We Jews are the last surviving tribe of the peoples of Canaan – Moabites, Israelites, Judahites, Edomites, Ammonites, and Phoenicians (this last one, the “Canaanites” in our Torah). To this day, we still tell our Indigenous stories, both as preserved in our written TaNaKh (our ancestral literatures) and through adaptive re-envisioning to relate them to the present, in our Canaanite Hebrew language. We were born as a people upon the land of Moab (present day southern Jordan) and became an Indigenous nation north of Moab and across the river (yes, all of this is Judea and Samaria!).
Besides our attachment as Jews to our ancestral land of Israel, our Canaanite language, and our Judean-orignating halachot, Indigenous laws that inform us and define us legally as an Indigenous People, what other ways do we employ to maintain amongst ourselves our Judean sense of nation identity – regardless whether we are living upon the Land of Israel or in the worldwide diasporas? The answer is in our Jewish stories, which never cease to be written l’dor v’dor, in every generation. Our collective traditional stories as Jews is found in our scrolls, in our Torah, Nevi’im, and Ketuvim.
Every Jewish community worldwide chants and listens to our stories weekly and, for some, even daily. Some understand our traditional stories on their own terms as shared in our Torah, and some understand them through the influence of modern religious/societal interpretations. It is said amongst our people that it is a mitzvah, a sacred obligation, for benei Israel, the children of Israel, to write the Torah once during one’s lifetime. For those of us who love our Jewish stories, it is a daily obsession to share our Canaanite Hebrew words to all who will listen. This is the purpose of this page here! So, let us now begin….
In our Jewish literatures, there is a Canaanite Hebrew word that applies to all breathing creatures upon this planet. This word is called “nefesh”, which literally means “body-mind” (only in modern times does it also mean “soul”). Nefesh is the hidden word in the following story about to be shared, for all creatures – from humans, to animals, to fowl, to fish, to insects – are created in the same way and possess the neshama, the breath of life/living soul, within them – according to our Judean people’s Torah stories. Thus, our halachot, indigenous Judean laws, must demand behavior from Jews that demonstrate this understanding about planetary life.
For Jews, rainbows are the sign of established order and balance in this chaotic world. It is a reminder from our Creator of the purpose for our human species: “le’avdah ul’shamrah”, to plant and to protect the land. As the Judean people of the Land of Israel, one of our important Indigenous views has to do with “tza’ar ba’alei chayim”, compassion for animals, so much so that we have numerous laws, “halachot”, that enforce a Jewish lifestyle that avoids animal suffering.
It is said that Judah ha-Nasi understood that he once became sick as a punishment for not showing compassion for a frightened calf. Lack of empathy, human indifference, sickens! There is nothing in our sacred ancestral literatures that says we humans shouldn’t advance ourselves in knowledge and technology. But, if we fail to plant and to protect, to sustain our land’s vitality, then we create the cursed life of tilling thorns and being bit by angry wildlife!
Le’avdah ul’shamrah, to work and to guard the land, and to be wary of tza’ar ba’alei chayim, the suffering of animals – this is what it means to be Indigenously Jewish! These d’varim, Torah words, of our people, it’s not a choice, but a divine obligation upon all human beings. The rainbow was set in the skies above after our exile from gan eyden, YHWH’s garden. Why then? To break the curse of drought with a flood, with the waters needed for life upon the land.
If we don’t sustain the Earth and her ecosystems, we will be driven from paradise. Worse, we will bring an extinction of the species, to include ourselves, is the warning behind this sacred human obligation that is found in our Jewish Torah. Judaism, our ethno-religious Judea-people-ism, is a eitz chayim, a tree life, that helps to sustain this planet Earth for the Creator of land, skies, and waters! This is our Indigenous Judean mission on planet Earth – peace through observance of life-sustaining rituals and obligations.
Those who threaten the peace and security of our sovereign Indigenous nation of Israel, threaten the future survivability of this planet Earth! Acts of Colonialism, land occupations and terrorism, happen only for religious and unchecked capitalistic reasons. Colonialism is an act of human indifference, born in a loss of Indigenous awareness, stories, and ways. A sickness born from an appropriation of Jewish ancestral stories, with an utter disregard for our Indigenous understanding, seeing in them the pathway for universalist supremacist dominionism over all of planet Earth.
Check back on this page. More to be shared here over time….
We Jews have yet to fully decolonize. We have regained sovereignty upon a third of our ancestral land, but we are forced to daily fight for our Independence. Why?
We say that it is because of the structural inherited antisemitic racism (terrorism) that is rampant in all Arab-European colonized lands and upon our still occupied Israel. But it’s more!
We are the most targeted Indigenous People on Earth, “Because right here behind this door stands a Jewish child that knows nothing about Jewishness. Absolutely nothing!”
This failure to successfully educate our own is not entirely our fault, for Jews have been severely colonized for 58 generations now. 2,300 years of dhimmi/ghetto status, having to kiss the hands of the Christian/Muslim supremacy ruling over us, everywhere that they have colonized! But, if we fail to teach our own, how will our own properly teach the Arab-European Colonizers!
As Carl Sagan would put it, we are nothing more than briefly animated stardust. Our physical bodies, our nefesh, generates a mental body, an extension of nefesh. The mind perceives itself as being different, but no mental thought happens without the physical body’s actions towards this. Though this awareness of life is ancient Indigenous understanding, even modern neuroscience has demonstrated that consciousness is a slave to body-brain, a perceptual self-reflection, that is dependent upon there being the “breath of life” in the body to sustain it.
In Jewish Indigenous culture, we recognize that animated life occurs only through the nashamah, the “breath of life”, for while this breath (or living “soul”, as northern Greco-Roman culture would call it) is within us. The breath does not belong to us – though while alive, we perceive this to be so – for the breath (the living “soul”) is the Creator’s breath within all living breathing things. For Jews, the breath of Elohim/YHWH within us, sustaining our animated nefesh. There is no life without this Creator’s breath, only endless unconsciousness.
Hence, why our Judean-orignating literatures says that the Creator is a deity of the living, not of the dead. And this is why Torah speaks of “dead” nefesh, referencing both humans and animals, and makes clear that a person lives only for the number of years that the Creator’s breath (living “soul”) is within his/her body. The Creator will breathe in and remove from, this breath of life, at the Creator’s will, says Torah! And, this is also why you’ll find no reference to an “afterlife” or apparitions (spirits, ghosts, non-physical demons, a “Hell”, etc) within our Judean ancestral literatures, what we Jews call “the TaNaKh”.
Unlike northern Aegean-created Christian culture (Greco-Roman), our later developed Jewish concept of a “resurrection” (derived from Greco-Roman occupation of the Land of Israel) is a strictly physical one – not involving any kind of “soul separated from the body” type return. The Jewish people’s Indigenous concept of resurrection is simply the Zionist idea that in the day of mashiach – the age where a human Jew fully decolonizes the Land of Israel and frees the people of Israel from non-Jewish terrorism – Jews of the past will un-decompose (reconstitute) to live life one more time in this age of mashiach, to experience this age of planetary peace among all humankind, before dying again.
This is what the Jews who wrote the book of Matthew meant when they had human Jewish “Jesus” resurrect from the grave. They expected that Rome, “the Beast”, would soon fall and Israel would reestablish her sovereignty. They expected those who had died at the hands of the Roman occupiers to resurrect and experience the liberation of Israel from her enemies. (Hint, it didn’t happen. Then, a generation after Zionist Jesus’ death, northern Aegeans got a hold of these texts!) And this brings us to the subject of this following Jewish story….
We Jews Indigenous to the Land of Israel enjoy contemplating life through magical/mystical stories, while maintaining the self-evident awareness of life evolving one generation (one change) to another, as usual. This is why we have so many stories of gods and demigods, of a talking donkey, and of demons used by “God” within our Torah and, even, our greater TaNaKh. For examples: YHWH has his palace in the skies above (the “heavens”) and rides down to the land (to “Earth”) on a cherub (what Christians call an “angel”), the benei elohim (“child-gods of the gods”) mate with humans and create the giants of the land, and the malachim (the human “messengers” of the gods) have magical divine-like powers.
Many Jews share a story on Shabbat that is found in our people’s Talmud, in Shabbat 119a. It is a “Sabbath” story that is repeated weekly, and it is about two Cherubs and a human Prophet. A cherub is a winged armless celestial being that is used by YHWH as a flying chariot or, sometimes, as a messenger. The story that we Jews share is the following:
As the workweek, the six days of every week, comes to an end, every Jew is followed by two cherubs back to his/her/their home. One “good” cherub and one “bad” cherub. They follow us into our homes and observe our actions. During the erev Shabbat, the evening of the “day-of-resting” (in Indigenous Judean culture, the evening starts the day) the two cherubs observe the Jew to see if he/she/they is sanctifying the Shabbat, this day of resting, with chant and aromatic food, with family togetherness and “in this moment” contemplations. If so, then, the “good” cherub must declare, “May this be so next week!” And the “bad” cherub must declare, “Amein (means, this be so)!” If during the erev Shabbat, the two cherubs observe that the Jew is not sanctifying the “day-of-resting”, then the “bad” cherub must declare, “May this be so next week!” And the “good” cherub must declare, “Amein!” It is here that the cherubim, then, leave the Jew’s home, only to return next week.
It is also taught amongst our Jewish people that, for the Jewish homes that observe the Shabbat, another visitor briefly visits at the end of the “day-of-resting”. His name is Eliyahu ha’Navi, Eliyahu the prophet, an ancestor of the Jewish people. As we chant the welcoming of the new week in our homes, a knocking at the door occurs. And, as we open the door to allow Eliyahu to enter, we separate from the “day-of-resting” and enter the new workweek of six days. Eliyahu symbolizes the redemption of our Indigenous Judean nation, the people of Israel, from our enemies – the ushering in of our full Jewish decolonization upon the Land of Israel and of our enemies laying their (physical and by proxy) weapons down in peace with sovereign Israel.
When Jews living in Arab-European colonized diasporas were forced to take on surnames representing our family lineage, many of our family names were of animals and many were of work professions. My family’s surname is of the animal kind, Farkas which means that we are a “Wolf” clan. Like with all Indigenous Peoples around this planet Earth, there is deep significance to the meanings of names and the relationship of these names with nature.
Our Judean-orignating Torah literatures could not have been written *without* a proper understanding of the names that these stories are built around. Likewise, understanding our Jewish Torah stories – which are chanted in our indigenous Canaanite Hebrew language – *without* understanding the meaning of the names within them, is like trying to read Latin while only knowing the French language. You miss *way too much*!
When I was in my early twenties, I went on what Aboriginal peoples call a “walkabout”. I was a troubled youth and seeking a vision of clarity. It was during this time that I met my “spirit animal”, as Indigenous Peoples of “America” would call it. No, it was not a wolf! It is the custom of the Indigenous Peoples around me that you do not talk about such encounters, for they are deeply and intimately personal events. What I will say is that there was a sharing of knife and quill.
Understanding the meaning of this encounter, I have been trying to keep my part to this relationship ever since. I don’t quite know how to do this “successfully”, only that this is my part of this mutual obligation and that I have been blessed in ways for this. Having now shared a bit of me with a few of you, this brings us now to our latest Indigenous Jewish story. It is a Jewish belief that there is no better way to make a point than to tell a story!…
“There was a rabbi, a very good and pious man, who wanted to see justice in the world. But it often seemed to him that good people got punished, and that bad or undeserving people thrived and prospered. He pondered about this, and he found no solution for his problem.
Now, this rabbi used to study at night, and sometimes he got a famous visitor—Elijah the Prophet.
“Come,” said the prophet on such an occasion. “Tomorrow I wish to go out into the world. I want to see whether the Jews around here are still hospitable; I want to experience how they keep this great mitzvah of our father Abraham. I want you to go with me. We will disguise ourselves as filthy, haggard beggars, and knock on doors. But no matter what happens, I want you to observe without asking me any questions or seeking any explanations.”
And so it came to pass. They left the next morning, and in the evening they came to a very poor hovel, hardly worthy of human occupation. They knocked and found that a poor farmer and his wife lived there together with a cow, their only possession, which provided their meager livelihood: they sold milk in the next village, and drank what was left. It kept them from starving.
The farmer couple was poor but very friendly, and ushered the two “beggars” in. They let them sleep on their best straw (they had no beds), and they shared a slice of hard bread and a cracked bowl of milk from their cow with them. They entertained the guests with friendly conversation, till they all said the nighttime prayers and went to sleep.
In middle of the night the rabbi noticed that Elijah had slipped away to the “stable,” a part of the hut screened off with a burlap sack, where the couple’s cow was kept. He wondered what the prophet might be doing there, but remembering his promise, he said nothing.
The next morning they woke up to a terrible scream. The farmer’s wife had gone to milk the cow, had found the animal stretched out on the floor, stiff and dead. “How will we live?” she wailed. “Now we will die, too!” The rabbi expressed his concern, and tried to console her. He told her to trust in G‑d, but they had to leave her sobbing.
“No questions, remember!” whispered Elijah when he saw the rabbi’s face. He blessed the poor couple, and they walked again for a whole day without having breakfast, because the cow had died. That meant no milk—and there was nothing else.
That evening they came into a village, and heard happy music. They found a nice house made of brick: servants were bustling about, and they were told that the wealthy owner of this nice house was preparing a party for the engagement of his daughter. “It’s better not to disturb him now,” warned a butler. “He doesn’t like beggars in normal circumstances, and he will be very irritated if you talk to him before his feast. Better go somewhere else!”
“No,” said Elijah, “we want to share in his joyous occasion, and we will ask for lodging and food from him.”
“At your own risk. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” said the butler before he hurried into the house with some bottles. And the butler was right. The owner of the house treated the beggars harshly, and threatened to have them removed by his servants. But they pleaded so desperately that finally he gave in and let them sleep in his barn, just to get rid of them. He warned them not to show themselves at the party; he would certainly not give them any food. “Beggars!” he muttered into his beard. “Let them go and work. They should be outlawed!”
And so, the rabbi and Elijah went to sleep with an empty stomach, and it was drafty and chilly in the stable. There was only old, smelly straw to lie on, because the owner did not spend much money on his animals.
The next morning they woke up, recited the Modeh Ani and washed their hands with water from a trough. Elijah pointed to a large opening in the wall of the crumbling barn. “That’s why it was so cold in here!” he exclaimed, and told the rabbi that they would repair that crack with some old tools that were in the barn.
The rabbi wanted to object, but he saw the stern look on the prophet’s face, and he obeyed without asking questions. They did not bother to tell the owner that they had fixed his wall; he was too busy receiving his guests, and would be angry to see the ragged beggars at his doorstep.
As they headed back to the rabbi’s village, Elijah said to him, “Í know that you did not find it fair that the cow of the good couple died, and that the wall of the miser was fixed for free. But in G‑d’s world, there is more to things than what meets the eye . . .”
“When we were sleeping in the poor couple’s hut, I heard the rustling of big wings from outside. It was the angel of death, who had come to take the life of the farmer’s wife. I pleaded with him to leave this couple alone, but as you know, the angel of death does not go away emptyhanded. It cost me a lot of trouble, but finally I was able to convince him to take the cow. And I gave a blessing to the couple when we left. They did not know it, but at that very moment a new cow, wandering and lost, was making its way to their hut. They will find it and take care of it. And not only that: G‑d will bless them this year with a child, which is their deepest wish.”
“I see,” said the rabbi. “And what about the miser?” … “‘Ah, him,” sighed Elijah….”
Go to the Chabad org web site for the rest of this story (link is below). What we – and, especially, “page author” I (!) – are most interested in is this: “Despite the blatant unfair sufferings in this world, *why* do we Indigenous peoples continue to thrive throughout this Arab-European – aka, Christian, Muslim, and Marxist – colonized world, still resistant and still unassimilated?” Is it because of our stories, despite life’s experiences and despite that these are *our* “explanatory” stories for life as experienced?
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/404895/jewish/The-Rabbi-and-the-Cow.htm
The Rabbi and the Cow
“I am a Jew who is fully comfortable in his Indigenous Judean skin. I and every father before me is a Jew Indigenous to the Land of Israel! I don’t care whether I appear “holy” to Christians and Muslims, for we Jews are not here for them. I don’t care how much genetic admixturing my Indigenous Judean people have experienced from forced diasporas. I’ve been known to strap tefillin without shame. I’ve been called a Sadducee more than once in my life, and a “Reb” (no, I am not!)! I show love for only the deity of my ancestors, for the Name is One! (Not 3-in-one, not generic without a name, but ancestral land-based one!)” – Yosef ibn Yehuda
A Colonizer is a Colonizer Regardless of Ancestry! Learn why Here!
A Taste of Israeli Politics – Jews Indigenous vs Jews colonized! – A battle between Jews Indigenous and Jews colonized for Israel’s future!
Jews need an Israeli “Constitution” based on the ways of Judea! – Learn about it, here!
Only Arabs and Europeans can End the Violence in Israel! – See Why Here – Enough said! So, prove us wrong.
I don’t know how to reach this “white” “black” world! Learn why Here!
Educate yourself on historical quotes and historical facts here on this page of History That Is Erased By Arab-European Colonizers!
Is Israel A Racist Supremacist Ethno-State? – Find out here, Now!
Indigenous Stories and Indigenous Ways – Learn some here!
Back to the Take On Me index page – Click Here.
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