Abram of Ur And Why He Moved To His New Destination

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

     Abraham about to be stopped in the sacrifice of his son, Isaac.  Today,  Muslims believe Abraham (known as Ibrahim) was commanded by God to sacrifice his son. However, there are two key differences between the Islamic and Judeo-Christian traditions: Muslims believe the son was Ishmael (Ismail) rather than Isaac, and that the son was a willing participant. Ishmael was the son of Hagar, Abrams's concubine/wife that couldn't get along with Sarah being Ishmael resented the new baby then and as he was growing up.   

Jewish children usually were able to grow up with the story of Abram whose name was changed to Abraham and learn that he was on quite a trip and had earned the newer name to show he had gone through a  transformation in thinking, like becoming a new person.     I'm going to elaborate on the why and how he did that and why it's so interesting and full of meaning for us.

Genetic studies today have consistently shown that Palestinians and Jews share deep biological roots and are close genetic neighbors. Both groups inherit a significant portion of their ancestry from the ancient populations of the Levant.  This differs from studies done at least 20 years ago.  However, findings do not indicate that Palestinian DNA has become more similar to Jewish DNA over the past two decades. Rather, the scientific consensus has remained consistent: genetics demonstrate a high degree of ancestral continuity in the region.  I believe this shows that we may be 20th cousins to Palestinians but do not share the same interpretations of morality that Judaism has presented to us through Abram, and than Moses, his 15th descendant or so.  It's all in the interpretations.  

              Ur of the Chaldees on the Euphrates River

Abram grew up in Ur of the Chaldees, the meaning explanation showing the importance of the Chaldees as their might have been another Abram somewhere.  The Chaldees show the type of people who lived there.  Abram was an extremely important man to the Jewish people.  He was our Patriarch and his wife Sarah, who was his niece, was our Matriarch.  The patriarch Abram (later Abraham) was born and lived before God called him to migrate to Canaan. It was a major urban center in ancient Mesopotamia. I had thought of it as a simple little grouping of huts, being Abraham lived in the 2nd millennium BCE, probably about the year 1948 BCE., which is about 4,000 years ago.  One cannot even imagine 250 years ago when our USA was born let alone 4,000 years ago.

It turns out that Ur certainly was a major urban center, a large one at that.  It's where people were sacrificed to their polytheistic gods regularly when they needed things.  We know this because Moses wrote about it when Abram was asked to sacrifice his only son to their G-d., and he seemed willing to do it, getting everything ready, when they were stopped by an angel.  The story reflects the change in Abraham, not going along with sacrificial rituals.  To me, he then realized that he didn't want his children to grow up with such a morality as that, and he had to leave this city and find a place barren of such thinking. Ur at that period was like New York City to Abraham. 

Ur has been investigated by archaeologists.   It was situated in southern Mesopotamia on the banks of the Euphrates River, about 10 miles west of its modern-day bed  The ancient city of Ur (also known as Ur of the Chaldees) is a Sumerian city-state located in modern-day southern Iraq, near Nasiriyah. It was famously investigated by British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley between 1922 and 1934 in a joint expedition between the British Museum and the Penn Museum. Woolley  was a British archaeologist best known for his excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia. He is recognized as one of the first "modern" archaeologists who excavated in a methodical way, keeping careful records, and using them to reconstruct ancient life and history. Woolley was knighted in 1935 for his contributions to the discipline of archaeology.  Ur was the burial site of what may have been many Sumerian royals. The Woolleys discovered tombs of great material wealth, containing large paintings of ancient Sumerian culture at its zenith, along with gold and silver jewelry, cups and other furnishings. The most extravagant tomb was that of "Queen" Pu-Abi. Amazingly enough, Queen Pu-Abi's tomb was untouched by looters. Inside the tomb, many well-preserved items were found, including a cylindrical seal bearing her name in Sumerian. Her body was found buried along with those of two attendants, who had presumably been poisoned to continue to serve her after death. Woolley was able to reconstruct Pu-Abi's funeral ceremony from objects found in her tomb.

                Kingdom of Aram-Damascus up north   

In the Hebrew Bible, the term Amorite often refers to specific, militant highlander groups or pre-Israelite inhabitants who occupied the land of Canaan.They are frequently described as enemies defeated by the Israelites during the Exodus and conquest narratives, led by kings such as Sihon and Og.  Hammurabi of Babylon: The most celebrated Amorite ruler, King Hammurabi (reigned 1792–1750 BCE), united Mesopotamia under the Code of Hammurabi, one of the oldest and most comprehensive deciphered writings of significant law in the world.   Despite their pastoralist roots, the Amorites rapidly adopted and contributed to the Sumero-Akkadian culture, blending their own traditions (such as the worship of the chief deity Amurru) with native religious and societal structures.

Since Upper Mesopotamia included northern Syria, which was inhabited by groups like the Amorites, some even consider Abraham to be among the Amorites that migrated to the Levant. Like Abraham and his descendants, the Amorites followed shepherding-based lifestyles. Nonetheless, the Biblical authors distanced themselves from the Amorites to assert their moral superiority.  Abram's writings were an upgrade from Hammurabi's list.  

Here's the map showing how Abram/Abraham and his group traveled northwest and then south to Canaan.  

    Terah, father of Nahor and of Abram and Haran,  couldn't make it all the way to Canaan.  They seemed to be traveling in a massive caravan. . By 4,000 years ago (around 2000 B.C.E.), the wheel had already been in use for over a millennium, so they must have had wagons of some sort to travel with.  Mesopotamia: Archaeological excavations—such as those at Kurd Qaburstan on the Erbil Plain—have uncovered evidence of monumental city walls, gates, and trade routes used during the Middle Bronze Age.

 Terah, a descendant of Shem son of Noah, was the father of Abram/Abraham, Nahor, and Haran. Their home's location is not certain, but it is usually supposed to have been in Mesopotamia. Besides Lot and Milcah, Haran fathered a daughter Iscah.  After Haran died in Ur of the Chaldees "before his father Terah",his family travelled towards Canaan, the Promised Land. Abram did not know his destination geographically at first. According to the biblical narrative, he knew about the "Promised Land" of Canaan entirely through divine revelation, being called by God to leave his homeland and go to a place that God would "show" him.  

However, Terah stopped at Harran [Hebrew חָרָן, Ḥārān]) and settled there, as did Nahor and Milcah, whereas Lot, son of Haran,  accompanied Abraham and others onwards to Canaan.

It Was Hard to Be A Jew In England

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                          

Edward I was king of England in 1290.  Edward I, byname Edward Longshanks, (born June 17, 1239, Westminster, Middlesex, England—died July 7, 1307, Burgh by Sands, near Carlisle, Cumberland), son of Henry III and king of England in 1272–1307, during a period of rising national consciousness.                                 

For starters, England expulsed any Jews they had in 1290 and didn't allow any back in the country until 1655.  That means there weren't any Jews living in England for 365 years !  

The heavy tax was passed, and three days later, on 18 July, the Edict of Expulsion was issued. One official reason for the expulsion was that Jews had declined to follow the Statute of Jewry and continued to practice usury.

Now this is almost laughable because loaning money usually was asked of first by the royalty in a country.  Loaning money was the only profession allowed to Jews in most cases.  They weren't allowed to own land, for instance.  

Since the time of the Norman Conquest, Jews had been filling a small but vital role in the English economy. Usury by Christians was forbidden at the time by the Church of Rome, but Jews were permitted to act as moneylenders and bankers. That enabled some Jews to amass tremendous wealth, but also earned them enmity, which added to the increasing antisemitic sentiments of the time, due to widespread indebtedness and financial ruin among the gentile population.

Edward I returned from the Crusades in 1274, two years after his accession as King of England, and found that land had become a commodity, and that many of his subjects had become dispossessed and were in danger of destitution. Jews traded land for money, and land was often mortgaged to Jewish moneylenders. In January 1275 Edward's mother, the Queen Dowager Eleanor of Provence, expelled the Jews from all of her lands, a precursor to the Statute enacted later the same year.

As special direct subjects of the monarch, Jews could be taxed indiscriminately by the King. Some have described this situation as indirect usury: the monarch permitted and encouraged Jews to practise usury and then taxed the profit. 

In the years leading up to the Statute, Edward taxed them heavily to help finance his forthcoming military campaigns in Wales, which began in 1277. One theory holds that he had exhausted the financial resources of the Jewish community when the Statute was passed in 1275.Remember-by 1290 all Jews had to leave England.  

Provisions: Usury was outlawed in every form.1066 to 1290-

In 1066 Jews had entered with Norman Conquest-just a handful of financiers followed William the Conqueror from the Continent.  The Norman Conquest prompted the arrival of Jews to England for the first time. William I needed to borrow large sums of money to consolidate his position as the King of England and he turned to Jewish merchants from Rouen, Normandy to provide him with this much-needed income. Lending money with interest or ‘usury’ was forbidden to Christians and considered a sin. As a result, the English king paved the way for Jewish individuals to migrate and settle across the Channel. Jews and Christians now lived alongside each other in settlements across the country.

• Debtors of Jews were no longer liable for certain debts.
• Jews were not allowed to live outside certain cities and towns.                               
• Any Jew above the age of seven had to wear a yellow badge of felt in the form of Two Tables Joined on his or her outer clothing, six inches by three inches.
• All Jews from the age of 12 on had to pay a special tax of three pence annually.
• Christians were forbidden to live among Jews.
• Jews were licensed to buy farmland to make their living for the next 15 years.
• Jews could thenceforth make a living in England only as merchants, farmers, craftsmen or soldiers.

"Of the 12 million inhabitants of England in 1819, there were only 20,000 to 30,000 Jews;  at least 2/3rds of whom lived in London.  The 19th century Jewish population was undergoing a major shift from Sephardic to Ashkenazic leadership.  With growing numbers of Jews immigrating from Germany and Poland into England, the Ashkenazim (Jews with ancestors from Northern, eastern, and Central Europe) began to take over the reins of leadership that had been dominated by the Sephardim (Jews whose ancestors originated from the Mediterranean rim). "

           Oliver Cromwell-25 April 1599-September 3, 1658

"Wealthy Sephardi families had dominated the Jewish community since the 18th century when Oliver Cromwell,   an English statesman, politician and soldier, widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of the British Isles came to prominence during the 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, initially as a senior commander in the Parliamentarian army and latterly as a politician, and allowed Jews to resettle into England. " 

England passed the "Jew Bill of 1753 that allowed Jews to become natural citizens, but it was repealed the very next year, and there was a continued denial of equal rights to Jews.  

A Jewish candidate, Lionel de Rothschild (1808-1879), was elected as one of the four members of Parliament for the City of London in 1847 but could not take his seat without taking a Christian oath of office. As a consequence, on Monday, 26 July 1858, Lionel de Rothschild took the oath with covered head, substituting "so help me, Jehovah" for the ordinary form of oath, and thereupon took his seat as the first Jewish member of Parliament; David Salomons was re-elected for Greenwich in a by-election and took his seat in early 1859. Two years later a more general form of oath for all members of Parliament was introduced, which freed the Jews from all cause of exclusion.That would be the day of emancipation for Jews of England, 1861 would be the proper date.  Ironically, 1861 is also the date when Abraham Lincoln took office as President of the USA.  He was assassinated in 1865 for his Civil War in freeing the slaves and emancipating them.  

 He had financed the English purchase of the Suez Canal shares in 1875 and was the first Jewish member of parliament in 1858.  His son, however, Nathaniel, succeeded him as head of the banking -house and was the first Jewish  peer in 1885 and one of the outstanding Jews in his time.  

During the period of overt anti-Semitism, many Sephardic families sought full entry into English life by adopting more extreme Hellenistic and Anglican ways, by abandoning the synagogue, even by raising their children as Christians. That is the most extreme form of Hellenization that I have run across, bar none.  Evidently they were already from such Hellenized families that conversion didn't mean much to them in a change of their lives.  One wonders if perhaps the family were already Marranos-secret Jews since 1492- from the Spanish Inquisition.  The most prominent example of this trend was the Disraeli family.  

Portrait by Cornelius Jabez Hughes, 1878

The Right Honourable

The Earl of Beaconsfield

KG PC DL JP FRS

As it was, Isaac D'Israeli had a son, Benjamin, who grew up to be Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield who was born in 1804 and died in 1881.  He had become a British statesman.  When he was 13, his father, who had become estranged from the synagogue, had him baptized.  The age of 13 causes me to think the argument was over his to be-bar mitzvah.  Perhaps he didn't want any Hebrew reading in it, and the synagogue expected it to be a normal bar matzvah.  Another resource mentions his conversion at 12, so it must have.  After unsuccessful ventures in business, he made a reputation by his brilliant novel, Vivian Grey that he wrote in 1826.  The catastrophe at the conclusion provides Vivian with a brutal but essential lesson in human behaviour. The novel offers a comment on the political and social temper of England in the early 1820s, and is specifically concerned with the question of personal advancement in a rigidly restrictive social structure. 

From 1828 to 1831 he traveled through the Mediterranean, spending some time in Palestine.  That's interesting.  Was he searching for answers?  At least he was curious about his heritage.  

On his return to England, he entered politics and after initial failure, was elected to parliament in 1837 as a Tory.  though at first howled down in the House of Commons, he became the spokesman of the inarticulate Protectionist right-wing when the official Conservative Party under Peel went over to Free Trade in 1845.  

In the course of the next few years, he revived the Party and became its official parliamentary leader.  Meanwhile, he continued his literary career, publishing a series of outstanding political novels.

In 1868  Disraeli became Prime Minister briefly before losing that year's general election. Disraeli became Prime Minister once again in 1874, aged 70. This was a successful premiership, though it has been said that the legislation of this time depended much less upon Dizzy himself than upon his Cabinet colleagues.The 1880 election was lost to the Liberals, a narrow loss in terms of votes cast. Disraeli threw himself into the job of Opposition, and was active until a month before his death from bronchitis in April 1881. On his deathbed, he is reported to have said: “I had rather live but I am not afraid to die”.

Throughout his career, he never ceased to proclaim his sympathy with and admiration for the Jewish people, to which he was proud to trace his origin.  He championed Jewish emancipation in parliament, almost identified himself with a medieval messianic pretender in his early work, Alroy, delineated an idealized Rothschild as "Sidonia," a principal character in his novels Coningshy and Tancred, spoke of Christianity as a development of Judaism, and ascribed exaggerated qualities to the Jewish "race."

"Benjamin 'Dizzy' Disraeli was the son of Isaac, a Jewish Italian writer, and had an Anglican upbringing after the age of 12. With Jews excluded from Parliament until 1858, this enabled Disraeli to follow a career that would otherwise have been denied him. He was Britain's first, and so far only, Jewish Prime Minister."

At the start of World War II (WWII), the Jewish population in the United Kingdom (UK) was approximately 370,000-390,000 people.

Going into the 19th century, the Jewish population was small, likely no more than 20,000 individuals. However, the population quadrupled in just a few decades after 1881 as a large number of Jews fled oppression in the Russian Empire. The population increased by as much as 50% between 1933 and 1945, with the United Kingdom admitting around 70,000 Jews between 1933 and 1938, and a further 80,000 between 1938 and 1945. The late 1940s and early 1950s proved to be the high point, numerically speaking, for British Jewry. 

In 1990, the Jewish population of Great Britain with N. Ireland was estimated at 330,000.  

Portland, Oregon in 1980 had  366,373 population.

  

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Pioneer Rabbi of the West by Rabbi Joshua Stampfer-the life and times of Julius Eckman

https://www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers/benjamin-disraeli-the-earl-of-beaconsfield#:~:text=Benjamin%20'Dizzy'%20Disraeli%20was%20the,far%20only%2C%20Jewish%20Prime%20Minister.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disraeli_(1929_film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Expulsion#:~:text=The%20heavy%20tax%20was%20passed,and%20continued%20to%20practice%20usury.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_the_Jewry#:~:text=The%20Statute%20of%20the%20Jewry,outlawing%20the%20practice%20of%20usury.

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/jews-in-england-1290/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Jews

 

Abraham's Ancestry-An Amazing Journey Through Time and Geography

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

     The Garden of Eden, 5,783 years ago according to the Bible,  where Adam and Eve came from, was the factory.  It seems that it was located on the land mass of Africa, where so many bones of various eras of development have been found. Homo sapiens evolved in Africa from Homo heidelbergensis. They co-existed for a long time in Europe and the Middle East with the Neanderthals, and possibly with Homo erectus in Asia and Homo floresiensis in Indonesia, but are now the only surviving human species, the first we know about named in the bible:  Adam and Eve.  

Adam was made, according to the Bible, in the image of G-d from the dust of the earth on the 6th day of creation which was the last work day of G-d because the 7th was his day of rest. .  His duty was the dominion over the rest of the animals on earth.  Eve was created out of one of Adam's ribs and was intended as a help/a partner for Adam, definitely a help in the creation of more humans.   Adam and Eve's first children were Cain and Abel. Seth was the 3rd child and lived for 912 years. The sons of Seth were the nomadic Sutho, shepherds,  tribes mentioned in the neighborhood of the Palestine-Syria frontier in about the 15th century BCE. It was Balaam (Num.24:17) who mentioned them.   They seem to have been related to the Hebrews.  They could be Abraham's cousins.    Cain killed Abel, the example of fighting between the nomadic shepherd and the settled agriculturalist.  Cain was accidentally killed by his own blind grandson, Lamech.  .  

Abraham, the ancestor of Jews and their cousins, today's Muslims, are well documented in the Torah and its extension, the whole Tanakh.  His name was Abram and he lived in about 1948 BCE, born in Ur on the Tigris River of the Chaldees.  

Abram's father was Terah and mother was Amathlai of Haran whose parents were  Nahor and Iyoska, going back:  Serug and Milcah, Reu, Peleg, Eber, Shelah, Arpachshad, Shem, and finally, Noah. 

Noah's story is that he saved his family including his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth,  by building an ark or ship before the great flood, and they managed for 40 days on it, landing on new land. If his father, Lamech and mother, Adah,  were alive, they were with Noah.  Lamech's father was Methuselah who lived for a very long time.  His father was Enoch, and was remembered in stories about Noah.    He had loaded it with all the animals he was familiar with, for he didn't know where they'd land and what lay before him. From his sons sprang the 1st 70 people (types or tribes) from whom humanity was derived.  This can also be read somewhat in the Babylonian tale of Gilgamesh, an epic that contains a parallel flood story with the hero called Utnapishtim.  many midrashic stories were woven around the story of Noah.  Therefore, we now have humanity moved to Turkey as hunters and gatherers of food.  

This goes along with my father's Y haplogroup line of  Q's (QBZ67).  The origin was said to be in Siberia, Mongolia and parts of Turkey.  It's an ancient Jewish line-of which today is 5% of 0.02% of the world population, a very small group of men. Does this mean that they are one of the oldest groups of males that can trace back to Noah? 

Q-M242-his genetic title originally;  is believed to have arisen around the Altai Mountains area (or South Central Siberia), approximately 17,000 to 31,700 years ago. However, the matter remains unclear due to limited sample sizes and changing definitions of Haplogroup Q: early definitions used a combination of the SNPs M242, P36.2, and MEH2 as defining mutations.)    

J1, the Cohen gene,( 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.) This seems to be the landing site of Noah's Ark as well.                  

     The Middle East, and landing on Mt. Ararat:  The Garden of Eden could have come from Egypt for it's a country on Africa.  The Ark could have sailed over the Mediterranean onto Turkey during the Flood. Iraq was the scene of the tower of Babel of Babylon.   

Even I must use Noah in our genealogy history, for he landed on Mt. Ararat, thought to be  located in extreme northeastern Turkey, near the borders with Iran and Armenia.  Nevertheless, Mount Ararat is traditionally considered the resting place of Noah's Ark, and, thus, considered a biblical mountain. Mount Ararat has been associated with the Genesis account since the 11th century, and Armenians began to identify it as the ark's landing place during that time.  

That's where Abram, later called Abraham's ancestors came from.  They had come from the East and he had migrated west to Canaan with his family which included Terah, his father, and his wife, Sarai, later called Sarah. Sarah was his niece, which shows that they did marry into their own family.  Siblings did not marry in Abraham's group, though, like the Egyptian royalty did.    

The beautiful plan of creation included giving male humans DNA that could be traced back to their beginning roots.  Abraham was the ancestor of Moses, born in 1391 BCE to Amram and Jochebed. Amram's father was Kohath, and went back to Levi, son of Jacob whose name changed to Israel, father of 12 sons who became the 12 Tribes of Israel.  Their DNA line is J1, called the Cohen gene, coming direct from Aaron, brother of Moses who would have been J1 as well.  Jacob's father was Isaac whose father was Abraham.  

                                Sarah with Hagar, her handmaid

 Abraham had a child with Hagar, Sarah's handmaid when Sarah was very old, past child-bearing age. Then she surprised everyone and did get pregnant and had Isaac.   The child Abraham had with Hagar was  called Ishmael. Hagar took her son and left the family due to all the in-fighting of the children, Ishmael and Isaac going on.  

Isaac,  Abraham's son by Sarah  had twins, Jacob and Esau.   Jacob's fraternal twin, Esau,  fought with Jacob, having the opposite type of personality.  They were even enemies.  Esau left the family group and married with Others not related.  Jacob had fled to Haran and stayed there for 20 years before connecting with his brother once more.  The three most important men in our Jewish history were Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  

How do people remember such facts, especially names?  We saw this happening in the Black tribe mentioned in the book, Roots: The Saga of an American Family is a 1976 novel written by Alex Haley. It tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent, sold into slavery in Africa, and transported to North America; it follows his life and the lives of his descendants in the United States down to Haley.   

  Haley spent the last chapter of the book describing his research in archives and libraries to support his family's oral tradition with written records. If Haley's family line remembered facts orally, I believe ours could have used this method as well, possibly combined with written. If you're interested in your family, read this book, whoever you are.       

Abraham's journey can be tracked by oral history and today's DNA.  That way we can see who he has left behind as descendants.                             

Resource:

Tanakh, Stone Edition

https://australian.museum/learn/science/human-evolution/homo-sapiens-modern-humans/#:~:text=Homo%20sapiens%20evolved%20in%20Africa,the%20only%20surviving%20human%20species.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Saga_of_an_American_Family

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33758277/#:~:text=We%20show%20that%20this%20haplogroup,the%20Levant%2C%20and%20southern%20Mesopotamia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_Q-M242