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We are an Indigenous Jewish people because of our Canaanite Hebrew language and our ancestral Torah stories!
In our ancestral Jewish stories, we have a legend about the “angel” of death. On our scholarly web site of Jewish ethno-religious literatures, why would an article about “angels” be presented amongst “Passover” articles? What relationship does “angels” have with this Pesach festival? The answer depends on: 1) Whether you are Jewish, or not. And 2) what do you mean by using the Christian word “angel” (and “Passover”)?
Our ancestors wrote a story about the משחית maschit of YHWH – the malevolent deity (a demon, destroyer) that the god of Israel (YHWH) sends throughout Egypt to kill all firstborn children, as punishment for continuing to enslave the people of Israel. Our ancestral Jewish myth explains how the maschit is able to distinguish the Jews from the Egyptians (both being a Semitic people), and this is by a פסח pesach – a protective blood mark upon the doors of Jewish homes. Hence the Christianized tale of the “angel of death” that slaughtered all the firstborn of Egypt, as if (so Christians believe) this actually happened for real in history. Only one problem,… our Jewish Torah has no knowledge of “angels”!
The phrase מלאך י-הוה is only wrongfully translated as “angel of god” because of later Christian appropriation of Indigenous Judean texts and their northern Aegean enforced interpretations upon this phrase – a conflation of the word מלאך, by translating it as meaning the same as שרף and כרוב through their generic non-Hebrew word “angel.” The use of מלאכי malachei / מלאך malach in Torah refers to a *human* (not supernatural!) “messenger” or “envoy” of Y-HWH. It is שרף seraf, a “winged-fire-serpent,” and כרוב cherub (k’ruv), an “armless-winged-humanoid that the deity rides upon,” that refer to divine “angelic” beings in Torah.
In our Pesach story, we have another kind of divine being, the משחית maschit that seeks out unprotected nefesh chayah (living breathing-creatures) to slaughter them – and it is YHWH himself that is directing the maschit’s choices. Without the פסח pesach upon the door entrance for protection, even the Jews would have been slaughtered by the maschit on that mythical night (and any Jewish family that failed to listen, obviously, their firstborn was also killed along with the Egyptian’s firstborn).
Exod 12:23 : For when YHWH goes through to smite the Egyptians, He will see the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, and YHWH will pass over the door and not let the Destroyer enter and smite your home.
The pasuk that immediately follows this one above is an obligation in the form of a statute to make this pesach every year “for you and for your children,” and we honor this obligation with our observing the Pesach festival and sharing the ancestral stories of our Jewish people. We are an Indigenous Jewish people because of our Canaanite Hebrew language and our ancestral Torah stories!
https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-origins-of-the-biblical-pesach
The Origins of the Biblical Pesach
Further thought: I give “respects” to Dr. Daniel O. McClellan’s suggestion in a TABS article that the “conflated identities of the messenger and God/YHWH within these [Torah] narratives are likely the product of ancient scribes in the exilic or post-exilic period, who wrote the Hebrew word מַלְאַךְ (mal’ak) in front of the name YHWH or the word ‘elohim wherever the physical presence of the deity had become theologically undesirable, thus creating the construct “the messenger of YHWH/God.” ”
Torah, which is written in our Canaanite Hebrew, is fully based upon our Canaanite pantheon of gods – El and Asherah and their 70 children gods that rule the 70 nations of the land. This is why Torah scribes did *not* erase all these pantheon connections, only hid them, when moving Jewish ethno-religious theology towards henotheism during the late 2nd Temple period. Prior to this, the stories likely did have Y-HWH himself appearing before his vassaled subjects (the people of Israel) in humanoid form.
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The Canaanite peoples were the Moabites (from whom Israelites literally came from), Israelites (Judea and Israel), Edomites, and Phoenicians (the Canaanites in Torah). All dialect versions of the Canaanite language were mutually intelligible. Egypt occupied and enslaved the land of Canaan for over 400 years, and the land of the Canaanite peoples was regularly invaded and occupied by Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon regional empires as they battled for possession for economic/trade gain. Is it really so surprising that, to look powerful and not worth invading, the Canaan Jewish people would create myths of great conquests within the very Canaan land that we became an Israelite nation upon?
What do modern Jews have in common with the ancient Israelites? The Canaanite Hebrew language and the stories of our Canaanite ancestors and the Canaanite names for the pantheon of gods and the mitzvot/halachot (indigenous Judean laws) that determine how we are legally children of the Canaanite Jewish people and how, as non-Jews, you are not. The Jewish people are the only ones left to correctly tell the Canaanite stories, as we choose to tell them, in our Canaanite Hebrew language. Honesty is the only path to peace!
The Jewish people have faithfully spoken our Canaanite Hebrew for 3,300 years. We are the only Canaanite tribe left that still speaks our Canaanite Hebrew to this day. We still retain the names of our Canaanite deities in the sacred literature of our ancestors. We maintain our faithful presence in the land of Canaan/Israel to ensure the fulfillment of the land’s annual obligations. It was the Jewish families born in the Middle East that returned the Land of Israel to the agricultural and water sovereignty of the Jewish people in the 1880s.
That is why, in the years 1920-1940, during the British occupation, masses of Arabs came to Judea and Samaria to claim our Jewish land as “Arab”. It was the Arabic-speaking colonial settlers in the West Bank and Gaza who founded the KGB-PLO in 1964. They are a long-standing Arab occupation force, calling themselves “the Palestinian people” on our Israeli land.
You can reinvent history all you want, and this does not change the easily verifiable historical facts of the Levant land. You can call easily verifiable historical facts “wrong,” and still they are easily verifiable historical facts. You waste your breath trying to “educate” the Indigenous Judean people of the land, who know our land’s history.
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Your indigenous language is your Indigenous identity! And ka ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi is written on the Colonial coin. This signifies to the entire Arab-European Colonizers of this world whose land this European Colonizer has occupied. You don’t see the languages of First Nations on the monies across the “American” USA continent! Na kanaka be lucky, here! Ke olelo nei au ma ke ano he kamaaina Iudaio.
Just 75 years ago, the Jewish people in the land of Israel were experiencing the same upon our ancestral land. … Our Canaanite Hebrew language upon the British-Arab occupiers’ currency clearly states *whose* land this is!
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Jews are always punching up to systemic structural Colonial Arab-European powers around us! All for the sake of peace!
*False Equivalency* – that Jews are equal to Arabs-Europeans – must end! “Apartheid” and “ethnic-cleansing” are the standard MO of the Arab-European Colonizers of the land of Israel.
The Arab Colonizers for Colonial Allah-Christ-Marx ruling supremacy upon all Indigenous Peoples’ lands chant daily “From the River to the Sea, [Arab-occupied] Palestine Will Be Free [of Jews and Jewish decolonized self-sovereignty].”
The European Colonizers for Colonial Christ-Marx-Allah ruling supremacy upon all Indigenous Peoples’ lands chant daily “The [“white” Confederate] South Will Rise Again [to enslave the Indigenous and former African slaves].”
Both Arab-European Colonial slogans mean the same *supremacist* *racist* thing! Both are chanted upon formerly colonized Indigenous Peoples’ lands, and both Arabs and Europeans wave their Colonial flags of racial superiority upon the lands of Indigenous Peoples around this planet, Earth!
The Palestine flag equals any Confederate flag – *is just as racist as* – on this planet Earth!
In comparison, every Jews chants (at least) yearly (if not more often), *”Next year in Jerusalem!”* To include every single Jew in the land of Israel! Why? Because, Jews only want to live in peace and self-sovereignty upon our ancestral land of Israel. We have no desire as an Indigenous Judean people to rule over other peoples, nor to colonize their lands for YHWH! And we reject – resolutely – our own assimilation into servitude to the Colonial Allah-Christ-Marx gods of the Arab-European Colonizers who occupy all Indigenous Peoples’ lands around this planet, Earth!
No false equivalencies, Jews are always punching up to systemic structural Colonial Arab-European powers around us!
Folks, it’s time to end this online Arab-European Colonial racist antisemitism towards Jews Indigenous to Judea-Samaria and the Middle East. Take me on! www.takemeon.org
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4 Questions for Pesach (and 4 Answers)
Q: “Why is it hard to believe in a supernatural being who created all things? What is hard to believe about Genesis? What is hard to believe about Exodus?”
If you “believe” in Genesis and Exodus as historical facts, then you don’t know how to read our Indigenous Judean ancestral literatures! Torah is not for Christianity, until Christianity learns to actually listen to Torah on its own Canaanite Hebrew terms!
Q: “What I am most confused about is why it took YAHWEH so long to respond to the needs of the Israelites (400 years)?”
The Canaanite peoples were the Moabites (from whom Israelites literally came from), Israelites (Judea and Israel), Edomites, and Phoenicians (the Canaanites in Torah). Egypt occupied and enslaved the land of Canaan for over 400 years, and the land of the Canaanite peoples was regularly invaded and occupied by Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon regional empires as they battled for possession for economic/trade gain. Is it really so surprising that, to look powerful and not worth invading, the Canaan Jewish people would create myths of great conquests within the very Canaan land that we became an Israelite nation upon? And that our Levant land’s god-King, a Canaanite people’s god-King, would be more powerful than the ruling god-Kings of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon?
Q: “If it’s hard for you to believe the story is history, then its obvious that you don’t believe in the God that brought about the stories. So why do you say you are observant Jews?”
Nowhere in Torah is there a command for Jews to “believe” in any kind of a god. Only to show love for the Levant land’s god-King by obeying mitzvot (the laws of the land). Torah was not made in heaven (the skies), but on earth (the land)! Non-Jews of every kind were not and are not obligated to mitzvot. In other words, a Jew who is shomer halacha, mitzvot observing, though an atheist is a halachically observant Jew. Most Jews know which of our stories are historical fact and which are myths that we tell ourselves that are based in historical facts.
Q: “Tsefan Josef, thank you for your views. Is it possible that the El and Elyon of the ancient Hebrews could be different from the El and Elyon of the Canaanites? Is it possible the names in the Canaanite pantheon and Hebrew divine council are same, because of cross-cultural exchanges between neighbours over a period of time?”
HaShem formed the orderly world from out of the chaotic primordial matter, and he had to create light first in order to do this forming, says Torah. What the scribal author wrote as a cosmological myth to explain the earth and the life on the earth is near identical to the Big Bang theory. But, in the Big Bang theory, gods are not required for this. I say “gods,” because “elohim” literally means “children of El (and Asherah)” in all Canaanite languages, including our Canaanite Hebrew. By Genesis story context alone, “elohim” reads overall as if this pantheon of gods is simply just “El Elyon” himself. Until you get to humans created male and female “in our image.”
The land mass of the Levant, Southwest Asia, and north Africa was later divided for the individual rule of the 70 children of El and Asherah. This is how Cain could be banished from YHWH’s land and make a name for himself, an entire city, in a neighboring god’s land amongst that god’s people. HaShem created the earth because Torah says that haShem created the land, and our Torah means something to Jews. According to Torah, Jews were created from child god YHWH’s Levant soil (Israelite identity was founded in Moab and not “with the fathers before,” teaches Torah). All Archaeology science repeatedly confirms this! …
This is the danger of northern Aegean and southern Arabian Christianity/Islam appropriation of Jewish ancestral literatures – a failure to understand the Canaanite Hebrew speaking people’s worldview. And *because* of Colonialism based in anti-Jewish rhetoric, even some Jews in the West fail to understand how to correctly read Torah on its own Canaanite Hebrew terms. Every name has a meaning, and every story was build around the name, and you cannot fully understand Torah without understanding the names. In Canaanite Hebrew, the Jewish people’s language, the word “davar” means both “word” (formless) and “thing” (that is formed).
Snapshot: Tonight, Jews in Israel and the world celebrate Passover, after sunset, as a memorial to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and their liberation from slavery. The Jews are commanded to recite the story of the exodus from Egypt as if they personally participated in it and not as a purely historical one.
The feast continues until the 12th of April in the evening. The Maymouna tradition is of Moroccan origin, which has become part of the Israeli heritage.
You will find the seder on the table on the night of Eid. Matsa is the unleavened bread, which is symbolic in memory of the days when the children of Israel left Egypt in a hurry. They did not wait for the dough to ferment before they traveled to the wilderness, so they carried unleavened bread with them.
The boiled egg symbolizes the solidity of the children of Israel.
Celery symbolizes the bitterness of life that the children of Israel tasted under the rule of the Pharaohs.
Jewish history is present in many holidays, and the people of the country are keen on their freedoms, which have cost great sacrifices over the years. This is evident in the recent demonstrations in the country, fearing that the proposed legal changes might restrict their freedoms in the future.
A Fifth Question: “Tsefan Josef, Are you saying that the polytheism (worshipped many gods) was the accepted religion of ancient Israel? Are you saying that worship of one elohim above all elohim, I.e., the Shema, came about much later in history?”
Yes! In the 2nd Temple period, Israel’s ethno-religious leaders were trying to move the Jewish people of Israel into henotheistic adherence, hence Torah as we Jews have it today. Monotheism didn’t get invented until the 12th century CE, with the formation of our Siddur and the acceptance of Maimonides teachings! To this day, Jews range in “beliefs” from polytheistic to henotheistic to monotheistic to atheistic and, if shomer halacha, all Jews – regardless of personal beliefs – are Jews. What makes you violate Jewish Law and threatens your children’s legal status as Jews is if you “believe” in and worship a god of the gentiles – such as the idol Christ – or give up your Jewish identity for a Colonizer’s identity – such as Muslim, Christian, or Marxist.
A Sixth Question: “Tsefan Josef, where do Messianic Jews fit in this paradigm that you explained?”
Messianic Jews are Christians, full stop. No matter what they tell themselves! The Baptists started this ‘assimilate the Jews’ movement, as an effort to proselytize to Jews who are indigenous to Judea-Samaria – to both Jews who never left the land of Israel, despite every Arab-European occupation and ethnic-cleansing, and Jews who were forced into the Arab-European Colonial diasporas. Jewish Jesus himself warned his Jewish followers to never idolize him, or he does not know them. That idol worship is the way of the Roman Colonizer of the land of Israel! If you are not born Jewish or have not been ruled Jewish by a beit din (a Jewish court of law), then you are not Jewish, full stop. No matter what you “believe.”
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A multi-language Jewish rap song for the occasion – being it’s 75 years of Israeli decolonized freedom now! Chag Pesach Sameach חג פסח שמח !
The Jewish Agency for Israel is partnering with artist and creator Shanan Street and music producer Cohen, for a special project bringing together seven Jewish hip-hop artists, working in different languages from around the world, who wrote a song in honor of Israel’s 75th Independence Day. The song “The Same Speech” deals with the connection to Israel and the Jewish people, which is found even in the most distant Jew, anywhere in the world, and the Jewish identity of the participants, who perform it in their native languages.
Ma Nishma, Israel | אותו דיבור
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