Thursday, March 28, 2013

Blood Libel Kept Up By Hanan Ashrawi

                                                                         
Nadene Goldfoot
Who would imagine that today a Christian woman with an honorary doctorate degree would continue the Passover blood libel that Jews use blood in their matzos but Hanan Ashrawi has been doing just this.  She claims that we Jews use Christian blood for Passover rituals.

Born October 8, 1946 as Hanan Daoud Khalil, in Nablus or Ramallah in Judea-Samaria, and educated in Beirut, Lebanon, this Christian Palestinian married Emile Ashrawi, another Christian Palestinian in 1975.   Her father was one of the founders of the PLO, Palestine Liberation Organization led by Arafat.  Hanan has become a legislator in the PA.  She has been friends with Edward Said, proponent of Palestinians and author. "Ashrawi also has a PhD. in Medieval and Comparative Literature from the U of Virginia.

I have seen her on TV ranting very loudly to the effect about the rights of Palestinians and saying that Israel had none. "Ashrawi "has just earned a gold medal in historical revisionism" for asserting "there were no Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Instead, according to her, there were only 'emigrants' who left their ancestral homes voluntarily.   Jews were not singled out for persecution, and if they were, it was, in reality, a plot by 'Zionists, '" she said.

."She surprises me with this libel found on Miftah, a group she started in August 1998 to "promote the principles of democracy and good governance of which she acts as secretary-general. " Miftah is also spoken of as  the" Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy", and she has served as secretary general of that organization since that time.  "It's supposed to be an initiative which works towards respect for Palestinian human rights, democracy and peace."   This organization gets money from the UN and the Ford Foundation for its funding.  Hanan is also Miftah's chairperson on the Board of Directors.   To say such a stupid thing should even be embarrassing for her.

First of all, it is against our kosher laws to eat blood.  Period!   Part of the kosher laws forbids the eating of certain animals, and then eating parts of the permitted animals that would have the most blood.  Then there is the getting rid of any blood by the washing in a salt water bath.  Everything is done so as to not eat any blood.  Matzos must be made only of flour and water.  It's a libelous lie that she is spreading.  Is this done in her idea of promoting democracy and good governance?

It only shows me that certain people still have the mentality of the uneducated people of the 1200's to swallow such lies.  Did she actually believe anything about Jews she might have read in her Medieval studies?    Or is she just saying this to stir her people up so that they will attack Israel?  She calls herself a humanitarian. This is the type of person that has been interviewed on Al Jazeera.

Hanan,  telling such lies about Israel's people and its religion is not going to get you any respect either personally or for your people.  You are only hurting  your own interests.

Re: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanan_Ashrawi
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.co.il/2013/03/passover-blood-libel-in-hanan-ashrawis.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/ashrawi.html
http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/03/28/plo-official-hanan-ashrawis-ngo-publishes-passover-blood-libel/
http://www.miftah.org/AboutUs.cfm
David Harris, of the Huffington Post and Jerusalem Post columnist

Monday, March 25, 2013

A Traitor: Berenice, Judean Princess and the Destruction of Jerusalem; Worthy of Her Own Soap Opera



Nadene Goldfoot                                                                        
A play by Jean Racine called "Shameless" was written about Queen Berenice, once the princess of Judea and Titus, the man that destroyed Jerusalem.    Her life had the makings of a tragic soap opera.

Let's start with Antipater, an Idumean or land of Edom., father of Herod and ruler of Judea from 63 BCE to 43 BCE.  The Edomites were of Semitic origin, traditionally descendants of Esau, and lived by hunting.  They were traditional enemies of the Israelites.  They fought against Saul and were defeated by David who partly annexed their land.  During the reign of Jehoran they regained their independence. At the time of the destruction of the 1st Temple, they plundered and looted along with the Babylonians.  Later they occupied southern Judah during or after the period of the Jews' exile.

Antipater was a man who helped the Romans by joining Julius Caesar after his victory over Pompey, and had recruited Jewish and Nabatean troops for his army.  For this Caesar made him financial administrator of Judea and he became an effective ruler of the country.  He appointed his sons, Phasael and Herod, to the chief administrative posts. "These “almost Jews” were—to the Roman mind—more comfortable than the true Jews."    Antipater did of poisoning.  

Beautiful Berenice I was a Judean princess in the late 1st century BCE to 1st century CE.  She was the daughter of Herod's sister, Salome.   Herod I (73 BCE-4 BCE) son of Antipater.came from Edom, a mountain country including Mt. Seir which was given to Esau of the history of the twin sons of Isaac, Jacob and Esau.  The land lay between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba.  The people had been under pressure from the nomadic Nabateans in Arabia and moved around 587 BCE.

 "The Edomites were gradually pushed into the southern half of Judea, including the region around Hebron, an  area that the Greeks later called Idumea.  Judas Maccabaeus warred against them and a half century later John Hyrcanus completely subdued them, imposed the rite of circumcision, and invoked the old Jewish law of assembly (Deut 23:7-8).. Herod. was the Roman appointed  king of Judaea.

One good thing he did was to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.  Outsiders saw him as a protector of the Jews.  Salome is identified for being responsible for the death of John the Baptist in the New Testament.  Josephus gives a different account of John's death.

Herod Agrippa, also called Marcus Julius b: 10 BCE-44 CE)  (became king of Judea in 36 CE) had a daughter and named her Berenice II as well. He was also king of part of Transjordan, then also king of Galilee, and after 41 CE Judea and Samaria.    She was a Judean princess, probably  born in Rome  from 28 CE to after 79 CE.  Her mother was Cypros/Cyrus, daughter of Phasael and granddaughter of the first Berenice.  She was Herod the Great's great-granddaughter.  Agrippa I died suddenly while attending the games in Caesarea.  After his death, his kingdom was again converted into an annex of the province of Syria.

Berenice II was betrothed at age 13 to Marcus, son of the Alexandrian alabarch, Greek title of the customs official at the harbour of Alexandria during the Hellenistic and Roman periods.  Alexander. Marcus was head of the Jewish community in Alexandria.   After he died in 44 CE she married her uncle d she had a close association with her brother, Agrippa I  (10 BCE-44 CE) King of Judaea,  which drew a lot of Herod of Chalcis, which was a tiny principality in the Lebanon Mountains. She was then queen of Chalcis.   He died in 48 CE ancondemnation from the surrounding people.  Agrippa I was liked by the Jewish people because of his respect for the Jewish religions.  They charged her with incest and she was induced to marry another, Polemon II of Cilicia.  So Berenice chose Polemo, King of Cilicia for her next spouse.  Polemo went through circumcision and learned of the Jewish lifestyle, but this didn't make the marriage successful.  Sometime later Berenice left Polemo and returned to her kingdom.  She was present in Palestine when the 66-70 CE revolt against Rome broke out.

In 60 CE she rejoined her brother, Agrippa I and supported his efforts to prevent the outbreak of the great Revolt of 66 CE.  They later fled to the Romans.

Berenice  became the mistress of Titus, the Roman Emperor from 79-81 CE, son of Vespasian  and followed him to Rome, but was forced by Roman popular opinion to leave him.  She was older than he was as well.

On Vespasian's death she tried to reconciliate with Titus but was unsuccessful.  .  He had taken command of the Roman army in Judaea from his father in 70 CE and had destroyed Jerusalem after a 5 month siege.  According to Josephus, he tried unsuccessfully to preserve the Temple.  Other sources say it was deliberate with the object of eliminating the national religious center of the Jews.  Jews had the tradition of referring to him as the "wicked" Titus.  Perhaps/ due to his mistress, Berenice, he didn't interfere with Jewish rights in other places and refused to accede to the demand of the people in Antioch to abolish Jewish privileges there.

However, during Titus' siege of Jerusalem, the Idumeans marched in to reinforce the extreme elements, and killed all they suspected of peace tendencies.  After this they never were mentioned in Jewish history again.  Idumeans in the Talmud means: an oppressive government.  In the Middle Ages it referred to: Christian Europe.

While all this was happening when  Jerusalem was taken by the Romans in 70 CE.,  the royalty didn't seem to have any feeling for Jerusalem..  After all, they were Roman appointed people, not selected by the Jews themselves.  "It is from Tacitus that we learn that with the outbreak of war Berenice chose to side with the Romans and supplied General Vespasian’s offensive with local forces."  Jerusalem burned but Berenice was more interested in the next man in her life.


Resource:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8c5hfyUmNU
 The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia.
http://www.geni.com/people/Julia-Berenice-Of-Judea/6000000012396226544
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/berenice
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7598-herod-i
http://www.bible-history.com/jesus/jesusuntitled00000375.htm
http://www.khouse.org/articles/2010/920/print/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edom

Saturday, March 23, 2013

The Jews' Long Claim To Land That Iran Turns a Blind Eye To

Nadene Goldfoot
It's true that when Jerusalem fell to the Romans in 70 CE, many Jews were forced into the diaspora; the  neighboring states or countries that allowed them to enter.  Some had to go as far as Europe in order to find refuge in this unilluminated diaspora.   That it was 1,800 years after this expulsion that Jews have returned does amount to a long time, but the fact is that we didn't all leave.

As commanded in the Bible, Jews reenact and remember and retell their history of 400 years of slavery and their exodus from Egypt and their entrance into their Promised Land of Canaan, or Eretz Yisrael with Pesach, or Passover.  It's a time-honored tradition to feel that we were on this trek as well and celebrate it for 8 days, eating matzos, the unleavened bread prepared for their journey back home.  Our history burns in our memory.  We haven't forgotten that which Ahmadinejad denies.  In fact, Passover starts Monday evening.

Iran would like to pretend that we have no claim to the land.  In reality, the Jewish people have kept up ties to this historic land of their for more than 3,700 years.  They have maintained their national distinct language of Hebrew, which only they were speaking.  In the long diaspora they had to become bilingual and picked up the language of their host country.  Those remaining in the Middle East learned to speak Latino while those in Europe spoke Yiddish, but for all Jews, Hebrew was used in reading the Torah.  They have maintained their distinct civilization shaped by their religion.  Now Hebrew is again their spoken language.

When their 2nd Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE, Jewish life in Palestine, as it was called by 135 CE, a Roman given name, life continued and often flourished by the remaining Jews.  Large communities were reestablished in Jerusalem and Tiberias by the 9th Century.  In the 11th century, Jewish communities grew in Rafah, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jaffa and Caesarea.

Christian Crusaders came along in the 12th Century and massacred many Jews.  The community rebounded again in the 13th and 14th centuries as large numbers of rabbis and Jewish pilgrims immigrated to Jerusalem and the Galilee.  Prominent rabbis established communities in Safed (Tzfat), Jerusalem and other places during the next 300 years. (Read "The Source" by James Mitchener.)

By the early 19th century, years before the birth of the modern Zionist movement, more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today Israel.  Beginning in 1870 started the 78 years of nation-building which ended with the reestablishment of the Jewish State.  The land cried for the Jews to return.  For 1,878 years no one did anything with the land.  It lay fallow, turning into desert, swamp, malarial marshes and dust.  Palestine was just a land to trample through on the way to some other place.  Even the landowners moved away to better places except for the communities upheld by the Jews.  Only weeds grew.  It had been in the hands of upteen million Muslim empires but they did nothing with it.

The Israelites were promised the land according to the Bible  which validated their rights.  It was given to them by G-d.  Moses was moved at age 80 to talk to the Pharaoh himself and take the Jewish slaves for a 40 year trek back to Canaan where Joseph and his family had come from after having moved there from Ur, a city that is in today's Iraq.  Canaan had people in it that had become quite despicable, sacrificing their own children and being idol worshippers.    Joshua was the man Moses picked to lead  the Israelites back there again.  They had the task of establishing monotheism;  Judaism.

Jews lived in Persia, today's Iran because of the Babylonian Empire led by Cyrus who invaded Israel in 538 BCE and took away many of 10 of the 12 tribes..  Queen Esther of Persia was married to the King Ahasueros.  Jews wound up living in 127 of the Persian provinces and many lived in Susa, the capital.  The 80,000 Jews of Iran left for Israel and the West under the Khomeini revolution in 1978 and 20,000 remained in 1989.  Where does Ahmedinejad think they came from?  How can he deny the Jewish origins of Israel?

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 gave the Jews a National Homeland, agreed to by all the nations of the world.  The League of Nations gave the mandate to Britain to carry this out.  The UN decided upon a partition resolution in 1947 to create out of the Jewish Homeland 2 states, one for the Arabs and one for the Jews. (They had already taken 80% of the agreed upon Jewish homeland and had given it to Transjordan).   It isn't Israel's fault that the Arabs turned down their opportunity not once but many times since.  Israel was admitted to the UN in 1949 and was created a state through the UN recognition.

And finally, in addressing Ahmadinejad's claims that Jews of today are not descendants of the original Jews who he refuses to say  ever existed anyway, DNA tests have found that Jews have a connection between the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi as well as the Mizrachi Jew but not to the nations of which they had been living in before returning to Israel born again in 1948.  Jews have a record in their DNA of where they have been and who they were and it differs from other groups. It shows we came from Israel.  The special Cohen gene itself, J1, has shown up in 40% of the Jewish men's haplogroup.   Take the test yourself, Ahmadinejad.  Maybe you have some Jewish connection, yourself!

Iran and other Arab states cannot say Israel has no right to exist.  It exists!  It is no different than the United States, Saudi Arabia and 152 other states.  It is a legitimate state.

Resource:  Myths and Facts by Mitchell G. Bard, Joel Himelfarb pages 1, 2.


Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Syria's Chemicals Topic of Netanyahu and Obama in TV Coverage

Nadene Goldfoot                                                             Emblem of Jerusalem 
The first day of Spring found that Netanyahu met Obama at the airport today for Obama's first trip to Israel as president.  I hope this time he learns how close things are to Israel.  It just happened that somebody used chemical weapons in a northern village near Aleppo.  Both sides accused each other of using it.   A US official said there was no evidence of any such attack, but everyone was talking about it.    Obama thought the rebels would never use this.  He said this needs investigation.  He wants evidence.  The regime (army) was backed up by Russia in their allegations and said that 31 people were killed including 21 civilians and 10 soldiers.  There are tight media restrictions in Syria so could not be independently verified.  Obama said that this would change the picture if true.  .

I don't know about that.  I spent 5 years from 1980 to 85 in Israel watching the Syrian army do despicable things on TV showing how tough and mean they were, things they did to little animals.  How the rebels managed to fight against them and to have the guts to face such a mean army is more than I can imagine.  How it must have affected the general  population seeing such grotesque behavior by their to be admired army has to have shaped their minds and behaviors as well.  So maybe it would be possible for them to put an end to 2 years of fighting such an army that has already taken 70,000 of their people.

The point for Israel is that these horrid chemical weapons can easily fall into the hands of even worse terrorists to be used against Israel.  Netanyahu pointed out that Damascus is only 100 miles away from Israel.  It's like from Boston to Chicago, Obama said.

Obama, an eloquent speaker, spoke a little more haltingly this time, I thought, but took his time to answer questions.  He was such an eloquent speaker that this is what got such a young man and new senator elected the first time.  He lost Israel's approval when he made a bee line to Egypt and told them that the USA would have a new approach and that's what made me nervous, that and the friendships he had back in Chicago with people who were definitely anti-Semitic.  His actions have spoken louder than his words, and so the 10 times that he has met with Netanyahu haven't always been so hot, especially when on TV Obama wanted Netanyahu to go back to the 67 lines which is what the Palestinians want, and then it'll be the 48 lines, and so on.  I think he'll find that Netanyahu is a gracious host.  Obama was smart enough to mention Netanyahu's brother who had died fighting for Israel which brought a few tears to Benyamin's eyes, as I saw they glistened a little then.  We are an emotional people.

Obama was joking that he was happy to be away from the Senate and Netanyahu and he kept saying how close the USA and Israel were, which was a good message for the neighbors of Israel to realize.

Of course they spoke about Iran, and have different opinions when the window will be shut so that action might have to be taken.  I understand that Iran is very close to completion of getting the uranium grade level enriched where it must be to use in weapons .    Obama figures that they won't be ready till the weapon itself is made.  I'm wondering why they couldn't be working on both at the same time, so that when the uranium is ready,  the weapon will be, too.  If so, time is awasting!  Obama thinks they won't be ready for another year.  It's plain that Obama understands that if Israel feels they must defend themself, they will do so, and that's okay with him.  As I remember, Netanyahu really would like to do this together and not have to go it alone.   Plans are in the works for the 2 countries to work together for many more years, hopefully past 2017.  .

Obama's mother taught him to listen before he talks.  This time he plans on following her advice and do a lot of listening.  Still, he didn't talk to heads of state at the Knesset, which is a downer.  He spoke at a hall in Jerusalem, though, where there were plenty of news reporters and Secretary of State, John Kerry,  and a few got to ask questions.  Obama mentioned the blue line.  I thought there was the green line to consider.  Then, Iran is almost at Netanyahu's red line.  The USA will be giving Israel some $200 million for defense.

Chuck T of NBC asked a question of Obama that I thought showed that Chuck didn't know much about the interactions between the Palestinians and the Israelis.  He asked why Obama hadn't got a peace program accomplished in his first 4 years.  Obama had to say it wasn't an easy thing to do.  Oh Chuck, there's so much to inform you about.  Chuck asked what went wrong!  I was amazed.  Yes Chuck, the Palestinians certainly would be healthier if they came to a peace.  So would the Israelis, and it isn't as if they don't want peace.  How would you like it it the USA were attacked almost constantly for 65 years by people 100 miles away or less?

In the meantime, all the women in Israel were busy doing their Passover cleaning and trying to shop and get ready for their first night of the Seder.  It's an all encompassing job.  I hope the people in the old city of Jerusalem can get out and shop.  They have been so blocked because of Obama's visit that they haven't been able to do the things they must get done.

Resource:  Oregonian newspaper 3/20/13 page A8 Syrians trade accusations of chemical use by the Associated Press
NBC TV
CNN TV






Tuesday, March 19, 2013

USA Colleges Backing Apartheid Week Against Israel Again

Nadene Goldfoot
The United States academia has still been beating their drums against Israel by doing the following.

 "At least 35 col­lege cam­puses in the U.S. are par­tic­i­pat­ing in IAW this year, the ninth con­sec­u­tive year that the pro­gram has been held in cities around the world. Most of the events in the U.S. were for­mally sched­uled to take place March 4–8 but some are stretch­ing into next week as well (due to var­i­ous university-related sched­ul­ing con­flicts).

 IAW events this year have pri­mar­ily included anti-Israel speak­ers, mock “apartheid walls” and check­point dis­plays on cam­pus, and screen­ings of two crit­i­cal of Israel films,  the Oscar award-nominated “5 Bro­ken Cam­eras” and a more extreme film called “Roadmap to Apartheid.” “Roadmap to Apartheid” is nar­rated by The Color Pur­ple author Alice Walker and analo­gizes Pales­tin­ian refugees to Jews in the War­saw Ghetto and par­tially con­dones ter­ror­ism as a “symp­tom” of the conflict."

Anyone who thinks that Israel practices Apartheid is either deaf, blind or an idiot.  If anything it is the most un-apartheid state in this whole world.  America was the first country to be a magnificant melting pot.  Israel is even more so.  In the nearly 65 years (will be on May 14, 2013) of existence, more  people from countries all over the world have immigrated there than America ever saw.  You name it; white, black, brown, tan, beige, ecru, every color under the sun of people who just happen to be Jewish.  That's what Israel is all about.  If you need to be told why, you haven't read any history about the Jews.

Israel also has 1.4 million Arab citizens that are not Jewish in the country.  Most are Muslims, but there are a few Christians as well.  I love the Druze, who are not accepted by the Sunni or Sh'ia Muslims, but who are fantastic citizens and who love Israel and are fighting for it right along with the Jewish soldiers.  The only thing Israel does against Arabs is to not expect them to serve in the armed forces, but this may change.  Observant Jews attending Yeshivas have also been exempt from serving, and with the new coalition, may be serving, as they used to do.  Both women and men serve in the forces.  How un-apartheid can you get?  

Speaking of being Apartheid, has anyone paid attention to the Arabs' plans for Palestine?  It it to not have any Jews in their state.  Judenrein!  Now, who is planning to practice apartheid?   

So, professors, , you'd better start learning something other than propaganda such as what you're expousing.  You're no better than the early Nazis of Germany.  To you it's "cool" to take on this attitude, but speaking lies is not "cool."  

Do any of you see that Israel did not kill the producers of Broken Cameras or Roadmap to Apartheid?  They had the freedom to do this.  Did that happen with the producer of the movie or video about Islam?  I believe there'a a fatwa on his head.  It was the poorest made video I have ever watched.  4th graders could have done better.  Come to Israel and snoop for yourself and see if the producers were so accurate.  Possibly like you, they were more interested in making money and knew there's a market for hatred of Israel?   

You just happen to be picking on people who have been the scapegoats of the world for over 2,000 years.  Do you not realize that Israel was planned by Chaim Weizmann and his pals to be a perfect utopia?  These Zionists were well educated people of their day who were tired of being beaten up for being Jewish.  The number one rule in Judaism is a Golden one; Don't do to others what you don't want to be done to you.  So do you really think that Jews would go apartheid?  

Apartheid!  Do you realize that Jews were originally turned away from entering  America just because they were Jewish?  Go read your history books.  You're spouting off the same old same old anti-Semitism we keep on hearing in different forms.   How can anyone condone terrorism?  

Resource: http://blog.adl.org/international/anti-israel-bds-apartheid-weereached-fever-pitch-this-week
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2011/05/social-studies-101-definition-of.html (tells what apartheid is and how Israel is not apartheid. )
http://israel-nadene.blogspot.com/2011/04/date-saturday-march-19-2011-211-am.html  Excellent!
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/04/bds-movement-with-apartheid-activists.html
http://israel-nadene.blogspot.com/2010/12/palestinian-journalist-claims-israel-no.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/06/where-passion-against-israel-comes-from.html


Sunday, March 17, 2013

SYRIA and LEBANON: In Ancient Days Was Phoenicia

Nadene Goldfoot
Syria and Lebanon are in the news today.  Syria has killed from 70,00 to 100,000 of its own citizens in President Bashar Assad's effort to maintain his presidential- monarchy since March 2011. Now a high ranking military officer has left him and has gone to Jordan.  Morale is breaking down.  They are also stepping up its use of widely banned cluster munitions which kill and wound their civilians.   Lebanon is affected by terrorists that have taken over the country.    The Syrian opposition has taken over an intelligence compound near the Golan Heights.  Syria and Israel have had a ceasefire since 1974.  Problems are starting with stray rockets landing in the Golan lately.  Aljazeera reports that 4 million of the 22 million population have been displaced.  Long ago both countries were simply a part of Phoenicia.

The religion of the Phoenicians was  the same religion that the Canaanites followed as described in the bible and as found in Ugaritic poetry.  The chief gods or deities were Baal, lord of fertility and the rains, and Astarte, goddess of fertility.  Anat was the goddess of war, and Melkarth was the patron-god of Tyre.  They worshipped under trees and on hills.  They also had temples with pictures.  The religious practice included the sacrificing of children to Moloch.  They dedicated religious prostitutes to their temples.

Tomorrow, Syria has the audacity to bring up Israel before the UN for harming the children in the Golan Heights, children that are Israeli citizens since the area has been annexed by Israel.  Like Golda Meier, former Prime Minister of Israel said once, "



  • Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.  What Syria has done to its own children is what they are now claiming Israel is doing to theirs which of course is a downright lie.  .  
  • .
    Phoenicians  lived along the Syrian-Eretz Yisrael coast.  Arvad, Beirut, Sidon, Tyre, Gebal (Byblos), Simirro and Sin were their main towns.  At times they expanded north toward the later Antioch and south to the Carmel and even to Jaffa.   It is thought that originally the Phoenicians came from earlier Canaanites.  They spoke a Canaanite dialect.

    The language they spoke was close to Hebrew as we can tell from inscriptions.  Their writing was also similar to ancient Hebrew and was modified by the Greeks and then by other Europeans.

    The Egyptians controlled Phoenicia from the time when the Hyksos of 1500 BCE were expulsed to the time of Rameses III when Phoenician cities were ruled by the Hittites.

    Hiram of Tyre (10th century BCE) sent wood and craftsmen for David's palace, and  was closely connected to King Solomon of Israel.  He had cedar trees of Lebanon to give to King Solomon for his temple along with gold and craftsmen.  Tyrian metal-workers made the metal-fittings of Solomon's Temple. The Tyrian princess Jezebel married Ahab, king of Israel and son of Omri ruled (876-853 BCE)  and this caused religious and cultural influence into Israel and even to Judah.

    In the 8th century BCE Assyria subjugated most of the cities.  Later, Phoenicia was brought into the Persian Empire.  Greek influence and Hellenization spread quickly in Phoenicia.

    By 64 BCE Pompey brought them all under Roman rule.

    The Phoenicians were known for their ships and for trading with the known world.  They discovered distant lands and brought them products of the Middle East.  They established colonies from Cyprus to Carthage and Spain and paid tithes to Tyre.  Their competition was the Greeks.

    Some of their specialties were purple-dyes and glass manufacture.  Egypt and Greece gave them inspiration in their art.  "The Phoenicians were the first state-level society to make extensive use of the alphabet.  The Phoenician phonetic alphabet  is generally believed to be the ancestor of almost all modern alphabets.  It did not have any vowels in it, though. which were added later by the Greeks.  "
    influence.

    "Spencer Wells  has conducted genetic studies that demonstrate that male populations of Lebanon,  Syria, Malta, Sicily,  Spain and other areas settled by Phoenicians, as well as the main Jewish populations, including modern Israel, share a common m89 chromosome (We all have 23 chromosomes).  Y type. m89 first arose around 40,000 years back; a lineage marker of 90 to 95 percent of all non-Africans who migrated out of Africa and settled in the fertile lands of the Middle East and beyond.

    Pierre Zalloua and Wells (2004), under the auspices of a grant from National Geographic Magazine examined the origins of the Phoenicians. The debate between Wells and Zalloua was whether haplogroup J2 (M172) should be identified as that of the Phoenicians or that of its "parent" haplogroup M89 on the YDNA phylogenetic tree. Initial consensus suggested that J2 be identified with the Canaanite-Phoenician (Northwest Semitic) population, with avenues open for future research. As Wells commented, "The Phoenicians were the Canaanites — and the ancestors of today's Lebanese."   It was reported in the PBS description of the National Geographic TV Special on this study entitled "Quest for the Phoenicians" that ancient DNA was included in this study as extracted from the tooth of a 2,500 year-old Phoenician mummy.  

    Based on the genetic dating methods utilized by Zalloua,  the J2 genetic marker dates back to around 12,000 years and stem from the Levant. The National Geographic Genographic Project  linked haplogroup J2 to some ancient towns such as Jericho, Tel -el-Sultan, ca. 8500 BC and indicated that in modern populations, haplogroup J2 is found in North Africa, Southern Europe, and the Middle East. J2  alone is found at a frequency of (20%) in Southern Italians, and at lesser frequencies in Southern Spain (10%). Both haplogroup J, to whose descendants originally appeared exclusively in the Mediterranean area around 10,000 years ago, and its subgroup J2 constitute a combined frequency of about (30%) among Jews."  It is J1 that is called the Cohen gene, linking men to Aaron, Moses's brother, both Levites.

    Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicia
    Oregonian newspaper 3/17/13  page A8.
    http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/03/201331720613911289.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria

    Saturday, March 16, 2013

    Did Ashkenazic Jews Originate from Khazaria?

    Nadene Goldfoot                             Grandfather, Ashkenazi Jew born in Lithuania 1870
                                                        
    Arthur Koestler wrote "The Thirteenth Tribe",copyright 1976,  saying that all Ashkenazi Jews came from Khazaria.  This was before studies of dna which up to today tell us a lot more about our Jewish origins.  Koestler's theory is held onto as a weapon against Jews inhabiting "Palestine" and turning the Jewish Homeland into Israel on May14, 1948. Science is proving that our origins, as written in the Torah, are correct.

    It all started with Jacob's son, Joseph, one of two sons by Rachel, his 2nd and most favorite wife, who was disliked by his brothers because he was Dad's favorite son.  They managed to get him kidnapped by traders who took him to Egypt where he charmed the pharoah and rose to the 2nd highest rank.  His family came looking for him later and stayed, and finally were turned into slaves for the New Kingdom's pharoah of either the 18th to 20th dynasty.  After 400 years from entering Egypt they were able to be led out by Moses.  The 70 people who had entered became quite a large group after 400 years.

    We must remember that the 600,000 that left Egypt with Moses (1391-1271 BCE) were the Children of Israel "Jacob."  Accordingly, this 600,000  was a count of  adult males.  The total population including women, children and elderly men was about 3 million.  A multitude of people of various nationalities  accompanied the Jews out of Egypt according to Rashi. seen in Exodus 12:38 and converted to Judaism .  They are referred to as a "mixed multitude' who went up with them..

    " They must have been slaves along with the Jews.  This could account for the haplgroups other than J1, called the Cohen gene considered as a direct line from Aaron, a Levite, brother of Moses.   These other slaves were usually people captured in war.  "As prisoners of war or even their descendants, they initially belonged to a social stratum superior to that of the Egyptian servants that they were given to. "  Since the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, foreign slaves mainly from Asia  became increasingly numerous. They were either prisoners of war or traded by slave merchants."

     "While there had been slaves in Egypt since the beginning of its history, their numbers greatly increased during the New Kingdom, when the pharaohs were committed to a policy of foreign involvement and conquests in Nubia, Canaan and Syria/"  This  brought in many prisoners of war, or ( seqer-ankh, who were enslaved, at times even branded with the sign ki).  Found in hieroglyphics was this statement;  I gave to them captains of archers, and chief men of the tribes, branded and made into slaves, impressed with my name; their wives and their children were made likewise."

     Josephus wrote that  there were many converts to Judaism in the Roman Empire.  About 10% of the Roman Empire were Jewish made up of Jewish slaves and possibly converts.    In the 2nd and 3rd centuries Jews sought to proselytize but stopped after that.  It was common for Roman women to convert after marrying Jews.  This happens today as well.

    Jews since Roman times had moved to the Balkans, in the Caucasus including Georgia, along the northern shores of the Black Sea and in other areas of eastern Europe.  We cannot believe that Khazaria was the birthplace of just converted Jews.  This was because Jerusalem fell in 70 CE to the Roman conquerors who carted away many of the Jews.  The city was burned down.  People had fled.  They went in every which direction.  Some took the high road and some took the low one.  Most had gone through Rome itself, then onto France, Germany and Austria and up to eastern Europe.

     Evidently that's what my Q1b1a haplogroup paternal ancestors did as 23&me has found segments of chromosomes from these places. I have some amount, from 6 cM's of segments of chromosomes to about 67cM's with over 1,000 people tested at 23&Me.  On the Ydna side I have some matching with E1b's, G1,G2a, I1, J, J1e, J2, lots of Q1b's, R1a1a, R1b1b2 and T.  So how did there happen to be Q1b1a's?  They even match up closely to 2 tribes of Pakistanis who today are Muslims. We even have a close match to a few Saudi Arabians.  Good grief!  Jewish tribes living in Saudi Arabia at the time of Muhammad from 570 to 630 CE were either killed or had to convert.  That could explain some of our connections.  (.J1 arose 10,000 to 15,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent and includes Jews, Arabs, Armenians and Kurds, found at the highest frequencies in Iran and Iraq, then carried by traders into Europe, central Asia, India and Pakistan.  The majority of Jewish men fall into J and J1.  The cohen modal is in J1.)  

    Jewish settlements and synagogues were founded in Roman-governed Pannonia (Hungary) in the 3rd century CE.  Jews lived in Moesia and Thrace in Roman days.  Jewish settlement was also in Bulgaria in these early days.  Jews in the premedieval period from Egypt, Judea, Syria and Asia Minor migrated to the Hellenistic kingdom of Bosporus and settled in towns there.  They worked in jewelry making, pottery making and trading in grain, fish and slaves.  They spoke Greek.  Some of the slaves became regulars in their congregations.  Jews from the tribe and state of Judea settled in Tamatarkha and  Jews were forcefully deported to the Caspian region.  Crimean Jews came into contact with Khazars.

    Khazaria  was the home of shamanists (medicine men)  and worshipped spirits and the sky. It became a refuge for persecuted Jews as it was a safe haven from Europe and Asia.  The Byzantine Empire was so anti-Jewish that it forced many Jews to go to less dangerous lands.  They had forced baptism.  In 610-641 the decree was out saying that Jews had to convert to Christianity.  Jews continued to migrate to Khazaria from the Muslim and Byzsantine lands in 914 CE because of forced conversion policies continuing.  Joseph, the king of the Khazars, welcomed them to settle in his country.

    It is thought that Jews who came through Armenia to Khazaria intermarried with the Khazars.  Jews from Iraq also moved to Khazaria.  Saadiah Gaon wrote that Yitzhak ben Abraham migrated from Iraq (Mesopotamia) to Khazaria.  They also came from Baghdad itself,  from Byzantine Empire and eastern Persia (Iran).  .

     What amazes me is that our Torah was so spot on with this information!  It makes me be in awe of Moses, the author,  who lived over 3,000 years ago.  This was back in the days of writing on sheepskins that were written and rolled up into scrolls; before ipods and websites.  It was almost before writing existed.

    Khazaria was an empire that was swallowed up by Russia.  It was in its heyday in the 700's CE.  The story is that the king or Bulan.of Khazaria listened to 3 representatives of different religions; Christian, Muslim and Jewish and chose Judaism for himself and his royal court to follow. This was in the year 740 CE.  By 838 many of the Khazarians accepted Judaism.  They accepted Circumcision, the observance of Shabbat, Hanukkah, Passover,  and all the holidays and even used Hebrew for writing.   His people were free to do as they wished.  Khazaria started in the 600's CE.  It was the largest in the 9th century CE.  By the 10th century it started losing land and eventually fell apart.

    Kiev, a city in Ukraine, Russia, was also inhabited by Khazarians and the Magyars.  Ukraine was a part of the Pale of Settlement where Russia allowed Jews to live so that they didn't live in Russia proper.  Part of Kiev was founded by Khazars in the beginning of the 9th century which they called "Sambata."  Kiev was also known as "Sambatas."  Magyars ruled Kiev from 840 to 878 and probably controlled the city with Khazarian participation.  Russians took over between 910 and 930 CE.  By the 12th century there was a "Jewish" gate in Kiev, showing that there had been some Jewish settlement by then.

    The latest dna evidence shows that males with the Ydna haplogroup of R1a1a (RM17) are more likely to be descended from Khazaria making up 12% of Ashkenazi Jews.  Males with Q1b (M378) thought they were the Khazarian descendants but this turns out to be false.  It's a rare haplogroup of which my father had.  We have close matches from two nomadic tribes found in Pakistan.  Pakistan is close to Iran which was Persia in ancient days where many Jews were living.  Queen Esther lived in Persia..  Jews with Q1b, or Q1b1a make up 5% of the male Jewish population.  Q's originally started out in Siberia, Mongolia and parts of N. Turkey 15,000 to 20,000 years ago.  In fact, we're connected to Native Americans who broke off from the family and migrated through northern Eurasia into the Americas.

    We did come from the Middle East.  Not surprising, many Palestinian Arabs also share closely with our Ydna haplogroup as well.  After all, Esau was the son of Abraham, too as is written in the Good Book.  This theory of Koestler's is still being cited by Muslims to my face!  The one I discussed this with was elated to find he was the carrier also of J1, called the Cohen gene, and denied that so many Jewish men also carried this, yet so far at least 35-43% of Jewish men possess this haplogroup.  It is found that J1 also has a branch definitely Arabic, and my contact was a member of that one.

    "A study of haplotypes of the Y chromosome, published in 2000, addressed the paternal origins of Ashkenazi Jews. Hammer et al confirmed that the Y chromosome of most Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews contained mutations that are also common among Middle Eastern peoples, but uncommon in the general European population."

    A few people belonging to the Khazarian royal family had converted to Judaism.  There were many Jews from other parts of the world living there that probably intermarried with them if they were of a high enough status.  Otherwise, we can say that most all Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews are like the rest of the Jewish world, directly stemming  from Judah or Israel.  Though there could be some Khazarian chromosomes with Ashkenazis, most all came from Eretz Yisrael in the beginning as members of the 12 Tribes of Jacob.

    Central European Jews from Germany, Bohemia, Moravia and Austria migrated eastward and joined up with existing Jewish communities of the East, including the East Slavic-speaking Jews, whom they outnumbered.  The 13th to 15th centuries saw mass migration from central Europe into Poland.  By the 15th century about 30,000 Jews lived in the Polish-Lithuanian realm.  From the 15th to 17th centuries many of these western Jews moved further east into lands now a part of Belarus and Lithuania where my paternal grandfather was from. 1529 Lithuania had Jews who were given a charter guaranteeing freedom of movement and employment.  By 1566 they had to wear a Jewish badge and were disqualified from giving evidence in courts.  Anti-Semitism had commenced.

    In summary, "most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora." According to Nicholas Wade,  "The results accord with Jewish history and tradition and refute theories like those holding that Jewish communities consist mostly of converts from other faiths, or that they are descended from the Khazars, a medieval Turkish tribe that adopted Judaism."

    Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews
    The Jews of Khazaria 2nd edition by Kevin Alan Brook
    Tanach, the Stone Edition edited by Rabbi Nosson Scherman
    http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/slaves.htm
    http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/slavery.htm
    http://www.historylink101.net/egypt_1/a-time_periods.htm
    The Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ashkenazi-Q/message/1375 study by Hammer.
    Abraham's Children; race, identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People by Jon Entine
      My father, Ashkenazi Jew of Q1b1a haplogroup, father from Lithuania, professional boxer in younger days.  

    Thursday, March 14, 2013

    These Middle Easterners: A Conundrum of People


                                                                         
    Nadene Goldfoot
    Egyptians, Lebanese, Turks and Iranians are Caucasians of the same general type as the Greeks, Italians, Spanish, Irish and Jews.  Negroids are among the area, especially in the Sudan, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf areas.  There are some Mongoloid people, such as the Turkmans of NE Iran and central Iraq.  Jews in Israel come from all corners of the earth and might be making up all of the above.  The Middle East has been in the crossroads of humanity for ages, so that racial mixing can only be traced through dna programs such as is found in 23&Me or familytreedna companies today.

    How these people differ mostly is in their religion which makes up their ethics, but first, communication is stunted by language.  Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Kurdish and Hebrew are spoken in this part of the world.  In Israel, students study Hebrew, either Arabic or French and everyone studies English.   Signs are in Hebrew, Arabic and English.

    Those who speak Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew are most at odds with each other.  Hebrew speakers are of the nation of Israel while Arabic speakers are scattered in the Middle East. Israelis also speak Arabic or French.  Linguistic and cultural ties bind the Arab countries.  They range to the Sudan and North Africa and as far west as the Atlantic Ocean.    Another Semitic group are the Assyrians, also called the Chaldeans, who speak Syriac.  They are Christians and live mostly in Iran and Iraq with small numbers in Syria and Lebanon and much larger numbers in the USA. The largest Assyrian settlements are in Iran and Iraq.  They can be called "the Nestorians".  This  group, before 632 were the main propagators of Christianity throughout Asia.

    The Turks have linguistic ties with the Turkmans and Uzbeks in the east and Hungarians and Finns in the west.  Turks are relative newcomers to the Middle East.  Iranians are the Indo-Europeans who have linguistic and cultural ties with people of Afghanistan, Tajikistan and parts of Turkmanistan,  Uzbekistan and Pakistan.   Linguistically, there is a connection between Persians (Iran) and most of the languages of India and Europe.  Armenians and Kurds are related linguistically to the Persians, but by dna, Kurds are the closest to the Jews.  Religiously, they are both from the Persians and from each other.  “Farsi” means Persian language and is a word that became popular in the USA in the 50's.

    Armenians are scattered in most of the countries of the Middle East and the world.  Mainly they exist in the Soviet Republic of Armenia.  Kurds are predominantly a rural people and most live in parts of Turkey, Iran and Iraq.  Armenians and Kurds are minority groups with nationalistic aspirations.

    An important difference is religion in the Middle East.  The majority are Muslims who are divided between Sunni and Shi’i.  The largest group are the Sunnis.  They feel they are the direct line from Muhammad and feel they are orthodox Muslims.  This is in question by Wahhabism, which is the state religion of Saudi Arabia.

    Shi’s are divided into 4 groups; Ja’fari or Twelvers is the state religion of Iran and they are scattered in other countries of the Middle East as well.  Ismaili or Seveners, Zaydis which is the state religion of Yemen and Alawis who live in N. Syria, Yemen and Morocco.  Sufis are a part of the Islamic community who practice mysticism and is suspect by the clergy of Islam.
    The largest minority is the Christians, divided into 4 groups; Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental churches, Roman Catholics and Anglican and other Protestant Churches.  One has only to look at Egypt and see that they are being attacked and persecuted today.
                                                                           
    Judaism is the 2nd non-Islamic religion of the Middle East and the reason why Israel was established.  Sephardim Jews never left the area but after 70 CE, when Jerusalem fell to the Romans, moved into nearby Arab communities and were 2nd class citizens (dhminnis) and as far away as Spain (forced to leave in 1492) and then Portugal (also forced to leave or convert).  .  Ashkenazsim were taken to Rome, then traveled to Germany and on up into Eastern Europe.  Jews from both groups moved back when possible to Eretz Yisrael, their old home. Most all synagogues in Israel are Orthodox, but there are Conservative and Reform there as well.   A 3rd non-Islamic religion was Zoroastrianism from Iran up to 632.  There are also The Druze found in Lebanon, Syria and Israel, an offshoot of Shi'a;  Yazidis, Sabians and Bahais.

    A little less than 5% in the Middle East are nomads.  However, though none are in Lebanon, between 25-30% are in Saudi Arabia.  They herd sheep, goats or camels.  Some are in Iran and Turkey who live in higher levels.  Their leader is either a shaykh or khan.  They sell sheep, milk, butter, cheese and wool to towns.  Their way of life is in danger of disappearing.

    Expect for Jews in Israel, sexes have been traditionally segregated and women have been subordinate to men.  The veil covers women’s faces and is the symbol of Muslim conservatism.  Whereas Egypt had become very secular and women were not veiled, it has returned with the Muslim Brotherhood.  Many women of the Middle East now cover themselves completely with the Burka, usually black in color.  The only thing to be seen are the eyes.  Orthodox Jewish women are covering their hair, thought to be sexually attractive.  They also keep their arms covered to just below the elbow, and the word is to modest in dress.  Otherwise, women are a part of the armed forces and dress accordingly.  They make wonderful sergeants.  Women have always been leaders in their communities, starting with Deborah of the Bible days.

    Resource: Textbook: Middle East Past &I Present by Yahya Armajani, and Thomas M. Ricks

    Wednesday, March 13, 2013

    Where Did Jews in Ukraine Come From?

    Nadene Goldfoot                                                                     
    Between the 9th and 12th Centuries CE, Jews immigrated to Ukraine in waves from Khazaria, the Caliphate and Byzantium.

    Khazaria was established in the 630's and 640's between the Volga River and the fortress city of Derbent.  It was multiethnic and multireligious.  They assimilated with other tribes and confederation of the Caucasus as early as the 7th century.  .  The Sabirs living in Khazaria intermarried with a large portion of both the Khazar and Magyar tribes.   Kiev, a city in Ukraine,  is over a millennium old, inhabited by Khazars and Magyars in the early days.

    The Royal House of Khazaria converted to Judaism.  Since Roman times Jews had lived in the Caucasus and other areas of eastern Europe.  Khazaria became a refuge for persecuted Jews.  The Khazars lost their kingdom because of military actions of the Rus', Pechenegs, and Byzantines.  The 10th century started their decline. with the Rus'.  By the 960's they had lost power, but they had political independance until at least 1016.  In January of that year the Byzantine emperor,  Basil II,  and the Rus'ian army sent a force against Khazaria.  Some historians say they lasted 2 more centuries after that.  It was then that the Jews of eastern Europe  no longer had a nation of their own.  Golden Horde Mongols controlled a large area of the former Khazar Empire around the Caspian Sea in the late Middle Ages.  The Eastern part of Crimea was controlled by the Khazars from the 7th century to 1117.  The Germans wiped out 50,000 Jews living there in 1941.  Some 300 Karaites survived.  The Jewish population in 1980 was 25,614.

     The Byzantium was the eastern Roman Empire with the capital being in Constantinople, Istanbul, a Turkish city.  .  It covered a vast geographical area up to the year 637, including Palestine.  Jews lived there from its foundation in the 4th century.  Emperor Justinina (527-565) had elaborate anti-Jewish laws in his Code and issued a decree in 553 which interfered with the conduct of the synagogue services.  Emperor Heraclius in 614 issued an edict ordering the conversion of the Jews.  Judaism was formally forbidden by successive emperors.  Jews were present in the Byzantine Empire until the last remnant was conquered by the Turks in 1453.

    The Byzentines and the Khazars had a long period of relations starting in the 7th century.

    The Caliphate was the Islamic States ruling after Muhammad died in 632 CE.  They included Abu Bakr, Umayyads of 7th and 8th centuries, the Caliphate in Hispania, the Abbasids of the 8th to 13th centuries and the Fatimids of the 10th to 12th centuries.  They were all Muslims and against Jews, who were treated as 2nd class citizens with penalties, "dhimmis."

    Between the 14th-15th centuries Jews came from Central Europe, and from the 16th to 17th centuries they came from Poland.  There were uprisings from the 17th-18th centuries where severe massacres occurred during the Chmielnicki and Haidamak uprisings.

    In 1791 Catherine II decreed that all Jews had to live in the Pale of Settlement.  That meant that 25 provinces of Czarist Russia became a prison for Jews.  They were only allowed to live in Poland, Lithuania, White Russia (Belorussia) , Ukraine, Bessarabia,a province, formerly Romanian, now in the Moldavian and Ukrainian Republics,  and Crimea, a Russian peninsula in the Black Sea. .  Latvia was annexed in 1795 and included in the Pale except for Jews in Courland as in 1835 it was excluded from the Pale along with Livland.  .  The Pale wasn't abolished until 1915 and legally March 1917.  No Jew was ever allowed outside this confine unless he was a member of the liberal professions with a high school diploma, big businessmen, or skilled artisans.  It rarely happened.

    The Ukraine was always an anti-Semitic center, and was the scene of pogroms in 1905 and 1918-1920.  About half of Soviet Russia's 3 million Jews lived there before WWII, but under Nazi rule, and were wiped out by both the Nazis and the Ukrainians in 1941-1942.  The Jewish population was 777,126 in 1970 and 484,129 in 1989.  Russia had outlawed the practice of any religion.  Jews didn't know much about their religion except that people didn't like them.

    Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliphate
    The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
    The Jews of Khazaria 2nd Edition by Kevin Alan Brook


    Monday, March 11, 2013

    The Women in Moses's Family and Possible MT DNA Haplogroups

    Nadene Goldfoot                                                                       
    Noah's wife was Naamah.  They were the parents of Shem, Ham and Japheth.  The Babylonian Gilgamesh epic tells the flood story but instead of Noah, has a hero named Utnapishtim.  This was a Sumerian poem from the 3rd Dynasty of Ur found on clay tablets dating back to 2,150 -2,000 BCE.  The story of the flood  with Noah is  in Genesis in the Bible (Torah). 

    1. Levi, son of Jacob, was the father of Kohath and the female Jochebed.  His wife, mother of his children was Milkah, a daughter of Aram.  Aram was one of the sons of Shem.    As Abraham came from the line of Arpachshad, Aram had fathered Uz, Hul, Gether and Mash.
     2. Kohath was the father of Amram, Izhar, Hebron and Uzziel
      3. Amram and his wife, Jochebed  were the parents of Moses and Aaron.
       4. Moses was the father of Gershom and Eliezer.
       4. Aaron was the father of Nadab, Abihu, Elazar and Ithamar.  Produced lots of descendants.  
         5. Elazar was the father of 16; Jehoiarib, Harim, Malchijah, Hakkoz, Jeshua, Eliashib, Huppah, Bilgah, Hezir, Hapizzez, Pethahiah, Jehezkel, Jachin, Gamul, Delaiah, and Maaziah.
        5. Ithamar was the father of Jedaiah, Seorim, Mijamin, Abijah, Shecaniah, Jakim, Jeshebeab and Immer.

    Leah and Rachel, sisters and the two wives of Jacob were the daughters of Laban and Adinah and lived at Haran in Aram-Naharaim.which was on the upper Euphrates River in Mesopotamia.  Leah had a daughter, Dinah.  Dinah had been raped by Shechem which was avenged by her 2 brothers, Simeon and Levi who killed all the people of Shechem for doing it.  Dinah would have carried the same mt dna as Leah and Rachel.    Laban was Rebekah's brother.  He had given his sister Rebekah in marriage to Isaac.  Laban and Rebekah were the children of Bethuel.  Rebekah was the mother of Esau and Jacob.  Bethuel was an Aramean, "Syrian,"  the youngest son of Nahor and Milcah and was the nephew of Abraham.  He was a descendant of Arphaxad "Arpachshad" who was the grandson of Noah. .   Nahor was Terah's father and Terah was the father of Abraham.

    Jochebed carried a special mtDNA that was inherited by Moses and Aaron who carried the Ydna of their father, Amram as well.  Amram's Ydna was the very same haplogroup as Levi's DNA.  Jochebed was married to Amram who was also his aunt.  She had been the daughter of Levi, just like he was. She would have the same mtdna as her mother, Milkah.   According to Chabad, Jochebed was born 2,238 years after the Creation just when Jacob and his household of 70 people entered Egypt because of the famine.  She was the youngest of the 70.

    Jochebed  must have had one of 7 possible haplotypes for mt DNA.  Bryan Sykes had identified only 7 types, which he called the 7 daughters of Eve.  The copyright of his book by the same name was in 2001, and since then a few more have been found.  Mt dna does not change very much and can stay the same for about a  thousand years.

    *My first thought is that Jochebed could have been of the J, J1 or J2 which originated about 45,000 years ago in central Asia and is associated with the spread of farming and herding in Europe during the Neolithic Period beginning 10,000 years ago.  Moses lived from about 1391 to 1271 BCE, so his mother was born about 1,410 BCE.  These haplogroups are common in the Near East, , Europe, the Caucasus, North Africa and the Middle East and among Jews.  J2 is more localized in the Mediterranean.  Sykes calls J's "Jasmine."  He places her about a mile from the River Euphrates in today's Syria when the ice age had ended.  Because food could now be produced and the landscape was under human control, the population increased relentlessly.  Of course it was a famine that drove Jacob's children into Egypt where they stayed for 400 years.  When they left, their count had gone from 70 to 600,000.  They had this same population to intermarry with for the 400 years.

    It could also have been haplogroup I.  This started some 30,000 years ago in Eurasia and found in Egypt and Arabia as well as southern Europe.  The handmaids, Zilpah and Bilhah could have been of this group.

    A 3rd possiblity could have been K.  This is a subbranch of U that appeared in the early part of the Holocene Epoch after the last glacial maximum.  About 1/3 of people with Ashkenazi ancestry carry a subclade of this K haplogroup.  Sykes named K's Katrine, who is more centered in Italy.

    One more that can't be overlooked after 400 years of living in Egypt is N haplogroup together with M make up 2 superhaplogroups.  N is the daughter of one of the NE African lineages thought to have originated in Africa some 60,000 years ago.  It's common in the Middle East.  N1b is also found in the Near East, Egypt and Arabia and radiated around 39,000 to 52,000 years ago.  Sykes other daughters, H (Helena) , J (Jasmine) , T (Tara)  and U (Ursula)  come out of this line.

    References: Abraham's Children race, identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People by Jon Entine
    The Seven Daughters of Eve, the sicence that rteveals our genetic ancestry by Bryan Sykes
    The Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
    Tanakh, The Stone Edition
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jochebed
    http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112040/jewish/Jochebed.htm
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethuel
    http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3227-bethuel
    http://www.mts.net/~arphaxad/arphaxad.html
    http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9568-laban
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_names_for_the_biblical_nameless  TERRIFIC WEBSITE
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh

    Jacob's Twelve Tribes of Israel and How They Grew or Shrunk in Size

    Nadene Goldfoot
    Our Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob probably lived around the 17th century BCE.  They were a nomadic shepherd clan who arrived in Eretz Yisrael from Mesopotamia (today's Iraq).  They believed in One G-d.  Jacob was given the name "Israel" by G-d.  

    According to Numbers Chapter 1 to Number Chapter 26 in "The Old Testament" or Torah, we see what happened to the population of each of the 12 Tribes of Israel, fathered by Jacob.

    1. Judah, always the largest from 74,600 to 76,500 showing a growth of 1,900.
    2. Dan, ...........................  ........62,700 to 64,400.........................of.... .1,700.
    3. Simeon................................. 59,300 to 22,200.............. ........ .......                  loss of .37,100.
    4. Zebulun                                 57,400 to 60,500...............a growth of 3,100
    5. Issachar                                54,400 to 64,300................................ 9,900
    6. Naphtali                                53,400 to 45,400.................................................loss of... 8,000
    7. Reuben                                 46,500 to 43,730.................................................loss of ...2,770
    8. Gad                                      45,650 to 40,500.................................................loss of....5,150
    9. Asher                                   41,500 to 53,400 ............a growth of 11,900
    10. Ephraim                             40,500 to  32,500................................................loss of... 8,000
    11. Benjamin (youngest)          35,400 to 45,600.............a growth of 10,200
    12. Manasseh                          32,200 to 52,700............a growth of 20,500

    Totals           603,500 to 601,730        with a net loss of 1,820.  

    Simeon: 2nd son of Jacob.  He was concerned about the good name of his sister, Dinah, so he and Levi tricked the people of Shechem, captured the town, killed the males and took the women and children captive.  Jacob didn't approve and was angry about his actions.  and prophesied the dispersion of his descendants and of Levi having to live among the other tribes. Simeon received territory in Eretz Yisrael within the lot of Judah in 2 separate places of the Negev Desert and was of minor importance.  During the reign of Hezekiah they took possession of the Arab areas of Seir.  Some apparently settled in the Mountains of Ephraim.

    Naphtali:  6th son of Jacob, the 2nd son of Bilhah the handmaid of Rachel.  He was given the northern part of Canaan including the entire eastern coast of the Sea of Galilee and the mountains of Galilee.  They were active in war against Sisera and Gideon's campaign against the Midianites.  They belonged to the northern kingdom of Israel after the split.  It was overrun by Arameans in the time of Baasha.  Large section of its people were exiled by Tiglath-Pileser of Assyria in 721 BCE.   From the survivors were derived many of the Jews living in Galilee in 2nd Temple times.

    Reuben:  1st son of Jacob; Oldest son of Jacob and Leah, He argued with his brothers about their plot against their brother Joseph and did not want to sell Joseph to traders.  He later volunteered to be kept for ransom for Benjamin during his visit to Egypt.  This was his good side.  On his bad side, he had had incestuous relations with his father's concubine, Bilhah., so Jacob gave away Reuben's rights as first-born to Joseph.  The heads of the tribe when they were on the Exodus with Moses were  were Dathan, Abiram and On.  They had tried to claim the right to serve as priests but failed.  When the tribes settled in Canaan, the tribe of Reuben asked and received territory in Moab (Transjordan), which was fertile but presented political problems, and eventually much of their territory fell into the hands of the Moabites or Ammonites.  Reuben was one of the 10 tribes exiled to Assyria by Tiglath-Pileser in 721 BCE.  They played a minor part in the settlement.

    Gad:  son of Jacob and Zilpah the handmaid of Leah,  had settled in Gilead and Central Transjordan where they gained a warlike reputation.  They flourished during the rule of Saul, 1st king of Israel and their position was consolidated under King David  (1010 -970 BCE)  After the split in the kingdom, Gad belonged to the northern kingdom (Samaria) and suffered severely from Syrian attacks.  In 732 BCE, the region was devastated by Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria and most of the people were exiled.  It was later occupied by the Ammonites.   The Assyrians kept taking people  of the northern tribes from  721-715 BCE.

    Ephriam: Younger son of Joseph who was a son of Jacob.  It was the more northern of the 2 Israelite kingdoms.  It included the hill-country in central Eretz Yisrael and was noted for its fertility.  In the period of the Judges, Ephraim claimed priority among the Israelite tribes because their religious center was at Shiloh in the territory of Ephraim.  The secession of the northern tribes after Solomon's death centered on the tribe of Ephriam, to which Jeroboam, the 1st king of the northern kingdom of Israel belonged.  The prophets later spoke of the House of Judah and the House of Ephraim as representing the 2 branches of the Hebrew people.  Ephriam and Manassah had been the tribe of Joseph originally but were divided in half to make 12 tribes since the tribe of Levi was chosen to be the priestly officials and had no land. they would live among all twelve in the work of teaching.   Twelve was a sacred number.

    What Land All 12 Tribes Received
    Joshua gave Reuben, Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh land in Transjordan.  
    Naphtali and Asher got land on the Sidonian frontier in Galilee.
    Issachar and Zebulun got land in the Valley of Jezreel area.
    Ephraim and the other half of Manasseh were given land in the mountains of Samaria.
    Benjamin was to Ephraim's south and Dan was along the seacoast around Jaffa.  Dan couldn't hold the land and were expelled by the Amorites and so moved to the sources of the Jordan River.  
    Simeon was in the Negev.  Changes were later made.  

    Levi:  3rd son of Jacob and Leah received no land:  He and Simeon had avenged the dishonoring of their sister, Dinah.  They had received Jacob's rebuke who then forecast their descendants would be scattered throughout Israel.  During the 2nd Temple Period, the act of Levi and Simeon was extolled.  :Levi had a daughter, Jochebed who was mother of Moses. and 3 sons; Gershom, Kohath whose son Amram was the father of Moses, and Merari.  Levi died in Egypt.   Levites are 2nd in line after the Cohens to read from the Torah in the synagogue.

    The last Judean exiles of the tribe of Judah from 597 to 586 BCE by Nebuchadnezzar had been deported to areas adjacent to the place of exile, Babylon, and taken to many of the same places the 10 Tribes had been taken which were in Media, Assyria and Mesopotamia.  While some of the Lost 10 tribes remained in their land of Eretz Yisrael, some of their descendants preserved their identity among the Jewish population and others were assimilated.

    70CE:  The fall of Jerusalem to the Romans and destruction of the 2nd Temple.  .

    Reference:  Tanach, The Stone Edition
    The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
    Facts About Israel 1973 Division of Information, ministry for foreign affairs, Jerusalem

    From Abraham Back to Noah and Our Ensuing DNA

    Nadene Goldfoot
    One of the 3 sons of Noah was Shem.  From Shem came, according to the Bible, the nations of:
    1. Elam
    2. Asshur
    3. Arpachshad.  He was father of: Eber who was the ancestor of Abraham.
         A.   Shelah
         B.  Eber.  He was ancestor of Abram-Abraham.  Abraham's father was Terah and they lived in Ur of the Chaldees, now in Iraq. Terah's father was Nahor I.  Nahor's father was Serug.  Arpachshad was the founding father of this line.

    Abraham's brothers were Haran and Nahor II.  Eber was the grandson of Shem (Gen. 10-11) His descendantss form the Semitic peoples and tribes including the Israelites who are therefore, according to one view, called Hebrews.
                (1) Peleg
                (2) Joktan
                      (a) Almodad, Shelph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Obal, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah, Jobab.
    4. Lud

    5. Aram.
        A. Uz, Hul, Gether, Mash

    Shem and Eber were the son and great grandson of Noah and their graves are to be found in a cave next to a synagogue in Safed, Israel that bears their names.

    There are many legends about this.  The location is relatively far from the old Jewish Quarter of Safed.  The Arabs didn't destroy this building like they did others because Muslims also thought this was a holy place.  Abraham was said to have bought the cave of Machpelah as a family burial place.  Circumcision is called by both Jews and Muslims as "the Covenant of Abraham our Father."  Abraham lived at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE.

    They believe that Jacob, son of Isaac, studied here for 14 years with a famous teacher and that this is the burial site of the holy messenger who told Jacob that Joseph was lost.  Joseph was the 11th son of Jacob and the 1st born of Jacob's 2nd wife, Rachel, his true love.  He was a favored son.  Josephs story is amazing, but the bottom line is that he was finally joined by his father and brothers and had received grazing land in Goshen, beginning the Israelite settlement in Egypt.  This story of Jacob has been dated during the Hyksos domination of Egypt  (18th-16th cents. BCE.)

    Jewish tradition says that one of Jacob's daughters, and I only know of Dinah,  and all of his 12 sons, including Joseph, are buried in the 2nd cave.

    This historical site is not on the regular tourist paths and few visit here.  The neighbor of Dov Silverman, who wrote about this legend in his book, Legends of Safed,  was the caretaker.  He is happy to open the gate and show visitors this most unusual and ancient religious site.

    Shem is supposed to be the ancestor of the Semitic peoples who spoke Semitic languages.  It was a tongue akin to Hebrew.  Arabs speak Arabic whose language fits the description.  For instance, peace, in Hebrew, is Shalom and Salaam in Arabic.  In Hebrew, the letter used for S or Sh is the same, and in one case is called a Sin and in the other is called a Shin.  A dot if used at all denotes which sound to use.

    Noah's other 2 sons were Ham and Japheth.  From these 3 sons came the first 70-80 people from which we all came from.  This information comes to us from Genesis 6 in the Bible which is the Flood story.  The Babylonian Gilgamesh epic also contains a parallel flood story where instead of Noah, has a hero named Utnpishtim.  Our "Song of Songs 6:8" include the 74 that rabbis have found and listed including both Nimrod and Pelishtim as well as Peleg's son Reu, his son Serug, his son Nahor, his son Terah, his sons Nahor and Haram.  Some researchers omit Nimrod from the count of 70 and instead include Pelishtim (Philistines).

    DNA shows that all people are 99% the same.  It is that 0.1% that holds the map telling more about our particular families and how we differ.  DNA shows that we differ as individuals for sure, but also as groups.

    This wouldn't be too far fetched from what science is discovering in DNA studies by  human population geneticists.  Male lines of Y dna are identified as distinct haplogroups : A, B, C, C3, D, D2, E, E3a, E3b, F, G, G2, G2c, H, I, J, J2, J1 (which is called the Cohen gene stemming from Moses's brother Aaron and perhaps even Moses himself and also including  J1 line of Arab Muslims) K, K*, L, M, N, O, O3, O1, P, Q, Q3, R, R1, R2, R1a, R1b.

    The most common Y-DNA haplogroups among Jewish men worldwide would be haplogroups J1 and J2
     As for haplogroup J, Jews of Portugal/tras-os-Moriles had 57 people in a sample size tested which found a total J M267 at 12.3% in testing by Nogueiro;  Jews that were Cohanim were tested in a sample of 215 men who were 46.0% J M267 and 46.0% of J-P58;  this testing was done by Hammer and Behar in 2009.  One of my friends here in Portland, a Cohen in the synagogue,  was also tested by ftdna as J1 or M267. His surname was not Cohen.  Jews who were non Cohanim  were tested in a study of 1,360 men and 14.9% were J M267, with 0.9% J-M267 (x P58) and 14.0% were J-P58.  This test was done by Hammer in 2009.  So ever since 70 CE at the time of a great dispersal from Jerusalem, the oral history of being a Cohen which means serving in the synagogue in this role has been handed down from Aaron to the next generation of males and has been at least 50% as an exact lineage.  J-M267 is common throughout the Levant and Jewish populations, dominated by J-P58, but some specific sub-populations have now frequencies.  A distinctive Arab line is J13cd.

    Other Sephardic Jewish male Y haplogroup lines are E1b1b which makes up 20% of Ashkenazis and 30% of Sephardis; R1b1a2, I, and E1b1a found in different places.  Q1b1a make up 5% of the Jewish and is an Ashkenazi population.  " Jewish communities are more closely related to each other and to other Middle Eastern Semitic populations -– Palestinians, Syrians, and Druze -- than to their neighboring non-Jewish populations in the Diaspora.  The results also indicate a low level of admixture (intermarriage, conversion, rape, etc.) into the gene pool of these various Jewish communities.


    A was believed to have been the first Y chromosome lineage to diverge.  It is restricted to Africa, where it is present in several groups at a low frequency, but is mostly found in population of the Khoi and the San tribes of southern Africa.  R1b is the most common haplogroup in European populations.  It is believed to have spread throughout Europe as humans recolonized after the last ice age of 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.  It has the Atlantic Modal Haplotype.  

    Abraham was the progenitor of  the 2 billion Christians, 1.3 billion Muslims, and 13-14 million Jews of today.  G-d promised in the Bible that his descendants will be "as numerous as the stars of the heaven and the sands on the seashore"...Today a new Pope is being considered and voting is in progress.  We find that the United States has 75 million Catholics, about 1/4 of the population and about 7% of the Catholics in the world.  In Oregon, 14% of the population is Catholic and is the largest Christian denomination in the state.  Jews make up only 0.02% of world population.

    Reference:  Oregonian newspaper,  page B, Living
    Abraham's Children, race, identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People by Jon Entine
    Legends of Safed by Dov Silverman published by the Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley, CA, USA
    The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J-M267_(Y-DNA)
    http://www.familytreedna.com/public/dominicansephardim/default.aspx?section=results
    http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48937817.html
    Tanach, The Stone Edition


    Saturday, March 9, 2013

    Why Jews Have Been So "Popular"

    Nadene Goldfoot                                                                    
    Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914 in ViennaAustria-Hungary, the only child of Gertrud "Trude" Kiesler (née Lichtwitz; 1894–1977) and Emil Kiesler (1880–1935). Her father was born to a Galician Jewish family in Lemberg (now Lviv in Ukraine) and was a successful bank director

    The Jewish King Saul of the tribe of Benjamin was Israel's first king.   King David of Israel of the  tribe of Judah, son of Jesse- grandson of Ruth the Moabite and Boaz,   ruled from 1,010 BCE to  970 BCE and created an empire in the Middle East.  His son, King Solomon ruled for 40 years from 967-920 BCE, was well known and had a reputation of being the wisest of men.  Stories have been told of how he decided between 2 women as to who the real mother was.  The Queen of Sheba journeyed to visit him from Ethiopia and left very satisfied.  He was a powerful ruler with a harem of 1,000 wives and concubines, which he procured in the act of making peace with other countries.  He had the 1st Temple in Jerusalem built.   The reputation of this great empire and its ethics of Judaism ranged far and wide.  Israel was taken in 722 BCE by the Assyrians.  At this point we had a great reputation.

     In about 930 BCE the Kingdom of Judah was formed out of Israel when Solomon died.  His son, Rehoboam was king from 928 to 911 BCE in the newly formed Judah.   Many of the previous exiled were able to return in 539 BCE.  Zedekiah was the last Jewish king.

    Young Rome, also situated on the Mediterranean like Israel, was created on April 21, 753 BCE by the twins, Romulus and Remus, descendants of the Trojan prince Aeneas. This was 207 years after King David had died.  In the 300's BCE Rome started annexing provinces.   By  139 BCE, 614 years later since its inception, Rome started to take Jewish captives.  By the time the Roman Empire evolved and was in its heyday, Judah was still in existence with Jerusalem as its capital.  It was a ripe plum to be  picked.  From 6 CE to 66 CE Judea was ruled by the Roman emperors.  There were 14 altogether; 7 between 6 and 41 CE and the others between 44 and 66 CE.   The Romans now coveted Judah.

    Jerusalem was overtaken by the Romans who ruled it by Roman Procurators like Pontius Pilate.   Jesus died on the cross in 29 CE.  His death was blamed on the Jews of Jerusalem even though it was the Romans who were the government who ruled and placed him on the cross along with many others.  It was Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator who gave the order.   It is possible that the Jewish officials, who were appointed by the Romans and anxious to keep their own lives and to be in favor, brought the messianic movement to the attention of the Roman authorities, not meaning to have another fellow Jew placed on a cross but just to get in the procurators good graces.  Anti-Semitism was set in motion.

     Agrippa ruled from 41 to 44 CE. The Masada was a stronghold near the Dead Sea.  In 40 BCE it was unsuccessfully besieged by Antigonus Mattathias, a Jewish leader when it was Herod's Palace.   By 73 CE, it was a zealot fortress that housed 960 Jews holding out against the Romans.  They finally committed suicide rather than being taken by the Romans who would have exerted great cruelty in their slaughter as they held out for about 3 years against them.

      By 44  CE Julius Caesar had become their dictator.  Latin-speaking Rome was powerful in the first two centuries and had a Pax Romana (Roman Peace). Jews revolted in 66 CE under their non-peaceful demands, such as putting idols in their temple, stopping circumcision, etc.    Jerusalem fell to the Romans in 70 CE to Titus.  Bar Kochba, a Jewish fighter and leader, led a revolt from 132 to 135 CE and then fell.  From then on the Jewish land of Judah was called Palaestina, then later written as Palestine, called by the Romans a name of an earlier  Jewish  enemy.

    Christianity grew out of the events with Christians blaming Jews for the death of Jesus.  This brought about anti-Semitism that lasts to this day even though the latest pope, Pope  Benedict finally forgave Jews officially.  It has caused Jews to have been the scapegoats of every people on earth.  Wherever Jews have gone, they have had to live under restrictions like only being allowed to live in the Pale of Settlement of Russia and not Russia proper, not allowed to own any land, not allowed to work in a sundry of jobs, in all treated worse than 2nd class citizens.  Many times they have been excommunicated out of countries.  Living conditions have been short-lived.  They went from living in the greatest empire to being homeless.

    Then along came Islam with Mohammad in Medina.  Mohammed was born in 570 CE and died in 632.  Around 610 he introduced Islam to his tribes.  One of the first people he tried to convert were the Jews of Medina.  They didn't buy into his new religion and so many Jewish tribes of Medina were slaughtered as a result.  Mohammed reacted to their refusal by changing some of his Koran to reflect his then dislike for Jews, and ever since then they too, have been treated as 2nd class citizens called dhimmis which also means rules and regulations were enforced upon them.
                                                                               
    Youssef Qaradawi-originally from Egypt-now from Qatar
    Youssef Qaradawi is the most important leader of the Global Muslim Brotherhood and is the de facto spiritual leader of the movement. Morsi of Egypt was the head AND had become the President of Egypt until ousted.  He is also considered to be the “spiritual guide” for Hamas and his fatwas in support of suicide bombings against Israeli citizens were utilized by Hamas to justify their operations. 
    By today, Muslims are more intolerant as ever towards Jews.  A few of their religious leaders such as Qaradawi have fatwas out to kill all Jews on sight. However,  Evangelical Christians have become our best friends and are showing their friendship with a group called CUFI, Christians United for Israel.   Other Christians show their continued repulsion by backing boycotts against tiny Israel, which is the only Jewish state in the world.  They prefer to back the Arab Palestinians who have attacked Israel since its rebirth in 1948.  To the disappointment of all of these people, Israel has made it to its 64th birthday and is looking forward to its 65th!  Update:  It's made its 70th birthday.  I'm looking forward to its 120th!  (age of Moses when he passed away).  

    Jews today (14 million)  only make up only 0.02% of the world's population in a world of 7,021,836,029 people and yet get more negative attention than other people.   The world's largest  religions are Christianity at 33.35% and Islam at 23%.   The reason we have such a low population isn't because of Judaism being an outdated or unworthy religion,  but because of  such things as the attacks from the Assyrians and then the Babylonians, the  Crusades starting in 1096 to 1320 CE of the early centuries that killed off Jews in the Christian zeal to retake Palestine from the Muslims, and Christianity's  Spanish Inquisition of 1492 that caused so many Jewish deaths and forced conversions or Jews to hide their reverence to their religion, and then of course, the Holocaust of Europe that killed 6 million of us.

    Also, Jews do not proselytize their religion.  In fact, one has to ask at least 3 times to get in a class to convert.  That's because they did not like the attacks from Christians or Muslims to convert to their religion.  The Golden Rule rules; don't do to others what you would not want  done to you.  Being Jewish means you're under pressure a great deal either of anti-Semitism or people wanting to convince you to join their religion.  You have to be very sure you want to be in our shoes and are convinced that it is right for you.
                                                                               
    Albert Einstein:  IQ 180Albert Einstein ( EYEN-styne; German: ( 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics).

    We, a lone people that still exist from ancient days, are a people that the Nazis tried to exterminate completely.   Even though we are not great in numbers, we have kept the intelligence we were granted while our neighbors were granted all the oil.  .                                         
    Kirk Douglas, actor,  sports a cleft in his chin
    just like my father's.  

    Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch, December 9, 1916) is an American actor, filmmaker, and author. A centenarian, he is one of the last surviving stars of the film industry's Golden Age

      Nobel prizes have gone to 177 Jews and 10 more to people with one Jewish parent since 1901. In 2012 Jews  won the prize in Chemistry, Physics and Economics.    Start up jobs are created out of Israel who is only 2nd to the United States in this endeavor. "START-UP NATION addresses the trillion dollar question: How is it that Israel – a country of 7.1 million, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources—produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful,and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? How is it that Israel has, per person, attracted over twice as much venture capital investment as the US and thirty times more than Europe? " Medical science is being created in Israel.  Israel knows more about fighting terrorism and helps to train others to defend themselves.  Inventions come out of Israel and are shared with the world.  Einstein, who had the highest IQ known of 180, was Jewish.  Jesus was Jewish.    

    Resource:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire
    http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/63429/Bethlehem
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Rome
    http://www.amazon.com/Start-up-Nation-Israels-Economic-Miracle/dp/0446541478Book:  "Start up Nation, the story of Israel's economic miracle"  by Dan Senor and Saul Singer
    http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/David.html
    http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Solomon.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Judah
    http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/nobels.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations
    http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=16563
    Updated 3/7/19