Dear Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) and your Jewish Indigenous guests,
Thank you for sharing your lived experiences and stories! As an Indigenous Jew, myself – who, like all Jews, is Indigenous to Judea-Samaria by the lineage of our ancestors, by our stories, by our Canaanite Hebrew language, and by our halachot (indigenous Judean-orignating laws) – I would like to add some thoughts here from my lifelong effort to decolonize and restore our Indigenous Judean people’s narrative.
The Jewish people only began to be labeled and began to behave as a “religion” community since the 12th century CE. It was in the 12th century CE that the Sephardi-Ashkenazi Rabbinical Judaism movement, one that is exclusively monotheistic, took root and began normative Judaism of today with all its insular rules and rituals. I call modern Judaism, affectionately, as “prayer Judaism” – different from the ritual and legalistic Judaism of prior historical periods. Before the rise of modern Rabbinical Judaism, we Jews were a henotheistic Judean “race,” according to European Christianity itself – with a “tribal deity,” different from their superior Trinity deity.
So, with your having only experienced modern Rabbinic Judaism and not insular enough to experience scholarly individual Jewish learning – a must for all Jews – I deeply feel your expressed discomfort in seeing the indigenousness parallels between the origin myths of Jews and of Indigenous Peoples in what Europeans call “America”. But we still are the Indigenous Judean people of the land of Israel that we have always been, and our origin stories – as preserved in our Torah – are, when read as BCE intended, uncanny in similarities with “Native American” origin myths. Please, allow me to help you see this in two distinct ways:
(1) Through a correct indigenous reading and understanding of our Jewish creation stories (and how every Jewish child should better understand the agrarian nature of our ethno-religion and ethno-religious stories). And (2) how, by the United Nations very own definition of the word Indigenous, the Jewish people are still an Indigenous People to this very day (despite the Arab-European historic antisemitism that causes them to falsely equate the Jewish people to their Colonial nations). Shall we?
Before we do, I will digress first, forgive me! Sarah Podemski and Emily Bowen Cohen, in direct response to where you think that Judaism sharply differs with “Native American” Indigenous creation narratives: Both Native “American” tribes and Jews share the dreadful “fog” of chaotic disorder origin story, before the Creator god creates order to this world. And the perceived difference is, in some NA traditions, the humans and animals “hold hands” out of the fog – signifying mutual respect and shared coexistence. It is believed that Judaism has nothing similar – that, somehow, Judaism doesn’t have such an inherent coexisting relationship between humans and animals in our Judean creation stories – all due to Christian influenced *interpretations* of Torah, that has influenced even the understanding of Torah in Jewish communities in the Western diasporas. Let us correct this understanding now:
When ha’Shem created the human to work the garden, the human named all the living things – not the god of the land! You cannot have relationship with others, without a name by which to relate. It is the human who gives names to life around us. Hence, the idea of having “dominion” over the species indicates a form of responsibility in the Canaanite Hebrew – the land obligations as the land-God’s caretaker of the garden – and not, as is Western interpreted, an indifferent supreme ruling over the earth. The intimate connection in Torah between the human being and all the life of the land that surrounds is an animistic one. All breathing creatures are “nefesh,” not just humans, and all are formed and given life in the same way. Drinking the blood of an animal sacrificed as food is forbidden (for you are literally drinking the soul of the animal, and this is disrespectful!). There are laws governing the treatment of animals, that make sacred the relationship between other nefesh and the human nefesh. To this day, Judaism is an animistic ethno-religion, even in its monotheism. I am saddened to hear that you have not been taught the Torah stories as Torah expresses these stories in our Canaanite Hebrew language! … Okay, back to “shall we”, on “two distinct ways” above?
(1) Our ancestral Jewish literatures teach that both the high god El (with his wife, goddess Asherah) and YHWH (one of 70 child gods of El and Asherah that rule the 70 nations of Noach) have the power to “create life,” and each did so in creative parallel. El Elyon, aka Elohim, in the Six Days of Creation myth and, then, after the 1st Sabbath (day-of-resting), YHWH (which we refer to as ha’Shem, “the-Name”), in the Garden of Eyden myth. Pay attention, the Torah hides nothing! The late 2nd Temple period scribes only leaned the textual narratives, through redactions, towards treating Elohim and ha’Shem as being one-in-the-same, thus obscuring the inherited Canaanite polytheism in our Torah. Meaning, without hiding the Canaanite pantheon origin of our Indigenous Judean stories, that are expressed through the names!
It is the origin story of the Jewish people that YHWH (a child god of El and ruler of the Levant land) personally molded all Levantine people from the topsoil of this Levant (adam, “human,” from adamah, “humus”) to be the first human to work the garden that YHWH had planted on his land portion of the Earth. And, after shaping the adam from the adamah, YHWH directly breathed the neshama (the “breath/spirit of life”) into its (our) dead animal forms – thus turning Levant humans into nefesh chayah (into “living creatures”). From this first breath of life directly breathed into the human, every human formed takes this first breath of life (once birthed) and exercises the breath of life. Because, the neshamah is ha’Shem’s breath, the Torah origin stories teach that this breath of life is in every living creature shaped from the soil, and will be removed from every nefesh at ha’Shem’s direction (no favorites, no exceptions!).
This Levantine creation story echos in parallel with the Six Days of creation cosmology story that directly preceded it in Torah. In the Six Days origin story, the ru’ach elohim (the “wind/spirit of Elohim” – in more precise meaning of the word Elohim, the breaths of the 70 “children of El and Asherah” of the Canaanite pantheon) hovers upon the chaotic primordial soup of matter and, by utterance of words alone, identifiable orderly objects are formed. The Canaanite Hebrew word for both the mental “word” and the objective “thing” is davar, meaning that they are literally the same, mind and body. Thus, by the breath alone, we exist as nefesh chayah, as “living creatures.” And only because of the momentary breath within us, teaches the Torah of the Jewish people.
In Judaism, everything exists through words, and every name has meanings. Without the names in Torah, the stories could not be written. Every story derives from the names! Without an understanding of the names in Torah, you cannot hear the Torah stories as it is chanted in our Canaanite Hebrew on its own terms. So, how are the origin myths of Jews and of Indigenous Peoples in what Europeans call “America” more alike than is often imagined in the Christian dominated West? It’s all in the Torah details, when read correctly in our Canaanite Hebrew language.
Nowhere in the Garden of Eden creation story does it say that “God” created “man” first and “woman” second! To think that is a failure to understand our Canaanite Hebrew language. YHWH shaped the adam / “human” from the adama / “humus” is literally what Torah says. The human had no gender! That is, until the splitting of the “ribcage” into two humans, wherein Adam declares the existence of human species genders, “This one shall be called woman (ishah), because this one was taken from man (ish)” She is called “Chavah” (life-giver), because she was taken from Adam – because no other species created by YHWH and brought to the adam was right for the “human” to mate with and propagate with!
Details, they are important to Indigenous Judean understanding of our Canaanite people’s origin myths!
The role of Adam was to tend the garden of YHWH as a working viceroy. In a garden this size, to successfully achieve this role, Adam needs co-equal partners to do as Adam is instructed to do – “to work it and to guard it” / לְעָבְדָ֖הּ וּלְשָׁמְרָֽהּ. Despite all the species shaped from the ground by YHWH, like Adam was shaped, none met the needs of the human viceroy (“Head Species”, top of the food chain) position in the garden. So, YHWH had to split adam into two adams to fix this numerical problem that the human was faced with in such a big garden!
It’s not good for the human (“adam”) to be alone, I will shape for it* ezer ke’negdo. … For the human, none [of the species that YHWH created and brought to Adam to name was] found ezer ke’negdo (“equal helper” – literally, “opposite like” “helper”):
verse 18, verse 20
A king needs a queen, both are equal rulers over their subjects! Likewise, YHWH’s Viceroy species for his garden is not complete without an equal opposite Viceroy species. Since none of the other species were compatible for this role, YHWH split the human into equal gendered opposites. Let Torah speak on its own terms, folks, in “*her*” Canaanite Hebrew language!
*Note, all genderless objects are either male or female in word nature, thus the use of gender pronouns even for inanimate objects – there is no “it” pronoun in ancient Canaanite Hebrew.”
And, this brings us to the second distinct point….
(2) How are Jews still, by definition, an Indigenous People? The first creation story in Torah, the cosmology creation of definable shapes from out of preexisting primordial matter by the Elohim, is more about the other peoples upon the land, than it is about the Levant’s Canaanite peoples. This is why this story precedes the first planetary Shabbat (weekend, day of resting), according to Torah. And it is the second post-Shabbat creation story that is directly all about the Levant land’s god-King, YHWH, shaping and breathing life into the Levantine peoples, the Canaanites (Moabites, Israelites, Judahites, Edomites, Phoenicians/Canaanites, and Ammonites), from the soil of the Levant, according to Torah.
We Jews cling to our Torah stories for our people’s life! To this very day, we Jews refuse to be assimilated into Arab-European Colonial cultures and religions! We Jews preserve and teach l’dor v’dor, generation to generation, our Canaanite Hebrew, the stories of our Judean Canaanite ancestors, the Canaanite names for the pantheon of the gods, and the laws of Judaism, Judea-people-ism, that define how we are children of the Canaanite Jewish people of the land of Israel, and how others are not. Honesty is the only way to peace!
The Jewish people do not want to be Arabs, nor do we want to be Europeans. Jews do not want to be Christians or Muslims. The Jewish people do not want to be ruled by an Arab nation. The Jewish people do not want to be ruled by a European country. The Jewish people do not want the Arabs and Europeans to victimize us, demonize us, and terrorize us any more! The Jewish people want to live in freedom and sovereignty in the Land of Israel! The Jewish people want to speak, read, and write our Canaanite Hebrew in peace. Jews are the original inhabitants of Judea and Samaria and the northern half of Jordan – and we were repeatedly colonized by Arab-European Colonialists!
If you’re on Facebook, check out the Jewish Indigenous Rights Advocacy page for more on Jews restoring our Indigenous Judean narrative – and why this is so important now to addressing antisemitism, which is the first Arab-European Colonial racism. Thanks for reading!
https://www.facebook.com/civil.religious.judaism?mibextid=ZbWKwL
Intersections of Identity: The Jewish Indigenous Experience
This program, presented by the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, features a conversation between Sarah Podemski, star of FX’s Reservation Dogs, and Emily Bowen Cohen, artist and comic writer. The program is moderated by Cindy Benitez, Program Manager at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
When we fail to teach our youth, we lose our identity as a people. Jews in the Western Diasporas, especially the USA and Canada, need to *decolonize* and *restore* our Indigenous Judean narrative teaching! How can your descendants *not* know this?!
————-
THIS HERE IS HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE JEWISH PEOPLE!
This is what makes Jews different from other Indigenous Peoples upon this Arab-European colonized planet, Earth, for Colonial Allah-Christ-Marx dominionism and settler-occupational supremacy upon all Indigenous Peoples’ lands!…
This *here* is what I’ve been trying to say to Indigenous Peoples around this planet:
Motherland [Africa] wrote(!), “I hate to say this but I think we are way beyond the stage of caring about that [Indigenous costumes]. For all these complex ceremonies and rituals and customs in Africa, A LOT OF THEM fail to advance people into a modern setup that stops them from being at the bottom of every positive demographic. And it is a strong statement. But you think about how the very culture that use to protect us– no longer does that. What in African culture has been taken and used to make us great bankers, great environmentalists, great scientists, great scholars, or great humans even!
You think about it. It is not as straightforward as saying African culture has failed, I think we have failed to comprehend it and this cannot put it in a context to serve in our development. It has been ill-adapted for the contemporary moment. Just think about the culture of the UK, and think about what that does to the GDP of the UK! just so you get the point I am making. Yet we got cultures that make more money for Europeans than they do for us.”
Yes, yes! This is what we Jews fight for daily by our defiant anti-Colonial successfully forced *decolonization* of a third of the land of Israel! All Jewish corporations are Indigenous Peoples’ corporations. Indigenous Judean corporations for an Indigenous Judean nation’s economy and self-sovereignty, *but* we are also a light for all other Indigenous Nations in this world – by our example of survival and progress! It is too late to stay in costumes that are meaningful for us as Indigenous Peoples. We need to be the planet’s defenders in being an economic and political and cultural counterbalance to Colonial Allah-Christ-Marx dominionism and systemic oppression/supremacy upon all Indigenous Peoples’ lands!
Black History Month is also North African Semitic History month! And it is also *all* Indigenous Peoples’ history month, regardless of geography/skin-color! Let’s represent Indigenous Peoples’ histories correctly, please. Black History Month is *also* Semitic History Month and is *also* Indigenous Peoples History Month! #BlackHistoryMonthFacts #BlackHistoryMonth
0 Comments