The Blueprint for Jewish Life In Foreign Lands
In 587 BCE, the Babylonians attacked Judea and destroyed the Temple of David. Worse, they took 10,000 Judeans, or Jews, as prisoners and marched them as slaves to Babel, their home, a hundred miles from Jerusalem. In Babel, the Judeans assimilated and prospered. They wrote to the Temple leaders in Jerusalem for guidance on how to live and pray when they were away from the destroyed Temple and its community? The Temple authorities advised the Babylonian Jews to hold fast to the traditional rituals, work and pray for the greater glory of your king, and be sure to send tribute in the form of gold and shekels to Jerusalem.
The Jewish tribes dispersed all over the world over the next millennia. They held close to their heart the basic precepts of Judaism wherever they went and settled down. These basic features of Jewish religious life were 1. Observing kosher dietary laws, 2. Circumcision, 3. Veneration of Torah, 4. Marking legendary events such as Passover and Hanukkah. The menorah, a metallic multiple-candles holder, was part of the religious ceremonies. The Jewish communities were matrilineal; so a child’s ancestry was traced through the mother. No proselytization and no conversion into the Jewish fold by non-Jews.
Jewish communities, like any other immigrant groups, intermarried over time and pretty much assimilated themselves into host societies, becoming indistinguishable from the majority, adapting to conditions. But they also stood somewhat apart from the majority in the way they prayed or dressed during ceremonial occasions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar_hypothesis_of_Ashkenazi_ancestry
American Jews’ Rise to Power
How did the Jews in America acquire decisive power over its government in just 30 years from the end of WW2 in 1945? They have obviously triumphed over 2,000 years of hatred, if not persecution, in most of the lands where they had put down roots. Probably the first answer that comes to mind is money: They controlled banks, Wall Street, and all European centers of powers. But my question is how did this drastic change in fortunes happen? Just how? Apparently in 30 years that saw the establishment of Israel.
Another answer might come to mind: European guilt consciousness favored the Jews and created Israel to maybe atone for the greatest catastrophe the world had ever seen in the gassing of millions of human beings during the Holocaust. It is true, there is no equivalent of a genocide in history at a mass scale. But guilt consciousness alone simply does not answer the question as to how the Jews in America came to exercise effective power at ALL levels in America, and Europe, too, sometimes. (British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli was a Jew in the 19th century, and Volodmyr Zelensky of Ukraine is Jewish.)
Another answer could be, and it might be closer to the truth, that assimilation into the culture of the ruling elites makes it possible for ambitious men and women of the minority culture to get to the top, but always underpinned by values esteemed by one and all: Power. What plays a decisive role is not just land and money, but sometimes talent, too. Not only Zelensky of Ukraine comes to mind, but also Ronald Reagan, MGR, Sivaji Ganesan and N.T. Rama Rao, film heroes of South Indian states of recent past. Why leave out Imran Khan of Pakistan?
Talent being exceptional, we must ponder whether the possession of money alone explains the power the Jewish Americans exercise. Clearly, the Chinese billionaires and the Russian billionaires today cannot and do not exercise the power that the Jews wield as a community in Washington. It is much much more than money. Yet the fact remains that those who broke the barriers and rose to the top are known by their ethnic or minority origins. That makes attributes other than wealth more significant in the attainment of power, collective power.
The story of the Jews in America begins with the migration of just 24 Sephardic Jews — those from Spain — from Brazil to the shores of New York City in the 18th century. They established a congregation and stuck to their beliefs and rituals. The temple they built still stands in New York and is open, according to Steven Weisman, author “The Chosen War Wars: How Judaism Became an American Religion”, 2018.
As millions of Germans and Spaniards migrated to the New World, mixed with them were Jewish communities of Amsterdam and London, both great shipping and commercial hubs. The Syrians and Lebanese, too, migrated in large numbers to the new American colonies, especially Brazil.
What’s regarded, at least in the West, as the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment period that began roughly around 1750 not only did not pass by the Jewish intellectuals, some of them were leaders of it. During this period, great minds pretty much shaped the Western world, starting from Votaire and Rousseau, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Frued down to Einstein and Frank Kafka.
It is important to remember that the Jewish religion from antiquity had assigned a very special role to rabbis, grassroots community leaders who lived with and guided their flocks in all the ways important to being a Jew:
Kosher kitchen, observance of Sabbath on Saturdays, veneration of the Torah, and its many volumes of Talmud with its 600 or so written laws that covered all possible actions of an individual life. Circumcision and the coming of age ceremony, bar mitzva for boys, and observance of the Seder were all part of Jewish life everywhere.
The Muslim scholars or ulema do not come close to the responsibilities rabbis have always had. Any Jewish man migrating to a new place was expected to find a partner within a congregation with whom to explore the Jewish history and philosophy, and the meanings of the Torah. The Jewish scriptures, or the Old Testament, has been culled for meanings over thousands of years by the rabbis. It is the source of some 600 laws recorded in what is known as Talmud. Rabbis apply the Talmudic wisdom to matters great and small. So it is that Jews who wanted to live a moral life in accordance with the teachings of the Talmud, they turn to the rabbi and ask: What guidance will Talmud have to a particular family situation, or to a larger problem.
“What does the Talmud say now, Rabbi, in light of all this new knowledge”? It is assumed that the meanings change. It is utterly important to find guidance in Talmud in light of totally new circumstances. Which of the laws would be found to inoperative, and which other law applicable. That’s the question for a rabbi. He has to wrestle with the reasoning process, induction and deduction. Collectively, the rabbis would decide what changes in customs, theology and sociology are in order. They control the gates. The Muslim ulema come nowhere near the rabbis in adapting to social change.
Rabbis and the Torah
Origins of Judaism
Most educated people have some idea of the origins of Islam, and the doctrines by which Muslims live, but do educated Muslims anywhere have the faintest notion of the origins of Judaism? I’ll tell that story as best as I can:
The word “Jew” is derived from the region of Judea that existed in Biblical times, meaning at least 2,000 years bce (before common era). Thus, whoever lived there was a Jude or a Judean. It was the seat of King David’s domain and home to his great temple in Jerusalem. In 587 BCE, Judea was invaded and occupied by the Babylonians, a fighting people who lived in what’s Iraq now and is still known as the Babil district, about 5 square miles.
The Babylonians destroyed the Temple of David and took 10,000 Judeans or Jews to their homeland as prisoners. These Jews over the years flourished in their new home, but missed the Temple. Their leaders wrote letters to the Temple authorities in Jerusalem to seek advice as to how they were to conduct their lives away from the Temple? The answer they received was the essence of wisdom that has been one reason why Jews have persevered over the centuries in diverse lands, as a minority.
The Temple authorities wrote to the separated Jews to be loyal to the land where they lived and strive for its success and glory, while, at the same time, pray toward Jerusalem, preserving at home the rituals they had been taught.
A few centuries later the Romans invaded and made Palestine a province of the “Holy Roman Empire”. Around the birth of Jesus, which was noted in Roman records, there was widespread belief among the Jews that the world was ending. “The end times are neigh!” foreign yoke would be lifted, a new David would be born in the form of a messiah, the savior. Jesus was just a preaching rabbi, a Cohan. But he preached against greed and violence, and denounced church leaders. Jesus acquired a devoted following. The group was seen as a bunch of dangerous rebels. They reported the rebels to the Roman governor, Pilate. The rulers had a standard punishment for rebellion — nailing to the cross.
Judean / Jewish tribes had been migrating out of Palestine in droves to escape tyranny, or drought years, and settled in foreign lands as far flung as Kiev and the Coromandel coast in southwestern India. There are many theories regarding the scattering of the Jewish tribes all over the world.
Any account of the Jewish history must include the great pre-Renaissance Andalusian history in which the Jewish traders and intellectuals shared power with Muslims and Christians, from the 8th century to 1492, the year Grenada fell, and Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
The Muslim scholars or ulema do not come close to the responsibilities rabbis have always had. Any Jewish man migrating to a new place was expected to find a partner within a congregation with whom to explore the Jewish history and philosophy, and the meanings of the Torah. The Jewish scriptures, or the Old Testament, has been culled for meanings over thousands of years by the rabbis. It is the source of some 600 laws recorded in what is known as Talmud. Rabbis apply the Talmudic wisdom to matters great and small. So it is that Jews who wanted to live a moral life in accordance with the teachings of the Talmud, they turn to the rabbi and ask: What guidance will Talmud have to a particular family situation, or to a larger problem.
“What does the Talmud say now, Rabbi, in light of all this new knowledge”? It is assumed that the meanings change. It is utterly important to find guidance in Talmud in light of totally new circumstances. Which of the laws would be found to inoperative, and which other law applicable. That’s the question for a rabbi. He has to wrestle with the reasoning process, induction and deduction. Collectively, the rabbis would decide what changes in customs, theology and sociology are in order. They control the gates. The Muslim ulema come nowhere near the rabbis in adapting to social change.
