Israel is a very low priority for Jewish Americans

35 Comments / 85 Comments

1. @ Michael S:

   The Irish and probably the Scots are the people who have most red hair. They apparently got it from vikings and Scandinavians generally. They also spread around the Baltic and deep into places like Poland. Recessive genes etc. So I would assume that any 1903 scientific study would be greatly flawed and the likelihood of Polish Jews acquiring red hair, by 1903 would probably have been passed on from the general population. You know…pogroms and such…It seemed popular in pre WW2 literature to cast the crook as a red headed Polish Jew…I have many late 19th cent. and early 20th cent. books in which the villains were very often curly red haired Poles with “Semitic” noses, lisps, or beady-eyes……. So take your pick. As I said, in my home Community of 4,000 of whom about 90% were originally from either the Baltic States, or Poland (which was Russia in those days-before that it was all the Duchy of Lithuania, stretching right through East Central Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea)) I knew of only 3 redheads, one of whom was a German kid in school. Where the red beards you talk about come from except from their chins, I have no clue. I don’t believe the high percentage anyway. One sometimes sees people with black hair and brown eyebrows or vice versa…etc.

   The famous Ottoman admiral Barbarossa had a red beard as had his brother, so it seemed to have been a family trait, and they were born somewhere in the islands off Greece. Too late now to ask him if he was ever in Poland-or if he had a Semitic lisp….

2. @ Edgar G.:
   “Red hair is also found amongst the Ashkenazi Jewish populations.[21] In 1903, 5.6% of Polish Jews had red hair.[22] Other studies have found that 3.69% of Jewish women overall were found to have red hair, but around 10.9% of all Jewish men have red beards.[23] In European culture, before the 20th century, red hair was often seen as a stereotypically Jewish trait: during the Spanish Inquisition, all those with red hair were identified as Jewish.[24] In Italy, red hair was associated with Italian Jews, and Judas was traditionally depicted as red-haired in Italian and Spanish art.[25] The stereotype that red hair is Jewish remains in parts of Eastern Europe and Russia.”

   — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair#Eastern_and_Southern_Europe

3. @ Michael S:

   Turkic extraction means that they originally came from Central Asia and no “probably” about it., if my memory is correct. This has positively been proven to the satisfaction of historians and scientists. Not from Turkey, although the Turks from the same or nearby area, arrived in present day Turkey centuries later than the Khazars high point.

4. @ Michael S:

   WARNNG…Megillah on the way;

   Well this sounds as being a very good “put down” and perhaps deserved, although don’t know for what..?

   If you can get to understand more about the Creator through a book on physics and another on Inorganic chemistry, it leaves me “scratching my head”. At a quick guess, one would explain what were previously thought to be “miracles”, and show me my own insignificance and unimportance, (I absolutely hated physics in Uni. even with a Nobel Prize lecturer), the other might make me a master-manufacturer of hard-to detect poisons or something like that….

   As for me, I’m no scholar…far from it. And Jewish red hair…..?? it could barely have come from the Khazars. Reports showed almost no corresponding connecting genetic evidence, but perhaps the red hair was the one bequest from them to the Jewish People. In our Community of 4000, I knew only 3 people with red hair and one was a child refugee from Germany. There were the same number of very oriental looking families though. I also read somewhere that Jews have about the same percentage of redheads as the rest of the Western world.

   As for Josephus’ Christ Passage that you have no interest in, and your dependence on “earlier” and “more reliable” writings….you must be kidding, considering the many “insertions” by different copyists and the huge number of redactions etc. Old Jo wrote “The Antiquities” just after the year 90, but collected his information during the previous 20 years. ( his “The Wars of the Jews” was only a couple of years after Masada fell in 73 with NO mention of Jesus)… at least in the same time period of the New Testament and earlier than most of it.

   However I wasn’t recommending Josephus’ writings, but the masterful analysis of that ‘Testimonium” by Solomon Zeitlin. It would be very intellectually bracing to say the least.

   Since in another life I must have been a detective, I find it very interesting that Origen, from around the middle of the 3rd cent. the most important scholar and theologian of his time and who mentioned Josephus’ widely read writings, never a word about the “Testimonium” …….(nor did anyone else) which first “saw daylight” with Eusebius, who was already a well known “interpolator”…

   Go ahead, try it.. you’ll like it…..I guarantee it …..!!

5. @ Michael S:
   Hi, Edgar

   I just did some reading into the Wikipedia article I cited above. It mentions the Khazars:

   “…Ashkenazi R1a lineage. One of these, the M582 mutation, is not found among Eastern Europeans, but the marker was present “in all sampled R1a Ashkenazi Levites, as well as in 33.8% of other R1a Ashkenazi Jewish males, and 5.9% of 303 R1a Near Eastern males…”

   The Khazars have disappeared as a distinct people; but it was conjectured that most Ashkenazi Levites were Khazars. They are thought to have contributed most of the Haplogroup R1a yDNA to the Ashkenazi Levites, as well as a large minority of other Ashkenazi Jews. The above shows that the particular strain of this DNA was much more closely connected to Near Easterners, than to Eastern Europeans. That would jibe with the fact that the Khazars were probably of Turkic extraction.

   The Cohen Modal Haplotype was distributed among Jews as follows:

   CMH.1[1] CMH[1]
   Ashkenazi Cohanim (AC): 69% 45%
   Sephardic Cohanim (SC): 61% 56%
   Ashkenazi Jews (AI): 15% 13%
   Sephardic Jews (SI): 14% 10%

   You can see that this marker was preserved among all Jews; but among Cohanim it was preserved 4-5 x as much as among other tribes.

   I have to go. Cheers.

6. @ Edgar G.:
   Hi, Edgar

   I am not the scholar that you are: I have an MS in Chemistry, an AAS in Network Operations, and tested fluent in Vietnamese Language. Any knowledge of Jewish history comes purely from a hobbyinst’s interest in genealogy and history. I read Josephus, including the “Christ Passage”; and I realize that it came from a fairly late translation. The New Testament itself attests a more ancient and reliable pedigree, so I’m not that interested in the Jewish patriot-turned-Roman, Flavius Josephus.

   The next time you recommend books for me to read, you might consider that my my most dog-eared tomes are (1) the 58th Edition of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, and (2) Advanced Inorganic Chemistry, by Cotton and Wilkinson. They are both extremely interesting, and have given me many insights into God and His ways; but I doubt that there are many others who would derive a like benefit from them.

   When I think of the Khazars, I think of all those red-haired Jews, especially Ashkenazi Levites. I also think of yDNA haplogroup R1a1. (Notice that I said “think of”, not “am confirmed in such-and-such an opinion about”). Haplogroup R1a1 can be found from Ireland to Siberia, in several people groups. My red-headed Viking-descended father-in-law may also have had it; but he was never tested.

   I suppose I should close here, and get on with something useful — like doing the dishes.

7. @ Edgar G.:
   You are correct, Edgar. I just rattled off the words “Kohen Gadol Haplotype” off the top of my head — not bothering to check it up at the time, because I was fairly sure you would get back to me. The Wikipedia article about it is at:

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Aaron

   They call it the “Cohen Modal Haplotype”; but even this name can be misleading. The Cohen Gadol, AND every other genetic Cohen, AND every other male-line genetic Jew, AND every male-line genetic descendant of Ishmael (many Arabs), AND every male-line genetic descendant of Noah (through Ham, Shem AND Japheth), AND every descendant of Adam and Eve, all have this same haplotype and haplogroup (J2); because outside of a minimal number of mutations, the gene is passed on exactly from father to son.

   In my own line, I have been in contact with distant cousins who are connected with me only by common descent from a German-Dutch settler in New York who was born in 1624 — some ten generations distant from me. We are practically exact genetic matches with one another. Now, go to Genesis 10, count generations and go figure.

   Jews and Arabs, as well as Turks, Kurds and others in the area, are descended from a common pool of both males and females, mainly of male haplogroups J1, J2 and E. J2, the haplogroup of the Jewish CMH, is most common in the eastern Cacasus, among the Azerbaijanis and Chechens. The ancient homeland of the Jews, in Eastern Turkey (the headwaters of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, as well as the location of Mount Ararat) used to speak the Hurrian language, akin to modern Chechen and Ingush. (In other words, Adam did not speak Hebrew).

   Of course, this is all heresy, to most fundamentalist Christians and Jews. No love lost there.

8. MCHAEL- Just now mentioned Solomon Zeitlin (for whom I had a tremendous respect his knowledge was VAST) and recalled that he had written a separate treatise on the “Testimonium Flavianum”, considering it’s great importance to Christianity.

   So I just checked on the internet and see that it is called “The Christ Passage In Josephus”. I strongly recommend that you read it, and see the enormous amount of talent and knowledge this Jewish Historian had. At least you will enjoy that part. H he goes much further, into the Slavonic “Wars”, to examine which, he actually travelled to Moscow, finding that they were translated by an unknown Rabbi of the Khazars, also the Josippon”…and not what they were touted as being. etc I feel you’ll find it enormously interesting, indeed fascinating, as I originally found it to be many years ago. (The Khazars also are an interest of mine since I bought the Koestler book “The 13th Tribe”, nearly 50 years ago and I’m a member of a Society devoted to the archaeological finds which have been going on for many years at their capital Atil, finally discovered.

9. @ yamit82:

   Oh yes Yamit, I DO know exactly who I am, and from whom I am descended. It’s nice to hear it from another as well.

   Incidentally, in your vast and most interestng essay on our history, where you mention Zadok of the 3rd century. I believe that Zeitlin says that ths Zadok was a student of Antigonus of Socho around the turn of the 3rd to the 2nd century B.C.E.

10. @ Michael S:

    Since the information was announced some years ago I always understood that the Haplotype was a Kohen Haplotype and did not distinguish Kohanim Gadolim, which, in my opinion, would require a positive identification of a present day descendant of the single family from which the Gadodlm were chosen. Since this unavoidably changed from time to time due to causes both internal and external I believe that it is now lost.

    Perhaps archaeologists may be able to positively identify the tomb and bones of a definite Cohen Gadol (they may already have done so) from which DNA may be obtained. This is a subject I know nothing about, and am too lazy to search for..

11. @ Edgar G.:
    The “Cohen Gadol Haplotype”, found in perhaps 50% of Cohanim, has been touted as Aharon’s yDNA marker. However, since Aharon was directly descended in a male line, over not too many generations, from Adam, the CGH is probably the marker for Adam and his male line as well — a marker that was especially preserved among the Cohanim for religious purposes. The vast majority of Jews, who do not have this gene, are not directly descended from Adam — as, indeed, neither are any other people groups. This is evidence that the Biblical Flood was of local impact — probably in eastern Turkey, where the Jews (and the descendants of Adam) originated.

    The CGH also establishes a direct connection between modern Jews and the patriarchs in the Bible; but clearly, the vast majority of their “blood” came from converts. Note in the Book of Ester, that when the Jews were in favor, as in Ahashverah’s time, many people sought to become Jews. This made up for their great periodic losses from assimilation and persecution.

12. @ yamit82:

    There will be arguments as to “who is a Jew” throughout the coming ages nevertheless.

    As for the “Missing 10 Tribes,”…….I was taught in Chaidar, as a child, that, contrary to common belief, Ephraim and Dan, along with Benjamin (the first to be absorbed) and Simeon became the Kingdom of Judah. Of course it “flows” better than “The missing 5-6 Tribes. Geographically it seems logical…What do you say Yamit??

13. @ Michael S:

    Thank you Michael…just imagine my missing the sharp give-and-take, of arguing with a devoted Christian, but I believe I would have. I appreciate the regret you expressed.

14. @ adamdalgliesh:
    Hi, Adam
    My daughter moved to China 18 years ago, to find work. After several years, she married a Chinese-born man there. They now have four children.

    My father was of Yankee stock, going back to Elder William Brewster of the Mayflower. My mother was Slovenian-American, like Melania Trump. Her mother and maternal grandfather were of Jewish descent, but her maternal grandmother was Slovenian. I was raised Roman Catholic.

    My “Jewish blood” is unproven. My grandmother had an unusual surname, unique to her relatives in Slovenia and to about a dozen Jewish families in a shtetl in Galicia. Zero Mostel’s mother was part of this family.

    I first contacted my Slovenian relatives, through an Israeli researcher at JewishGen (He has since passed away). The relative had contacted him, because she realized that her family was not native Slovenian; and they were the only ones there with that particular surname. Ironically, her grandfather was sent to forced labor on the Russian front by the Nazis — not for being Jewish, but because he had needed skills and spoke German. He escaped via imprisonment in Siberia, being nearly starved to death when he made it back to Slovenia.

    A few years ago, I was contacted by another Slovenian woman whose grandfather had that same name. She also knew nothing of the family roots. Her grandfather was shot by the Nazis, probably because a German soldier had been shot in the area. Some six months later, the Nazis felt the need for another “demonstration”, and sent the woman’s great-grandfather to Auschwitz, where he died. He did not wear a Star of David, but a dark triangle patch.

    My Jewish relatives had identical experiences as my Catholic relatives: Those who had migrated to the US earlier survived the war without mishap; but those who remained in Europe were all subject to forced labor and death.

15. @ Michael S: Michael, how did your family end up in Red China? Is your Dad Jewish? Do you have any Jewish “blood?”

16. @ Michael S:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw8l8G-uhnA

17. @ Edgar G.:
    Welcome back, Edgar 🙂

18. @ yamit82:
    Hi, Yamit

    I’m content to let the Jews fight amongst themselves, over who is or isn’t a Jew. I know I’m not a Jew because my mother was a Roman Catholic; and even though I’m not a Catholic either, I feel comfortable in not being claimed by anyone.

    I have two identity issues which are of more importance right now, than religious distinctions. One is the fact that much of my family lives in Red China; and if the government there decides to get nasty, my grandchildren could be in peril. Another issue is the national crisis my country is going through while being invaded by “immigrants”. Some parts of the country are on the verge of insurrection, opposing US citizens by letting cheap foreign labor in to steal their jobs. This is a serious issue.

    I’m glad Israel is not allowing unbridled immigration, and forcefully opposes those who attack it. In this, they may have better survival chances than the US.

19. @ Michael S:

    Buzz of the Orient Said:

    Perhaps if the Ultra-Orthodox did not treat Reform and Conservative Jews as goyim there might be a change in the attitude of modern Jews. Has nobody considered that?

    WHO IS A JEW?

    The Jewish people is a religio-nation, meaning that it is a people that consists of two coexistent and intertwined components: Ethnicity and Religion. Consequently, the Jewish people constitutes both an ethnic nation and a faith community. However, the former component of Jewish peoplehood is involuntary and immutable, while the latter component thereof is voluntary and mutable.

    It is a unique collective, in that it is the only religio-nation born in Antiquity that, despite being dispersed throughout much of the World for the greater part of its history, continues to exist Today.

    The Jewish people is comprised of:

    (1) the descendants of:

    (a) the eponymous Hebrew tribe of Judah, and

    (b) the Hebrew tribe of Benjamin — the descendants of the Hebrew tribe of Benjamin being the product of collective intermarriage between the surviving male members of the Hebrew tribe of Benjamin and some female members of the Hebrew tribes of Manasseh (from the City of Jabesh-Gilead) and Ephraim (from the City of Shiloh) (see Judges 21:1-23), and

    (c) the Hebrew tribe of Levi, which (per the deathbed declaration of Jacob in Genesis 49:5-7, per God’s Declaration in Numbers 18:20-24 and per the lottery conducted by Joshua for that tribe in Joshua 21:1-40) was not allocated a separate tribal territory within the Land of Israel, but was instead allocated 48 cities located throughout the Land, including within the territory of the tribe of Judah (see Joshua 21:4 & 21:9-16), and

    (d) the Hebrew tribe of Simeon, which (per the deathbed declaration of Jacob in Genesis 49:5-7 and per the lottery conducted by Joshua for that tribe in Joshua 19:1) was allocated a separate tribal territory completely enclosed with the territory of the tribe of Judah; and

    (2) those Gentiles who have converted to Judaism and their Jewish progeny.

    Although not an ethnic Jew, a Gentile nonetheless becomes part of the Jewish people by joining the latter’s faith community (i.e., acceptance of the God of Israel and the Truth of His Torah) and by simultaneously self-identifying as a Jew. This two-component formula for becoming part of the Jewish people was first uttered by Ruth, the Moabite ancestress of biblical Israel’s King David (and of the future Messiah):

    “And [widowed] Ruth said [to her widowed mother-in-law Naomi], ‘Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back from following after you; for, where you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge; your people are my people, and your God is my God.’” (Ruth 1:16)

    The ethnic-religious duality of Jewish identity means — uniquely — that an ethnic Jew who later repudiates Judaism (or even the Existence of God) nonetheless continues to be part of the Jewish people, as such an apostate nonetheless remains an ethnic Jew. This duality distinguishes Jews from Christians, Muslims and adherents of other religions, precisely because the latter lack a unifying ethnic component (i.e., the latter are merely followers of a religion, not members of a religio-nation). So, while the Jewish apostate may continue to be identified (and to self-identify) as a Jew, the Christian apostate and the Muslim apostate can no longer be identified (or self-identify), respectively, as a Christian and a Muslim.

    Although intermarriage between members of the Hebrew tribes and Gentiles is prohibited by the Torah (see Deuteronomy 7:3-4) and, consequently, also by normative Judaism, when such a union does happen a question arises as to whether the offspring thereof is to be recognized as a Jew. In such a case, the Orthodox branch of Judaism (which, until several hundred years ago, constituted the entirety of Judaism) has traditionally recognized as a Jew the child of a Jewish mother (i.e., matrilineal descent), but not the child of a Jewish father (i.e., patrilineal descent). However, I disagree with this formulation, as the child of a Jewish father in such a union is as much a (partial) ethnic Jew as is the child of a Jewish mother. Rather, I believe that the child of such a union ought to be recognized as a Jew if and when such a child self-identifies as a Jew, but not otherwise. This means that, in the case of intermarriage, the Jewishness of a child of a Jewish mother ought not be automatically accepted; and that the Jewishness of a child of a Jewish father ought not be automatically rejected. While such a formulation is considerably more complex than a bright-line rule which accepts matrilineal descent and rejects patrilineal descent, it properly includes those people as Jews who self-identify as such (even if their Jewish parent is male), and it properly excludes those people as Jews who do not (even if their Jewish parent is female).

20. @ yamit82:

    You must be talking about the “Circle Drawer”…..

    Hello Yamit welcome back, I missed your pithy, very direct comments and was “calling a spade a spade” all by myself…

    Hello folks. Don’t be surprised that I’ve cancelled my departure. Ted and I have had a long conversation, in which I became convinced it was right to rejoin my sparring partners.. Naturally I already have some comments, in due course.

21. @ Michael S:

    Treat the earth well.
    It was not given to you by your parents,
    it was loaned to you by your children.
    We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors,
    we borrow it from our Children.

    Ancient Indian Proverb

    . Compare with:
    This teaching comes from a Talmudic story about a rabbinic sage and folk hero named Choni (an actual figure who lived in the first century BCE), who once saw a man planting a carob tree. Choni asked the man, “How long will it take until this carob tree bears fruit?”

    The man answered, “Seventy years.”

    Choni said to him, “Do you think you will live seventy more years?” In other words, does it make sense for you to work at a task that cannot possibly benefit you in any way?

    And it is to this challenge that the man answers with words that apply to every generation before and since: “My ancestors planted for me. Likewise, I am planting for my children.”

22. MORE TO COME !!!
    
    DC man arrested after saying Pittsburgh synagogue killings ‘were a dry run’

23. @ yamit82:
    Hi, Yamit.

    ““If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies in yourself” – Minquass”

    I agree. Being thankful to God for His many, many mercies, is the one mitzvah we can all perform.

24. Hello again, Yamit.

    “The Message is clear. The American Exile will end, whether by Assimilation or Antisemitism — more likely, by a combination of both…

    “Again, the Message is clear. If the Jewish people are to have a Future, it will only be found in Israel. American Jews can either be a part of that Future, or they can simply disappear.”

    I agree.

25. @ yamit82:
    Hi, Yamit

    I have hitherto been unaware of the figures you quote, but I have no reason to doubt them. It is not remarkable to me that perhaps one in four children of Jews are becoming Christians. What is remarkable, it that the other three are not:

    American Jews are immersed in a Christian culture. Many of them go to public schools, where the majority of fellow students are Christians. These are young people, who in their teen years may be driven more by chemistry than by religious connection. They fall in love with someone chosen by their pheromones, not their minds. It’s a story as old as Judah and Tamar, or of Samson and Delilah.

    The surest way of ensuring that Jews marry Jews, is for them to live in Israel. Even there, you have a problem of Jews marrying Arabs. The culprit is biology, much more than religion.

26. How sad.

27. Again, an important review of Jewish history from Yamit. But some of my usual pedantic caveats: There is some inconsitency in your account of the Sephardic Jews who remained faithful to Judaism after Queen Isabella ordered their expulsion, and who submitted to expulsion rather than convert. Was it 50,000 or 180,000?

    The “Zodok” that the Saducees claimed descent from didn’t live in the 3rd century B.C., but in the 10th century B.C. He was the high priest who served under David–see the Books of Samuel for more information about him.

    The Northern Kingdom fell in the 8th century B.C., not the 6th century B.C. The Southern Kingdom fell in the early 6th century B.C., about 135 years after the fall of the northern Kingdom.

    The denunciation of the northern Kingdom in the scriptures, which were written by Southerners, the people who wrote our Jewish scriptures. They may be unfair to the northerners and one-sided.. The scriptures do report that there were many people who worshipped other gods in the South as well as the North. Archeologists have discovered idols of an earth goddes in places located in the territories of both kingdoms.

    The rabbinic sources may be unfair to the Saducees. The rabbis were all spiritual descendants of the Pharisees (Parushim), who opposed the Saducees, and so naturally painted them in an unfavorable light. The Saducees left behind no writings that have survived–they would have been destroyed by the rabbis if there were any-and so we don’t know their side of the story.

28. Edgar G. Said:

    I am 100% Jew, and very proud of it.

    If you were born a Jew, you are descended from heroes and heroines who, at various points in history, chose to relinquish their property, their homes, and sometimes their lives, for the sake of their religious principles. Masses of other Jews — sometimes the majority — chose to forfeit their core identity as Jews in order to assimilate into the prevailing religious milieu. You are not descended from them.

    Your ancestors were the brave idealists who were willing to sacrifice all for their Jewish convictions.

    If you were born Jewish, you are descended from the scant one-quarter of the Israelite people who remained loyal to God, the Davidic Dynasty, and the Holy Temple in Jerusalem (where God caused His Divine Presence to dwell).

    A mere two generations after God promised His beloved servant King David that his progeny would be the eternal monarchy of the Jewish people, Yeravam ben Navat rebelled against the rule of David’s grandson and set up a rival kingdom in the North of Israel. Ten of the 12 tribes followed Yeravam. To ensure that his subjects would cease making pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem, Yeravam set up guard posts on the border and built as an alternative two temples, in Dan and Beit El, in each of which he ensconced a golden calf.

    The Northern Kingdom, called the Kingdom of Israel, was ruled by one evil, idol-worshipping monarch after another. (King Ahab and his wife Jezebel are only two examples.) The people of the Northern Kingdom continued to worship the God of Israel in combination with the Baal and other pagan deities, despite the prohibitions of the Torah and the fiery admonitions of the Prophets. Their Kingdom became large, powerful, and prosperous.

    The Southern Kingdom, called the Kingdom of Judea, comprised only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, plus many of the tribe of Levi who ministered in the Temple. This tiny kingdom was weak and impoverished. Despite repeated backsliding, these Jews always returned to their covenant with God. You are descended from this struggling minority, the Jews of the Southern Kingdom.

    As for the mighty Northern Kingdom, it was conquered in the 6th century B.C.E. by the powerful empire of Assyria. The ten northern tribes were exiled and scattered among the Assyrian empire. Lacking a fealty to God and His Torah, they had nothing to distinguish themselves from the surrounding population. They became “the ten lost tribes.”

    Greece and its culture swept through the ancient world, including Judea. By the 2nd century B.C.E. virtually Jerusalem’s entire elite, plus the priests who officiated in the Temple, had become Hellenists — aficionados of Greek philosophy, sports, art, and religion. A gymnasium, where young priests participated in sports naked, was built to the south of the Temple, and on a hill towered the Acra, a massive citadel where Seleucid Greek troops were garrisoned. In the Temple itself, an idol was installed and served by the sacrifice of pigs.

    The choice of the cosmopolitan residents of Judea’s cities to become Hellenists was simply conforming to a world trend. Greek culture, after all, was modern, enlightened, scientific, and universalistic, while Judaism was widely regarded as old-fashioned, tribal, and restrictive. In that era, adopting the Greek lifestyle was a prerequisite to becoming materially successful and culturally sophisticated. As historian Paul Johnson wrote: “Acquiring Greek culture was a passport to first-class citizenship, as later would be baptism.” [A History of the Jews, p. 99]

    The gradual Hellenization of the Jews might have become total had the Seleucid Greek King Antiochus not issued a decree in 167 B.C.E. outlawing the practice and study of the Torah, on pain of death. Faced with the prospect of totally abandoning God and Torah, a small band of Jews rose up under the leadership of a single Hasmonean family and rebelled against the Greek Empire. Some 6,000 guerilla fighters waged war against 40,000 trained Greek warriors equipped with state-of-the-art weaponry and elephants.

    These 6,000 Jews were the first
    It was the first time in history that a war was fought over ideas. All previous wars had been fought for the sake of conquest — land and power. These 6,000 Jews were the first people in history to risk their lives to defend their religious convictions. They were the first people in history to be willing to sacrifice all for their faith. You are descended from one of these 6,000 Jews or their supporters.

    The war of the traditional Jews against the Greek empire and its Hellenist collaborators was a wildly quixotic endeavor. It would take two and a half decades and the violent death of all five Maccabee brothers before the traditionalists could claim complete victory. Everyone acquainted with the Chanukah story knows that eventually the traditional Jews won. But those Jews of 167 B.C.E., without benefit of the foreknowledge of history, knew only that they had nothing going for them but God. Their faith, their bravery, their willingness to die rather than assimilate, is breathtaking. They were your ancestors.

    As for the Hellenists, when Judah Maccabee’s army invaded Jerusalem, they took refuge in the Acra, the giant citadel overlooking the Temple. They remained there for years, until they surrendered to the Hasmoneans, who expelled them from Jerusalem and Judea. Most likely they migrated to Greece, where nothing prevented them from becoming full Greeks in every way.

    Traditional, mainstream Judaism believes that in addition to the written Torah God gave at Sinai, God also taught Moses the Oral Law, which was handed down from generation to generation. In fact, no one can seriously follow the injunctions of the written Torah without its oral explication. (For example, no one would know what tefillin are or how to properly observe the laws of keeping kosher, which are not detailed in the written Law.) In the 3rd century B.C.E., however, a Jew named Zadok began to preach a new strain of Judaism. It denied the validity of the Oral Torah and the authority of the Rabbis, as well as certain theological tenets such as the immortality of the soul and the existence of an afterlife.

    Zadok’s new version of Judaism appealed to the wealthy and powerful, as well as to the priestly class, who were usually at odds with the Rabbis. His followers, called Sadducees, comprised about 20% of the Jewish population throughout the Second Temple period. As historian Rabbi Berel Wein writes:

    Though not pagan, as were the Hellenists, the Sadducees nevertheless inherited the Hellenists’ disdain for Torah, tradition, and other, less “sophisticated” Jews. They encouraged a life of hedonism and the pursuit of luxury and pleasure, to the exclusion of the traditional Jewish life-style and value system. [Echoes of Glory, p. 85]

    At various times, such as during the rule of Alexander Yannai, the Sadducees were the dominant sect in Judea, holding all the important positions in the government and the Sanhedrin (the religious authority). During the Roman period the Sadducees, who comprised the aristocracy and the Temple priests, became allies of Rome.

    After Rome destroyed the Holy Temple and Jerusalem in 70 C.E. and sent its Jews into exile, the once-powerful Sadducees simply disappeared. If you were born Jewish, you are not descended from the Sadducees, but rather from those Jews who remained loyal to Rabbinic authority and the Oral Law.

    BAPTISM OR THE SWORD

    According to historian Irving A. Agus, the ancestors of all Ashkenazi Jews number somewhere between 5,000 to at most 10,000 Jews who lived in Italy, Germany, and France at the end of the 8th century. By the end of the 11th century, the Jewish community of the Rhineland was thriving, with distinguished yeshivas and brilliant rabbis. Then in 1096, the First Crusade, marching from Germany on its way to liberate the Holy Land, passed through the Rhineland. In less than a month, the Crusaders brutally massacred thousands of Jewish men, women, and children.

    The Crusaders offered their Jewish victims the chance to escape through baptism. (Until the Nazis, Jews could almost always escape persecution and death by consenting to convert to Christianity.) According to historian Rabbi Berel Wein:

    The Jewish reaction to this destruction was flight, monetary payments for protection and preparedness for martyrdom. There are many recorded incidents of suicides and mercy killings of children and relatives performed in order to spare them the pain of torture and the heresy of forced conversion. With almost no exception, the victims of the Crusade would not resort even to pro-forma conversion. To the masses of the Ashkenazim, conversion was traitorous, unforgivable and always anathema. [Herald of Destiny, pp. 145-6] Make no mistake: The choice of these Ashkenazi Jews to die rather than convert was not motivated by an ethos of, “Give me liberty or give me death.” They were not choosing between a horrendous life and death. They were choosing between betraying the lifestyle God had commanded them to live (through the mitzvot) and death, between spiritual apostasy and physical survival. That the entire spectrum of Jews — from the learned and the saintly to the unlearned and the ordinary — chose spiritual fidelity over physical survival, chose a heroic death over a compromised life, is a historical fact of awesome proportions.

    The history of Ashkenazi Jewry is a history of banishments (from virtually every country in Europe), discrimination, persecution, humiliation, and massacre. If you were born an Ashkenazi Jew, you are descended from those heroes and heroines whose commitment to their faith was utterly unbreakable.

    The Jews flourished in Spain for seven centuries. They were the most affluent and influential Jewish community the Diaspora has ever known until contemporary America. Then, on June 6, 1391, a Spanish Churchman named Ferran Martinez whipped up the Christians of Seville to attack the city’s Jews. The pogroms spread through Spain and Portugal, murdering some 50,000 Jews.

    Over the next two decades vicious violence plagued the once-secure Jews of Spain. Fear coupled with the royal promise that Jews who converted would be granted immediate equality with “Old Christians” persuaded tens of thousands (some historians says hundreds of thousands) of Jews to convert to Christianity in a single year. Unlike previous defections that had affected only the upper classes, the “New Christians” of Spain came from every class of Jewish society, including even many rabbis and communal leaders. By the middle of the 15th century (decades before the expulsion of 1492), the majority of Spain’s Jews had converted to Christianity.

    In 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella issued the Edict of Expulsion. All remaining Spanish Jews had to leave, convert, or be burned at the stake. Only 200,000 Jews were still living in Spain. Thousands of them, including the senior rabbi and many of the leading families, submitted to baptism.

    Over 180,000 Jews choose to give up everything and leave Spain. A Catholic priest provided a moving eye-witness account:

    The Jews sold and disposed of their property for a mere nothing; they went about asking Christians to buy and found no buyers; fine houses and estates were sold for trifles; a house was exchanged for a mule; and a vineyard given for a little cloth… In the first week of July, they took the hardship of the road upon themselves and left the land of their birth… They went along the roads and through the fields with great travail and misfortune, some falling, others rising, some dying, others being born, others falling ill… and always, through wherever they passed, the Jews were invited to be baptized. And some, because of the hardship, converted and remained, but those were very few. [Quoted by Berel Wein, in Herald of Destiny, p. 208]

    Some 50,000 Jews undertook the perilous sea voyage to North Africa, Turkey, or Italy. Thousands of these perished from shipwrecks, pirates, and unscrupulous Spanish captions who charged them exorbitant fares and then threw them overboard.

    From where did these 180,000 Jews derive the fortitude to resist the blandishments of conversion to which most of their fellow Jews had succumbed? From where did they derive the courage to face death rather than convert? From where did they derive the spiritual fidelity to relinquish all their worldly possessions rather than relinquish their faith?

    If you were born a Sephardi Jew, you are descended from these awesome, valiant spiritual heroes and heroines.

    Heinrich Heine, generally acknowledged as the greatest German man of letters since Goethe, had himself baptized in 1825. Explaining his conversion to Christianity, he called baptism “the Jew’s entrance ticket to European society.”

    In Europe in the 19th century at least 250,000 Jews bought their entrance ticket through conversion. Karl Heinrich Marx, the father of Karl Marx, was baptized in 1824. He lived in Trier in Prussia, where Jews were permitted to learn law but not practice it as a profession. After his conversion, Heinrich Marx not only practiced law but eventually was elevated to the position of the Dean of the Trier bar. Other famous converts who rose to political or artistic prominence after their conversion include Benjamin Disraeli, Felix Mendelssohn, and Gustav Mahler. Fully 35-40% of German Jews converted to Christianity in the 19th century.

    The Ashkenazi Jews of yore had lived devout, Torah-based lives, which they were unwilling to forfeit for the advantages or privileges of the Christian majority. In the wake of the Enlightenment, however, the vast majority of Germany’s Jews had forsaken Jewish observance. They dressed, ate, and lived like their Christian compatriots. So what kept the 60% from buying their “entrance ticket to European society”? What deep inner promptings, what fidelity of soul, kept them from relinquishing their Jewish identity?

    If you are a Jew of Western European extraction, what have you inherited from the stubborn fidelity of your recent ancestors?

    he staggering assimilation rate in the world today dwarfs all previous phenomena of defection from Judaism. Demographic experts predict that non-Orthodox American Jewry will be extinct by the end of the century.

    Many assimilated Jews say, “My ancestors’ self-sacrifice is not a sufficient reason for me to not intermarry for the sake of a religion that plays no real part in my life.”

    They’re right. But if you were informed that you had inherited a treasure from your great-grandparents, wouldn’t you at least bother to visit the old family homestead, climb up to the attic (even if you have to search for a ladder), open the antique trunk, and check out its contents?

    Barring a real commitment to living as a Jew, you are likely to join the ranks of the lost tribes, the Hellenists, the Sadducees, the “New Christians” of Spain, and other Jews who have no Jewish descendents.

    But if you do connect to your inherited trait of unswerving loyalty to your remarkable heritage, you are likely to have Jewish descendents who will proclaim proudly, “My ancestor was a Jewish hero.”

29. Felix Quigley Said:

    To not build a party to change this reality there can be no forgiveness.

    Told ya many times Principles precede movements and political parties…..

30. Felix Quigley Said:

    What do you propose to do to change it?

    Only way is to flaunt our nukes and announce in advance our automatic targeting..Responses…Like Moscow and St Petersburg all Arab and European capitals even Washington DC, If Israel is attacked by hundreds of K of missiles. From Lebanon Syria and Gaza,

31. @ Buzz of the Orient:

    ‘Squirrel Hill’, Pittsburg is known and called by many gentitles as “Kike Hill” nuff said
    Buzz of the Orient Said:

    Perhaps if the Ultra-Orthodox did not treat Reform and Conservative Jews as goyim there might be a change in the attitude of modern Jews. Has nobody considered that?

    They are considered to be goyim because in all things except for name (Jewish ) they are goyim….. They must be written off lest they infect Israel and destroy us as in the past from within….. Better they should stay away from Israel and we don’t need their support or money today. They have nothing to offer us in any positive way. In a few generations, they will have assimilated completely into the gentile abyss.

32. @ Buzz of the Orient:

    ‘Squirrel Hill’, Pittsburg is known and called by many gentitles as “Kike Hill” nuff said

33. Felix Quigley Said:

    So obviously Edgar being a person who has thought about this a lot you will have anticipated my next remark in the form of a question…What do you propose to do to change it?

    Can’t change the trend it’s already past the point of reversal…..20-40% of those calling themselves Jews in America are not in fact Jews according to Jewish law and tradition.

34. adamdalgliesh Said:

    The lesson for Israelis is that they must face reality and “write off” most American Jews as a source of support for Israel.

    I agree and have written them off years ago.

35. @ Michael S:

    “If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies in yourself” – Minquass