Why Jews Want To Live Amid the Arabs Of The Middle East?

 Nadene Goldfoot                                 

     Jews are an ancient indigenous people of the Middle East with origins from Ur of Mesopotamia and Canaan of the Levant. They have every right to want to live in the land of their origin. They lost their land in 70 CE to the Romans.  The League of Nations made that choice possible for the Jewish people in the 1920s at the end of World War I 1917.      

As of 2020, the world's "core" Jewish population (those identifying as Jews above all else) was estimated at 14.8 million, 0.2% of the 7.95 billion worldwide population. There are about 6 million residing in the USA, 6 million in Israel, and the rest scattered through the world.   That means we're not even 1% of the population, only 1/5th of a %, hardly a crumb, but who's counting? 

Some of us had explored the problem that we were a stateless people, living in others' lands that often turned against us.  We thought of Africa.  No, our hearts belonged to our ancient Israel, called  Palaestina, a Roman name from the year of 135 CE.                                    

Our ancestors had been told by G-d to live in our Promised land, land that reached the Pelusium arm of the Nile Delta, the gulf of Elath and the Euphrates opposite Aleppo in the East including most of Syria and altogether covering 58,000 sq. miles. It had included Transjordan. This entire area was occupied by our ancestors, the Israelites under David and Solomon. (I Kings 5:4).   The Jewish National Home under the British Mandate was land west of the Jordan excluded part of land given to Lebanon, and then 80% of the land promised was first given to Jordan's Prince Abdullah. Our section was 8,000 sq miles of the original, grateful to be back home after 2,000 years of praying for the day to come.                                

            Our extended family of 70 seeking water, food, headed for  Egypt

 

We're different from other religions in that we were a family with a belief that came to be called Judaism, named for the tribe left, Judah with Jerusalem as its center, that carried on that belief.  

                             

Haman of Persia tried to kill all the Jews.  Hitler of Germany tried to kill all the Jews and almost succeeded. Now Iran (ancient Persia) wants to kill all Israelis.  We who continue to stand for our beliefs wonder why everyone wants to kill a people who earnestly believe in the one invisible G-d and have been for the past 4 thousand years?  So, as Hillel said, Don't do to others that which you don't want done to you, and the rest is commentary.  That's our belief in a nutshell.  It's the original Golden Rule.   

Abraham, ready to sacrifice his son, Isaac, but was stopped, and all human sacrifice was to be then to be stopped. Our education had begun.                                 

Judaism, a belief in ONE G-d,  began with Abraham. who was born Ur around 1945 BCE according to our Jewish records, or in the 2nd  millennium BCE to be more general.  

    World of 20th century BCE with Canaan in orange along the Mediterranean Sea and  as a complex farming society and Ur in Blue. This was over 4,000 years ago.                

                     Assyrians leading away the Israelite captives

Assyria had established an aggressive kingdom in the 20th century BCE, and expanded rapidly by the 13th and 10th centuries BCE. Assyria had overrun Syria and the Phoenician cities in 876 BCE, then taking 27,290 Israelites as prisoners in 721 BCE. Civilization had come to the Middle East before it had reached Europe and other sections.  

Babylon, the land of Shinar or of the Kasdim (Chaldees)  was highly developed mentioned in the Bible. It was the Cradle of Humanity.  Nebuchadnezzar II (604-656 BCE had inherited the Assyrian Empire and copied them by also taking the Israelites of Judah  to Babylon in 597 BCE and 586 BCE. Many of this group were able to return in 538 BCE and rebuild their destroyed Temple of Solomon.                          

                 Ur,  not far from Babylon

Abraham (1948 BCE) had had a divine call which told Abraham to leave his native land of Ur in order to become the Father of a Nation, and he was possibly the only man at that time to believe in one G-d, as the world had been polytheistic believers.  

Since then, Judaism has been the faith in the G-d of Abraham, but has undergone many phases, absorbed and resisted many civilization, and still remains strong and vigorous after 4,000 years of history.

The family of Abraham's genealogy is followed in the Torah where our history is recorded, and leads to his son, Isaac and his son,  Jacob.  Jacob's name was changed to Israel divinely.  From then on, his descendants would be called the Israelites. 

                                  Jacob and his 12 sons

Jacob married 2 sisters, later taking each of their handmaidens, and produced 12 sons, making up the 12 tribes of Israel, which were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin, and Gad, Asher, Dan and Naphtali.  Dinah was his only daughter.   Jacob's family underwent a very bad drought that drove them to Egypt in the South as being on the Nile River, they would have food.  They took their sheep, and the family of 70 arrived and was able to recover and then grow in size, not thinking of returning to Canaan.                                    

            Israelites entering Egypt who soon grew in numbers.  

Egyptians grew uneasy about their numbers, and decided to take them as slaves, which they remained for 400 years from the time of entrance to the time when Moses released them. The Israelites built the storage cities for the Egyptians. 

Moses, the  prince of Egypt, had discovered that his mother was not the daughter of the pharaoh, but that he had an Israelite birth-mother who had hid him in the bull-rushes when the Pharaoh ordered male babies to all be killed.  He had this impulse to protect the lives of the slaves, which caused him in a moment of zeal to kill an overseer who was whipping a slave to death.  He had known the penalty, and fled to the outskirts of civilization to Midian where he had lived and taken a wife.  Now he had returned at age 80, to help the slaves again.                                                                  
Aaron and Moses with Pharaoh
                                                                   Mirium, sister of Moses

                                  

He and his newly found brother, Aaron, belonging to the tribe of Levi, debated with the Pharaoh and got the release of the slaves, leading to a 40 year trek back to Canaan. Moses received Divine information straight from G-d  and taught the Israelites the laws they were to follow from then on.  They went through mind-shaking experiences together, shaping them for the future, a form of conditioning that must have    even entered their DNA, (my personal thought- as they would be referred to as the stiff-necked people).   

Moses died outside Canaan's gates, and Joshua led them in and divvied up the land for the 12 tribes.  Each tribe ruled themselves by the Elders of each tribe.  

         A prophet, leader and a judge, Deborah, 1150 BCE, wife of Lapidoth, roused the Israelite tribes to revolt under Barak, son of Abinoam, against the Canaanite king, Jabin of Hazor and Sisera, his ally and commander (Judg. 4). 

The Israelites ruled themselves by having judges.   Later, judges could be aa soldier-leader, priest (Cohen-direct descendant of Aaron)  or even one of the prophets assumed, in addition to his chief function , that of a Judge as well for each tribe. 

 Finally, in the 11th century BCE,  the Israelites saw that all the other nations were ruled by kings, and they clamored for a single king, too, especially now as they were under a military threat.

  The prophet, Samuel, of the tribe of Levi, whose mother placed him as a small child with the Nazarite sect, was asked to perform a very important act in his old age, of choosing a king.  He chose Saul as their 1st king from the tribe of Benjamin. The Philistines and Ammonites were warlike and ready to attack them all.  Saul acted quickly, organizing and training their  1st army and then they defeated their enemy.              

 Later, Samuel again had to choose another king, so chose David from the tribe of Levi, youngest son of Jesse who was the grandson of Ruth and Boaz. He ruled from 1010 to 970 BCE.   David's son, Solomon inherited his throne and was king from 961 to 920 BCE. It was Solomon who built the Temple in Jerusalem. A Civil War followed with much calamity.   

A history of Assyrians in 721 BCE and the Babylonians in 597BCE with Zedekiah as their last king of this inherited line of Kings    interrupting their lives led to the Romans occupying Judah and the destruction of Jerusalem and their 2nd Temple of Solomon in 70 CE. 

           Shabbos, Yiddish for Shabbat, that 24 hour period devoted to G-d and not work from Friday at sundown to Saturday evening when 3 stars can be counted in the sky.  

Their lives were then in the hands of the Romans who burned down the 2nd rebuilding of Solomon's Temple and Jerusalem itself.  Jews became a scattered people, that wound up replacing the Temple's importance with synagogues as the center of their religion with rabbis functioning from there to replace the Cohens of the Temple.  In fact, many rabbis, who actually started dynasties of rabbis, were Cohens themselves, passing this onto their descendants genetically. 

                  Shaari Torah Synagogue in Portland, Oregon 

Thus, we find Jews all over the world, practicing their religion.  This means that a Jew could walk into any synagogue on a Friday night or Saturday morning and find them reading from the same scheduled section of the Torah (5 Books of Moses)  and Tanakh (Bible).  Judaism was well organized, and had been by the rabbis living in the Rhineland back in the 1000 CE era. 

Because Jews had their own religion, feeling very responsible for it as it was of a calling from G-d, they refused to accept conversions to other religions.  Their oath was to remain as people of the ONE G-d and to follow those precepts.  Anti-Semitism developed and continues to this day, actually gaining in strength again from the horrid years of the 1930s when it led to the Holocaust, slaughtering 6 million Jews.                                

1920 Decision at League of Nations: A Jewish Homeland

As a shock to everyone, world decision through the League of Nations ended up accepting the creation of a 2nd Israel in the world in a sliver of their ancient homeland in Palestine, which was the Israel-Judah homeland.  Jews' ancestors were the natives of the Middle East, descendants of the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  

Of course, others, who had been in the group of Egyptian slaves who followed Moses, and other daring people who broke away from their polytheistic faith, converted and became Jews as well, but not many did this.  It was stopped by the governments of other nations.  Therefore, Jews had to end any converting they wanted to do.   We're an ancient people who have survived the ages.  

                               The IDF, guided by our beliefs

We're an important group.  One of our purposes on earth is to improve the  world, not to harm it.  Israel's army is called the Israel Defense Force, (IDF), and they fight defensively to protect their people from harm.  They do not start aggressive moves to take over others' land, like Germany and Russia.  

Maybe you’ve heard of tikkun olam. It’s a phrase thrown around a lot in Jewish circles.  Olam means “world,” and tikkun—well, it means all sorts of things. But in this sense, it means “repair.”So tikkun olam means “repairing the world.” No bandaids, do the fixing.  Which is what we’re here to do. Because, in case you didn’t notice, the world is broken. Even the stuff that looks great isn’t anywhere near what it’s supposed to be. So some people say, “That’s just the way things are. Live with it.”Others say, “Let the One who made it fix it.” And yet others say, “Escape it.”But Jews say, “Fix it. Whatever you can. Because that’s what you’re here for. ”Where did we get such a crazy idea?The first and last step of our tikkun is to awaken to the realization that we are actors in a great drama, players in a master symphony. That we are here with a mission, a responsibility to a Higher Consciousness that brought this place into being.               

Tikkun olam is an important concept in Judaism, which refers to various forms of action intended to repair and improve the world. In classical rabbinic literature, the phrase referred to legal enactments intended to preserve the social order. In the Aleinu prayer, it refers to the eradication of idolatry.  

Mitzvot is another concept to do, meaning to do good deeds, like visiting sick people to cheer them up.   Yes, I guess we are here to be do gooders, spending our time wisely while on earth.   

One group of Jews works on it continuously, the JDC.  The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, also known as the Joint or the JDC, is a Jewish relief organization based in New York City.

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_century_BC#/media/File:World_in_2000_BC.svg    map

Tanakh, Stone Edition (Bible)

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3433653/jewish/Who-Came-Up-With-Tikkun-Olam.htm