Thursday, November 03, 2011

Can Voices of Peace from Arab Jewish Community Center Combat Anti-Semitism?

Can Voices of Peace from Arab Jewish Community Center in Jaffa, Israel Combat Anti-Semitism?
 Finding Jewish Ancestors in Many Lands
Nadene Goldfoot
"The forces of genetic mixing are so powerful that everyone in the world has Jewish ancestors, though the amount of DNA from those ancestors in a given individual may be small.  In fact, everyone on earth is by now a descendant of Abraham, Moses, and Aaron-if indeed they existed."  Steve Olson in Mapping Human History:  Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins page 114. "

Others have found that many populations in area such as northern Iraq or south ex-USSR, Caucasus, even to the edge of India, and more than half of the population of Afghanistan are...of Jewish descent.  It is believed that they are parts of the 10 lost tribes. 

After the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians, the majority of the 10 Lost tribes were spread at the extremities of that empire to populate it and act as a buffer to potential invaders.  We are finding  them today through DNA where they settled.  This includes most of Kurdistan, which also has Q1b haplogroup people (today making up 5% of the Jewish population) .  Many of our ancestors were converted to Islam at the time of the creation of Islam by Mohammed in the 600's.  However, many retain some practices dating back from their Jewish heritage, often without them knowing about these customs and their origin.  A mission was sent from Israel in the 1960's to 1970's to identify these "lost" tribes, and they had been found.

Our house is split like brothers found themselves to be in America's Civil War between the North and the South.  Long ago our 10 tribes were carried off  and some became assimilated into what later became a Moslem population, whether by force or by choice. 

When Jerusalem fell in 70 CE, some Jews were able to remain by hiding, and their descendants are there today, but many were taken as slaves.  Some left and set up villages along the way from the Mediterranean to North Eastern Europe.  then traveled through the homeland referred to as the Levant, then Anatolia and Greece and sailed to Italy, which is not that far away if you look at today's map.  Rome in 70 CE had a large Jewish population already and some Romans and Greeks had  even converted to Judaism.  This had happened during the time of Roman rule.  Romans had changed the names of Judea and Samaria and Israel to the name "Palestine" to wipe out the Jewish presence after 135 CE when Bar Kokba had a final showdown and had  a rebellion against Rome. 

Some Jews who were in Anatolia, a part of Turkey since 1453 CE but originally under Persian and Roman rule,   joined the cities of Byzantine Jews there.  Others kept moving north in Italy, though the Southern Italian peninsula was the first home for the new communities of Jews.

In the 4th century Jews kept moving north into Northern Italy until the 10th century when they went north into the Rhineland (Germany) and set up communities which became the cultural center of the northern European Jews. 

They moved NE after the 11th century and settled in Eastern Germany and Poland.  This area became the largest Jewish Diaspora community in Europe before WWII which was when 6 million Jews were slaughtered.  It was in 1012 CE that Jews migrated from Germany to Poland near Bialystock and Grodno. 

The founding families of Lithuania are said to have come from Babylonia in early medieval times.  There had been a plague in 1347 followed by a 1348 migration of Jews going from Eastern Germany to Lemberg and Temopol with Hungarian Jews from 1349 to 1360 migration to Temopol, also.  The Jews of Kiev were a mixture of Byzantine, Western European and maybe even the few Khazarians who had converted to Judaism as well as other Jews living in Kiev and had moved into the Crimea in 1350. This is when the plague finally ended. 

There was also a Lithuanian migration of 1445 SE of the Crimea.  At the same time Byzantine Jews and the Judaic Khazars might have gone to Khakov from SE to the north of Russia.   By 1495 Lithuanian Jews also migrated to Bialystock, Poland.  Whenever a plague broke out, the Jews were thrown out of some German town and went into Poland.  Jews were accused of creating plagues because they didn't get sick and die to the degree that others did.  This was because of Jews keeping their kashrut laws which contained a lot of sanitary habits, such as bathing and washing hands before eating, weekly dips in the mikvah, and dietary cleanliness habits. 

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and this was the time that Jews were forced to leave Spain and flee to Portugal, who later also expelled them.  Many Spanish Jews at that time became Conversos, pretending to convert to Christianity but practicing Judaism in secret.  Today there are Spaniards who through DNA testing have found they match Ashkenazi surnames.  In their family's history they may remember such things as not eating pork and washing their hands before eating.  Some say that everyone in Castille had Jewish ancestors from there. 

It is believed that Jews arrived in Central Asia about 4,000 years ago.  There was a large population of Jews in Georgia.  Many think that the entire population of Georgia can point to a Jewish grandmother or grandfather, but this would have to be proved through DNA testing. Who was from Georgia?  Joseph Stalin. 

It's now discovered that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has Jewish roots.  He was seen in a picture holding up his identity card in March 2008 showing his former surname was Sabourjian, which is a Jewish name meaning "cloth weaver".  His family converted to Islam when he was 4 years old.  They came from Aradan. He has been continually berating Jews and Israel.  He calls for Israel's destruction at every opportunity and calls it a "fake regime".  He has said so many degrading things about Jews, calling Zionists the most detested people in all humanity, and that the Holocaust was a myth, used by Jews just to gain sympathy.   It is typical when people convert of degrading the religion they left.  People think he is overcompensating to hide his past by blasting Jew and Israel.   Not too recently there were about 25,000 Jews living in Iran, down from an original 100,000 to 150,000.  Since the Ayatollah Khomeini Islamic Revolution, Jews there are defamed often by the Mullahs.  

Evidence has turned up that Gaddafi of Libya and also even Hitler had Jewish connections. Yes, we know that Bernie Madoff is Jewish and he took advantage of everyone, Jew and non Jew alike.   This certainly tells me that it's what you learn from your mother and your wife family and community that counts, and that your genes just give you your  capabilities, such as leadership skills, but not your morality.  What's amazing is that anti-semitism is still so rampant and as it turns out, many of these  people may have Jewish ancestors! 

Today in Israel there is a Choir group called "The Voice of Peace, who just performed for Pope Benedict XVI in Jaffa made up of Jews and Muslims with Dudu Fisher singing songs in Hebrew, English and Arabic.  I hope the Pope recognizes the significance of this project.  Enjoy.  They sing of peace. 

Resource: http://www.youtube.com/embed/e7oK0nXB188?
Tracing Your Jewish DNA For Family History & Ancestry-Merging a Mosaic of Communities by Anne Hart, copyright 2003.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/6256173/Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-revealed-to-have-Jewish-past.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Anatolia
http://www.adl.org/main_International_Affairs/ahmadinejad_words.htm?Multi_page_sections=sHeading_7
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Jews
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff

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