The Land of Edom AKA Idumea, Enemies of Jews and Why

Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Mentioned in Gen.33:14;  Num. 24:18

In the southeast section of Israel was a country called Mount Seir, otherwise known as EDOM or IDUMEA.    It was in the mountains and easily fortified.  The land was most fertile.  EDOM was south of the Dead Sea and bordered on the Red Sea at Elath and Ezion Geber.
                                                                     

Esau and Jacob, twins of Isaac

The Edomites were Semitic people, traditionally the descendants of Esau who was the oldest twin of Isaac, twin brother of Jacob. Evidently they were not identical twins.   When they grew up, they became enemies even though they were twins.  Though born minutes apart, Esau was born first and claimed the right of the first born inheritance.  Jacob managed to get it instead, by trickery,  angering Esau, of course.   What Jacob had done was to approach Esau when he was very hungry after a hunt and had bought Esau's birthright from him in exchange for a mess of pottage.   Their mother, Rebekah also showed her favoritism by helping Jacob to trick Isaac when he was blind and dying into thinking that he had given his birthright to Esau.  It was Jacob who later struggled with an angel and by overcoming him, was given the new name of ISRAEL.   This was the way this story explains by such symbolism the relationship between the 2 nations which became hostile to each other.  The Talmud speaks of Esau with villainy and violence which indeed, Jacob's tricking Esau had brought out.  Anger and retribution knows no end as we see today.

These mountain Edomites lived by hunting.  They were stronger than the Horite people, who were there before the Edomites took the land over, and so organized themselves along tribal lines with a chieftain they called the Allooph.  This arrangement later consolidated like other people into a monarchy.  (An Israeli general is called an Aluf in Hebrew.)

Thus, the Edomites became the traditional enemies of the Israelites.  They fought King Saul and were defeated by David who annexed much of their land.  They regained their independence during the reign of Jehoram (853-843 BCE)   This was after King Solomon had died and Jehoram was the 9th king after Solomon's death in 920 BCE.  However, wars between the 2 state were frequent.
                                                                           

Assyrians leading away captive Israelites of 10 of their tribes

By the 8th century BCE, the Edomites were vassals of Assyria who would attack northern Israel in 722-721  BCE and take the best of the men and women as captives.  This is the time Israel lost 10 of their 12 tribes.
                                                                             

At the time of the destruction of the 1st Temple in 586 BCE by Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian,  they also plundered and looted along with the Babylonians all the gold and silver from the Temple.  They probably aided and abetted them in their thievery and destruction.
                                                                             

Judeans return from Babylon to Jerusalem 

They got their upcoming by being driven from their home on the mountain by the Nabateans, forcing them to occupy southern Judah during or after the period of the Exile of Judeans in Babylon. Taken there in 586 BCE, many Judeans were able to return in 538 BCE, making their kidnapping last for 48 years.
                                                                       

Nehemiah (5th century BCE), famous for his writings, had to teach  the people about their
religion and get them to rebuild the Temple. He became the governor of Judah.

The Edomites were then conquered by John Hyrcanus (135-104 BCE) son and successor of Simon the Hasmonean who had become the ruler and  who forcibly converted them to Judaism, and from then on they were part of the Jewish people.  John  became a high priest.  It was John's sons defeated the Samaritans and gained control of Bet Shean and part of the Valley of Jezreel.  Only his last years of rule had become tranquil.
                                                                           
HEROD was one of the Edomite descendants and had died in 48 CE.  During Titus' siege of Jerusalem (79-81 CE), they marched in to reinforce the extreme elements by killing all they suspected of having peace tendencies.  Titus, the Roman emperor was the son of Vespasian, the Roman Emperor 69-79 CE. .  He had taken over command of the Roman army in Judea from his father in 70 CE when they destroyed the 2nd Temple.  This happened after a 5 month siege.  The destruction of the Temple was deliberate an done in hoping to eliminate the Jews' national religion and center of the religion.
                                                                     

His mistress was Bernice, who was also his niece and  a Jewish princess.  Thereafter, they stopped figuring in Jewish history.  The name EDOM in our Talmud is a synonym for an oppressive government, especially Rome which was the worst.  This was replaced by the Middle Ages and was applied to Christian Europe.

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Tankakh (Old Testament)

The Armenian Jews: Where They Came From-Where They Went

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                   

Armenian historians have written that Jews came to Armenia right after the destruction of the 1st Temple of Solomon.  This would have Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE who destroyed it.  Armenia is a part of Western Asia and is east of the Caspian Sea. Yerevan, Armenia is 779 miles away from Jerusalem, Israel.  If it is 9:26pm in Jerusalem, it is 11:26pm in Yerevan.  One could drive from Portland, Oregon to Cottonwood Heights, Utah and also cover 779 miles.  It would have made quite a camel caravan of traveling.  Traders would have made the trip before and possibly led people there.  
                                                                               

The Temple was rebuilt from 538 to 515 BCE and then was called the 2nd Temple.  It took 71 years to regain this 2nd Temple.  Of course, ties existed between the Jews who stayed in Armenia and the Jews of Judah during the 2nd Temple days.  Judah had been a section of Israel that split off when King Solomon died in 933 BCE.  The state of Judah lasted with kings till Zedekiah was the last king from 597 to 586 BCE when they were attacked.  

The Romans had taken over Jerusalem making Herod a King of Judea.  He lived from 73 BCE to 4 BCE.  He was the son of Antipater, the Idumean  and  had a Nabatean mother, Cypros.  Antipater had helped the Romans take over Jerusalem.  He had at one time been the ruler of Idumea (Edom).  This was a country in SE Eretz Israel, also called Mount Seir. Edomites were traditional enemies of the Israelites.  They had fought against the first Jewish King Saul and King David.  In the 8th century the Edomites were vassels of Assyria.  It was John Hyrcanus who forced them to convert to Judaism.   Edom  was a mountainous country and was south of the Dead Sea and bordered on the Red Sea at Elath. They were Semites, traditionally descendants of Esau and were hunters.   Herod  was a cruel ruler and a murderer.  He had ordered the slaughter of the innocents at Bethlehem.  

 One of his grandsons, Aristobulus, was made king of Little Armenia by Nero.  Two other grandsons ruled Greater Armenia.While young, Herod had been appointed Governor of the Galilee of Judah by his father.  He showed no problem coming on very strong with the population and executed any who disagreed with him.  For this the Sanhedrin wanted to give him the penalty of death for killing, but Hyrcanus and Sextus Caesar, governor of Syria, intervened with higher powers.  

The Romans also allied with  King Tigranes II the Great of Armenia. Armenia became the strongest state in the Roman republic.   He lived from 140 to 55 BCE.  Tigranes brought with him 10,000 Jewish captives to Armenia when he left Judah because of the Roman attack on Armenia in 69 CE.  He also became king of Syria as well.  Like Armenia, Tigranes was a pagan.  

Many Jews settled in Armenia during these next generations.  The Talmud mentions a Rabbi Jacob of Armenia and a school at Nisibis.  

From the 4th century on, the Jewish population started to shrink  because of exile and emigration.  Medieval travelers found many small Jewish communities at Nisibis and other places.  

Armenian Christians lived in Jerusalem since the 5th century and there is an Armenian quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem.  

The longest river in Europe is the Volga River.  It flows through Central Russia and along this river lived a Turkic people, including the: "Azerbaijanis, Chuvashes, Kazakhs, Tatars, Kyrgyz, Turkmens, Uyghurs,Uzbeks, Bashkirs, Qashqai, Gagauz, Yakuts, Crimean Karaites,Krymchaks, Karakalpaks, Karachays, Balkars, Nogais and as well as past civilizations such as the Göktürks, Kumans, Kipchaks, Avars, Bulgars,Turgeshes, Khazars, Seljuk Turks, Ottoman Turks, Mamluks, Timurids,Khiljis, and possibly Huns and the Xiongnu".  

Since Turkey bordered Armenia, it is good to know that there came to be many  varieties of people in the area.  However, Khazaria did not come about to its fullest till the 8th to 10th centuries CE.  They were made up of either Turkish or Finnish tribes  and their capital was Itil in the Volga delta and were called the White Ugrians. 
 "The Khazars probably belonged to the West Turkish Empire (from 552 C.E.), and they may have marched with Sinjibū (Istämi), the first khāqān of the West Turks, against the Sassanid (Persian) fortress of Ṣul or Darband"

 Hungarians were called Black Ugrians.  The Khazar royal house intermarried with the Byzantiums.  Their king Bulan and supposedly 4,000 of his royal household converted to Judaism in the 8th Century CE.  Their Prince Obadiah saw to it that they were converted properly.  The original Khazars came from the east. 

We have some Jews leaving Armenia in the 300's and their neighbors, Turkey and Russia, having Khazaria appearing in their lands by the late 700's.  Whether any Jews had drifted into Khazaria is not known.  That is a long span of time.  Being Christians from Armenia went to Jerusalem in the 5th century tells me that Jews from Armenia must have gone back, also.  As proof of this, Jews have been praying every day to return to Jerusalem lest they should lose their right arm if they forget it.  This remembering and returning is very important.  

Then from 360 to 370 there was an increase in Jewish Hellenistic immigration into Armenia.  Many Armenian towns became mostly Jewish.  By the same token, the Persian Shapur II began deporting thousands of Jews to Persia (today's Iran).  

Hellenism made an impact in Armenia so studies did not grow here.  During the Medieval days, most of the Jews left, thought to become part of the Kurdish Jewry.  A cemetery lies in Vayots Dzor in the city of Eghegis SW of Yerevan with more than 40 tombstones that date to the 13th century and 16 with Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions.  

Much later in the 19th century, Jews entered Armenia from Persia and Poland, so then they had a mixture of Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews.  From 1840 they had communities in Yerevan.  Hundreds of displaced Jews moved to Soviet Armenia.  Then there were at least 10,000 Jews living there.  Another wave came in between 1965 and 1972 made up of the intelligentsia, military and engineers.  They were attracted to a more liberal society.  

The Ottoman Empire learned a lot from the Germans who were their allies in WWI.  Muslim leaders were visiting with Hitler during WWII who were against the Jews.  The empire committed Armenian genocide and slaughtered from 1 million to 1 1/2 million Armenians.  They massacred the males and forced the women and children in marches in the Syrian desert.  Other ethnic groups were to be next.  Today of course there is still this divide between the Armenians and the Turks because of this needless slaughter that took place in 1915.  .  

Today there are less than 1,000 Jews in Armenia because of  emigration and assimilation.  Between 1992 and 1994, more than 6,000 Jews  immigrated to Israel because of economic and political reasons hurting Jews.  However, in 1995, Chabad House was established in Yerevan.  They offered classes about Judaism, Hebrew, Jewish traditions and free meals.  

Resource:  The new Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_River
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_people
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/khazars.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/armenia.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigranes_the_Great
http://www.ldolphin.org/chron.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide

90,000 Syrian Deaths But Not Alarming to Newsmen

Nadene Goldfoot
On the 12th of February 2013 at least 70,000 Syrians had been killed in their uprising. Syria has been the 17th largest Muslim majority country in the world with a population of 22,505,000 of which 90% are Sunni/Shi'a following Hanafi/Alevi  fiqhs.   Kerry reports that now 90,000 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising began.  It has been a wholesale slaughter but the world just isn't reacting very strongly.  They're just ho-humming about it.   Is it that when an Arab kills an Arab it is not news?  Reporters don't get excited until it is a Jew that kills an Arab.  1.2 million Syrians have been displaced.  Many have found refuge in Jordan who has had to create camps to hold them.  The fighting is even spilling into Israel's Golan Heights.

Jews don't have any laws going on to kill Arabs.  There is no enmity on the part of the Jews towards Arabs, but there has been on the part of the Arabs towards Jews starting at the beginning of time.  Abraham lived in the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE.  Our problems started about 4,000 years ago. Ishmael, first son of Abraham with Hagar, the maid of Sarah,  had reason to be angry with his half brother, Isaac.  He was cast out of Abraham's house along with his mother by Sarah's frustration over his behavior around the baby, Isaac.  Ishmael became the father of the Arab people.

 Joktan, , the 2nd son of Eber (Gen. 10:25)  is thought to be the ancestor of the southern Arab tribes. Joktan's sons in the order provided in Gen. 10:26-29, were: Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Obal, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab. Joktan means small, smallness.

 Problems between the two parties continued  with Esau and Jacob, twin sons of Abraham's son, Isaac when Isaac took the birthright due to go to  Esau who was the elder brother by a few minutes. Esau had sold it to Jacob in a deal to get a meal quckly.   Esau wanted to kill Jacob for his own negligence of giving his birthright away which caused Jacob to leave home in Haran.  Jacob returned 20 years later and was greeted affectionately by Esau, who is identified with Edom.  Jacob's name was later changed to Israel, denoting a change in status.  This became the point of reference telling about the 2 nations.   First Isaac had problems and then his son Jacob had problems.

However, with Islam and Mohammad's anger with Jews not converting to his new religion, anger has sprung up again from the Muslims for Jews and along with it an intoleration of Jews living  in the Middle East.  Qaradawi, religious leader from Egypt who lives in Qatar, has a fatwa out for all Jews to be killed.  Enmity has been  shown by the Gazan Arabs who have shelled Israel with mortars, missiles and rockets since 2001 until just recently.

When Israel announced its birth on May 14, 1948, it was attacked immediately by the Arabs which marks Israel's "War of Independence" which cost around 20,000 casualties in total for both sides.  That's the highest amount of deaths that Israel has suffered so far.  Casualty estimates of the wars of 1967  was 20,000 and 1973 was 15,000.

All wars involving Israel have been less that Syria's deaths of the last few years by about 30,000.  The fight from Gaza led to deaths that are but a fraction of Syria's numbers of Arab on Arab.  How has the press reacted?  With protest movements against Israel by bigots.  Israel was attacked.  Israel responded eventually  but with as much diligence as humanely possible.  Then the press reacted by calling Operation Cast Lead a "Holocaust", muddying the word that exemplifies the Jews losing 6 million people in a Holocaust of having become the scapegoats of a warrior nation that tried to exterminate the whole Jewish people.   The Gazans fought among their own populated areas hiding behind women and children, making sure they would be targeted first to play the sympathy card whereas Israel does the best job of teaching soldiers techniques to save lives.

Gazans claim to have lost 1,385 in Israel's Operation Cast Lead action but uniformed soldiers count was 200-300.  "Difficulties in ascertaining an accurate Palestinian casualty count have been attributed to a number of factors. It was reported that Hamas fighters had been ordered not to wear military uniforms during the fighting..  Israeli-Arab journalist Khalad  Abu  Toameh wrote in The Jerusalem Post that this practice led to the over-counting of civilian casualties and under-counting Hamas military casualties, as Palestinian casualties arrived at hospitals without weapons or any other signs revealing they were actually fighters."

Why did the Arabs attack southern Israel from 2001 on?  "Rationales given by the Palestinian groups responsible for the attacks vary, but often include the argument that the rockets are a method of protest and of calling attention to perceived injustices. According to other explanations, the attacks constitute revenge for – or defense against – perceived Israeli aggression."  The Israel aggression hasn't been anything other than defensive strikes when deemed absolutely necessary to stop constant hits.

Israel, being such a small nation of people who make up only  half of 0.02% of the world population, is under the magnifying glass constantly.  Every death is investigated by the press as well as having been investigated by Israel itself.  It's a good thing Jews have tended to follow the profession of law, as they must be ready constantly to defend themselves against anti-Semites.  Every movement Jews in Israel make finds protesters of some sort.

The Syrians are just passed up as stale, uninteresting news.  Fighting goes on among Arabs on a regular basis in the Middle East.  Lebanon and Syria, Palestinians and Jordan, Iraq and Iran, all have had their to the death battles.

When Ha-Shem told the Jews that they were to be the light among nations, I'm sure he didn't mean to have the flood lights or stage lights on them constantly whenever they had to protect themselves, but that's the case.   So Israel tries to be the light of ethics,  even when they are in horrible situations such as war.  The fact that they have shown restraint and care for life as found by fellow soldiers of battle from other countries, puts them in a good light.

Reference:  dailyalert@list-dailyalert.org  from Gatestone Institute, by  Douglas Murray
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_war
http://www.timesofisrael.com/kerry-says-90000-killed-in-syria/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_War
Tanach, the Stone Edition