Bringing Babies Into The World-From the Beginning Till Now

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Our ancestors, wives of Jacob:  Leah-daughter of Laban, oldest sister of Rachel, with her 6 sons Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and Zebulun,  Rachel with Joseph and Benjamin (born later) :   and Zilpah, handmaiden to Leah with Gad and Asher, and Bilhah, handmaiden to Rachel with Dan and Naphtali.  

Abraham, grandfather of Jacob, was born in about 1948 BCE-the 2nd millennium, almost 4,000 years ago. 

 When Rachel gives birth to Benjamin, she will die in childbirth near Bethlehem.  Benjamin is compensated for losing his mother by the land he inherits.  He is given land between Ephraim and Judah which includes the future Jerusalem.  Saul, 1st king of Israel, was a Benjamite.  The land eventually had to be partitioned between the 2 kingdoms of Israel and Judah, even though it was such a small plot.   

 Today, it costs about $20,,000 to give birth to a baby in the USA.  No wonder our population growth has slowed down.  There is only a 0.4% annual change from 2020.  The U.S. population grew at a slower rate in 2021 than in any other year since the founding of the nation, based on historical decennial censuses and annual population estimates.  The U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2021 Population Estimates released today show that population grew only 0.1% and that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the slower growth the country has experienced in recent years. 

What does that imply?  A baby will be born in a hospital with expert medical conditions guaranteeing the life for the baby and the mother. Parents cannot afford $20,000 for a child.   Now, Roe vs Wade is discarded and having an abortion is against the law.  The numbers should come up.  In our already crowded world, many are hysterical about this new law causing pain and inconvenience to their families. 

Eve didn't have it so well.  Imagine, her midwife was Adam and neither she or he knew what was happening or what to do.  She gave birth to Cain and Abel, and Cain wound up killing Abel when they were adults.  They had no understanding of the pain that Eve went through to bring them into this world.  

Jacob is our 3rd patriarch (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob).  He's the younger non-identical twin of Isaac and Rebekah.  The older twin was Esau.  Jacob was jealous of Esau as being the older, got the birthright benefits and the much desired Blessing, so their mother, Rebekah,  helped him cheat his twin out of it.  Esau went on to lose interest in  the family values having lost his birthright Blessing and status, and  threatened later to kill his twin, Jacob.  Jacob fled to Aram-Naharaim and Laban, his uncle.                         

They met 20 years later and Jacob tried to make friends with him and apologize  to no avail. The deed was done.    Then Esau became a villain, a violent person, a coarse materialist who was unable to recover from his trauma of having something and then losing it to trickery!  He had left the family and found wives amongst the Arabs.

 According to the Torah, Esau is the progenitor of the Edomites.  Jacob was born holding onto Esau's heel.  Esau, a "man of the field", became a hunter who had "rough" qualities that distinguished him from his twin brother. Among these qualities were his redness and noticeable hairiness.

                                                

Today's Edom is Israel, possibly as Edom was south of Judah-the southern end of ancient Israel.  Edom was the land touching the Dead Sea and bordering Judah.  Notice that much of Jacob's history took place in today's Syria.  

 Jacob was a plain or simple man, depending on the translation of the Hebrew word tam (which also means "relatively perfect man"). Jacob's color was not mentioned. Throughout Genesis, Esau is frequently shown as being supplanted by his younger twin, Jacob (Israel).                                              

Here, Esau did the hunting and Jacob does the cooking.  

Jacob fell in love with young Rachel and in order to win her as a wife, had to work for her father, Laban, who in fact was Jacob's uncle, for 7 years.  She was very young.  He was tricked into actually marrying her oldest sister, Leah, first, and had to continue working another 7 years to finally gain Rachel.  Leah gave him Reuben-1st son , Simeon-2nd son, Levi-3rd son, Judah-4th son, Issachar-5th son, and Zebulun-6th son.  Then he had a daughter, Dinah-order unknown.                               

Rachel, who also lived at Haran in Aram-Naharaim (Syria),  produced Joseph, Jacob's most precious son, and his 11th, finally produced by the love of his life.  He was an exceptional lad, treated as such even in the presence of his brothers, having been given a special coat of many colors that none had that showed favoritism.  Jacob hadn't had the chance to read child development books about such things as we have done.  He was ignorant of such things.  Joseph's brothers were so jealous that they intended to kill him, but settled for selling him to passer-by merchants on camels instead who took him to Egypt.     

 Rachel had finally given birth to Benjamin-12th son and then died in childbirth   near Bethlehem.  Who raised her son?  Probably her handmaiden, Bilhah, who, with Rachel's permission, had also given birth to Dan and Naphtali by Jacob before Rachel had ever given birth.  (Gen: 30) Rachel had said that if she remained childless, it would be as if she were dead, so that's why she needed her Bilhah to have a son.  Rachel would be credited for it.  She had threatened Jacob for not getting her pregnant, but of course he could do nothing about it.  The irony is that she was his great love and she had a hard time getting pregnant.  

This instigated Leah to add more sons from her, so she gave her handmaiden to Jacob and Zilpah then gave birth to Gad and Asher.  In those days, men felt obligated to produce sons.  It was of great value to them.  Probably these 4 women acted as midwives to each other.  There probably was jealousy among them, but necessity was also in the mix.  Their worth to Jacob had to be considered.  Their sons were their insurance.  

Who were the handmaidens?  Chances are they were bought in Egypt and were also  sisters.  They all would have spoken the same language, maybe those females that hadn't attracted a mate and the father could use the money.  

As we see, even with our Israelite family, women had less status than men did at this point in time.  We're lucky to know about Dinah and how she had been raped and what he brothers had done about it by putting themselves in jeopardy.

Resource:

Tanakh, Stone Edition

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

  

How Judaism Tells Where Our DNA Comes From

Nadene Goldfoot                                               

                                                                 
This all happened in a garden in Eden 5,780 years ago, which was in the Eastern part of the world.  The area is identified by four rivers.  The first was Pishon that circled Havilah, the land where gold was found  The second river was Gihon that circled the land of Cush.  The third was Hideel which flowed toward the east of Assyria, and the 4th river was the Euphrates.  

The Torah starts off right away in the first chapter, Genesis (Bereishis)  with Adam's creation of a partner, Eve,  through his own rib, giving Cain and Abel, their sons,  DNA from an extremely close source.
                                                                           

They had been born in a different section of land, leaving the garden in Eden, so were receiving a different environment in which to grow up.  
                                                                                     

Cain and Abel received their DNA as normal brothers, but as different as could possibly be.  One had talent in hunting and the other didn't.  Abel became a shepherd and Cain became a tiller of the ground.   Cain eventually killed his brother, Abel.  That shows me that the first people carried a great variety of genes, just like today, from their mother and their  father.  Adam was the one with the extreme differences that he shared with Eve.  
                                                                               

The sons of the rulers saw that the daughters of man were good and they took themselves wives from whomever they chose.  .....his days shall be 120 years.  

Suddenly Cain finds a wife in the neighborhood, so Enoch was born.  This was a beginning evidently and a family had not been created as yet but is in the beginning stage.  Cain's genes will induce him to be a wanderer and will be exploring the land.  His descendant, Methushael had a son, Lamech, who started bigamy by taking two wives, Adah and Zilah.  
                                                  

The first,  Adah's descendant, Enoch,  became a city-builder, so that's where those genes came from.  A descendant, Jabal was the first to live in a tent and breed cattle.  His brother, Jubal became the first to have and play the harp and flute.  Lamech's second wife, Zilah's son Tubal-Cain sharpened all cutting implements of copper and iron.  
                                                           

Lamech was blind, so his son, Tubal-cain would lead him when walking.  Tubal-cain saw Cain but thought he was seeing an animal.  He told his father to shoot an arrow at this animal. (Tubal-cain's eyes were going like his father's, evidently.)  When Lamech understood that he had shot Cain instead,  he beat his hands together in grief  and accidently killed his son.  His wives were so angry that they refused to live with him.  He tried to appease them.  "If the punishment of Cain, an intentional murder of Abel was delayed until the 7th generation, surely my punishment will be deferred many times 7 because I killed accidently."  (Rashi).  
                                                   

Cain suffered vengeance for 7 generations.  Lamech suffered vengeance for 77 generations.  Then Seth was born to Adam and Eve to replace Abel.    The telling of the genealogy of mankind is beginning.  It starts with Seth and goes on from Adam to Noah.  From Seth onward, the human race survived.  Abel had died without leaving any children.  All of Cain's descendants perished in the Flood.
So did the continuance of mankind living as long as Methuselah, son of Enoch and father of Lamech of 969  years.     
We come from Seth and the genes he carried on his 23 chromosomes.  
                                                

Noah after 40 days tested for land with a raven.  When he sent out a dove, he also returned.  Another 7 days went by and this time after flying out, the dove returned with a twig.  He had found land.  

                                                 

Noah had 3 sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.  THE FLOOD covers land in the 600th year of Noah's life, the year 1656 from the time of creation of the world.  After the Flood, we see that 70 people came from Shem, Ham and Japheth from whom humanity was derived.  The Babylonians also have a story about THE BEGINNING, The Gilgamesh epic which contains a parallel flood story.  Instead of a hero, Noah, their story contains Utnapishtim as their hero.  Many midrashic legends were woven around the story of Noah.  A Midrash is the finding of new meanings in addition to the literal one in the Scriptures.  It's the tradition of the Talmud to formulate certain rules to deduce hidden and new meanings.  Sometimes it is to find scriptural support for laws already accepted.  The entire talmudic literature is full of midrashic exposition of verses.  It's now applied mainly to legends and ethics.  

From Shem came the nations of Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, and Aaram.  Arpachshad was the father of Eber and ancestor Abraham.  That line should carry the J1 line of Cohen as Abraham was the ancestor of Moses and his brother, Aaron, the 1st high priest (Cohen).  These people's language were akin to Hebrew and are called a Semitic people and their languages are Semitic languages.   

From Ham came the nations of Cush (Nubia and Ethiopia), Put (Libya and Morocco), Mizraim (Egypt) and Canaan (Syria and what came to be called Palestine).  The languages of Africa south of Egypt which are related to Semitic languages are called Hamitic languages.  

From Japheth came the nations of  wide territories, 14 different peoples.  Mostly they came from the Indo-European language group, ranging from the Caucasus to the Aegean. 

It is my understanding that to be a member of the Sanhedrin, an assembly of 71 ordained scholars which functioned both as Supreme Court and as legislature, one had to present credentials showing their genealogy who in its later history was usually a descendant of Hillel, a man born in the 1st century BCE.  At the head of the Sanhedrin was the Nasi, meaning prince or president.   Hillel was born in Babylonia but settled in Eretz Yisrael and earned a slender living by manual labor while studying with the famous teachers, Shemaiah and Avtalyon.  He's the one that phrased, Do not do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you."  



Resource;
Tanakh, The Stone Edition, The Torah/Prophets/Writing, the 24 books of the Bible.
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia