Between Our Genes and Our Dendrites: The Making or Breaking of Humans

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

  Today's DNA scientists, perhaps at Family Tree DNA in Houston, Texas.  They show me that my ancient origins show the autosomal DNA I carry from ancient European groups are:  28% hunter-gatherers;  50% farmers;  22% metal-age invaders.  

Scientists can examine our genes by putting our spit under something like a microscope.  Our genes are in all our cells of our body.  To be exact, DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the blueprint of life, the sequence of chemicals that defines each human being as unique.

 Twins, but not identical twins: Esau, born 1st with ruddy complexion,  and then Jacob who was to become the father of 12 sons:  the 12 tribes of Israel, for Jacob's name changed to Israel when he struggled or wrestled with a heavenly emissary and overcame him, being then given the name, Israel.  Each twin is so unique.  

Think of Isaac and Rebekah who had their twin sons, Esau and Jacob, 20 years after they were married. The Bible says he was 100 years old and when "his eyes were too dim to see", when he called his eldest son, Esau, to give him his last blessing recognizing his birthright.  Their DNA were obviously closer than any other brothers or sisters would be, but still carried some different genes as well. Isaac was the son of Abraham who was born in about 1948 BCE, about 4,000 years ago. They had accumulated far less genes than we carry today.  I suppose they were in the hunting-gathering stage. 

In this example, Isaac and Rebekah were 1st cousins, so their DNA overlapped. Terah was the father of Abraham and Rebekah's father was Bethel  who was also a son of Terah.  Rebekah's brother was Laban, the man that her son, Jacob, worked for in order to marry Rachel.  He had been working for his uncle.    

Twin brothers married twin sisters and they bore sons who look alike.  Amazing!   

Actually, "Identical twins form from the same egg and get the same genetic material from their parents — but that doesn't mean they're genetically identical by the time they're born.

That's because so-called identical twins pick up genetic mutations in the womb, as their cells weave new strands of DNA and then split into more and more cells. 

On average, pairs of twins have genomes that differ by an average of 5.2 mutations that occur early in development, according to a new study." 

Human DNA contains 3,147 million chemical nucleotide bases (A,G, C,T).  The total length of DNA present in one adult human is about 2x10"13  meters, the distance from the earth to the sun and back.  The DNA in an average chromosome-we have 23 of those, is about 5cm long.  Almost all (99.9%) nucleotide bases are exactly the same in all people;  and 97% are the same as the chimpanzee's.

Dendrites are part of our brain.   Hopefully, we have grown a lot of them.   Dendrites are appendages that are designed to receive communications from other cells. They resemble a tree-like structure, forming projections that become stimulated by other neurons and conduct the electrochemical charge to the cell body (or, more rarely, directly to the axons).  The more we use our brain to solve problems, the more dendrites we grow.  They're like the star we earn for every puzzle we solve.  Einstein must have had a lot of them as his IQ was 180, with 100 being average.  

Willis suggests that the most pleasant and rewarding way to increase your dendrites is to “meet and interact with intelligent, interesting people.” Try tournament bridge, chess, even sailboat racing. And remember, researchers agree that it's never to late."                        

Science has shown that mankind went into hunting when first becoming humans.  After he wised up, he became farmers.  But did you ever wonder why our Native Americans were still at the  hunters' stage  when the Mayflower landed in 1620?  They hadn't gone through the farming stage that Europeans had.

             Grinding corn they grew, made own pottery, too

The exceptions were  a few more isolated tribes such as the Pueblo who lived in higher housing and couldn't get out to hunt as well.  They resorted to growing corn and that saved them.  Traditionally, Pueblo peoples were farmers, with the types of farming and associated traditions of property ownership varying among the groups. Along the Rio Grande and its tributaries, corn (maize) and cotton were cultivated in irrigated fields in river bottoms. Among the western Puebloans, especially the Hopi, farming was less reliable because there were few permanent water sources. Traditionally, women did most of the farming, but as hunting diminished in importance, men also became responsible for agricultural work.

It has long been thought that prior to white settlement, Indigenous Australians lived a nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Now some scholars argue that the first Australians practised forms of agriculture and aquaculture, writes Cathy Pryor.  Some evidence is that they grew bananas, states another reference.

When Great Britain sent their criminals into exile in Australia, they also found a people different from themselves.  They were the "Aboriginal Australians who are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Islands." As they tell us,  "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the proud keepers of arguably the oldest continuous culture on the planet. Our heritage spans many different communities, each with its own unique mixture of cultures, customs and languages. Before the European invasion in 1788 there were more than 250 Indigenous nations, each with several clans.  Were they hunters or gatherers or farmers?  "Our people were great storytellers, passing on their cultures through songlines – an animist belief system expressed through songs, stories, paintings and dance. We were also expert hunters and gatherers and had sophisticated ways of taking care of the land.  The prevailing theory was that they had not yet gone through the farming stage.  

It seems that different people progressed according to how fast their particular DNA warranted the speed which was controlled by the dendrites, or vice-versa.  Necessity is said to be the mother of all invention, so it may be that necessity causes how fast our bodies react; as threat-free environment allows us to just live and enjoy.  

Our holy writings and legends all tell us that we came from Adam and Eve, one man and one woman, and this particular woman also came from Adam;  his rib, as a matter of fact, so she shared his DNA.  Yet, the sons of Adam haven't all developed at the same time nor at the same places other than knowing human life started in Africa. 

In fact, science is now thinking that before our stone age period, our paternal ancestor was something more like an Orangutan (tree man)  who was able to walk on two feet.  He lived in trees and finally came down, and he's the father of all of us;  going back extremely far, of course, and this came about after studying the remains of bones of the leg.  Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Classified in the genus Pongo, orangutans were originally considered to be one species.                                 

Intelligence comes from having the right genes and the use of our brains.  Having the right genes but being lazy about using your mind will get you nowhere.  A person who is constantly using his mind and learning, even as he or she ages, are using what they have, and need not worry about what genes they have inherited, except if their ancestors suffered from dementia a lot.  

Intelligence isn't everything, either.  One has had to have ambition and guts to get things accomplished, or the right friends in the right places and a lot of money for pay-offs.  

All this has to be dependent on our ecosystem; the water and nutrients in the soil that we eventually ingest.  This should have something to do with what kind of people we turn out to be. 

Animals are either getting smarter or always have been smart.

Wolfgang Kohler, the psychologist in 1920, observed that chimpanzees not only used tools to reach food, but that they could also make tools to reach food. 

Jane Goodall observed chimps in the 1960s doing so in the wild.  Until then, it was thought that only humans were able to make tools.  

We now know that Dolphins have a language, elephants mourn their dead, and even cats and dogs reason in their own cat and dog ways.  Dogs have been known to save their masters' lives in one way or another.  Bees communicate the way to the nearest flower through a kid of bee-dance.   

This all means that the modern day expectant mothers should be taking all the nutrients that modern medicine has to offer  in order to produce the best and healthiest child possible, and stay away from all the bad things like drugs, smoking, and alcohol. We don't want to be surpassed by the animals.  We are to stay on top.  

In the end, it's those genes and our environment that have made us who we are, and that environment helped to create all the dendrites that we had collected.  One seemed to affect the other.  We couldn't do much about the genes we inherited, but all through our lives, we are either prisoners or partners of our environment. Go and enjoy life.   

  

Resource:

DNA & Genealogy by Colleen Fitzpatrick & Andrew Yeiser

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.intoxicatedonlife.com/all-the-twins-in-the-bible/

https://www.amnesty.org.au/eight-facts-about-indigenous-people-in-australia/?cn=trd&mc=click&pli=23501504&PluID=0&ord={timestamp}&gclid=CjwKCAjwv4SaBhBPEiwA9YzZvJ2lSoFf5ltre5GWcrxftKwacr4xDo5d1F0CNP9xlzgKC2V1mJbt_xoCJ0IQAvD_BwE

youtube on orangutan father of us all

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pueblo-Indians

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/bushtelegraph/rethinking-indigenous-australias-agricultural-past/5452454

https://www.sdbif.org/articles/dendrites_grow.pdf

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

Going From Abraham's Revelations to Today's Judaism

Nadene Goldfoot                             

Long ago, at the time of Abraham in about the 2nd millennium BCE which was a good 4,000 years ago, mankind was practicing human sacrifice to appease the many gods that controlled earth, so they thought.  We know they did this because it is documented in our Tanakh that Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac, his son.  He had already come to the realization of there being only one G-d.  
                                                     

Aztec human sacrifice to appease their gods 
Human sacrifice was practiced in 1400s to mid 1500's 

  In some parts of the world, like South America, human sacrifice was practiced only a few hundred years ago with the Aztec  and Incan Indians at the time the Spaniards discovered their land.  They even ripped out the hearts of their victims, chosen as some of the best young people of the land.  The jungles of Africa contained tribes that even ate people, and were called cannibals.  There may have been some sort of transfer of bravery in doing such a thing in their thinking.  
                                                   

      
Abraham was stopped by an angel in our Bible and told not to sacrifice again.  That was the end to such practice.  Instead, he was to use a sheep or goat.  That was the beginning of our use of animal sacrifice for  paying for the sins they had been guilty of.  They were sin offerings.  A young bull was used for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering that were unblemished and were offered to G-d.  A he-goat (ram), calf and sheep in their first year were also used for burnt offerings.  A bull and a ram were used for peace-offerings.  Meal-offering mixed with oil which was some form of cracker were also used.  This was atonement for the person and their people.  
                                                          

In Leviticus 9 we see this performed for the first time directed by Moses and done by his brother, Aaron and Aaron's sons.  Their offerings brought out the descent of a Heavenly fire which represented G-d's appearance among the people.  Then Aaron's two oldest sons do more than asked by Moses using a strange incense of their choosing and are struck dead.  It was the reaction of the Heavenly fire that had filtered into the son's nostrils and burned them internally, saying in the writing that it was their souls that were burned.  Their bodies and clothing were not touched by any fire.  Our lesson in this ordeal is that we must learn to accept G-d's justice but also mourn over the misfortunes of our fellow man.  Ending of human sacrifice was not to be taken lightly.  This was serious.  No more human sacrifice.  Our being chosen to be G-d's examples in his lessons for good behavior depended on teaching this precept now of no more human sacrifices.  
                                                       

The Middle East was full of temples.  Phoenicians had at least    Marathus (Greek: Μαραθος, Marathos), was a Phoenician port located near present-day Tartus in Syria. Founded in the third millennium BC, Marat (Phoenician: 𐤌𐤓𐤕, mrt) was the northernmost important city of ancient Phoenicia and a rival of nearby Arwad. During the 2nd century BC, Amrit was defeated and its site largely abandoned, leaving its ruins well preserved and without extensive remodeling by later generations.
                                                               

Palmyra, Syria was the site of another temple where they worshipped Baal.  . "Palmyra was dedicated in 32 CE to the worship of Bel, or as most Bible readers would know him, Ba’al. Lower levels of the ground underneath the Temple of Palmyra indicate human occupation that goes back to the third millennium BC. Converted into a Christian church during the Byzantine Era, parts of the structure were modified into a mosque by Muslims in 1132. It remained in use as a mosque until the 1920s.   Lately ISIS has been going around destroying ancient artifacts of temples.  They are erasing history, making it easier to slip back into such behavior, the proof of man's folly and learning experience.  

"Yahweh, the God of Israel, continually condemned the worship of Baal, and the Lord sent His prophets to warn them of this idolatry and of the corruption of Baal's fertility rites. During the period of the kings of Israel Baal worship was prevalent, and even commanded. Queen Jezebel, the Phoenician wife of king Ahab, had 450 prophets of Baal as her court counselors. Elijah challenged them on Mount Carmel and Yahweh proved to be the true God.

At times of crisis, Baal's followers sacrificed their children, apparently the firstborn of the community, to gain personal prosperity. The Bible called this practice "detestable" (Deut. 12:31, 18:9-10). God specifically appointed the tribe of Levi as his special servants, in place of the firstborn of the Israelites, so they had no excuse for offering their children (Num. 3:11-13). The Bible's repeated condemnation of child sacrifice shows God's hated of it, especially among his people

Asherah was worshiped in various ways, including through ritual sex. Although she was believed to be Baal's mother, she was also his mistress. Pagans practiced "sympathetic magic", that is, they believed they could influence the gods' actions by performing the behavior they wished the gods to demonstrate. Believing the sexual union of Baal and Asherah produced fertility, their worshipers engaged in immoral sex to cause the gods to join together, ensuring good harvests. This practice became the basis for religious prostitution (1 Kings 14:23-24). The priest or a male member of the community represented Baal. The priestess or a female members of the community represented Asherah. In this way, God's incredible gift of sexuality was perverted to the most obscene public prostitution. No wonder God's anger burned against his people and their leaders.

What was going on was that our early men had to learn to substitute live people of human sacrifice with animals and that G-d would be satisfied with that.  They need not worry about gigantic catastrophes happening because they didn't have this kind of protection anymore.  They were living in worse times than we without knowing what to do in such events.  They were facing earthquakes, floods, erupting volcanoes, droughts, animal attacks, all sorts of things our mother nature has not confronted many of us with, though today's events are bad enough.  At least we are more equipped to handle it and help others.  
                                                   

Each time we have to actually think pretty hard to solve something, we grow dendrites in our brain.  Man probably had far less of them than we do today, so this was a major obstacle to overcome.  Accepting an animal to account for our sin that could bring on the death of thousands.  That's why they worried about their sins.  It caused bad things to happen to other good people.  As we gain more and more dendrites, we can solve problems more easily.  We get smarter.   "Alcohol, for example, causes the dendrites to shrink, while learning appears to lengthen them. The popular idea that drinking damages brain cells, as it turns out, is correct, even if it specifically hurts the dendrites, not the whole cell. These studies have shown the very real ways in which the brain and nervous system change, a trait known as plasticity which allows the body to evolve over the course of a lifetime to meet its needs."  After 3,000 years, lets hope we have evolved a bit mentally at least from experience and education.  

When the Assyrians attacked Israel in 721 BCE and took away the best of the northern 10 tribes, they took them away from this newer practice and into their own polytheistic world of many gods and human sacrifice again.  They didn't have the Temple to remind them of their own culture and no doubt they tried to hang on, but faced such things as Baal and other gods which overcame them with great temptations, being of awesome presentations and sexual as well. Such practices were growing in the southern kingdom.  Without the Temple, they could not perform any sacrifice, animal, burnt offering or meal.  I have wondered what the pull was into such Baal beliefs, and I think it was much like today's attractions, sex, drinking, entertainment, you name it.  
                                                      

The priests were replaced with the Cohens who now led them as rabbis and held a service in a residence of some sort which became synagogues. Synagogues were already an ancient institution by the 1st century CE, originating with the Babylonian exiles.   They had adjusted and accommodated themselves to their situation.  Animals do it in order to survive.  We did it, too, without losing a step in the Torah.  Our brains had to grow more dendrites to fit these unknown situations.   

Moses had set down the holidays we were to follow.  Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement was one of them.  In Leviticus 16 we see that Azazel  was a demon mentioned, so they did believe in such things back 3,000 years ago.  The scapegoat was sent to this demon.  What they did was have 2 goats as sin-offerings for the people.  The high priest cast lots and designated one goat FOR THE LORD and the other FOR AZAZEL. Aaron took it in his hands and stated all the sins of the people, their iniquities, so it was carrying all the sins instead of the people.   The one marked for this demon was sent into the wilderness and pushed over a precipice.  In apocryphal and midrashic sources, Azazel is usually represented as a fallen angel or an arch-demon, the personification of impurity.  The origin of the name is not known.  The term is used in modern Hebrew as a curse.  This goat carried all the sins of the people and then was killed.  It was the scapegoat.  Later on, a chicken was used by mothers as part of the preparation of Yom Kippur when this practice ended.  The chicken's neck was wrung in the process.  

We Jews have been the scapegoat of mankind ever since.  Whatever happens, we are blamed.  Then they also have done their best to kill us off.  Whether bad things are happening in the Middle East or the  Western world, Jews are blamed.  Even ridiculous things such as weather is blamed on us, and shockingly, believed by the populous.  In writing my 2nd book, I found such things happening in my research.  It's high time for people to stop blaming Jews for their misgivings and take on their own responsibility for their failures.  We're tired of it.  

Animal sacrifice and the others were replaced with doing mitzvote.  A mitzvah was a good deed.  The mind grew and grew to accept this and a final day each year of Yom Kippur, the time of asking pardon for one's sins, a day of 25 hours of fasting.  The mitzvah was an injunction found in the Torah.  Writings about this Torah had been continued and we see in the Talmud 613 laws from Moses or orders decreed by the rabbis.  So Jews had commandments which were good deeds to do.  it was all spelled out for them.  They say that knowing what is expected of you brings you more security and this it does.  The 613 was the number counted in the human body of bones that we have.  

In Medieval days, our scholars had divided the two between rational and revealed commandments.  Others had divided them between  those performed by the limbs of the body and those by the heart.; commandments regulating conduct between man and his Maker and between man and his fellows; commandments contingent upon a particular time and those permanently obligatory;  commandments applicable only to  Eretz Yisrael   and those not depending upon being in Eretz Yisrael.   Mitzvah means any good or charitable deed, and also to synagogue honors.  What I know is that most of them are done normally anyway, so it's not all that difficult.  
                                                     

Several hundred years later the southern tribe of Judaea and some of Benjamin left with them were also taken away, this time in 586 BCE by the Babylonians who now held the older Assyrian lands as well.  This time, the Jewish people were made up of a stronger minded tribe who had been close to the Temple and did not bend during the 80 some years in Babylon to strange gods.  They continued to let their religion expand to fit the situation and wound up writing the Babylonian Talmud full of all sorts of advice and facts to follow.  Their minds were developing as they put them to use to solve questions about the Torah and Tanakh, and in a group they could come to conclusions.  

In fact, when the time came and they could return home and rebuild their destroyed Temple of Solomon, many chose to remain.  They had acclimated to their surroundings and felt comfortable.  So some returned, with older and wiser leadership who taught when they got back as well as get their 2nd Temple built.  After all, they were going back as pioneers with much to develop from scratch again, and they were not sure of the welcome they would receive from those that never departed.  

Their religion lived through the interruption of forced labor and transfer of people to new lands and loss of Temple and animal sacrifice without turning to their kidnappers' ways.  Maybe by then they were just too disgusting to them to copy.  Nebuchadnezzar II, the Babylonian leader from 604-561 BCE was followed by Cyrus who allowed the Jews to return to Judah while there were whole towns populated by Jews that remained.  

During this Babylonian exile, we had such writers produce their work such as Hillel,, the Talmud, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Tobit.  Babylon had become the center of rabbinic studies.  Academies were founded by Samuel and others.  Babylon had become the spiritual center for all Jewry. The Talmud was a compilation of the records of academic discussions and of judicial decisions of Jewish Law by generations of scholars and jurists from the many academies and from more than one country during several centuries after 200 CE.  Each of the Talmuds came with a Mishnah and a gemara, commentaries on and supplements to the Mishnah.  People in the Babylonian Talmud lived before 500 CE;  the Palestinian one before 400 CE.  
                                                           

The Jewish Diaspora grew and looked upon Jerusalem as our spiritual center.  Hellenization grew under Ptolemaic rule 312-198 BCE and then under the Seleucids in trying to establish a Greek city.  Antiochus IV, all for Hellenization led to the desecration of the Temple and religious persecution against Jews that brought on the Hasmonean revolt.  Judah the Maccabee restored the Temple service in 164 BCE and we added a holiday of Hanukkah to our year.  In 63 BCE, Pompey the Roman General, was there at war.  Herod ruled as king by 37 BCE and then in 70 CE the Temple was destroyed along with the city which was taken over by the Romans who also had influence over their religious thinking.  

By 300 CE they were holding a meeting in Antioch and Constantinople about their new religion, Christianity, which had been started by a few Jewish followers of Jesus,son of Mary and Joseph, who offered some new thinking about Judaism, died as thousands of young Jewish men did on the Roman crosses put up to punish any unwanted behavior.  Followers of Jesus said that Jesus had lived through his punishment. He had died and came to life.  This miracle was the base of a new belief.   Jews were not permitted to compete with this new Christianity.  They had many laws that were created in these meetings against the Jews.  

New Christians were having a hard time.   As part of their civic duty, each adult was expected to sponsor a sacrifice in the Roman temple once per year.  Many Christians refused to do this because it would force them to acknowledge the legitimacy of Pagan Gods.   Adults were expected to acknowledge Caesar as THE SON OF GOD AND SAVIOR.  Many Christians would not do this, either.    To Greeks and Romans, savior had a different meaning. It was used for a Roman Emperor, and before the Greek used it in recognition of a noble action in performing deeds that safeguarded people or preserved what was precious to the people.  It was a title for these special people, something like being a hero.  So not only did they make their leader a god but a hero as well-the savior of the people.  Preventing a war might earn them such a title. 

 "Notice how the word “savior” was used in connection with Julius Caesar: “In addition to these remarkable privileges they named him father of his country, stamped this title on the coinage, voted to celebrate his birthday by public sacrifice, ordered that he should have a statue in the cities and in all the temples of Rome, and they set up two also on the rostra, one representing him as the savior of the citizens and the other as the deliverer of the city from siege, and wearing the crowns customary for such achievements” (Dio 44.4.5)."

 In this foreign land Jews were still outsiders and were persecuted by the natives.  The position of Jews continued to be difficult until the Arab conquest in the 7th century CE.   Babylonia was conquered by them in 637.  What happened was that the Jews, this large and ancient Jewish community, favored and even assisted the Arab advance in the hope that it would be better than what they were living under, the Sassanid persecution.  

After the Arabs occupied the land, there were Jews who had been expelled from Arabia who came in and settled in Kufa.  Their land continued to be the center of Jewish life for the next few centuries.  This SW Asian country, called Babylonia in the former Mesopotamia, is now considered as the land of Iraq.  

How anti-Semitism worked in the Middle Ages was in accusing Jews of human sacrifice of taking a child's blood and using it in the making matzos for Passover.  Part of our laws that are irrelevant to other religions is not to eat any blood of any animal, let alone the blood of a human, G-d forbid. Not wanting to know about us leads to all these distortions.   The law of Kashrut-something other people also find unnecessary, covers the laws of not eating blood and how to cleanse a special section of the animal to be blood-free.  It involves soaking in salt water, and choosing on certain portions of the animal to eat without arteries which supply blood to the body.  It even involves how to kill an animal without causing it to feel any pain.  Without that knowledge, the shekhet could not have a butcher shop.  

Zionism developed because of the need of having one's own state again.  Theodor Herzl was appalled at the conditions his fellow Jew had to live under for so long.  Being a reporter, he was a great writer and wrote  a book of his ideal, called THE JEWISH STATE (Der Judenstaat) of what it would be like in 1896.  His book rallied many and they started thinking of the possibilities again that they themselves could do something about their history.  The irony is that Theodor was not a religious Jew, but he had great feeling for his fellow man;  his people.  He knew that what was happening to them was wrong.  
                                                        

Jews of Lebanon

The Arabs' final attainment of Iraqi independence was in 1932 and was accompanied by the persecution of the Jews.  Hundreds of Baghdad Jews were killed and wounded in a pogrom during the revolt of Rashid Ali in 1941, going along with WWII.  

At the time, Arabs had joined the Axis group in this world war, who were the Nazis and they lost the war.  Talks had been going on with the Allies as to what to do with the Middle East land, and Jewish leaders were involved.  The Allies won the war and England was given a 30 year mandate to be in charge of Palestine.  At the end of this period, the land would go to the Jews for a Jewish Homeland.  That would solve both people's problems-of maintaining Jews in their countries that they didn't want and giving Jews their ancient land that they had lost to the Romans.  Both groups should be happy with such an outcome. 
                                                          

    

The Arabs had invested their time also and had chosen the wrong side to back.  They managed to finagle 80% of the land designated to go to the Jews for themselves and the Jews got the remaining 20%, mostly desert.  They took it.  They had had enough of the Russian pogroms; instant attacks into their villages ending in deaths and destruction.  A piece of their ancient land was better than nothing, and besides, they had people there since 1880 building up land and cities for themselves during the Ottoman Empire days.  No one else had done a thing with the land.  It had just been sitting there going to waste.  

Jews have never had much peace, nor have they always been treated like other citizens while in others' lands.  The way they have had to evolve and still feel committed to their original vow to G-d to follow his instructions is to evolve and fit into their circumstances.  It's given their dendrites a workout to constantly figure out how to do this.  Life is still not being on  Easy Street.  

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-dendrites.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_hise.htm
https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/64582/temple-baal-ancient-idol-worshiped-biblical-times-will-stand-times-square-biblical-zionism/
https://www.thattheworldmayknow.com/fertility-cults-of-canaan
Tanakh, The Stone Edition, ArtScroll Series, explanation of lines done by biblical commentators such as Rashi, as to how Jews interpret writings.
http://incamayanaztec.com/inca-human-sacrifice.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibalism
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2001/cannibal.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Zionism
http://christianmonthlystandard.com/index.php/savior-in-the-roman-world/

Jews and Their Dendrites

Nadene Goldfoot                               

Around 1946 when I was a young girl, my father told me about something new that would enter our life.  TV.  I thought he was crazy.  Movies in our home?  How far out he was.  What an imagination!  It was impossible!  I was almost angry with him for trying to tell me such nonsense.  Everyone knew movies were in theaters, not one's home. Crazy father!   My mind not only couldn't understand what he was talking about but rejected it completely.  I hadn't grown enough dendrites to wrap around what he was talking about.  Evidently he had read about how Philo T. Farnsworth had invented it in 1927 and people were starting to write about it.   As I look back now, it's very much like what Frank L. Baum had pictured in his mind when he wrote the Oz books.  What dendrites he must have had!
                                                                           

Son born in 1953, daughter in 54, in new age of TV and Mr. Moon, their favorite TV program. It came before Sesame Street was even thought about.   

My parents were able to buy their first TV in Portland, Oregon in 1953, the year my son was born.  He never had to wrack his brain about the possibility of TV-pictures coming into homes.  I loved it!
                                                                         

Every time our mind has to wrap around a new idea presented to us, our brains with their neurons will grow dendrites that propagate electrochemical stimulation.  Doing things that require some deeper thinking such as solving crossword puzzles or doing math problems will grow these dendrites which obviously aid in developing a higher IQ.

The lives we Jews have led from our beginnings have presented the many unwanted opportunities to grow many dendrites, probably more than most people as we have had so many times in which problem solving has been paramount in extending our lives.
                                                                           

Starting with Abraham, who was the father of monotheism who had some sort of breakthrough in his thinking when he realized as the idols in his father's workshop fell and broke, that they really were only clay and not gods.  He was unique in this realization, like another Einstein figuring out the theory of relativity.    People never thought about anything else but that clay idols were gods.  They never questioned it.  No dendrites growing in those brains in the city of Ur which was in today's Iraq.
                                                                             

Babylonian Empire

     

 Iraq as we know it today with capital-Babylon.  

Iraq was in Mesopotamia and the capital then as it is now was Babylonia (Bavel) or also known as the land of Shinar or of the Kasdim (Chaldees.).  It was the cradle of humanity and the tower of Babel took place here.  Abraham was born in Ur as his father and his people had come from the EAST.  Abram, as he was first called, migrated to what was to become Eretz Yisrael where he later fought against Amraphel, king of Shinar.
                                                                       

 From there Abraham's grandson, Jacob had taken his family group of 70 and had wrestled with the problem of famine in the land by trekking into nearby Egypt when they grew in numbers but were taken as slaves totaling the next 400 years.  It took a lot of dendrite-growing to grapple with the problem of existence there while they were forced to build Egypt's storage cities.  Moses had the problem with his conscience of having to return to Egypt after fleeing to do his part in rescuing his people and with that one G-d's directions, and managed to get them back to Canaan where they had come from 400 years before.  But it had changed.  It took them 40 years of traveling to get to that short distance and the first generation had died off before they got there.  They tamed the land and built an empire.  They became like other people with kings Saul, David and Solomon ( 961-920 BCE)
                                                                     

Relief of Assyrian taking away Israelites as slaves

Babylon was known to be a place of insolent pagan tyranny.  The Babylonian Nebuhadnezzar II (604-561 BCE) had inherited the Assyrian Empire. The northern section of the Israelite kingdom had already been defeated and exiled by the Assyrians about 160 years earlier than the Babylonian Exile in 722-721 BCE.
                                                                       

Nebuhadnezzar conquered the state of Judah (the southern part of what had all been Israel to Kings Saul, David and Solomon) in 597 BCE and again 11 years later in  586 BCE. .  Those attacks resulted in many Jews taken away by them to Babylon, a land completely different from their native land.  At the time, the Jews were made up of the tribe of Judah who inhabited Judah along with many from the tribe of Benjamin and a portion of Levi who were defeated and exiled by Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian soldiers. "Though the cream of the Jewish crop was now exiled from Judah, the majority of Jews remained after Yechanya’s surrender."  Zedekiah was the last King of Judah.  (597-586 BCE)  
                                                                                   

This exile had lasted over 18 years and in 3 stages.  In the last stage, Jerusalem's walls were breached and the Temple of Solomon was destroyed in 586 BCE.  Most of the best of the Jews were taken forcefully.  Some were able to remain in Judah and a small group fled to Egypt.  This is recorded and mentioned again is Psalm 137: 1, 3-6.  "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, and we wept, when we remembered Zion (Jerusalem)..For there they who carried us away captive asked us for a song.."  How cruel in that they were expected to perform and amuse their captors.  That must have cut deeply.  They vowed never to forget their homeland of Jerusalem.

At first they were most depressed and felt that they had been wrong about believing in ONE all inclusive G-d.  Then they realized that they couldn't be like the other nations who put their faith in worshipping wood and stone.  Their depression was only situational.  They adjusted to their new lives as best they could and started growing a few dendrites as they worked out their new position.

The prophet Ezekiel (Yechezkel)  taught them a new idea in that it was they who had betrayed their G-d, not that G-d had betrayed them.  They had to accept responsibility for what had happened to them.  What a new idea!  Everyone had always blamed THE GODS when things went wrong berfore.  All was not lost.
                                                                     

Building the 2nd Temple

Jeremiah (Yirmiyahu) had made the prediction of a 70 year exile before building the 2nd Temple which they knew about.  They followed given instructions of living a good life in the meantime.  They were able to settle in Babylon and Nippur and other towns along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers where they would remain for more than a millennium.  The irony is that this is where Terah, Abraham father was presumed to have come from in the first place  when the "East" was mentioned.  It's not known if they came from somewhere further than this as the rivers might have acted as a barricade.

If you want to get really picky, those who today carry the Cohen gene from Aaron and Moses are identified by the J1 haplogroup and they originated around 10,000 to 15,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent which includes Jews, Arabs, Armenians, and Kurds and found in the largest groups from Iran and Iraq where it is thought to have originated.  The Q1b1a haplogroup of Jews started as Qs in central Asia 15,000 to 20,000 years ago and migrated through northern Eurasia and even into the Americas. G haplogroup, also found in Jews, originated 30,000 years ago along the eastern edge of the Middle East or India or Pakistan and then went into central Asia, Europe and the Middle East.  They really kept moving.   People as we know each other are found to have originated in Africa and then went into Asia and went Westward.  As we heard in Oregon, the saying had been GO WEST YOUNG MAN.  Evidently its an old saying.  Very old, you might say.  Follow the sun to where it sets.

Our Jews had been farmers and artisans and now they had to adjust to mercantile communities. They learned new banking and commerce skills quickly.  Many even became wealthy and got into politics.  They had business contacts with the empire's ruling classes.  They learned to fit right in.  A good number of descendants from Solomon's royal family  included Daniel, Chananiah, Mishael and Azariah and they served as attendants in the Babylonian royal court.  Daniel became very important after explaining Nebuchadnezzar's dream to him.  The government treated the exiled Jewish kings, Yechanya and Tzidkiyahu  (Zedekiah (597-586 BCE) with respect.
                                                                       

Hanging gardens of Babylon, beauty of buildings

Perhaps it was their ancestor slaves that learned to get along with other slaves brought in from other parts of the known world then.  Socially, the Jews were doing well in Babylonia.  They preserved their identity in genealogical trees found in books of Ezra and Nechemiah.  They held onto their religious beliefs even more so than their predecessors, not wanting to make the same mistakes.  However, they were in danger of becoming assimilated into this impressive world of huge size and grandeur with their buildings and hanging gardens.  The Babylonian culture was revolutionary for its time.  They had universal education and literacy for both men and women.  Their writing consisted of cuneiform symbols.  They spoke Aramaic, which was closely related to the Jews' Hebrew.  Aramaic became the Jews' spoken language even when they returned to Judah.  The Talmud is written in Aramaic.
                                                                             

Babylonians excelled in astronomy and mathematics.  This could be where the Jews got their start with mathematical skills.   Priests could become astronomers, scientists who observed and recorded the movements of the stars and planets.  Others created advanced number systems and this must have led to the future Arabs of the land creating the Arabic numerals that we use today of 1 2 3 etc..  They had created a calendar system that resembled the same calendar Jews use today; both based on the moon.  Jews even adopted 4 Babylonian names for the months which shows the tie between the 2 methods of counting.  The 12  Jewish months start with the Autumn month of Elul, Tishrei, Cheshvan, Kislev, Tevet, Shevat, Adar I, Nissan, Iyar, Sivan, Tamuz, and Av.
                                                                                 

Babylonians also had a collection of laws and edicts they may  had inherited from  King Hammurabi, known as the Code of Hammurabi.  This code gave protection to all of Babylonian society, poor and rich.  They protected the weak and poor including women, children and slaves against injustice coming from the rich and powerful.  It's good they had been taken into such a society.  Jews kept the Torah as well.

Later, they found themselves in a Hellenistic culture which did not make Torah and its laws followed as easily.   Babylonia lacked the intellectual and spiritual grandeur that the Greek culture had.  The Babylonian culture failed to appeal in the same way to the Jewish people to draw them away from what they had.  Jews felt they were the light in the darkness with what they had to offer so were not enticed by the coarser nature of Babylonian life.
                                                                   

Greek God Zeus 

Only when the Greeks arrived in the Jews'  lives with  their balance of physicality and aesthetics on the one side and intellectual, philosophical and spiritual pursuits on the others, were the Jews facing a great soul-searching challenge.  Again, much exercise of those dendrites became exhausting in solving problems of the soul  as well as their physical hardships.
                                                                           

The challenge of avoiding this-Atomic bomb destruction

Like the Jews who were forcefully returned to their origins of Iraq by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, the Western Civilization is again focused on this part of the world which may be in its final stages if Iran has its way and gets nuclear power.  2600 years from before and we have to use more dendrites in solving this dilemma.  Are we about to let the Middle East go wild in having the need to arm themselves with like power to defend themselves?  Coupled with the religious pronouncement from Judaism, Christianity and Islam is the fact that we are in the days of the end of the world, and we can really see how it could end with atomic mishandling.  It hasn't been enough that we have the worry of North Korea having such power being they are also an unstable country in our eyes.  No, the Iran regime of Ayatollas do not find favor in Israel's eyes because they have been threatened over and over with extinction by them.  Their religion has been a religion of doing what they say they will do.  In other words, no warnings without intention to follow through.

Resource: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=dendrites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrite
https://books.google.com/books?id=euGWH26HOmAC&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=dendrites+and+IQ&source=bl&ots=1jtFC2AQWd&sig=3C1NKDL5Q3Thwlu-I-eKZvyMYTM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAWoVChMIl4z_junixgIVTBWSCh2EMQ5_#v=onepage&q=dendrites%20and%20IQ&f=false
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleability_of_intelligence
http://www.torah.org/learning/yomtov/5774/asarabteves.html
The Jewish Press, July 3, 2015, front page, p. 87.
http://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/987524/jewish/Why-Babylonian-Names-for-Jewish-Months.htm
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Babylonian_numerals.html

http://immortallife.info/articles/entry/why-is-the-iq-of-ashkenazi-jews-so-high