In the United States of (the continent that European colonizers named) “America,” there is a phenomena occuring among Ashkenazi Jews. A splitting between Jews who are still clinging to our Indigenous ways of life, identity, and Zionism and Jews who have internalized the Colonizer’s culture, politics, and (sadly) European views of this world. The latter have become our Yehudicanos, our Jewish version of the Mexicanos, the formerly Indigenous Peoples who bought fully into the Spanish Colonizer mindset and ways of life.
It’s a distrubing development, because those Jews who have internalized this form of anti-Jewish racism are unable to see their conditioning and acquiescing to worldwide anti-Zionist agendas. They are proudly Jewish – “American” Jews, as they like to say – while fighting for the Colonizers in this world *against* the survival of their very own people. And (just as sadly) they are near incapable of listening to the Mizrahi and Sephardi Jewish voices within their midst, believing the racist lie that Ashkenazi culture is the majority of modern Jewish history and the dominate nature of Jewish Israel. In both, it is not!
“The story of the immigration of Middle Eastern and North African Jewish communities to Israel, and their expulsion from their host nations, remains a severely under-treated subject both in the field of research on the Middle East and in the English-speaking world more generally. I recently visited the old Jewish neighborhoods of Baghdad and was struck, although not surprised, by the utter absence of any physical evidence that a Jewish community had thrived in that city for many centuries. MERIA is thus keen to do what it can to help ensure that this subject, vital to an understanding of the modern Middle East, begins to receive the attention that it deserves.” – Dr. Jonathan Spyer
Erasure of Indigenous presence, history, and influence is a key tool used by Colonizers – Arab Islam, European Christianity and, the counter political religion, Marxism – to maintain their supremacy over lands they have colonized at the expense of the Indigenous Peoples of these lands. This is true for Colonizers that named and/or call Judea-Samaria “Palestine,” like it is true for the Colonizers that named and call this continent “America.”
“From 1919 to 1947 more than fifty-three thousand Middle Eastern and North African Jews emigrated to Palestine, mostly from Yemen and Syria, including about forty-five thousand who entered Palestine legally…. The proportion of [Jewish] immigrants from Muslim countries was higher than that from Europe and the Americas, with more [Jews] coming from Asia than from [North] Africa….
Until the 1940s most Jews from the Middle East and North Africa emigrated to Palestine independently. Because so few could immigrate legally [after the 1930s], Jews developed and used illegal methods. Palestinian Jews often initiated these operations, but local Zionists, many of them He-Halutz members, later took over. So long as Palestinian Jewish soldiers were stationed around the Middle East and North Africa, they helped local Jews get to Palestine….”
– excerpt from “The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times, Volume 2”
edited by Reeva S. Simon, Michael M. Laskier, Sara Reguer – Columbia University Press
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“Jews are brown, not white.” – the new anti-Jewish racism.
Since the rise of social media platforms, giving wide access to all forms of anti-Jewish racism, it has become a very common online occurrence for those who hate the Jewish people, the Indigenous People of Judea-Samaria, to try and divide us along skin color lines. The most common one that I hear, near every day, is a devoutely anti-Zionist form, which is anti-Jewish racism pure and simple:
“Jews are brown, not white. So, if you are white, that means that your family doesn’t have middle eastern blood, or you are mixed with the Europeans.”
Let’s address this anti-Jewish racism, shall we? We’ll do this, now, using the very Halacha (laws) of our Jewish people, the Indigenous People of Judea-Samaria.
“I call upon heaven and earth to bear witness that whether Jew or gentile, whether man or woman … the Divine Spirit rests upon him in accordance with the halacha which he performs.”
In Judaism, skin pigmentation is unknown as a halakhic concept. The problem of determining the status of the various communities of Jews, regardless what they physical look like, is totally unrelated to skin color. The sole issue is that of Jewish identity, as is established by Jewish law. The question of recognition of black Jews, white Jews, brown Jews, or Jews of any other skin color as members of the Jewish people is only seen within Judaism in this halachic identity context. As such, skin color and physical appearances is not a factor in determining: “Who is a Jew?”
The problem of Jewish identity *is* a crucial one! It is not to be dismissed as being merely a theoretical question in the realm of speculative anthropology, nor a matter of individual choice or belief without Jewish community acknowledgement; it is an issue closely associated with Jewish *survival*. Jews have managed to preserve their ethno-religious indigenous identity over a period of millennia without becoming assimilated into the dominant culture of their lands of habitation, whereas other ethnic groups have disappeared within relatively short periods of time. Despite their wide geographical dispersion, frequent (and sometime forced) migration and lack of an autonomous homeland, Jews have neverthless somehow succeeded in preserving their ethnic identity “through our ethno-religious halacha.” – Sefaria, adapted for clarification.
Who Is A Jew? A Precise Definition!
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“In the past, mosrim (informers) and minim (most likely early christians) were our greatest tormentors. We were constantly persecuted by the local Christian community, and mosrim historically caused tremendous havoc to Jewish communities around the world. That is why these two groups merited their own prayer in the amida. Thrice every day we pray for their destruction and decimation, using every synonym in the book to express how badly we desire their comeuppance; ותעקר ותשבר ותמגר ותכלה ותשפיל ותכניע.
But, if you think about it, that prayer, thank God, no longer makes sense. It is outdated.
Of course there are occasional antisemetic flare ups here and there, but overall we now live peacefully with our Christian neighbors. Blood libels and pogroms are a thing of the past. Mosrim, likewise, ceased to be a problem we have to contend with. We no longer have to deal with Jews telling on one another to the local authorities, causing them to be killed or incarcerated.
Saying this bracha as is, therefore, seems wrong. I do however have a solution…. As the Talmud tells us: God wants our tefilot to be true and factual.”
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Do you really want to be an ally of Indigenous Peoples and other minority peoples? Do you want to help others to be such? Seriously?! If so, then this is what you need to do, below!
First and foremost, put your religion aside! We do not want to be proselytized! No indigenous people wants this. If you try, it’s already on deaf ears, and we *don’t* need you as allies from this moment out. I cannot make this clearer for you! For you are part of the Colonizer problem in this world, when you proselytize and we are *always* wary of you.
We Indigenous Peoples are not interested in your god, nor do we fear your Christian “Hell.” Nor do we accept your so-called Muslim publicly humiliating “protected citizen” dhimmi second-class taxed status in life. Indigenous People do not wish to be ruled by the majority, full stop!
So, as Indigenous Peoples still surviving intact within this world, what do we want by the ruling majorities who have nearly possesed all of the lands of this planet? Yes, all you colonizing Christians and colonizing Muslims, what do we Indigenous want? Do you even – or ever – want to *actually* know the answer to such a question?! We do have to wonder and ask this, as minorities in this world.
All Indigenous Peoples know that they cannot compete in this three-way Holy War between colonizing Christianity and colonizing Islam, and it’s counter- political religion known as Marxism. We simply do not have the physical numbers to even contemplate doing so. You all three have bought the minds of most peoples upon the planet. We get this, and *all* we’re looking for is allies – *genuine allies* in this world.
Who is an actual ally of an Indigenous People, like the Jewish people or the Pueblo people or the Maori people or the Sami people, etc.? Below is what it takes to be a *real* ally of minority peoples within this world:
Just because colonizers get to think of themselves as individuals who are not connected or responsible for the collective colonizing whole’s historical behavior, doesn’t mean that even friendly colonizers are not still part of the problem in this world for the minorities – who never get to think of themselves as independent individuals.
If you really are an ally of the Jewish people or any other Indigenous minority, then put your personal religion aside and listen to the Indigenous voice! Have just as much interest in each Indigenous People’s/Nation’s efforts to reestablish real self-sovereignty upon their ancestral lands (as you have for the Jewish people), even though your religion is not based upon theirs.
All Indigenous Peoples in this world have their versions of Jewish history, just without – yet – the hoped for return of self-sovereignty upon the land (which Jews fought the British to make happen!). They, too, are just as important as the Jewish people of Judea-Samaria! I’ll say it again: Every surviving Indigenous People in this world is just as important as the Jewish people of Judea-Samaria!
How about the Kurds who have no sovereignty over their ancestral land? How about the Wampanoag people who regret helping the Pilgrims through their first winter? How about the Amazonian tribes watching their land being deliberately deforested? How about the Sami Raindeer people of Europe who want their ancestral land actually protected from industrial activities?
Being a real ally of *all* Indigenous Peoples in this world, *this* is being a real ally of the Jewish people and all minority peoples within this world. Anything else, anything less than, is a partisan/eschatological objective masquerading *as* friendship. The attached snapshot is an Israeli Jewish wedding in the Mizrahi tradition.
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For 1,600 years now, out of Jewish fear of another pogrom or genocide by the majority around us, Jews have been acquiescing to the Christian view of Jews and of what our literatures are saying. For, if our words don’t please with a false equivalency of equal-ness between *Jewish knowledge* and Christian theology/belief, history has shown us repeatedly what will result from this. After all 2.4 billion converts to colonizing Christianity *outnumbers* 15.2 million Jews born into the indigenous people of Judea-Samaria.
Since this post-1948 period of re-established Jewish self-sovereignty upon our ancestral land, this is the first time in 1,600 years that we Jews have been in a position to educate converts to the colonizing religion Christianity on what *our* ancestral literatures actually says(, full stop). After all, it is our Jewish literatures – not y’all’s, no matter what beliefs you have about it(!) – and we study it daily, weekly, and yearly.
When the student raised in Colonizer culture is actually ready to *listen* to the indigenous voice,… an indigenous teacher will appear.
“It is often claimed that Israelite religion followed a consistent path of development: from Henotheism or monolatry to more abstract monotheism, which then prevailed in post-biblical Judaism in an absolute way. This view is wrong.
While full-fledged monotheism is often at a loss in explaining the existence of evil in the world, Jewish apocalypticism depicts a cosmic drama, wherein multiple forces exert their power and the supreme deity orchestrates the entire scene. This drama helps to explain the persistence of evil in this world.
Apocalyptic books such as Enoch and Daniel are deeply committed to this worldview and gained much popularity in Hellenistic Judea.” – Prof Jonathan Ben-Dov, University of Haifa
https://www.thetorah.com/article/are-there-gods-angels-and-demons-in-deuteronomy
Are There Gods, Angels, and Demons in Deuteronomy? (the scroll of D’varim) Answer: Yes!
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Perception is everything. If we, the Jewish people, are to ever experience real peace and security in this world, then we need to step out of the three-way Holy War between Christianity, Islam, and Marxism. Anytime the Jewish people appear to be partisan buddies with one of these three, the other two demonize us. This is a no-win scenario for Indigenous Rights in this world!
If we are to achieve this desired peace and security, we must call all three Colonizers to an awakening about themselves. This requires getting to know other peoples’ histories and religions, so that we can guide discussions towards developing real allies in this world – allies that recognize that colonizer cultures must give space to indigenous cultures. We minority peoples are not pawns for an eschatological endgame between colonizers!
If you really are an ally of the Jewish people, then put your personal religion aside and listen to the Indigenous voice! Have just as much interest in each Indigenous People’s/Nation’s efforts to reestablish real self-sovereignty upon their ancestral lands (as you have for the Jewish people), even though your religion is not based upon theirs. All indigenous peoples have their versions of Jewish history, just without – yet – the hoped for return of self-sovereignty upon the land. They, too, are just as important as the Jewish people of Judea-Samaria!
How about the Kurds who have no sovereignty over their ancestral land? How about the Wampanoag people who regret helping the Pilgrims through their first winter? How about the Amazonian tribes watching their land being deliberately deforested? How about the Sami Raindeer people of Europe who want their ancestral land actually protected from industrial activities?
This is being a real ally of the Jewish people and all minority peoples in this world.
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I know that this is way off of present weekly parasha, but as an indigenous Jew who regularly has “uncomfortable” (yet, sometimes, successful!) conversations with non-Jews and *colonized* Jews about Torah, it is often necessary to go back to the beginning. 🙂 !
In simple summary of our Jewish origin myths, what our Torah is saying on its own terms, in the Hebrew, when Torah is orally read and listened to as it is meant to be, we learn the following:
We first learn of Elohim (the Creator god) who creates light within endless darkness and reshapes pre-existing matter into an animate life supporting waters, skies, and land (a single continent). Elohim, then, creates humans, males and females, all at the same time to live on the land. Elohim’s final creative act, we learn, is to take a day of rest from all this creative work.
After Shabbat, we, next, learn of YHWH god (a lessor god that is assigned ownership of the Levant by Elohim – though on a first reading/listening, we don’t understand this yet) who creates a genderless human as a first creative act and a garden upon his portion of the land. Within his garden YHWH repeats the creative process that Elohim did the week prior, YHWH’s parallel micro creative repetition of Elohim’s macro creative act. YHWH god splits the human into two genders, then curses the land with desert drought for Adam’s intellectual disobedience .
Next, we learn of Cain and Abel, the first of many joined brothers who do not do right by each other. In this case, Cain commits murder and his punishment is lifelong banishment from YHWH god’s portion of the land. Cain goes out among the peoples that Elohim had made, and establishes a name for himself and wealth for family.
The saga continues on from here with more stories about the nature of humans – especially, our biggest threat as humans to the gods of the earth and our creative independence as a species. So, we now come to learn of a man named, Noah, who was literally born to end YHWH’s curse of drought upon his Levant land. Because the gods were displeased with human behaviors and also feared what humans could achieve when cooperating together, the land was deliberately flooded, with only Noah and family saved. This divine reaction of flooding the land ended YHWH’s curse of land drought for Adam’s disobedience in the garden.
Now, it is at this point where we begin to learn something very new about the gods, specifically through YHWH god. Realizing his overreaction to human nature, YHWH god makes a covenant until time is no more with humans. No more mass extinctions! It is from this stage that we now begin the stories of the human nations upon this continent (poetically rendered as the sons of Noah). Eventually, these stories will bring us to the origination point of the people of Israel within ANE Moab (present day Jordan), and our vassal treaty with YHWH god, known as the Covenant.
Y’all know us as the Jewish people. Maybe my next post should be *how* I know that YHWH god exists (curious?), we’ll see.
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