Nadene Goldfoot
The Land of Israel (Hebrew: אֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל, Modern: ʾEreṣ/Eretz Yisraʾel, Tiberian: ʾEreṣ Yisrāʾēl) is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land. Palestine should not be used until after the year 135 when the Romans named it for the Philistines, vindictively. (see also Israel (disambiguation)). The definitions of the limits of this territory vary between passages in the Hebrew Bible, with specific mentions in Genesis 15, Exodus 23, Numbers 34 and Ezekiel 47. Nine times elsewhere in the Bible, the settled land is referred as "from Dan to Beersheba", and three times it is referred as "from the entrance of Hamath unto the brook of Egypt" (1 Kings 8:65, 1 Chronicles 13:5 and 2 Chronicles 7:8).
Abram/ Abraham changed his outlook of religion. His father, Terah, was an idol maker, and one day, Moses, accidently knocked over an idol which of course, broke.
His father yelled at him when he got home, and Abram said that the other idol in the room had hit this idol and knocked it down! Fast thinking, but maybe Abraham was thinking about how people could bow and pray to the clay statue that his father had formed. G-d had spoken to Abram. When he was married to Sarah, daughter of Haran, and also son of Terah, he talked his father into leaving with them and head out for Canaan. He wanted to get away from these narrow-minded people who all believed in these idols so that they could have a good life.
Abram had married his niece, the beautiful Sarai while in Haran. Much later, when they thought Sarah had missed the window of conceiving, they had a son, Isaac.
Sarah had proved to be barren. Earlier, when Sarai had given up hope, she had told Abram to take her handmaid, Hagar, who could conceive as she was young. She bore Ishmael. When he had finished speaking with Abraham, God went up from him.
On that very day Abraham took his son Ishmael and all those born in his household or bought with his money, every male in his household, and circumcised them, as God told him. Abraham and his son Ishmael were both circumcised on that same day. (Gen. 17-10-14)
They were set apart as a people by being circumcised. (an uncircumsised male who will not circumcise the flesh of his foreskin--that soul shall be cut off from its people-he has invalidated My covenant.)
At the age of 90, Sarai had the surprise of her life by giving birth to Isaac who was circumcised at 8 days. Abram was tested by G-d by telling him to sacrifice Isaac, and he just about used his knife but stopped, said to stop through intervention of an angel (Esau's guardian angel).
Isaac in turn, at age 40, married Rebekah and Jacob and his twin, Esau were born. Famine drove Isaac from the Negev to the Philistine country. The twins were not identical but fraternal twins, and were complete opposites, having difficulties throughout their life.
Esau and Jacob, fraternal twins, the oldest by minutes, lost his birthright and firstborn's special blessing because of the cleverness of Jacob, causing the worst kind of friction between them. Esau was out to kill Jacob, who realized this and had fled back to Haran. They met again 20 years later. The twins symbolize the two nations' relationship who develop to the point of great hostility.
Genesis 26:34–35 describes Esau's marriage at the age of forty to two Hittite Canaanite women: Judith, the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite. This arrangement grieved his parents. In Gen.35, he is identified with the Edomites. Esau was born into a godly family, but turned to the more material path, and that his Hittite wives led him completely away from the belief of One G-d that Abraham had introduced and Isaac followed. It only took Esau, a 2nd generation to ignore his parents' path of religion. This shows that children all have their own minds and do not always stick together in practices and beliefs.
Basemath (Gen.26:34) 1st of Esau's wives. Tradition has it that Esau had hunted, eaten, and drunk for years with sons of Elon, his wife's brothers, and also had sworn, sacrificed and vowed to their false gods of the fields and groves. Having outdone her brothers in his debaucheries, Esau finally had brought Bashemath, a Canaanite, and Judith, daughter of Beeeri, another Canaanite, into the covenanted camp of his father.
Judith (Gen.27:1) had grieved and vexed Esau's parents. Judith did not worship the one G-d.. The account of Esau losing 1st born blessing comes immediately after marrying his Hittite wives (Genesis 26:34).
Jacob, after returning to Haran, married his uncle Laban's 2 daughters, separately, Leah and Rachel. By them and their handmaids, Bilhah and Zilpah, he had 12 sons, progenitors of the 12 tribes-and a daughter, Dinah. He returned home, which would have been the Negev, and he struggled with a heavenly emissary and overcame him, and was rewarded with the name of Israel. His son, Joseph disappeared, but finally Jacob was reunited with him in Egypt where Joseph had become Pharaoh's chief minister. Jacob settled in Goshen in Lower Egypt, dying there at the age of 147. His body was taken back to Hebron and buried in the Cave of Machpelah. The name, Jacob, has been found in Akkadian and Egyptian sources and is in the Torah.
By a 2nd generation, especially if a family has had to divide and live in many parts of the country, can lose sight of the religion of their fathers. One hopes that a 1st-born son will follow through, but not always. As in Isaac's story, if the son has married outside his faith, chances are that without that special helpmate, the practices might become lost.
What we're facing is what Abram and Sarai faced with Ishmael- a generation cut apart from the family and taking on another religion, or not accepting all the customs which managed to hold the family together as a religious unit. It doesn't take much, just a generation or 2 and they are lost to the family values. We went through this during the Greek era of Hellenizing. Now, with the Holocaust destroying families, it's leaving people either to practice Judaism or to become atheistic, or at odds with Judaism.
Our holidays of celebration have managed to hold us together. Passover is one of them that goes through our history and teaches us of our ancestors and what they did and why we are to remember them. We celebrate with a feast at a dinner table with a book and food:
- Maror - Bitter herbs, which symbolize the bitterness of the slavery that the Jews endured in Egypt. To represent maror, many people use grated horseradish or a whole horseradish root.
- Charoset - A sweet, brown paste-like mixture that represents the mortar used by the Jewish slaves to build structures in Egypt. While recipes for charoset do vary, it typically includes some combination of apples, nuts, red wine, and spices. Dates and raisins are other common charoset ingredients.
- Karpas - A leafy vegetable, often parsley or celery, that is a symbol of spring and hope. It is dipped in liquid (typically salt water) at the beginning of the Seder.
- Zeroa - A roasted lamb bone that represents the special Paschal sacrifice on the eve of the exodus from Egypt.
- Beitzah - A hard-boiled egg that symbolizes the temple sacrifice and rebirth.
Families hold a seder on the first and sometimes second night of Passover. It is fundamentally a religious service set around a dinner table, where the order in which participants eat, pray, drink wine, sing, discuss current social justice issues and tell stories is prescribed by a central book called the Haggadah.
The seder is time to reflect our history of a major event, the Exodus. It's a time of role play, as we imagine we were there. Food on the table reminds of of what we went through. Each speaks to us in reminding what happened. The more we do, the more meaningful our history becomes. Our history book is the Haggadah (Haggadah shel Pesach) which tells the story.
From time immemorial, Jews have celebrated Passover in memory of their liberation from slavery in Egypt, as described in the book of Exodus in the Bible. throughout the festival, matzah (unleavened bread) is eaten instead of ordinary bread, to recall the hurried baking of matzah during the Exodus itself. A really great Seder takes over an hour between going through our textbook Haggadah and eating including all the historic elements. We learn that on the last night in Egypt, each Jewish household ritually slaughtered a lamb and then consumed it at a family gathering. This ritual was commemorated in Temple times by each householder in the sacrifice of a lamb at the Temple on Passover Eve. Then lamb was then eaten at a festive gathering of the family or by a group of friends, who spent the evening recalling the memory of the historic deliverance with prayers and psalms. this banquet---reverent in purpose and joyful in practice---has been perpetuated through the ages in the Seder ceremony.
Jews from all over the world have clamored to return and many have. Somehow through the ages, they held onto their religion, or at least parts of it. According to statistics presented by the Population and Immigration Authority, 57,223 people immigrated to Israel from May 2022 until the beginning of January 2023 – 41,813 from Russia, 13,490 from Ukraine and 1,990 from Belarus. Of these immigrants, 32% (18,149) are currently not residing in Israel.That means 68% of the 57,223 are still there. Even if they only last 5 years, it will be a life-changing experience for them that should bring them much closer to the culture and religion and value system of Jews, and more of a personal identification that most all people are looking for. It's pretty exciting when so many people in a town in Israel are Spring Cleaning, and stores are full of Passover goodies. I made aliyah in September of 1980 and had to return by Thanksgiving 1985.
This year of 2023 is another where Ramadan, Passover and Easter come at the same time. Ramadan, a month-long festival, lasts from Evening of Wed, Mar 22, 2023 - Evening of Thu, Apr 20, 2023. Passover's 1st seder is Evening of Wed, Apr 5, 2023 - Evening of Thu, Apr 13, 2023, and Easter is Sun, Apr 9, 2023. On April 9th, all three religions will be celebrating.
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