Miracle Gift To the World From Abraham: Moses and Torah

Nadene Goldfoot                                                

The awesome Torah. which we all received through Moses, is the biggest miracle of all.  Moses was Abraham's gggggrandson through his parents of Amram and Jochebed, grandfather Kohath, ggrandparents Levi and Milkah, gggrandparents Jacob-Israel and Leah, ggggrandparents Isaac and Rebeccah, and gggggrandparents Abraham and Sarah of the 2nd millennium BCE.  Abraham was born in c1948 BCE and Sarah was his niece.  So Moses is Abraham's direct descendant.  He  carried  the Cohen gene, for he made his brother Aaron the 1st Cohen, and must have been carrying the J1 haplogroup, the male line of their DNA.

So in the 15th paragraph, Abram, for that was his original name, was told about his descendants by G-d.  They shall be aliens in a land not their own, and they will serve them and will be oppressed by them for 400 years.  His descendants would not be able to take the land G-d was giving to them until after the 400 years of oppression.   That nation G-d shall judge who oppressed them, and afterwards your descendants will leave with great wealth.  The 4th generation (here one generation may mean 100 years)  shall return to where we stand, and then he speaks of the Amorites' wickedness, yet to come.  
                                                                       

Moses on Mt Sinai receiving the 10 Commandments
A list of to-dos and not to-dos to a people for the 1st time

Our history says that G-d dictated this phenomenal piece of literature, history, genealogy and legal  laws to follow a moral code and be a people others would want to emulate.  It is something we could not by ourselves create even in this day and age, and this was written over 3,328 years ago,  started  when Moses was 80 years old.  We figure Moses was born in 1391 BCE and died at age 120 in 1271 BCE, so this was written in the 40 years of the Exodus leading 650,000 from Egypt to Canaan.  That would place the writings starting in about 1311 BCE and concluding in 1271 BCE when Moses died.  The Torah thus was started 3,328 years ago                                              

                                                                       
First of all, it would have been no easy matter for Moses to journey back to Egypt after being gone for 60 years and start this trek at age 80 over desert lands.  Hopefully he had a camel and lots of food and water with him packed up on those humps.  Then the journey out of Egypt with the leadership of  the 12 tribes of Jacob and other freed slaves of other people and sorting out the organization, food, disciple and rules on the way must have been exhausting.
                                                                       

We know it tried his patience at times, and his anger is written into the Torah when he struck a rock, or dealing with people yearning for food they did not find on the road.  What road?  That's another matter.  There was no road.  They were traveling on ground not traveled on before and could not lose their way.  Yet it took them 40 years to move 603,550 people to their destination.  The distance was only about 480 miles and a car could have driven it in 9 1/2 hours on route 90 in today's world not even as a crow flies, but in a distance from Egypt to Eilat and then up north to Israel.

He had only  601,730 people with him when he arrived at Canaan after traveling 40 years having lost 1,820 after these 2 generations went by.  The older generation died on the way and he arrived with a new generation who had not experienced slavery, only walking or riding the distance.  That's what was expected and needed to happen.
                                                             

Moses needed to educate anyone who would read about our history, so he started at the beginning with Genesis (Bereishis).  Brilliant. What an introduction!   Nothing would make sense when he started to tell us how to become a great society that would be the most moral this planet had ever seen if we didn't have a beginning of this story.    Moses had been educated as a prince of Egypt and could have heard of histories found on clay tablets in Ur, today's Iraq.  Egyptians would have had to travel 1,072.1 miles and by car it would take more than 21 hours on route 90 to get there to obtain some of these tablets.  A camel traveled about 15 miles a day back then.  It would have taken a caravan 2 months of traveling to get to Ur. The Creation story is but a small fraction of the Torah.  He tells us the creation of the mountains and valleys and the creation of the people who give meaning and purpose to the universe they live in. This 1st of the 5 books tells how this family  became the Chosen People.  It tells us how events in the lives of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were portents for the future history of their descendants.   As the chosen, we were the ones to accept the responsibilities, a hard position to be in, but we did.  

The themes of Genesis are: Making Choices, winnowing through them  and the tests we met..  This universe is a mixture of good and evil, and it is each one's responsibility to choose the good and spurn the evil.  We see Noah as an example of not following the crowd in a corrupt society.  Abraham stood tall when everyone else failed.  Isaac and Jacob win over Ishmael and Esau.  Jacob's family carries on the legacy of the Patriarchs.  A great person must overcome adversity, and we see Abraham tested.  

The clay tablets told a story similar to Genesis.  "Sumerian cuneiform, dating back to the Third Dynasty of Ur, which ruled southern Iraq more than 4,000 years ago.

"Much of the Hearst Museum collection of tablets - heavy on the recording of animal sales and grain purchases - was long considered "kind of garbage can, mundane stuff," said Carnahan. Scholars were more interested in finding tablets that told epic tales and myths.

On clay tablets at Ur was found the 7th Century BCE Gilgamesh flood myth of ancient Mesopotamia  dating from the Third Dynasty of Ur (circa 2100 BC)..  It  is a flood myth in the Epic of Gilgamesh.  Many scholars believe that the flood myth was added to Tablet XI in the "standard version" of the Gilgamesh Epic by an editor who utilized the flood story from the Epic of Atrahasis.   A short reference to the flood myth is also present in the much older Sumerian Gilgamesh poems, from which the later Babylonian versions drew much of their inspiration and subject matter. " This story told on clay tablets parallels our account Moses tells in the Torah.  My belief, and many others' feelings are that stories like this are based on fact.  People had reason to explain to their children how some things came about.  Moses heard it from G-d, and he may have heard of the story in his Egyptian classes as well, though it was certainly not an Egyptian tale amplifying their unique religious beliefs.  

"Mesopotamia was known in antiquity as a seat of learning, and it is believed that Thales of Miletus (known as the 'first philosopher') studied there. As the Babylonians believed that water was the 'first principle' from which all else flowed, and as Thales is famous for that very claim, it seems probable he studied in the region. Intellectual pursuits were highly valued across the region, and the schools (devoted primarily to the priestly class) were said to be as numerous as temples and taught reading, writing, religion, law, medicine, and astrology. 

                                                 

Chaos Monster and Sun G-d 

There were over 1,000 deities in the pantheon of the gods of the Mesopotamian cultures and many stories concerning the gods (among them, the creation myth, the Enuma Elish), and it is generally accepted that biblical tales such as the Fall of Man and the Flood of Noah (among many others) originated in Mesopotamian lore, as they first appear in Mesopotamian works such as The Myth of Adapa and the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest written story in the world. The Mesopotamians believed that they were co-workers with the gods and that the land was infused with spirits and demons (though `demons’ should not be understood in the modern, Christian, sense)."  

                                                 

How the world was created

Noah and the flood

After the creation story, Moses gets right into the genealogy  and story of our people in Genesis.  His writing is concise but to the point.  After all, he had to bring along on the trip sheepskins all rolled up to use as paper was not invented in those days yet.  That would have been heavy and bulky, as it had to last a long time, or he would have had to use skins from sheep they had killed for meat, and go through the trouble of preparing them.  Thus, the story of the flood was an historic event that had happened long before Moses' time and was recorded by others in Mesopotamia and Babylon.  The 5 Books of Moses was not a book of fairy tales but honest accurate reporting and recording.   Genesis ends with the Patriarchal family becoming a nation that has been purified and is noble, ready to withstand a terrible exile in Egypt and follow Moses to Mount Sinai.  

                                                      

Then he told about the Exodus (Shemos) itself in detail.  The nation of Israel takes shape and learns about faith.  Where the family had entered Egypt as a family of the viceroy, Joseph, and felt very privileged for that, Egypt resented the growth of this immigrant people and it became their undoing being they were made slaves.  This chapter has the miracles that Moses performed to sway the Pharaoh to release them after 400 years.  It's a chapter of Redemption.  The climax is the construction of the Tabernacle (Temple), the resting place for G-d's Presence, of overpowering holiness.  

                                                                         

After Exodus the 3rd chapter was named Leviticus (Vayikra), about the offerings to bring to the one G-d.  It covers information about the Cohens or Priests and laws of the Temple service with them.  It's about sacrifices, but by bringing an offering, comes closer to G-d and elevates his level of spirituality.  We modern people reading this are the product of 19 centuries of living without the Temple in our life and this part seems odd to us.  Wherever the Torah speaks of offerings, it uses the 4 letter name of G-d that signifies His mercy.  The offerings are the way He gives us to rejuvenate ourselves, to bring ourselves to elevation and purity into our lives.  Maybe its just as simple as in sacrificing our time to think of G-d.  

                                                                  

Numbers (Barnidbar) is the 4th chapter of the Torah and tells in detail about the wandering in the Wilderness that took place and problems in entering the land once again that Jacob's 70 people had left due to a famine for Egypt 400 years previously.  It has the counting procedure that Moses used and the sum of the people in the census taken. It tells how the children emerged strong and courageous and ready to claim their destiny as heirs to the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  

                                                    

Foreseeing Solomon's Day and making wise choices

Deuteronomy (Devarim) is the 5th and final chapter of the Torah.  This summary of the story, and is what makes the organization of the Torah so special and modern, was also referred to as the Repetition or Review of the Torah by the Mishneh Torah.  it was the prophet Moses' last will and testament to his beloved people where he warned them of potential pitfalls and inspired them to rise to their calling.  This was Israel's introduction to the new life they would have to forge in Eretz Yisrael.  They would plow, plant, and harvest.  They would have courts and a government.  They would have social relationships and the means to provide for and protect the needy and helpless.  They would need strong faith and self-discipline to avoid the problems and temptations of their pagan neighbors and false prophets.  

The function of the Torah was reemphasized with the laws and Moses' appeals to the conscience of the people.  This chapter didn't review everything he taught but went over things needed for Israel's new life in its land.

                                                   

Deuteronomy  was heard from the mouth of Moses.

Moses told it using the type of words like the prophets would use who came after Moses. They also heard G-d speaking and then would tell the nation of Israel the next day.  They heard the prophet's comprehension of the words heard by them.   It ended as all good literature should, rounding up what was told throughout this book of Moses.    

People today act bad enough.  I can't imagine how bad bad was before the flood.  The killing that went on at the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE was horrendous.  Romans stood by unnerved by the smell of death, the starvation and the blood running in the streets.  So they are also today at the slaughter in Aleppo, Syria when so many have been killed, women and children alike.  Those very people of the Middle East who dished it out to the Jews and others have been on the receiving end as refugees fleeing their destroyed land.  No, people have not yet learned or changed much since the days of Moses.  The science has evolved but the people have not kept up with it.  Their genes do not mutate very fast for understanding to evolve.  Only education will bring it on, like Moses proved, by changing a nation over 40 years after 400 years being held down as slaves.  Moses, however, had help from the higher power of G-d.  

Update: 12/20/16 1:00pm G-d telling Abram the future of his descendants, critique by Elisheva Pickthorn

 Resource:Torah, Stone Edition, ArtScroll Series by Rabbis Scherman, Zlotowitz. 

 https://www.raptureready.com/faq/faq220.html

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

Our Miracle of Chanukah Story's Enemy, Antiochus IV and His Wife, Laodice IV

Our Miracle of Chanukah Story's Enemy, Antiochus IV and His Wife, Laodice IV

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Our Chanukah celebration is that of success in a war against the Greeks in 164 BCE that had to do with being overrun by an empire's army and our precious 2nd Temple.

The Greek king in the story was Antiochus IV Epiphanes who had seized the throne and had been king for 11 years, being he was a son in the Seleucid Empire.  It was a Hellenistic state ruled by the Seleucid dynasty that had been in existence since 312 BCE, after Alexander the Great had died.  What had happened was that at Alexander's death,  his vast kingdom was divided among his generals.  A power struggle had engulfed all the nations of the Middle East, and Israel-meaning Judah,  had found itself under the sway of the Seleucid Dynasty of Greek kings who reigned from Syria.  So the Greeks now had another state that was their neighbor and they were not friends, but were then  taking over.   This Greek king had taken the throne in 175 BCE and his error was in taking Judah for he would die the next year in 163 BCE.

                                                                           

Statue of a Seleucid prince without a crown

The Seleucid Empire was a major center of Hellenistic culture that maintained the Greek customs and where a Geek political elite dominated, mostly in the cities, of course.  Seleucid expansion into Anatolia and Greece was abruptly stopped after many defeats in fighting the Roman army.  They had already defeated Ptolemaic Egypt, their old enemy and no longer could due to Roman demands.

Seleucid kings had been ruling their empire from Syria until the invasion by the Armenian king Tigranes the Great and their ultimate overthrow by the Roman general Pompey.

                                                                 

One of first Seleucid Kings, Nicatore

Antiochus decided to use very aggressive Hellenizing activities that were designed to de-Judaize the Jewish community in Judah that they had taken.  "In the narrative of I Maccabees, after Antiochus issued his decrees forbidding Jewish religious practice, a rural Jewish priest from Modiin, Mattathias the Hasmonean, sparked the revolt against the Seleucid Empire by refusing to worship the Greek gods.  Mattathias killed a Hellenistic Jew who stepped forward to offer a sacrifice to an idol in Mattathias' place. He and his five sons fled to the wilderness of Judah. After Mattathias' death about one year later in 166 BCE, his son, Judah Maccabee, led an army of Jewish dissidents to victory over the Seleucid dynasty in guerrilla warfare, which at first was directed against Hellenized Jews, of whom there were many. The Maccabees destroyed pagan altars in the villages, circumcised boys and talked  Hellenized Jews into helping them. The term Maccabees was used to describe the Jewish army,  taken from the Hebrew word for "hammer".  Thus, Judah Maccabee was called The Hammerer.  

https://unitedwithisrael.org/bronze-coin-dating-back-to-maccabean-revolt-discovered-in-jerusalem/?

The revolt itself involved many battles, in which the light,quick and mobile Maccabean forces gained notoriety among the slow and bulky Seleucid army,and also for their use of guerrilla tactics. After the victory, the Maccabees entered Jerusalem in triumph and ritually cleansed the Temple, reestablishing traditional Jewish worship there and installing Jonathan Maccabee as high priest. A large Seleucid army was sent to quash the revolt, but returned to Syria on the death of Antiochus IV.   Its commander, Lysias, preoccupied with internal Seleucid affairs, agreed to a political compromise that restored religious freedom."

                                                                     

Antioches IV on a coin

The result was that it provoked a full scale armed rebellion, the Maccabean Revolt.  Efforts to deal with both the Parthians and the Jews as well as retain control of the provinces at the same time proved beyond the weakened empire's power.  The Parthians " at its height  stretched from the northern reaches of the Euphrates, in what is now central-eastern Turkey, to eastern Iran. The empire, located on the Silk Road trade route between the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean Basin and the Han Empire of China, became a center of trade and commerce." 

 Antiochus IV  died during a military expedition against the Parthians in 164 BCE.  Over the years of Greek domination in religion and attitudes, many Jews had begun to embrace the Greek culture and its hedonistic, pagan way of life.  They had become pawns in Antiochus' scheme to obliterate Judaism.  They had invaded the Holy Temple, desecrated it and robbed it of its treasures.  Many Jews had been massacred and the survivors were heavily taxed.  The ultimate sin by Antiochus was in placing an idol of Zeus on the holy altar and force Jews to bow before it under penalty of death.  He had forbidden Jews to observe their most sacred traditions such as the Sabbath and the rite of circumcision.  Then he proclaimed himself a god, taking the name "ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES-the Divine.  Even his own followers had mocked him by calling him Antiochus Epimanes-the madman.

                                                                     

Laodice IV

Maybe now that the scene has been set, we can understand some of why his wife should have been mad, also.  Laodice was a priestess and her mother was Laodice III.  This Greek princess who became the Head Priestess and Queen of the Seleucid Empire had been appointed as such by Antiochus III in 193 BCE.  The state cult she belonged to was dedicated to her late mother, Laodice III in Media.  She later was married to 3 kings of the Seleucid Empire, all her brothers!

This made Laodice to be of Greek Macaedonian and Persian descent.  She was one of the daughters of Antiochus III the Great and Laodice III.  Her paternal grandparents were the former Seleucid Monarchs, Seleucus II Callinicus and Laodice II, while her maternal grandparents were King Mithridates II of Puntus and his wife Laodice.

Her parents were 1st cousins since her paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother were brother and sister; children of Antiochus II-Theos and Laodice.  This was an extreme endogamous family group.

Laodice married her eldest brother first,  Antiochus, her sibling in 196 BCE.  They had a daughter, Nysa.  Then her brother-husband died. Then it was arranged to marry her next brother, Seleucus IV Philopator.  They had 3 children; 2 sons, Antiochus, Demetrius I oter and a daughter, Laodice V.  They became king and queen and reigned from 187 to 175 BCE.  Then Seleucus died.  Then she married her youngest brother, Antiohus IV Epiphanes who at first co-ruled with his nephew, Antiochus and adopted him as his son who he had later assassinated in 170 BCE.  Laodice bore him 2 children:  a son Antiochus V Eupator and a daughter, Laodice VI.  Her 2nd son, Demetrius I Soter was sent as a political hostage to Rome.

                                                                                                                       

Chanukah Gelt
win in game of Dreidal

Dreidal with letters that stand for:
a great miracle happened there-
Nes Gadol Hayah Sham
nun, gimel, hay, shin

                                           

Chanukiah

As we remember Chanukah and this historic struggle that we had with another and much different culture that almost overtook us, we contemplate on the miracle that ensued of the eternal lamp in the Temple that had but a drop of oil in it, enough to last for a few minutes at the most, but kept lit for 8 days!  The special oil menorah had 7 lamps, a natural number-days of a week (6 days of creation and 1 day of rest).  Why did it burn for 8 days, the time it took the runner to go and fetch more oil for the lamp?   A miracle, a number outside-higher than nature and above time itself, associated with the coming of the Moshiach-may he come speedily in our days.

Only 213 years after the victory of retaking our 2nd Temple and gaining back our religion, The Temple would be burned down; destroyed in Rome's occupation of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Our people would be expulsed from our Holy City of Jerusalem for a short while,   and Ashkenazim, Sephardim and Mizrachim Jews, depending on their route fleeing, would be so named.  It would become another chapter in our long history of Judaism.s

Now, here's music from the stage play, Hamilton, singing about Chanukah

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/221839

Resource:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seleucid_Empire

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

Your Chanukah guide 1996-Lubavitch World Headquarters

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

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-major-hannukah-story-judahs.html

Labels: Anatiochus IV Epiphanes, Chanukah, culture, Greek Kings, Laodice, oil lamp,Seleucid Dynasty, Syria, Temple, wife

Miracles in Israel: 7: Reviving the Hebrew Language and How Important This Was

1898 in Rishon Lezion, Palestine
Jewish Kindergarten starting to learn Hebrew full of immigrants from Eastern Europe,
Middle East from 1st Aliyah

Nadene Goldfoot                                                

Hebrew starts from the right side and moves to the left, like Arabic.
Here you see that it is written without vowels or vowel markings.
It says Happy Birthday-in English but
Yom Ho-leh-det Sa-may-akh, which is:
Year of birth happy

This miracle was so well timed.  If our founding fathers had waited much longer to bring this miracle to Eretz Yisrael, it would never have happened.  It started with the 1st Aliyah in the 1880s.  "Coming from Eastern Europe and from Yemen,  an estimated 25,000–35,000 Jews immigrated to Ottoman Palestine during the First Aliyah."  The 2nd Aliyah started 1904 and 1914, during which approximately 35,000 Jews immigrated into Ottoman-ruled Land of Palestine, mostly from the Russian Empire,  some from Yemen.   I believe a few came from Romania as well during this period.  Jews were returning from several countries and running into language problems in understanding each other.  These were the days that the Ottoman Empire was in charge, and they spoke Turkish.  Russians were returning in this first group.  They couldn't understand each other.  Everyone there spoke a different language.  If this miracle took place later, chances are they would have arrived speaking English, which has become an international language, like Aramaic was in the 1st Century CE for the Jews.  .
                                                                           

As it was, the Jews who arrived from different countries all were attending a synagogue and the men had most likely been bar-mitzvahed, meaning that they could read and pray in Hebrew.  They may not have even understood more than a few words of what they were saying if they were anything like some American Jews, but if their Torahs had a translation in their own language, that would have helped them to understand the
                                                                               

Hebrew words, for Hebrew had become almost a dead language, not used in conversations anymore.  Yiddish was the language of the European Jews, which was a mixture of German and Hebrew; and Ladino was the language of Sephardic Jews, a mixture of Spanish and Hebrew.  Here they were in the land of Mizrachim Jews, and they may have been speaking Turkish or Arabic.  Not all returning Russians spoke the same language, either.
                                                                               

Jewish leaders had discussed settling somewhere in Africa, but all decided that for the last 2,000 years, their ancestors and they have prayed 3 times a day for the return to Eretz Yisrael.  This need was in their writings and in their soul.  Nothing else would do.  They respected their religion and believed in its authenticity.  Moving there in their desperate times seemed like the only place they should be.
                                                                         

Eliezer Yitzhak Perelman b: January 7, 1858 in Luzhky, LithuaniaHe decided against a Yeshiva for his schooling but went to a Russian gymnasium, completing his studies as an external student in 1877. In the same year Russia proclaimed war on the Ottoman Empire to aid their fellow Slavs, the Bulgarians, to regain their independence from the Turks.

Eliezer Ben Yehuda (Perelmann), (1858-1922) had traveled from Lithuania where he was born and raised, and had gone to Paris in 1878 to study medicine.  He had acquired TB and could not continue his studies.  The next year he began to publish article pushing for Jewish settlement in Palestine.
                                                                           

In 1881 he made aliyah, being a member of the 1st group,  and settled in Jerusalem where he taught and edited a succession of Hebrew journals.  He became determined to speak only Hebrew and to fight for its acceptance as a spoken language once again.  Eliezer insisted that he, his wife and child would speak nothing but Hebrew in the house.   It was his persistence that brought this miracle about.

For many years he was one of the principal personalities in Jewish life in Jerusalem.  During the 1st and 2nd Aliyah, "the first Hebrew schools were established in  Settlements,   Hebrew increasingly became a spoken language of daily affairs, and finally became a systematic and national language. Yet Ben Yehuda's fame and notoriety stems from his initiation and symbolic leadership of the Hebrew revival.                   

""Over 50 percent of all male Jews in 1879  were able to understand the pentateuch, the daily prayers, etc. and some 20 percent could read a Hebrew book of average difficulty, allowing for a much higher proportion in eastern Europe, north Africa and Yemen, and a very much lower one in western countries.” This being the case, we note Cecil Roth's penetrating axiom on Ben-Yehuda's role in the revival: “Before Ben-Yehuda... Jews could speak Hebrew; after him they did.”
                                                                                                     

Reading about Golom in Hebrew

Hebrew's revival can be seen in 3 separate periods.  "In the first period, the activity centered on Hebrew schools in the Settlements and in Ben Yehuda's club; in the second period, Hebrew was used in assembly meetings and public activities; and in the third period, it became the language used by the Yishuv, the Jewish population during the Mandate Period, for general purposes. At this stage, Hebrew possessed both spoken and written forms, and its importance was reflected in the official status of Hebrew during the British Mandate. All of the stages were characterized by the establishment of many organizations that took an active and ideological part in Hebrew activities. This resulted in the establishment of Hebrew high schools (גימנסיות), the Hebrew University, the Jewish Legion, the Histadrut labor organization, and in Tel Aviv – the first Hebrew city.

From 1915 to 1919 during WWI, he lived in the United States.  His main publication was a comprehensive dictionary of ancient and modern Hebrew in which he coined many words to meed modern life.  During his lifetime that ended in 1922, he wrote volumes from aleph to mem (A to M), and the work continued after his death by his widow and other leading philologists.  

He had founded the Vaad ha-Lashon ha-Ivrit ("Hebrew Language Council") in 1890, and served as its chairman until his death. 

" Modern Hebrew, along with Modern Arabic, has been an official language in Israel since the British Mandate of Palestine, a situation that continued after the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948. More than purely a linguistic process, the revival of Hebrew was utilized by Jewish modernization and political movements, and became a tenet of the ideology associated with settlement of the land, Zionism, and Israeli policy."
                                                                      

Hebrew most likely was spoken by the Ivrim that came from the East into Eretz Yisrael with Terah, Abraham's father. in the 2nd millennium BCE.  Then a calamity happened when they moved onto Egypt during a terrible drought.  Not realizing it, they remained for a period of 400 years as they were feared by the Egyptians and were taken as slaves to build storage cities, and probably were rubbing elbows with slaves from other countries as well.  
                                                                                 

Of course, language has a habit of rubbing off to other people, which is why "televisia" is a Hebrew word for television.  After they left Egypt with Moses and wandered for 40 years in getting back to Canaan, Joshua finally had to take over the movement and established Hebrew as their national language. 
                                                                            

 They used it until Aluf Bar Kokhba (General Simeon Ben Kosiba) of Davidic descent lost the 3 year war against the Romans from 132-135 CE ..  He lost his Jerusalem, the war, and the life of Hebrew used as a spoken language.  It would have been lost completely in 70 CE when the Romans had attacked, but was a revolutionary leader and tried his best to retake Jerusalem.  Holding out for 3 years against the world's mightiest army was no mere feat.  He showed it could be done.  
                                                                               

Suad, a Palestinian Israeli and Amit, a Jewish Israeli
speaking Hebrew.  Both languages are taught in public school
in Israel.  Israel  now has 6 million Jews and 1.7 million Arabs. 

"Against the exilic Yiddish language stood revived Hebrew, the language of Zionism, of grassroots pioneers, and above all, of the transformation of the Jews into a Hebrew nation with its own land. Yiddish was degradingly referred to as a jargon, and its speakers encountered harsh opposition."

Israel's destiny has been the return of Jews from the 4 corners of the world and also the finding and return of the 10 Lost Tribes, and both have been happening.  It was "to be" that they would be able to return to their Mama Loshen-Hebrew.  This is a must in having one's own country. Israelis speak Hebrew.  It's a wonderful miracle!  I'm a product of their 10 month program in an Ulpan of learning Hebrew.  Luckily, my teacher in Haifa, Sarah, the very one who taught Russians secretly via mail, could speak English and Hebrew.  

PS: to Elisheva, my Christian friend who thought that the revival of Hebrew was indeed a miracle and gave me the idea to write  this article for my "miracles" series.  

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia (Ben-Yehudah (Perelmann(, Eliezer
http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/This-week-in-history-Revival-of-the-Hebrew-language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_Hebrew_language
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/ben_yehuda.html
The Settlers, a Novel by Meyer Levin  Set in Palestine from the turn of the century to the Balfour Declaration, encompasses over 1/4 of a century of turbulent events; hardships of the first Jewish pioneers, tyranny of the Turkish overlords, neighboring Jews and Arabs, etc.