11–20 of 165 posts
Wow amazing how the bound of religion and ethinicy can led people to survive thousands of years and still maintain an identity.
There is little in the way of ethnicity. Ashkenazi Jews are an ethnicity, Jews in general, aren't. They even spoke different languages before Hebrew became a thing in early XX century, and many of them still do.
There are much earlier archaeological artefacts including stone writing from much earlier than 457 B.C. This is the time after the destruction of the first temple by the Babylonians who dispersed the Jews around the area. Since then there were Jewish communities all over the middle east including in Egypt. I don't understand why the writer of the article is so baffled about this. Just as an example, the Merneptah Ste…
He sees Elephantine as countering widely held beliefs about ancient Jewish life (that it was all in Israel, homogenous, etc), containing interesting analogues to the present day, and being an altogether interesting story.
It can be more difficult to spin a good yarn from the older material.
Wow amazing how the bound of religion and ethinicy can led people to survive thousands of years and still maintain an identity.
As a young boy my father used to take me to the Pergamon museum in Berlin - one major exhibit is the Babylonian street of processions (it dates to the neo-Babylonian empire) He used to say - here you see our heritage, we were around the show when Berlin (and all the other great capitals of the world) were still a swamp.
Wow amazing how the bound of religion and ethinicy can led people to survive thousands of years and still maintain an identity.
Indeed, this fact this makes me proud to be a Jew. (A happy Passover to all whom it may concern). As a young boy my father used to take me to the Pergamon museum in Berlin - one major exhibit is the Babylonian street of processions (it dates to the neo-Babylonian empire) He used to say - here you see our heritage, we were around the show when Berlin (and all the other great capitals of the world) were still a swamp.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, this fact this makes me proud to be a Jew. (A happy Passover to all whom it may concern). As a young boy my father used to take me to the Pergamon museum in Berlin - one major exhibit is the Babylonian street of processions (it dates to the neo-Babylonian empire) He used to say - here you see our heritage, we were around the show when Berlin (and all the other great capitals of the world) were still a swamp.
מועדים לשמחה
The history of the Jews (and the Jewish diaspora in particular) is fascinating. Between the typical opposing endpoints of assimilation/integration and separation there is this curious in-between state that seems both chaotic and stable over time -- the state of being "in a place" but not always being "of that place." The aforementioned podcast describes well the urge to assimilate or to remain distinct, positions held by both those in the Jewish community and those outside of it. The modern revival of the Hebrew language into a living tongue, both as a method of crystallizing identity and distinctiveness, is one example. Also interesting to consider how even small differences in "rules" between societies (like allowing usury or not, and to whom) leads to complex social consequences over time -- sort of a cellular automata analogy. Historical patterns of Jewish expulsion from various societies also make for interesting microcosms to understand tribe-based interactions: when the Jewish people were invited or allowed into a region, who was behind that change in policy and why? When pogroms or expulsions happened afterward, what were the causes and which segments of the population were the catalyst and why? It's an endlessly dynamic system that resists our efforts to create a simple static narrative -- and I suppose if anything it helps reveal that all of history is like that.
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Not strange at all, integration is an exception more than the norm. The various chinatowns, italian quarters, irish quarters etc should be a testament to that: communities always tried to stick together thorough time and space, now and in the past. There are comparatively few cases of succesful long term non violent integration.
> There are comparatively few cases of succesful long term non violent integration. I beg to differ. I live in Eastern Europe, at the crossroads of different migration waves, and I'd say we've been quite successful at integrating people over the millennia. Just look at this widely circulated genetic map of Europe ( http://brilliantmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/genetic-... ), you can see that Romania (the countr…
Wow amazing how the bound of religion and ethinicy can led people to survive thousands of years and still maintain an identity.
There is little in the way of ethnicity. Ashkenazi Jews are an ethnicity, Jews in general, aren't. They even spoke different languages before Hebrew became a thing in early XX century, and many of them still do.
These Wikipedia articles have a lot of good material for those who aren't aware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_peoplehood and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_a_Jew%3F
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are comparatively few cases of succesful long term non violent integration. I beg to differ. I live in Eastern Europe, at the crossroads of different migration waves, and I'd say we've been quite successful at integrating people over the millennia. Just look at this widely circulated genetic map of Europe ( http://brilliantmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/genetic-... ), you can see that Romania (the countr…
jews still lived in jewish quarters, married mostly other jews and aggregated around jewish structures; being integrated is a little more than liking local dishes; beside that "integration" ended up in violence anyway even before wwii, when romanians started persecuting them.
> beside that "integration" ended up in violence anyway even before wwii, when romanians started persecuting them.
WW2 and the 1930s were very difficult times (and not only for the Jews). I like to look at those times as the exception rather than the norm.