How Taxes and Labor Changed Ancient Israel and Our World Today

Nadene Goldfoot                                   

Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, a place now called
the Temple Mount.  It was built as a shrine for their ark, sacred vessels and offerings.   In it was a hall, shrine, and inner sanctum which was the HOLY OF HOLIES. It had a court for worshippers.


The Temple was completely destroyed by Nebuchadnezar, the Babylonian in 580 BCE.

It was rebuilt as the 2nd Temple from 538 BCE to 515 BCE by returned
Jews from Babylon by their King Cyrus.  

                                                                       
King Solomon was our greatest king from 961 BCE to 920 BCE, and was the son of King David.  It was Solomon who was able to build the Temple and created a place that was the center for the belief in ONE GOD.  He was known for his intelligence and ability to make wise decisions.  Wisdom was what he was known for.
It was his wisdom in things pertaining to how we are to treat each other and follow the law of Moses, and he was determined to build the temple and establish this as their religion. 
                                                   

      One time two women came to him, each claiming to be the mother of a baby they brought with them.  They wanted him to decide which one was the real mother.  He said to his guard, cut the baby in half and give each half to the women.  The real mother screamed,"  Don't do that!  Then give the baby to her.  Solomon had found the real mother.  The woman who said not to cut the baby was the real mother.  Everyone was satisfied.  This is an example of his wisdom. 
                                                       

Temple in Karnak, Luxor, Egypt
Didn't Johnnie Carson joke about this place in his monologues?In the sands of Egypt lies the massive Temple of Karnak, a temple dedicated to a variety of Egyptian deities. To get an idea of how big this structure is, think of the size of a football field. Now think of 150 football fields put together. The Temple of Karnak is even larger than this at over 200 acres! One of its original names was Ipt-Swt, which meant ''Selected Spot.'' The temple is located in the ancient city of Thebes in Egypt, the axis mundi, or center of the world, in Egyptian religion. The specific site of the temple was legendarily the mound of earth that Atum, the creator god, created himself, the other deities, and the world on. This site, which was built on and expanded for about 2,000 years, has a long and complex history. 

Every country around had such a Temple.  Solomon would have known about it.  It was the thing to do.   Moses would have seen it.  He was born in Egypt.  It was like not being a real country until you had a temple, and so he went at it with gusto.  He established communication with the king of Lebanon and used their Cedar trees and had help from there.  He had to use the free labor of his own people to build the Temple.  Taxes went up in order to afford everything for the Temple.  Taxes and labor became a burden for all the people, and the northern tribes were hurt the most.  They tried to get Solomon to lower his expectations and lower the taxes and labor but he didn't do it.

  Solomon died in 920 BCE.  His son, Rehoboam, inherited the throne of Israel, ruling over all 12 tribes.  He remained king from 933 to 917BCE.  This is interesting because this means he had taken over before Solomon's death.  Perhaps Solomon had been ill, or the historians were confused as to the dates.
                                                       

   The 10 tribes of Israel  had been in forced labor with Solomon and this was extending with his son, Rehoboam.  Jeroboam was the superintendent of this forced labor during Solomon's reign, and was an Ephraimite. from the tribe of Ephraim, a leading tribe of the 10.  He led a revolt against this burden of taxation and forced labor put on his people my the kings.  At first the king was able to stop the revolt and this forced Rehoboam to escape to Egypt to find refuge there. 

When Solomon died, he led a delegation of the northern Israelite tribes which met King Rehoboam at the city of Shechem and demanded changes in the system of taxation and forced labor.  Their request was refused.
                                                         

This meant that the northern tribes declared their independence and anointed Jeroboam as their king of the 10 northern tribes, ceding from Judah and Simeon and some of Benjamin.  . 

Jerusalem was the capital of the tribe of Judah that they had now left and was kept as their capital.  They had not been involved with as much trade and the outside world as Ephraim and the other tribes had been, and were a poorer but bigger tribe. 

 The northern tribes used Shechem as their capital. Shechem is today's Nablus where many Arabs reside.  They chose this place because it was on an isolated elevation dominating a wide countryside.  It had an acropolis with a casemate wall within which was the royal palace in the Assyrian style.  Inscribed ostraca were found by excavators in the store-rooms and also ivory nlays recalling the "ivory house" built by King Ahab which withstood the siege of the Syrians but fell in 721 BCE to Sargon II of Assyria .  

In those days, people were taken away and replaced with other kinds of people.  The Northern tribes were taken eastward and many wound up in today's Afghanistan, Pakistan, parts and India and even now are scattered throughout the world in their attempt to find refuge from the terrorists who occupy their land, al Quada and the Taliban.  

The Assyrians replaced our 10 tribes with people of the Cutheans.  Who were these Cutheans?  
"In the Talmud, a central post-exilic religious text of Rabbinic Judaism, the Samaritans are called Cutheans (Hebrew: כּוּתִים‎, Kutim), referring to the ancient city of Kutha, geographically located in what is today Iraq."
                                   

Today's Samaritans celebrating Sukkot on Mt. Gerizim.  This is
the holiday of remembering the Exodus and making little huts to
sleep in on the way to Canaan from Egypt.  Ephriamites were
there, one of the 12 tribes of Jacob (Israel).  

The Cutheans then intermingled with some remaining people of the 10 tribes, and they in turn became the ancestors of the SAMARITANS, found later in history.  Today the Samaritans claim descent from the tribe of Ephraim, who were of the royal line of the northern tribes living in Tirzah, their capital. So they may have some DNA from Ephraim, but mostly from the Kutim (Cutheans) of Iraq.   

 They later moved over to Penuel, a town across the Jordan River to its eastern side. After that they again had to move, this time to a town called Tirzah.   The land of the northern tribes was later called Samaria and Tirzah remained its capital. 

This happened in 880 BCE when Omri became their king.  Omri had bought a hill from Shemer that became their capital.  Tirza was 25 acres in size.   

When Moses had taken their last census, Judah numbered 76,500 people, having gained 1,900 from the 1st census.  Simeon had 22,200 and Benjamin had 45,600.  These were the numbers at the end of the EXODUS.    Ephraim had 32,500 at the end of their 40 year trek and had lost 8,000 along the way.  Yet they remained a very important tribe, now thought to be the Pashtun's Afridi tribe in in Pakistan with some in Afghanistan. "The Afridis and other Pashtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistan have also been alleged to be the descendants of the lost Jewish tribes such as the Efraim.  However, DNA and other research towards validating such claims has been inconclusive.  I can tell you right now that more people need to be tested, especially from Afghanistan. 

Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan

                                                       

The thing that impresses me so much is that many of the 50 million tribal Pashtuns, a group of our former 10 Lost Tribes of Israel of which so many claim to come from King Saul, Israel's 1st king of the tribe of Benjamin, have retained so many of our customs.  So many of our customs of today's Jews are becoming forgotten customs by people in the USA except with the orthodox in general. A few of the important holidays are still being remembered by the Conservative and Reform group of Jews, but not many customs, such as lighting candles on Friday night.  Then again, the freedom that these countries like the USA have given us have caused much intermarriage, and often it takes two parents to decide on our continuing practices.  
                                                    

Lighting candles 30 minutes before sundown
starts Shabbat to be kept till 3 stars appear in the sky the
next evening.  A time of peace, to do no work, to pray.
I can guarantee that this reminds you who you are.  

The environment is not conducive to doing something out of the ordinary like lighting candles on a Friday night  in a secular society, evidently.  In America, Friday night is the night to swing, and Jews are to remain a little different but it's hard to maintain.   If people of one culture all live in the same neighborhood with a communal synagogue or synagogues to attend, it helps.  Our culture was about completely wiped out in Russia by their atheistic government.  It's amazing that with religion not allowed to be practiced in that country that so many Russian Jews did opt to move to Israel and live.  They were not about to convert to Christianity.  

By 1492 CE, Spanish Jews were confronted with the king's edict that they had to convert to Christianity or leave the country, THE SPANISH INQUISITION.  Jews who could not leave due to elderly parents, jobs, businesses, went underground, even going through baptism if forced, and then were in bigger trouble.  The government's religious group would torture people to get to the truth;  ARE YOU A JEW?  We were spied upon.  People watched to see if we did anything "Jewish." It was a time when a religion used torture and hatred; we see this all throughout history, actually.  Religion has been the world's #1 Topic of Importance.  ARE YOU A MEMBER OF OUR RELIGION? This is whether it be the Christians or the Muslims, Jews have been picked on to convert to their religion.  It hasn't been a topic like if we support weather changes, or if we support women leaders, or if we support working every day of the week or not, it's our religion that they can't tolerate.  
                                                     

The much feared line-up of Jews
Taking Jews away in 1941 in Europe to be killed
in gas chambers during the HOLOCAUST.  Jews
were good people.  They worked hard, created businesses,
were not criminals. Many German Jews were integrating in their
German society, which possibly was to their detriment.
They were seen as detestable competitors such as
how people viewed them during the Middle Ages.
 They were hated for being Jewish,
and so forced to wear the yellow star of David to their death.
6 million Jews were slaughtered in this way.

Today, it is in vogue to not believe in anything, if you look at the drop in attendance in our religious houses of worship. Then I see how the Pashtuns have kept enough of their past culture as to be spotted by educated people such as Dr. Shalva Weil of Hebrew University in Jerusalem and others to be practicing our Jewish traditions!  They also have kept an oral tradition going about their origins as well.  I'm afraid the Holocaust has wiped out much of our knowledge about our own Jewish family history that came from Europe.  So many records are just marked as coming from Russia, and it discounted the countries of the PALE OF SETTLEMENT such as Lithuania and Poland as being their past country of origin.  
                                                       

So I admire very much the mothers of the Pashtuns for educating their families in every generation about their ancestors.  They had to do this for at least 200 years longer than Judah's mothers did.  It's usually the mothers who teach the children in such things while the fathers might be involved in passing on skills in work to provide for the family.  You know, today we don't even have a father involved in doing just that, not in our Western civilization, anyway, and this is a tragedy.  
                                                         
                                                           

 
I see the difference in the two groups, the northern tribes and the southern tribe or tribes, was Babylon.  By being taken there, Judah remained pretty much in touch with each other and they developed a bond and a strong interest in their Torah and the brightest of the brightest studied it with all their heart, being taken away then from their beloved Temple.  
                                                            

They wrote a special book of their studies called the Babylonian Talmud.  Another one in Jerusalem was also being written by the people left there.  This kept them in constant touch with their customs, rituals and belief system.  
                                                     

Since the northern tribes were no longer connected to Jerusalem when they divided themselves from the southern tribe of Judah who maintained the Temple, they did not feel the anxiety and frustration that had built up for the Judeans.  Miraculously, they kept their love for their religion and continued to believe in ONE GOD in a new environment that was so different and believed in many many gods, a polytheistic world.  We know how hard that was, and so they developed strict rules that were all combined into what they called their Pashtunwali, their Talmud. 
                                                          

Neither the north or the south could stand alone against the world's empires.  If they had stayed together, they may have kept the Assyrians and Babylonians at bay.  How that could have altered world opinion of these people who stubbornly continued to believe in one G-d.  What changes might we have seen in the world?  Many are now pretty shaken up over the fact that Israel is again in existence after a 2,000 year lapse.  The rabbis are saying that no Messiah is about to appear until the north and the south are united once again.  Christians have been waiting for the Jews to get a red heifer without a touch of any other color!   Both might usher in more changes in the world.  If we  Jews build the 3rd Temple now-that will usher in more than just a change. 


Resource: The News Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnak
http://www.barmazid.com/2016/08/afridi-tribe.html

Israel's Civil War,Ceding From the Family Union:

Nadene Goldfoot                                               

                          So, it all started with King Solomon.

King Solomon, son of King David and Bathsheba
and from the tribe of Judah
Reigned from 961 BCE to 920 BCE
Known for building the first Temple in Jerusalem
and his wisdom in judging people's problems
He was known to have 1,000 wives and concubines.
His kingdom stretched from Egypt to the Euphrates River.
However, his forced labor policy impoverished the country.
Edomites and Arameans began to revolt.  

                                                        

Solomon deciding on who the mother of a child was of 2 women

The problem started with King Solomon's death in 920 BCE.  He had been taxing all the 12 tribes heavily in building the Temple.  His  superintendant of forced labor during Solomon's reign, Jeroboam, an Ephraimite,  succeeded him as king of Israel ruling from 933 to 912 BCE. 

Joseph wasn't given any tribal land.  Instead, his allotment went to his 2 sons.  His first son was Manasseh. the other-Ephriam.
Jacob, Joseph's father, had conferred on them an equal portion along with his own 11 other sons in the division of Canaan.  . Jacob also blessed Ephraim over his older brother (Genesis 48:20).Joseph had been kidnapped earlier and wound up in Egypt as the Viceroy with important duties.  

 He had led a northern tribe  revolt and had left to be in Egypt.  He returned when Solomon had died, leading  a delegation of the northern 10 tribes  demanding changes in forced labor.  This was refused  by Solomon's son, King Rehoboam and the northern tribes declared a ceding from the union.  Since this important meeting was in Shechem, Shechem became their capital. 
                                                        ,

Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem with the help of the king of Tyre

 The tribe of Judah had been fighting with the others over this so had their own king being Solomon's son, Rehoboam.   His mother was Naamah, an Ammonite,  Rehoboam was king  from 933 to 917 BCE.   Judah, Simeon  and most of Benjamin remained loyal to him and back him in his refusal to let up on the taxation Solomon had put in place, even though the the northern tribes had demanded relief from it.  Then  King Shishak of Egypt (originally of Libya) took advantage of the split and overran Judah and plundered the Temple for riches in Rehoboam's 5th year as a king.  When Jeroboam had fled to Egypt, he had stayed with Shishak!  
                                                            

Ethiopian Jewish immigrants on the last flight to Israel

Assyria attacked the 12 tribes in 722 BCE and the next year in 721 BCE, taking away the best of the people.  From Eldad Hadani who reported their history, the tribe of Dan that lived along the coast, was a strong warrior tribe that went into voluntary exile when the Israelite kingdom was divided after Solomon's death because they didn't want to participate in the imminent civil war between the Kingdoms of Judah and the Kingdoms of Israel.  He was right.  A war was waged later, and according to the report we read in Chronicles 13, half a million people were killed.  Dan had migrated from Israel to Egypt and continued along the Nile to Ethiopia.  This tradition has been supported by the great Sages down the ages.  Today Israel has taken in Ethiopians as citizens who have claim to be Jewish.  The Radbaz, a past sage, wrote "Those who come from the land of Ethiopia are certainly from the tribe of Dan, and because there were no sages and Cabbalists among them they only followed the written law of Moses.  Rabbi Jacob Kastro, the Maharikas, wrote, "We are commanded to redeem and restore the Ethiopian Jews, although they behave like the Karaites, because they are of the Dan tribes and didn't learn from Zadok and Boethus."  As for DNA, the Ethiopians do not show a connection to others, but their culture does.  Perhaps DNA doesn't show ancient DNA at the time of their testing for comparisons with today.  Give it time.  It will.  However, the rabbis have concluded according to reliable evidence and testimonies that the Ethiopian Jews do come from the tribe of Dan and in light of this halakhic tradition agreed with by the Chief Rabbi of Israel the Jews of Ethiopia have already begun to immigrate to Israel.  By 2012, their numbers in Israel are estimated at some 80,000 which does include converts to Christianity who are called the Falashmura.  Most have already reached Israel and have become Israeli citizens.  The Amishav Organization has information about them, but many other organization have been involved in bringing them to Israel.  They were facing dangerous times being persecuted for their religion by the surrounding peoples.  

King Saul was Israel's first king and was a Benjamite.  After the brief period of the united kingdom of Israel, Benjamin became part of the southern kingdom of Judah following the split into two kingdoms.  After the destruction of the northern kingdom, Benjamin was absorbed into the southern kingdom. When the southern kingdom was destroyed in the early sixth century BCE by the Babylonians,  Benjamin as an organized tribe faded from history.  But DNA remains.  Pashtuns claim to be from the tribe of Benjamin and from King Saul's grandson, Afghani.  
                                                     

Bnei Menashe community of northeastern India is returning to Israel.  These

belong to the Tribe of Manasseh who had been dispersed from Israel by the Assyrians some 2700 years ago.

The tribe of Manasseh was made up of a half of a tribe and were carried away by Pul, King of Assyria and Tiglath-Pilneser, also king of Assyria along with the Reubenites and the Gadits and brought them to Halah, Habor and Hara, and to the river Gozan.  (This is found in 1 Chronicles, 5:23-26.)

As for Manasseh,  several modern day groups claim descent, with varying levels of academic and rabbinical support. The Samaritans claim that some of their adherents are descended from this tribe. Further afield, in northeast India, the Kuki-Chin-Mizo Jews claim descent from Manasseh, and call themselves Bnei Menashe; in 2005 Shlomo Amar, Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, announced that he regarded this claim to be true, which under the Law of Return allows them to emigrate to Israel, as long as they formally convert to Judaism in accordance with halachic standards.

The Reubenites were one of three tribes (Gad, East Manasseh) occupying land east of the Jordan River. These three tribes became known as the Transjordan Tribes.

The tribe of Reuben, as well as those of Gad and East Manasseh, were known for their large herds and flocks. They, thus, required much grazing land. Did they find the same sort of place to live in Afghanistan or Pakistan?  

                                                         

Descended from the Tribe of Dan 2,739 years ago
at least when Assyrians attacked our Northern Tribes
They have been living in Ethiopia

I had the amazing experience of seeing the Ethiopian Jews in Israel as they lived across the street from my apartment in Safed.  They came in being quite ill and were taken to the hospital for treatment before living in the apartments.  Now, Safed is in the North, and it is cold in the wintertime.  Of course, this would happen that people from Africa would be placed in the colder northern part of Israel. As it turned out, this was the place where there were empty apartments.   They came dressed in sheets and were barefooted.  The community of Safed opened an empty apartment and turned it into a clothing shop so the new arrivals could pick and choose clothing themselves.  Soon, they were acting just like the rest of Israelis in the supermarket.  There was an art exhibit of their work in a center that I remember.  Such beautiful people, I remember, with a delicate bone structure and beautiful faces.  
                                                                       

Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi in Jerusalem, a Pashto.
Behind him is the Wall, the Kotel where Jews say prayers
Israel is to fund a rare genetic study to determine whether there is a link between the lost tribes of Israel and the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://www.npr.org/2013/09/01/217356628/last-flight-of-ethiopia-to-israel-jewish-migration-program
Book:  The Tribes of Israel-The Lost and the Dispersed, by Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail, from Jerusalem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe_of_Manasseh
http://navrasaafreedi.blogspot.com/2010/01/pashtun-clue-to-lost-tribes-of-israel.html

Facts About Judea and Samaria That You Might Not Know About

Nadene Goldfoot                                                        

Judea and Samaria are the heartland of Eretz Israel.  The Jewish history started there. 

 Abraham left Ur (today located in Iraq) and migrated to Canaan to live among the 

Canaanite and Philistines of what would become the state of Judah.  

They settled in Hebron.

Hebron (Kiriath Arba) is located 18 miles south of Jerusalem.  The Hittites lived here before 

Abraham's time.  Abraham bought a plot of land from them which included the Cave of 

Machpelah which became his family burial plot.  A mosque stands there today.

Joshua gave  Hebron to Caleb of the tribe of Judah, one of the spies,  and it became a 

levitical city, one of 4 places of refuge. The other 3 were Jerusalem, Tiberias and Safed.   

King David reigned from Hebron for 7 1/2 years before moving the capital to Jerusalem.    

                                                                                   

 King Rehoboam (933-917 BCE), son of King Solomon, and his Ammonite wife, Naamah,  was the first 

king of Judah, formed in 933 BCE.  Judah was created out of the southern part of Israel after King Solomon

 had died.  Israel had divided into Israel and Judah because Solomon had been charging very high taxes and

 the people were unhappy as many were forced into labor to for Solomon's building projects.  When they 

broke apart, Judah, of the tribe of Judah,  kept Jerusalem as their 

capital. Most of the tribe of Benjamin was also a part of Judah as well as having absorbed the tribe of 

Simeon which was isolated in the extreme south.  

                                                                        

At the time of this split, Shishak of Egypt used the opportunity to invade the country and 

plunder the Temple. 

Jeroboam took over as king of Israel at the split and ruled from 933 to 912 BCE.  He was of the

 tribe of Ephraim, an Ephraimite.  and his job had been a superintendent of forced labor during 

the reign of Solomon.  Then he led the revolt against the burden imposed on the people by the

 monarchy.  His revolutionary movement was at first suppressed, and he had to take refuge in 

Egypt.  When Solomon died, he led the delegation of northern tribes to meet Rehoboam at 

Shechem.  They demanded changes in the system of taxation and forced labor.  

When their request was refused, the northern tribes declared their independence, their 4th of 

July, and annointed Jeroboam as their king.  The capital started with Shehem, but was later 

changed to Penuel in what became Transjordan and then finally to Tirzah.  

5 years after Jeroboam became king, 60 towns of Israel were ravaged by an Egyptian invasion.  

Jeroboam set up new shrines at Bethel and Dan with a similar cult but centering around the 

symbols of the golden calves.  Boy, did he miss the mark of what Moses had taught his 

people.                                                                

Golden calves!  Moses, born in 1391 BCE, was 80 when he went to Egypt to free the Israelites

from their bondage.  It would have been in about 1310 that  Moses started his lectures on their 

new Laws of their monotheistic religion started by Abraham.  Whatever was Jeroboam thinking 

of!  He had been trying to combat the influence of the Jerusalem Temple and had felt the 

competition.  Many of his people may have  gone over to live in Judah.  Prophets were furious 

with him for doing this and said he sinned and thus caused Israel to sin.  He was a good man to

recognize the need to stop their own slave labor and high taxation, but wasn't very bright about

what they were all about with their religion.  

King Omri,  founder of a dynasty,  established Samaria as the capital of Israel in 880 BCE 

on a hill that had been bought from Shemer.  

. It was 7 miles NW of Shechem (Nablus) and was on an isolated elevation of 25 acres. 

 Samaria is also used to mean the entire northern region of the central highlands.  

                                                                                       

My question is whatever happened to King Solomon, the wise?  Remember how he solved the 

dispute of 2 women over a baby?  He said to cut the baby in half and give each woman half, but

 the real mother screamed not to do that, and then he gave her the baby.  

He caused his empire to                                             

12 tribes of Israel

divide which led to their becoming weak which brought about the success of the Assyrians 

in  722  BCE to attack Israel and carry off most all the 10 tribes that lived there.  

When the Babylonians gained power over the Assyrians in 597 BCE, they attacked Judah.

Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Temple in 586 BCE and carried off much of the population.  

Those that wished were able to return in 538 BCE, freed by King Cyrus II of Persia (Iran). 

He had taken over the Babylonian Empire, which is how he came to the Jewish people.  He 

was  an enlightened king, and told these Babylonian Jews to go back and rebuild their temple.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were from Hebron.  Jews have lived here since the days of 

Abraham.  In 1890 there were 1,500 Jews living here.  In 1929, Arabs, instigated by the 

Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,  massacred many of the town, then of 700, and those that  lived fled. 

30 families returned in 1931 but riots broke out again in 1936, and they could not return until 

after 1967's Six Day War.  Then, there were 38,310 people living in Hebron.  

Today there are 250,000 Arabs and 8,500 Jews living here.  

 "Israel has controlled the area since 1967, and as part of the Oslo process, Israel and the Palestinians signed the “Hebron Agreement” in which the city was split into two sectors: H1, controlled by the Palestinian Authority and H2, controlled by Israel. "

Jews have lived in Judah and Samaria for the past 4,014 years.  

Resource: http://www.jewishjournal.com/rabbijohnrosovesblog/item/the_cauldron_that_is_hebron_today_israel_journal_part_iv

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia