews and between Islam and Judaism. It quotes the following Islamic prophecy: "The time will not come until Muslims fight the Jew and the rocks and the trees cry, "Oh, Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me. come and kill him." Perhaps the countries of the Abrahamic Accord can change the Hamas minds.
Anti-Semitism kept us all together till we could gain our state of Israel back again. It's cost us millions of lives through the ages. When I think of all the bottlenecks (a genealogy term) we've gone through with so many of the Jews almost wiped out, and then growing again from a few, I realize that Jews who are here today are but a handful of the families that started on the Exodus with so many lost to us. The Holocaust did the biggest number where 6 million were slaughtered. Of those left, the male Y haplogroup shows that there are but a few that are of the Jewish males such as the Cohen gene, J1, E, Q, etc. I'm counting all the losses due to anti-Semitism.
Aliyah as a core value of the State of Israel can be seen in its national anthem, Hatikvah, "The Hope", which was adapted from a poem by the 19th century Jewish poet, Naftali Herz Imber. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQCu9kl68Tg
Kol od ba’le’vav p’nima,Nefesh yehudi ho’miyah.
U’lefa-atei kadimah,
Ayin le’Tziyyon tzofiyah.
Od lo avda tikva-teinu,
Ha’tikvah bat sh’not al-payim
Lih-yot am chofshi b’ar-tzeinu
Eretz Tziyyon v’Yerushalayim.
Resource:
https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-haplogroup-we-be.html
https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2018/09/what-haplogroup-do-pashtuns-be.html
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/national-anthem-of-israel/
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/the-afghan-pashtuns-and-the-missing-israelite-exiles-543181
https://www.docsonline.tv/ancient-history-timeline/?gclid=CjwKCAiAvOeQBhBkEiwAxutUVLNNsUFWQ246kdX72eGxthUCi_q-a-7UVKbeq_EB_QTNj-PouFoxVhoCVmYQAvD_BwE
The Vanishing American Jew, Alan Dershowitz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Zion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_HaAliyah
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