Our DNA From Abraham, Ruth, Lot and the Moabites

 Nadene Goldfoot                                         

Abram, later called Abraham, was born in the city of Ur of the Chaldees, a Babylonian city,   near the Euphrates River and the Persian Gulf.  He was said to be related to the Moabites.  Ur has become very well excavated land  by Sir Leonard Woolley who found it had a highly-civilized nature of the city in Abraham's time.  

Ruth, a Moabite, married into his family line.  She had married the son of Naomi, a woman who was married to Elimelech, son of Nahshon, son of Amminadab, son of Ram or "Aram, "son of Hezron, son of Perez, son of Judah!  

                Ruth and Naomi gleaning in the fields to have food

The son of Naomi  was Mahlon.  She had another son named Chilion.  Mahlon, Chilion, Naomi and Ruth were living in Moab and Mahlon was killed. 

 Naomi decided to return to her land and Ruth insisted on accompanying her.  The two women cared for each other and really didn't want to part.  Naomi was in need of the help Ruth was giving her.  

They returned and eventually Naomi realized that Ruth was still young and could benefit from another marriage.  She had a cousin that was not married;  Boaz.  Naomi made a shidduch and Boaz married Ruth.

Boaz and Ruth had a son, Oved/Obed.  He married a lady and their son was Jesse.  Jesse married a daughter of Ithra and they had 8 children.                                        

 The 8th was David, who grew up to become David, King of Israel.  Here David's ancestor was a Moabite, people he wound up fighting against later in his life.  

Moab was a country in Southern Transjordan, and  that area was populated by Arabs; taken over by Prince Abdullah of Arabia who brought in his contingent of his own followers to live with him in his new land of Transjordan, renamed later to Jordan.  Today, Moab is part of southern Jordan.  The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by numerous archaeological findings, most notably the Mesha Stele, which describes the Moabite victory over an unnamed son of King Omri of Israel, an episode also noted in 2 Kings 3. The Moabite capital was Dibon. According to the Hebrew Bible, Moab was often in conflict with its Israelite neighbours to the west. (Amazing that the same thing has continued into this day and age.)

Rashi explains the word Mo'ab to mean "from the father", since ab in Hebrew and Arabic and the rest of the Semitic languages means "father". He writes that as a result of the immodesty of Moab's name, God did not command the Israelites to refrain from inflicting pain upon the Moabites in the manner in which he did with regard to the Ammonites. Fritz Hommel regards Moab as an abbreviation of Immo-ab =  Immoab="his mother is his father." Oh yes, The story is that Lot got drunk and fathered his 2 daughters' sons, Ammon and Moab. Their DNA should reflect this somehow but now? We're already carrying some DNA from Moabites, for sure.   

The Moabites first inhabited the rich highlands at the eastern side of the chasm of the Dead Sea, extending as far as Wadi Mujib to Wadi Hasa, from which country they expelled the Emim, the original inhabitants (Deuteronomy 2:11), but they themselves were afterward driven southward by warlike tribes of Amorites, who had crossed the river Jordan. These Amorites, described in the Bible as being ruled by King Sihon, confined the Moabites to the country south of the river Arnon, which formed their northern boundary (Numbers 21:13; Judges 11:18).

The Ammonites presented a serious problem to the Pharisees because many marriages between Israelite men and Ammonite (and Moabite) women had taken place in the days of Nehemiah. The men had married women of the various nations without conversion, which made the children not Jewish. So we have intermarried with both Arab lines.  

David's relatives thus were Arabs as well as Jews of today. Originally, the Moabites were kindred to the Israelites, so they  had shared genes from the same origin, and that origin was Lot, Abraham's nephew.  Both the Moabites and the Ammonites came from Lot, so were related. Lot's father was Haran, brother of Abraham.  

Haran, brother of Abram and father of Lot, lived and died at Ur of the Chaldees (Gen.11:26-31).  It was said to be a trading town of NW Mesopotamia, center of a moon cult. Assyrian inscriptions from this period mention a Habiru settlement in the vicinity which some scholars link with Terah's residence there.  Terah was Abraham and Haran's father.  

Of course, our family line goes WAY back in time.  Abraham was born in the 2nd millennium BCE, in about 1948 BCE.  That was about 3,971 years ago, or rounded out, more like 4,000 years ago.

I love the fact that this information comes to me through the Torah (5 Books of Moses who is said to have written it) which is also a part of the Tanakh (Bible).  The explanation of the family line of people, our Homo Sapiens,  is fantastic considering how far back it was created.  They saw that the male line was not only special socially, but guessed at its importance through DNA.  We can trace the male line through their Y haplogroup.  The same can be done with the female line, the Mt haplogroup, but I find it is a lot harder with us since often women's names were not written down.  

According to a 2010 study by Behar et al. titled "The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people", Palestinians tested clustered genetically close to Bedouins, Jordanians and Saudi Arabians which was described as "consistent with a common origin in the Arabian Peninsula".

 In the same year a study by Atzmon and Harry Ostrer concluded that the Palestinians were, together with Bedouins, Druze and southern European groups, the closest genetic neighbors to most Jewish populations.

There are about 4 generations every 100 years (1 generation=25 years).  There are 40 100's in the past 4,000 years from now to Abraham.  40 x 4 generations=160.  Arabs could be our 160th cousins;  you know, like 1st cousins; 2nd cousins, etc.  We go way back to have Lot as our common shared ancestor.  (hope I solved this correctly as my back is hurting and I can't sit here any longer).  

Reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Palestinians#:~:text=One%20DNA%20study%20by%20Nebel,in%20the%20seventh%20century%20AD%22.

Those Antagonistic Relatives, Ammonites and Moabites Could Be Our Relatives

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

 "G-d invited Moses up to Mount Nebo where He showed His beloved prophet the Promised Land before his death. Deuteronomy 34:4–5 records, “Then the Lord said to him, ‘This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, “I will give it to your descendants.” I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.’ And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab, as the Lord had said.”

Jordan River runs from Mt. Hermon to the Dead Sea of about 87 miles directly but has to wind around for 200 miles. Tributaries from Transjordan are Rivers Yarmuk, Jabboak, Heshbon

Abraham had a nephew named Lot.  Lot traveled from Aram-Naharaim with his Uncle Abe to Canaan with him on his contingent.  Lot's father was Haran who was Abraham's brother, both sons of Terah of Ur of the Chaldees.  Each traveled with their own sheep and sheepherders to their new site for this was to be a permanent move.

The sheepherders had a quarrel over pasture-land and invading each other's choice spots.  They parted company with Lot settling in the city of Sodom.  This was a poor choice of people, as he was captured by 5 kings (like mayors of their towns) who had just attacked the country.  Abraham rescued Lot. He had all the sheepherders with him.  It was quite the escape, with Sodom on fire and Lot's wife looking back at it and turning into salt, quite a hot fire at that.  At a later  point, his daughters produced 2 sons Lot had sired when drunk, Ammon and Moab.  From them came the Ammonites and the Moabites.  

    1.   Ammonites, one of the Bull worshippers;   didn't listen to the lecture from Lot's Uncle Abraham about what  G-d was not.  

Ammonites were found in Transjordan and of course were Semitic, related to Abraham. Remember that this was in the days of human sacrificing.  

 They were known best  from the 13th to 18th centuries BCE, then declined, and were absorbed into Arab tribes. They kept attacking the Israelites after Israelites had occupied Canaan.  The Ammonites were defeated at the hands of Jephtah, the Israelite judge who lived in Gilead and King Saul.   Jephtah even defeated the Ephraimites, his cousins,  who  opposed his leadership. The Bible repeats the story  Jephtah said that before fighting the Ammonites, he vowed to sacrifice whatever came first from his home, should he return safely;  he was met by his daughter and,, with her consent, performed his vow.  (Judg: 11).  (I notice that she and Abraham's son, Isaac, also went along with being human sacrifices).  Back then, they may have taken that ritual to be the norm, hard to believe, though.

Abraham's DNA, I figure, would be the same as Moses and his brother, Aaron;  and Aaron had to be in today's DNA lingo, a J1 haplotype as they were from the tribe of Levi, one of the 12 tribes of Jacob.  Of course, the DNA does mutate somewhat through 4,000 years so would be carrying that knowledge, too.  All of the males born with Abraham as the origin should be of J1. J1 is known as the Cohen gene-meaning from the direct line of Aaron.  All other Levites may have an altered line of J1.   

They were changed with new titles from Israelites to Jews much later after Solomon's death in 920 BCE, to past 135 CE when the Romans killed Bar Kokhba who held Jerusalem for 3 years and then was killed.  Those remnants in Judah became known as Jews.

 Great question! The Hebrew Bible doesn’t have a whole lot to say about individual Moabite men, and those texts that do talk about Moabite men (like Num 22-24) don’t talk about them in relationship to Moabite women.

This is probably because the Moabites, who were Israel’s close neighbors, were primarily of concern to the Israelites when it came to war or Moab’s political alliances with Israel’s enemies or to intermarriage. So what Moabite men and women did amongst themselves wasn’t really important to the biblical authors. It only mattered when they interacted with the Israelites in some way.

The alleged sexual promiscuity of the Moabite women was primarily a concern to biblical authors who believed that these women would lead Israelite men into worshiping Moabite gods (see Num 25:1-5 and 1Kgs 11:1-8). The idea that the foreign woman is a dangerous temptress is a very common theme in the Bible; it is probably a literary device rather than a reflection of historical reality—that is, these are ancient “yo’ mama” slanders, not historical facts. The role of Moabite men in influencing Moabite women’s behavior doesn’t really come into the picture, because the stories aren’t about actual relationships and actual people. Yo, yea of little faith, our DNA might give us an idea through Mt haplotypes,, and remember, this was back in the days of human sacrificing.  Sex offenses, hmmm, a whole town was slaughtered because of a rape.    

   2. Moabites were living in Transjordan which is bounded by the Heshbon River in the North, and the  Zered River in  the South, the Jordan River and the Dead Sea to the West, and the Syrian Desert on the East.                                        

 They were the brothers of the Ammonites.  They spoke a biblical Hebrew.  Moabites took the land from the Rephaim (Emim), an  even more ancient people in Transjordania in the time of Abraham who apparently settled near Jerusalem in the "Valley of Rephaim."                            

During the 40 years of the Exodus (c.1579-1500 BCE) part of the Moab land came under the rule of the Amorite monarch, Sihon.  After his defeat by the Israelites, it was occupied by the Israelites, giving all three reason to fight over it.  Moabites originally were divided into family tribes, then united into a single kingdom, and it was their 2nd ruler, King Balak who summoned Balaam (Heathen prophet who was divinely inspired) to curse the Israelites.   Of course, the curse was turned into a blessing on the Israelites. 

                                                Baal Peor
 It was on Balaam's advise that the Midianites invited the Israelites to worship Baal Peor and Balaam was killed by the Israelites on the battlefield.  Balaam had the characteristics of a Mesopotamian priest and soothsayer but also appears as a faithful servant of G-d.  The rabbis listed him as one of the 7 prophets who spoke to heathen nations.  the biblical report of Balaam's reproof by his ass (donkey) is interpreted by Maimonides as a vision.  

Resource:

The new Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/moabite-men/

The Probable Y Haplotype of Moses-J1 and Why

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Moses, born in 1391 BCE in Egypt to Amram and Jochebed,  was a descendant of Abraham according to the Biblical genealogy.   Abraham had come from the city  of Ur, which was close to the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia. Abraham was born in the 2nd millennium  about 1948 BCE.  His family line probably came from land even  further east, and they were shepherds.  That would have been an Indo-Iranian (Aryans) land.  They were the people of Ur of the Chaldees, and the Chaldees identifies them as a special tribe of people.   Abraham wanted it to be known that he wasn't a native Urian but from the Chaldees; thus Ur of the Chaldees.  They were obviously different and that may be one reason why he and his father Terah, decided to leave and head out for Egypt. 

 It's a great story of how Abram and Sarai wanted their children to be brought up their way; without many gods and their idols which is what people of Ur believed in.                                       

Look for the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers then see Kaldu (Abraham's tribe (most likely).  Ur is on the map at the bottom.  

Important Kaldu tribes and their regions in southeastern Babylonia were Bit-Yâkin (the original area the Chaldeans settled in on the Persian Gulf), Bet-Dakuri, Bet-Adini, Bet-Amukkani, and Bet-Shilani.

It's hard to say exactly what the Y haplogroup of Moses was, but it's a very important feature  because he did not leave any descendants.  His two sons, Gershon and Eliezer,  died accidently as teens when they were messing around with the Ark of the Covenant and not following the directions of Moses.  Their mother was Zipporah, daughter of Jethro, a priest in the land of Midian.  Moses was born during a time of Egypt killing all boy babies, and he had been born then, so his mother hid him and the Pharaoh's daughter found him and kept him as her son.  He was raised as an Egyptian Prince.  

This Egyptian Prince discovered his birthmother and that he had a brother, Aaron and sister, Mirium.  When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt on the Exodus, he made Aaron the high priest (Cohen) and all his male descendants as priests.  Aaron was from the tribe of Levi and that meant that all the males directly from Aaron were the priestly line who after these 3,000 years have been found to have the Y haplogroup of J1.  It is the most common Y haplogroup of the Jewish males of today.  They were Cohens and had a specific job in the synagogue and of course, before synagogues came into being out of necessity as the Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed in 70 CE; burned down along with Jerusalem.  The Cohens, many of them escaped out of Jerusalem.  

Many of the men bearing J1 have the surname of Cohen.  The priests were called Cohens.  However, we find that many Cohens serving in the synagogues today have taken  different surnames.  From my father's side of the tree, the Goldfus/Goldfoot line, my brother matches 898 Cohens on FTDNA. Ian Goldfoot, 2nd-3rd cousin matched 1,421 Cohens;   from a 1st cousin's husband (AB) 1,262 Cohens, from distant cousin (SZ) 747 Cohens, from distant cousin (VS) 1,329 Cohens; from 1st cousin (AE) 804 Cohens,  from a cousin's cousin (HH) 1,167 Cohens.  

Here are the DNA reports on people who could have been the line of Abraham and therefore, Moses, for this is a father to son inheritance of DNA.  

Approximately 35% to 43% of Jewish men are in the paternal line known as haplogroup J and its sub-haplogroups. This haplogroup is particularly present in the Middle East and Southern Europe. 

15% to 30% are in haplogroup E1b1b, (or E-M35) and its sub-haplogroups which is common in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southern Europe. 

The Mediterranean haplogroup T1a1 is found in varying percentages depending on the Jewish group studied but with upward of 15 to 3% with the highest frequency within Jewish communities native to the Fertile Crescent and East Africa.

Y chromosome haplogroup J1-M267 evolved in the northern parts of West Asia around the LGM. A limited number of founders migrated south—to the Arabian Peninsula, the southern Levant, and southern Mesopotamia, where the J1a1a1-P58 branch evolved in the early Holocene. Haplogroup J1-M267 expanded during the Chalcolithic, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age, coinciding with the spread of Afro-Asiatic languages combined with the diffusion of arid pastoralism in the desert regions of West Asia. The spread of Islam did not substantially affect the distribution of haplogroup J1-M267 in West Asia.  My cousin's cousin HH, had this Cohen gene which my 1st cousin shared as his mother was a cousin of HH.  HH and the mother shared a Rabbi as a grandparent.  This means that my 1st cousin had a great grandfather was a Rabbi and a Cohen (J1-M267).  

Human Y chromosome haplogroup J1-M267 is a common male lineage in West Asia. One high-frequency region—encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, southern Mesopotamia, and the southern Levant—resides ~ 2000 km away from the other one found in the Caucasus. The region between them, although has a lower frequency, nevertheless demonstrates high genetic diversity. Studies associate this haplogroup with the spread of farming from the Fertile Crescent to Europe, the spread of mobile pastoralism in the desert regions of the Arabian Peninsula, the history of the Jews, and the spread of Islam. Here, we study past human male demography in West Asia with 172 high-coverage whole Y chromosome sequences and 889 genotyped samples of haplogroup J1-M267. We show that this haplogroup evolved ~ 20,000 years ago somewhere in northwestern Iran, the Caucasus, the Armenian Highland, and northern Mesopotamia. The major branch—J1a1a1-P58—evolved during the early Holocene ~ 9500 years ago somewhere in the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, and southern Mesopotamia. Haplogroup J1-M267 expanded during the Chalcolithic, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. Most probably, the spread of Afro-Asiatic languages, the spread of mobile pastoralism in the arid zones, or both of these events together explain the distribution of haplogroup J1-M267 we see today in the southern regions of West Asia.Go to:

After the major exodus from Africa, anatomically modern humans started their journey of colonizing Eurasia from West Asia1,2. Later this region harbored initial developments of other breakthroughs of the human past. The Neolithic demographic transition3, the origin of the first city-states and civilizations4, writing5, the use of metal-making6, and the emergence of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam7 are the most prominent ones.

Y chromosome haplogroup J-M304 represents the major male lineage in West Asia today8–12. The 12f2a13 deletion and single nucleotide polymorphic (SNP) biallelic markers M3049 and P20914 define and characterize this haplogroup. It splits off from haplogroup IJ-M429 at ~ 45 thousand years ago (kya), while the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of haplogroup J-M304 lineages is ~ 33 kya15,16. Studies associate haplogroup J-M304 with the spread of farming from the Near East to Europe11,17,18. Around the time of the Neolithic demographic transition3, the genome-wide ancestry of West Asian populations was geographically structured into three groups19–22. Among them, haplogroup J-M304 is found in the Caucasus/Iranian and Anatolian hunter-gatherers and farmers, but not in the Levantine ones. Unfortunately, so far aDNA studies are missing from the Arabian Peninsula and Mesopotamia, where haplogroup J-M304 is frequent nowadays. This haplogroup splits into J1-M267 and J2-M1729,11. While haplogroup J2-M172 is associated more with agriculture in the northern latitudes of West Asia, haplogroup J1-M267 has been connected with the spread of the pastoral economies in the West Asian arid zones23,24.This is just the first part of the report.  

FTDNA said that "If you do not have an oral tradition of being a Cohen or of being Jewish, then your Y chromosome is still part of Haplogroup J-M267 (J1). Your deepest ancestor was likely part of the Neolithic farming expansion that began about 9,500 years ago from the Fertile Crescent. 

Keep in mind that while the CMH was the most frequent haplotype found in Cohanim men, it was not the only haplotype. Therefore, if you have an oral tradition of being Cohanim, then you most likely are genetically a Cohen. If you do not have a tradition of being Cohanim and if your ancestors were Jewish, then you come from the same genetic Gene Pool. While not being directly from the line of Aaron, you could be descended from one of his numerous male relatives. Three percent of Jewish males who identify as Yisrael have the CMH.

E is also a very common Jewish Y haplogroup. In my family, we have E-L117 coming up for three of our relatives.   The E-Y6923 cluster follows the same pattern as many of the larger Ashkenazi Y-DNA clusters, with (1) a shared direct male ancestor dating back to about the second half of the first millenium CE, as evidenced by initial branching during that time frame; and (2) substantial branching within those subbranches.

Resource:

https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-haplogroup-we-be.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7987999/

https://sites.google.com/view/ashkenazi-y-dna-and-mtdna/y-dna-haplogroups-of-ashkenazi-jews/haplogroup-e-y-dna-clusters-for-ashkenazi-jews

https://help.familytreedna.com/hc/en-us/articles/6202378100751-The-Cohen-Modal-Haplotype-Badge

Arabs and Arabic and Their Connection To The Jews-Distant Cousins

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

      2nd Millennium BCE--1948 BCE and Abraham's Life Story

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. 

Edom, , Moab, Ammon, Aram-Damascus, Assyria, Israel, Judah, Nabatu tribes, Arlej tribes ???-Egypt, Aramaean tribes,  Philistine city-states; Phoenician states 

 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.                     

     3 Jewish sisters from SW Arabia's Yemen, give an idea of Safia's appearance

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   

www.bu.edu/mzank/Jerusalem/tx/pactofumar.htm#:~:text=Islam%20and%20the%20Jews%3A%20The%20Pact%20of%20Umar%2C%209th%20Century%20CE&text=THE%20Pact%20of%20Umar%20is,Muslims%20and%20conquered%20non-Muslims

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.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/banu-i-na-ir