If you didn’t know or understand, Judaism is not a religion! And thank ha’Shem for this! Judaism is the ethno-religion of the Jewish people of the land of Israel. Judaism is Judea-people-ism or (tribe of) Judah-people-ism. And all our written and oral stories and our Jewish halachot serves to ensure that we always remain so in this world! If you’re not Jewish or a colonized Jew (a Jew inheriting an Arab or European Colonial diaspora worldview of Judaism and our Jewish people’s origin stories – better known as our “creation stories” in Torah), then you probably have not heard our Torah on its own chanted terms, in our Canaanite Hebrew language. If so, this blog will be a surprise (possibly, shocking) and an education for you!
I will prove both of these historical and factual points in two distinct ways. Do you wish to learn further? Or, do you think that you already know all that you need to know about “the Jews” and our Indigenous Judean ancestral literatures? You decide, for it’s your life and education. But, I am sharing, regardless! I am an Indigenous Jew of Sephardi descent, well educated in our Jewish people’s ways, literatures, and history. I can only teach you, if you’re willing to learn. So, let’s now do this!
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 First Nation (“Native American”) 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 “So, let’s now do this”, on the “two distinct ways” mentioned above.
(1) 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. התורה לא משתעלת! The Torah does not cough, folks, every word and every character is in their for a reason!
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!
לֹא־ט֛וֹב הֱי֥וֹת הָֽאָדָ֖ם לְבַדּ֑וֹ אֶֽעֱשֶׂה־לּ֥וֹ עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ … וּלְאָדָ֕ם לֹֽא־מָצָ֥א עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ:
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!
One last thought: Pay attention, for 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 deity, thus obscuring the inherited Canaanite polytheism in our Torah. Meaning, sharing now a henotheistic Torah, without hiding the Canaanite pantheon origin of our Indigenous Judean stories, that are expressed through the names!
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, created 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”), created in the Garden of Eyden myth. The Levant is YHWH’s assigned portion of the continent that was formed by Elohim.
The word Elohim itself literally means – in all Canaanite languages, not just ancient Hebrew – “children gods of high god El” – when not being utilized as a proper name for high god El himself. Hence, the 70 nations of the land in the Noah story, each ruled by an eloah of the elohim. The Torah that we Jews inherit from our ancestors does not know the Maimonides “God” of universal pantheism! Modern Jews simply prescribe a change to the Torah’s deity, and apply this monotheistic god to Torah herself (effectively silencing an important part of her voice!).
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UPDATE Comparative Thought : To which “God” do Jews actually “pray” to? Why do Jews reject worshipping the “God”s of Christianity and Islam, the Colonial religions?
The object that Jews “pray” to is only known to Jews. For all other nations have their own “God” of their land (except Christianity and Islam, that tries to enforce upon all lands and human minds their ideology!). But, Jews that understand Torah know that even the “God” object must be rejected, for this in itself is idolatry. We do not “pray” to a name, but chant our devotion to the mitzvot of our Indigenous Judean people. For those that believe in “God”, this supreme source deity is “You”!
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