Nadene Goldfoot
Jews have always thought to be people of Judaism, a religion, but they are also a people from the family of Abraham who begot Isaac who begot Jacob. It was that this particular family were of the Ivrim or Hebrews-and were followers of the teachings of Moses; thus Judaism from the name of the last of the 12 tribes that held together--Judah. Arabs are a people, specifically from Arabia-thus the name.
Both Hebrew and Arabic are read from the right to the left.
Hebrew Alphabet
Both Jews and Arabs are a Semitic people-whose language were from the same root. Arabic is a cognate of Hebrew. Arabic has borrowed many Jewish-Aramaic words, while the style of the Koran (of mid 7th century( betrays Hebrew influence. Arabic literature had already begun in the 5th-6th century CE with pre-Islamic poets, among them a Jew, Samuel Ibn Adiya.
In the Middle Ages, Arabic was the literary language of a flourishing mixed Hellenistic-Persian culture which profoundly influenced Hebrew philosophy, poetry, and grammar. from the 9th century, Jews in Moslem countries used Arabic (except for liturgy and religious poetry.)
Many works by eminent Jews who wrote in Arabic were translated into Hebrew, as were numerous writings by Moslem authors, especially those dealing with science and philosophy with most translations made from 1150 to 1350. Arabic has been the mother-tongue of about a quarter of Israel's Jews, and is recognized as an official language for the Arab minority. In Safed, Israel where I taught English, junior high students had the choice of learning French or Arabic. All had to learn English.
Arabs and Arabia are said to be mentioned in Biblical and Talmudic literature. I have found the ancient names but not Arabic or Arabs.
According to Gen.10, Eber was the forefather of Abraham and Joktan. Joktan was the ancestor of the southern Arabs. Joktan was the second of the two sons of Eber (Book of Genesis 10:25; 1 Chronicles 1:19) mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. He descends from Shem, son of Noah.
Our recent study of high-resolution microsatellite haplotypes demonstrated that a substantial portion of Y chromosomes of Jews (70%) and of Palestinian Muslim Arabs (82%) belonged to the same chromosome pool (Nebel et al. The Y haplogroup(male line) of the Jews finds J1-the Cohen gene- most common. J1 is also found in many Arabs. Endings attached differ to show one is of Jews and the other Arabs. A distant relative-a Hochfeld, was J1 or J-M267.... An Arab friend, Asher, was J1c3d.
Abraham also fathered several Arab tribes. Arabs trace their origin to Ishmael, son of Abraham and Hagar the Egyptian. Abraham's other son was Isaac by Sarah, his wife and niece. Abraham and Sarah were family members, but Hagar was the Egyptian handmaid of Sarah. It was when Sarah hadn't conceived and Abraham needed a son very badly, so Sarah allowed him to take Hagar. After Ishmael was born (first) and older, Hagar and Sarah had their differences since Ishmael was jealous of Isaac. They didn't get along, and it got to the point where Abraham had to remove Hagar and Ishmael from them, so took them back close to Egypt and dropped them off. Thus started the problems. All this, Moses recorded in the Torah and is a major part of our Jewish history.
This history was told orally in Arabia by the Jews outside for by-passers to hear as was the custom. It reached Mohammad's ears who knew Jews to be THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK, and as we understand, he also wanted to be known this way. The Arabs used many of the stories they heard (Mohammad was illiterate) and made them their story, too, such as sacrificing Ishmael instead of Isaac as in the Jewish story.
Jews, freed from Egypt by Moses, were living in Canaan, but by the 1st century CE were found in Arabia as they had suffered from being attacked by the Assyrians and later the Babylonians. Mohammad (570-632) created Islam with his book, the Koran, and with that caused Jews to be expelled from Northern Arabia but continued to live in the South until recent times. Evidently Jews had disappointed the Arabs by not supporting them in an attack against an opponent at a crucial time.
Mohammad, born in 570, believed in having 4 wives, and one of his was a young Jewish woman, "Safia. Ṣafīyyah bint Ḥuyayy (Arabic: صفية بنت حيي) who was the tenth wife of Muhammad. Actually, he had a harem of wives. She was, along with all other wives of Muhammad, titled Umm-ul-Mu'mineen or the "Mother of Believers". Safiyyah was born in Medina to Huyayy ibn Akhtab, the chief of the Jewish tribe Banu Nadir. Her mother, Barrah bint Samawal, was from the Banu Qurayza tribe. Her maternal grandfather was Samaw'al ibn 'Adiya, a celebrated pre-Islamic Arabian Jewish poet from the Banu Harith tribe. According to a source, she was married off to Sallam ibn Mishkam, who later divorced her.
When the Banu Nadir were expelled from Medina in 625, her family settled in Khaybar, an oasis near Medina. Her father and brother went from Khaybar to join the Meccan and Bedouin forces besieging Muhammad in Medina during the Battle of the Trench. When the Meccans withdrew Muhammad besieged the Banu Qurayza. After the defeat of the Banu Qurayza in 627 Safiyya's father, a long-time opponent of Muhammad, was captured and executed by the Muslims. In 627 or early in 628, Safiyya was married to Kenana ibn al-Rabi, treasurer of the Banu Nadir; she was about 17 years old at that time. According to Muslim sources, Safiyya is said to have informed Kenana of a dream she had in which the moon had fallen from the heavens into her lap. Kenana interpreted it as a desire to marry Muhammad and struck her in the face, leaving a mark which was still visible when she first had contact with Muhammad."From the information provided in the Hadith, it can be reasonably concluded that Safiyah did not have a choice in this marriage; rather she was war booty for Muhammad, a not uncommon practice at the time. There do exist passages in ibn Sa'd's "Tabaqat" or lives that indicate that Muhammad gave Safiyah the choice between marrying him and returning to her people:
He tried to win the Jews over to adopt his new religion in several acts: in Medina he copied the Jews twice a day prayers by adding a 3rd; introducing a fast day like the Day of Atonement of the Jews; having a day of public prayer like the Jewish Sabbath; face Jerusalem during prayer like the Jews, but when they still wouldn't change over, he became hostile. The Jews of Medina then were either annihilated or expelled.
We had had a Jewish-Arab symbiosis going on for many centuries. Jews were treated as 2nd class citizens (Dhimmis) but the treatment was better than in Europe, and Jews helped Arabs in some conquests. Arabs were following the Pact of Omar which was , 9th Century CE. the body of limitations and privileges entered into by treaty between conquering Muslims and conquered non-Muslims. Arabs had reason to develop an anti-European tendency which affected their relationship with the Jews. Arabs had a rising nationalism develop, an excuse they used to be against Zionism and the creation of Israel on May 14, 1948. 700,000 Arabs were living there in Israel by 1992 . After the Six Day War of June 1967, another million Arabs came under Israel administration since Israel won the war, a war in which all the Arab countries had attacked Israel.
Both Arabs and Jews have remained monotheistic, believing only in ONE (1) G-d. Their teachers/messengers are different people, though with Jews being Moses (1391-1271 BCE) son of Amram and Jochebed of the tribe of Levi and stepgrandson of pharaoh, and Arabs being Mohammad (570-632 CE) son of Abdullah ibn Abd al-Muttalib. son of Abd al-Muttalib ibn Hashim and Fatima bint Amr of the Makhzum Clan. He was married to Āminah bint Wahb. Muhammad was their only offspring and Moshe was the only son of the princess of Egypt. with their messages being quite different.
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://www.omniglot.com/writing/arabic.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safiyya_bint_Huyayy#:~:text=%E1%B9%A2af%C4%AByyah%20bint%20%E1%B8%A4uyayy%20(Arabic%3A%20%D8%B5%D9%81%D9%8A%D8%A9,the%20%22Mother%20of%20Believers%22.
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