Nadene Goldfoot
The son of David who took the throne was Solomon. He solved the problem of peace or war by marrying the daughter of the king of the country he wanted peace with. Solomon wound up with 700 wives, official wives with all the favors that comes with the title, and of course, 300 concubines. David was of the tribe of Judah, one of the 12. We Jews come from the tribe of Judah.
Aaron was the brother of Moses and though Moses did not leave descendants of more than the 1st generation, Aaron left many. Aaron was descended from Abraham through his son Isaac, and his son Jacob, and his 12 sons of which Judah, his ancestor, was one. So David was a Cohen, one of 3 groups of Jews who hold much responsibility in a synagogue today as a Cohen.
By the year 300 CE, there were 3 million Jews in the world. Solomon was born in 961 BCE, almost 1,300 years before, so there weren't many Jews of Judah then; maybe a million.
Some Cohens have the tradition of reaching back to Ezra the Scribe of the 5th century BCE-, a Kohen and leader of the return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple after the exile in Babylonia in 597 BCE and again in 586 BCE and Persia. With DNA testing, a Cohen is usually shown to be of the haplogroup of J1, sometimes also J2.
The surname of Sacerdote means priest in Italian, and Aaron was asked to be the priest by his brother, Moses. Koyan is Yiddish for Cohen. Kohanski is Polish.
Surnames identified as Cohens are Cohen, Cohn, Kahn, Cahan, Katz, Kahana (which is Aramaic) Kagan or Kogen (Russian) Kaganoff or Kaganovitch (Slavic for son of a Cohen) and Shapiro. Also, the Rapaports, who are the best documented, are Cohens.
Solomon Judah Rapoport was a well-known rabbi born in Galicia who also studied secular subjects besides those to be a rabbi. He was a rabbi from 1837 to 1840 in Galicia and in Prague in 1840.
In 1989, Rapaport moved to Los Angeles, California when he was 19 years old to try to become a stand-up comic. Rapaport's stepfather, comic Mark Lonow, who owned The Improv with Budd Friedman, helped him get into the stand-up world. He did that for three years. His break in acting was on the TV series China Beach.
Rapaport, Rapoport, Rappaport, Rappert, Repperport, Rappe, Rape, Rappoport, Rapiport, etc, was a widespread rabbinical family whose members were known to be living in 80 cities in Europe and Asia in 1900. the names Raps and Rappe are traced to the cities of Mainz, Germany in 1450, and later became Rabe in Germany. the various branches of this family all claim a common Kohenitic origin from Rabbi Menahem Raps ha Cohen of Porto, Italy who married into the Porto family in 16th century and so changed his name to Rapoport (Raps of Porto). Another branch of the family called itself Portraps. Rapport are related to Schrenzel, Katzenellenbogen, Ettinger, Silva, Leisels, Consiglio, Boskovitz and Levinson.
Over the centuries, members of the family intermarried with the most prominent Ashkenazic rabbinical families; these relationships are traced by Samuel Kahan and Israel Eisenstradt.
The title of being a Cohen is told from father to son.
Otherwise, Many Cohens are not Kohanim and many Kohanim are really not Cohens. That's because in many cases, individuals were arbitrarily given names by immigration clerks, simplifying their difficult Slavic names. Others may have chosen these names without regard to Kohanic implications. Perhaps others took such a name to gain status when they relocated to a new community. To use such a name does imply being a Cohen and accepting such duties. The DNA test tells who is really a Cohen. WWII would have caused havoc with who is who to those who lived through this period. So many children were separated from their parents who were killed.
Our distant cousin, Herbert Hochfeld, was a Cohen and knew since his father told him so. DNA testing verified it. He's J1. It turns out his grandfather was a rabbi.
We hold a lot of stock and take our history very seriously. To us its not a fable or just a tale, but our history and a history with meaning. It's who we are made up of; and we have a lot of known ancestors this way.
The Sanhedrin of biblical days, 71 scholars that were rabbis functioning as a Supreme Court and the legislature, had a head person or NASI/President who was to be a descendant of Hillel, a Cohen. He was of the 1st century BCE, an ancestor of a dynasty of patriarchs which held office until the 5th century. He was born in Babylonia; noted for his humility and tendency to leniency in the law. Additionally, since the Sanhedrin was required to hear all testimony directly, rather than through an interpreter, it was preferable that its members be familiar with every language spoken by Jews around the world. When a foreign language was used in testimony, the Sanhedrin had to have at least two members who spoke that language to examine the witnesses, and a third member who at least understood the language. So during this period, rabbis were expected to have a very high level of education, like all having PHD's from either Harvard or Yale. Possibly as a result, Jews value education highly and parents usually encourage their children to get the highest amount of education in their field of study. A result in the USA was that we had a lot of Jewish sons who needed entrance to Medical School and could pass the qualification easily, only USA held restrictions, on a certain % of Jews were allow entrance. Immigration was ended for Jews in 1924.
Being Judaism has 613 Laws that rabbis were educated about, Law was a profession Jewish sons qualified in. Jews not only have the written law-the Torah, but they also have the Oral law to consider which has also now been written down. They must be well educated in both. Jewish students, especially in New York, were sent to Yeshivas to become rabbis. This gave them education in thinking as well. They would practice in twos, presenting their form of argument and having to quote who it came from as the resource; a practice in debate. We've had many Jewish lawyers. Some have even been named, Cohen.
Madeline Albright, Secretary of State, was such a person. Madeleine Albright first learned of her Jewish identity when she was 59, two weeks before being sworn in as the first female Secretary of State in U.S. history. “It was a complicated family story,” she said in an interview. She never changed her religion, remaining Catholic. It was too late for her to do otherwise. She also discovered that 26 of her family members, including three grandparents, had been murdered in the Holocaust.
Cohens have the most elevated status but it comes with strings attached. It was a Divine decree from G-d to take responsibility. Cohens read from the Torah first. The Cohen is sanctified and honored. He is expected to be a fitting/kosher Kohen, a descendant of Aaron, which is quite heavy. The Cohen is 1st to be called up to say a blessing on the Torah reading (aliya) and is the 1st speaker to lead the Prayer service; the 1st to bless and lead the Grace after meals and to be the 1st to break bread, make ritual sanctification over wine or grape juice, say the Kiddush, etc. In other words, they are leaders in Jewish ritual bearing a good reputation.
Strings attached are things not permitted for Cohens such as: A male Kohen may not marry a divorcee, a prostitute, or a dishonored woman (חללה) (Leviticus 21:7) A Kohen who enters into such a marriage loses the entitlements of his priestly status while in that marriage. The Kohen is not permitted to forgo his status and marry a woman prohibited to him (Leviticus 21:6–7). However, in the event that a Kohen transgresses a marital restriction, upon termination of the marriage the Kohen is allowed to re-assume his function and duties as a full Kohen. The Royal line of Britain has copied this restriction for their kings.
Another string is that :Kohanim are forbidden to come in contact with dead bodies. They are permitted, however, to become defiled for their closest relatives: father, mother, brother, unmarried sister, and child. Defilement of a Kohen to his wife, although not biblically explicit, is permitted by Rabbinical order.
Resource:
Finding Our Fathers, Jewish Genealogy by Dan Rottenberg
DNA Tradition, the genetic link to the ancient Hebrews by Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman
https://jewishunpacked.com/madeleine-albrights-secret-jewish-heritage/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Rapaport
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