The People of Judah Among The Countries

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                  

On his deathbed, Jacob prophesied that Judah would be the leader among his brothers, likened to a lion, with a permanent royal scepter [Genesis 49:8-10]. Judah’s descendants would rule, defeat their enemies, and produce a ruler (Shiloh) to whom all nations would be obedient. Judah's father was Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abram (Abraham).  son of Terah, son of Nahor, etc, and onto Shem, son of Noah.   They had no idea that our DNA showed the same line recorded in the cells of our body.  We can prove this today.                                                    

Judah's mother was Leah on the left with  6 of Jacob's children.  He was the 4th son.  It was he who persuaded his brothers to sell Joseph to passing Ishmaelites rather than leave him to die in a pit (Gen.37)He received his father's patriarchal blessing (Gen.49-:8), though Reuben, Simeon and Levi were older. 

The land received by the tribe of Judah was one of the largest in Canaan and it eventually absorbed Simeon in the Negev Desert, and Benjamin 12th son of Jacob-2nd son of Rachel who died in childbirth.   This tribe was placed on land between Ephraim and Judah which included Jerusalem.  King Saul was a Benjamite.  The land was a bone of contention between Israel and Judah after Saul died, partitioned between the two eventually, then included in Judah.

Out of this tribe was born David who had a leading position over the other 11 tribes as King.  When the kingdom split after the death of Solomon, Judah supported his son, Rehoboam (933-917 BCE)  and was predominant in the southern kingdom of Judah.   

Punishment by the Greeks and Romans, a practice copied from the Persians was crucifiction.  It was unknown in Jewish law, and here it was was introduced by the Romans;  the usual punishment given to rebels.  Many Jews suffered this fate under Roman rule.  
 

We Jews come from Judah, which was later called Judaea by the Romans who took Judah in 70 CE. 

Jews are the only people who remained really faithful to the Law of Moses and believed in only ONE G-D purely;  no siblings or children of G-D like the Greeks and Romans did.  The rest of the world was a pantheon of Gods that people believed in and worshipped, along with some animals, at times.  

70 CE was the year of Roman putting an end to the Jewish Rebellion which started in  63 BCE with Pompey, the Roman General who involved the Romans into the warfare between the Hasmoneans, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, to occupy Jerusalem, the capital of Judah.  Then the Parthians in 40 BCE captured it which was followed by a long siege to Herod in 37 BCE.  who then ruled it as a Roman vassal until his death in 4 BCE and his son  Archelaus who took over in 6 BCE for his father. 

Pontius Pilate was a procurator who crucified Jesus in 29 CE. which started a new calendar.   Roman procurators then took over until the reign of Agrippa in 41-44 CE who began to build a 3rd wall to the north. 

The Arch of Titus in Rome, one can see it today,  showing how the Jews, now slaves, had to carry the spoils of the Temple back to Rome.   

Roman rule was unbearable and the Jewish rebellion started in 66 CE.  After 3 years of independence, the city of Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans under Titus and fell in 70 CE.  They starved the people of Jerusalem for a long time, according to Josephus Flavius (b: 38-d:100 CE), a Judean Jew of priestly family .  The Temple and most of the buildings were destroyed and a Roman garrison was built on its ruins.  The Jews were not only taken as slaves, but were forced into manual labor in building, and like the Christians, faced death by animals for entertainment.  

Some Jews escaped from Jerusalem and fled to Spain, forced to leave and went to Portugal, forced to leave.  Following their "Golden Age" in Spain, Jews were expelled in 1492 (and Portugal in 1496), triggering a mass diaspora known as the Sephardic dispersion. 

They fled to North Africa, the Ottoman Empire (Turkey/Balkans), Italy, Germany,  the Netherlands, and Eastern Europe and into Russia and that area.  and eventually the New World, forming global communities that maintained Spanish-influenced cultures.  The last place was the USA with Jewish immigration to the USA occurred in several major waves, starting in 1654 with Sephardic Jews in New Amsterdam (New York), followed by a large wave of German Jews in the mid-19th century, and a massive influx of over 2 million Eastern European Jews between 1880 and 1924.  

Germany had Jews living there since the 8th and 9th century who had a pro-Jewish policy and encouraged settlement of Jews with the object of developing trade.  By 9th century they were living in Augsburg and Metz, by the 10th, at Worms, Mainz, Magdeburg, Ratisbon, etc.  The densest settlement was in the Rhineland of Mainz, Speyer, Worms, Cologne, etc.  Crusaders massacred the Jews throughout the Rhineland and adjacent areas.  Yiddish came out of this experience, a mix of German and Hebrew and a dash of others.  

Russia, etc,  introduced pogroms to any anti-Semitic acts which drove Jews to think once more about Judea, their ancestral home.  1880 saw Aliyah of Jews go to live there by boat, and they were followed up by more and more.  

The Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act) severely restricted Jewish immigration to the United States by establishing strict national-origins quotas based on the 1890 census. This act intentionally targeted southern and eastern European immigrants, including Jews, effectively ending the era of mass migration and closing a major door for those fleeing persecution.