Being a Semite: Who's a Semite Today? What This Means

 Nadene Goldfoot                                         

               Israeli ladies whose native language is Hebrew so they are Semites and probably can speak several other languages as well; English among them.  They could have learned Arabic or French, for starters.                                        

    An IDF soldier can even be a religious Jew, and is definitely a Semite.                                     

    Arab Israelis, also Semites,  are joining the IDF-Sgt. Salah Halil (center) with other Arab members of his unit.  David Copeland / NBC News

Israelis are Semites because they speak Hebrew.  Beautiful Israeli girls decide in 2023-no more "Miss Israel Pageant".  Linor Abargil, who was crowned in 1998 and has since become a lawyer and actress while also embracing Orthodox Judaism, which places an emphasis on modest appearance for women, said in an Instagram post last week that it was time to end the contest.  

“A woman is not a body or a face and no one in the world has the right to criticize us, or to assess our weight to see if it matches what is going on in the market!” she wrote. “People change, the world changes, it is permissible to say we were wrong and move on to a world where women will continue to run the world but only because of who they are, and not because of anything else.”

Jews are Semites.  Am I a Semite?  Semite, name given in the 19th century to a member of any people who speak one of the Semitic languages, a family of languages spoken primarily in parts of western Asia and Africa. The term therefore came to include Arabs, Akkadians, Canaanites, Hebrews, some Ethiopians (including the Amhara and the Tigrayans), and Aramaean tribes. 

        Abram had to go through Babylon.  Haran is up north above Paddan-Aram.  

I was brought up when I read that Abraham came from Ur of Chaldees.  Chaldees was a tribe of Semites, so it's possible that Terah and Abram were also  Chaldeans.    Chaldeans had  entered Ur, a city whose population was not of Semites; which means they spoke a Semitic language while these people of Ur didn't.  The Semites gained the upper hand eventually, became leaders.  By the time Abram was born and raised, things had gone to pot again and he and his father, Terah and wife Sarai left for Canaan.                       

     Caravan at Haran  

They got as far as Haran.  "Terah settled with his son Abraham (at that time called Abram), his grandson Lot, and Abram's wife Sarah (at that time known as Sarai) during their planned journey from Ur Kaśdim (Ur of the Chaldees) to the Land of Canaan".  Abram lived there until he was 75 years old before continuing on to Canaan, in response to the command of God. Although Abram's nephew Lot accompanied him to Canaan, Terah and his other descendants remained in Paddan-Aram.

The earliest written records concerning Harran suggest that the city itself was founded c. 2500–2000 BC as a merchant outpost by traders from the Sumerian city of Ur. Harran was from early on associated with the Mesopotamian moon-god Nanna (later known as Sin) and soon became regarded as a sacred city of the moon.  Do you catch your breath realizing that Abram lived here until he was 75 and yet came out feeling that there was but one g-d of the universe?  I suppose he got to live in peace with people who worshipped a pantheon of gods, Nanna being the king of them all. I still love the story of Terah being an idol maker-must have done this in Haran as well as in Ur;  and Abram accidently breaking one.  Terah asked what happened and Abram answered that the idol was in a fight with the one standing next to him.  Why not? 

 Although Mesopotamia, the western coast of the Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa have all been proposed as possible sites for the prehistoric origins of Semitic-speaking populations, there remains no archaeological or scientific evidence of a common Semitic people. 

Because Semitic-speaking peoples do not share any traits aside from language, use of the term “Semite” to refer to the broad range of Semitic-speaking peoples has fallen out of favour. For this reason, some critics even encourage the removal of the hyphen in the term anti-Semitism to help dispel any pseudoscientific notions of a "Semitic race." They advocate instead for the use of antisemitism to describe the hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious or racial group.  Israelis are again speaking Hebrew, and probably a few can also speak or read some Aramaic as well. Most all male Jews in the world that have been bar-mitzvahed can read Hebrew.  I can say that Jews are from Semitic ancestors.  Many are still Semites (Hebrew speakers).  

Jacob and his 4 wives, Leah and her young sister, Rachel and their 2 handmaids-Bilhah and Zilpah,  and the 12 children.  Here, Joseph is already in Egypt while Rachel is holding Benjamin.                                   

The Bible explains how we came from the Israelites held by the Egyptians for 500 years who were from the original family of Jacob.  DNA proves this to be correct in that the Y haplogroup of J1 is said to be the Cohen gene, descendants of Aaron, brother of Moses.  So Originally, we Israelites, who take our name of Jews from our most southern tribe of Jacob, Judah, are made up of just a few Y haplogroups (male lines of Jews).  So Semites may not have a differing physical make-up, we do share genes.  

In fact, by 2500 BCE Semitic-speaking peoples had already become widely dispersed throughout western Asia. In Phoenicia they became seafarers. In Mesopotamia they blended with the civilization of Sumer. The Hebrews settled with other Semitic-speaking peoples in Canaan or Palestine which the land became after 135 CE.

Resource:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Semite

https://www.timesofisrael.com/miss-israel-beauty-pageant-canceled-after-more-than-70-years/