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The best preventive response to Colonial Arab-European antisemitic racism is a social vaccine shared often online:
Hello Colonial Arab-European for Allah-Christ-Marx dominionism upon all Indigenous Peoples’ lands. Still speaking reading writing that Colonial Arabic and Colonial English? Okay. We Jews Indigenous to Judea-Samaria see you! In the land of Canaan, we speak Canaanite Hebrew!
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The Jewish people have been speaking Canaanite Hebrew for 3,300 years faithfully. We are the only Canaan tribe remaining that still speaks our Canaanite Hebrew language to this day. We still keep our Canaanite god names in our sacred ancestral literatures, and we keep our presence faithfully upon the land of Canaan/Israel to ensure the yearly land obligations are fulfilled.
The Jewish people were born on the land of Canaan as an Indigenous tribal people of Canaan, one of among several others, and we have never been fully forced off our land by Colonial Arabs-Europeans for Allah-Christ-(now)-Marx dominionism upon all Indigenous Peoples’ lands. We, the Jewish people, are the last remaining tribe of Canaan to survive Arab-European Colonialism, we still speak our Canaanite Hebrew to this very day as an Indigenous first language, and we Jews of Judea-Samaria and Jews formerly of the Southwest Asia, Middle East, and North Africa Diasporas are the nation of Israel’s Jewish majority.
In this age of modernity, the 21st century CE, filled with nation-States that are democratically ran and supported by the citizens and where their Constitutions are empowered by these citizens (rather than by the authority of a god-King from some religion), it is very important to understand the history of our progression as a Jewish people – from past polytheism to questioning the validity of present monotheism – so that we know as a people where we are going historically.
For the modern democratic nation-State of Israel is now one of these nations that must prepare for the future. A nation where Jewish secularist lifestyle reigns as majority over the religious lifestyles, and where scientific understanding of the world brings to serious question the mythic reality of our inherited ANE and early CE Jewish literatures. It’s even now okay to question the existence of *any* human imagined god, but remain fully religious in our ethno-religious Jewish lifecycle rituals – adapting it to meet our modern awareness of life.
So, let’s briefly track the historical progression of our Jewish people, a people who are ever-evolving our ethno-religious culture to meet the changes and challenges that envelope/inform our human species understanding of this world in which we all live in:
In the 1st Temple period, 13th century BCE to 597 BCE, the tribal nations of Judah-Israel recognized that numerous gods exist, but they were devoted to three – Elohim, YHWH, and Asherah. This was the polytheistic Jewish period of history, that borrowed much mythic history from other older and more established civilizations and, then, turned these myths uniquely Jewish in perspective. This was the time of Kings, of monarchy Judaism, and great legends of conquests between nations – and heroic battles with demigods, and tragic stories about Jewish demigods.
In the 2nd Temple period, 539 BCE to 70 CE, the nation of Israel (Judean Israel) still recognized that numerous gods exist, but obscured the presence of Asherah (absorbing the goddess into YHWH) and equated YHWH to Elohim (thus usurping the role of creator high god onto YHWH). This was the henotheistic Jewish period of history, the time of priestly Judaism. This period of Jewish history is when the Torah and Nevi’im (the Pentateuch, first part, and the Prophets, second part, of the TaNaKh) were compiled from 1st and 2nd Temple writings, and the Koine Greek Septuagint *interpretive* translation of the Hebrew Torah was compiled.
After the fall of the 2nd Temple, the Sadducees (the Priestly caste of the Temple), and rise of proto-rabbinical Pharisaic Judaism from the oppressive Roman occupation upon Judea, 70 CE to 500 CE, Jews still recognized that numerous gods exist (and so did early Christians, with their declaration that their demiGod Jesus is superior to the YHWH god of the Jews), but Jews remained steadfastly henotheistic – devoted solely to the Jewish national creator YHWH god, which now is viewed as the only truly superior god, thus all the others are declared false gods (the budding of monotheistic thought). This period of Jewish history is when Ketuvim (the Writings portion of the TaNaKh) and the Talmud were compiled.
So, to sum up the Jewish people’s transition from 1st Temple polytheism into 2nd Temple and later proto-Rabbinic henotheism, sky daddy El and sky mommy Asherah decide to mate and gave birth to sky daddy YHWH, the Levant land’s god-King. Sky daddy YHWH, who regularly visits his portion of the lands of Earth, creates the Jewish people from the soil of the Levant. Then, one day, sky daddy YHWH usurps sky daddy El’s position and, oops, eats sky mommy Asherah for lunch. This is why the Jewish people, now, only speak of sky daddy YHWH! … We’ll leave the thoughts to you!
During the Middle Ages, 500 CE to 1500 CE, the Jews of Palestine and the broader Middle East and Europe formed the theology/ideology of modern Rabbinical Judaism. It was the Jews of this period of human history that developed the fully monotheistic idea that only one god exists, this god is formless, and all names for god in every religion references this one eternal and utterly transcendent “God.” The rabbis of this period developed the rules and resources (sidurim) for prayer Judaism, and we owe much of our present ritualized Jewish way-of-life to these Medieval Rabbis guidance and directions. Rabbis like Sephardi raised Moses ben Maimon, who is commonly known as Maimonides (and who established the 13 principles of Jewish belief – for theistic Jews, the closest thing to a defined Jewish theology).
This brings us to the Modern Age of human history, 16th century CE to Present, in which massive changes have occured to all aspects of human life through radical intellectual and technological developments that has affected every land upon this planet. This is for Jews the time period of brief momentary Jewish emancipations from ghetto life to all out genocidal holocausts against Jews. This is the period of white Christian colonizations of other peoples land for their racist based slave economies. This is the period of modern scientific methods, peer reviews of research, and multiple field disciplines based fully in developing theories based on mounting empirical evidence. And, this is the period were Western Jews formed multiple denominations/movements – from Heredi to Secular Humanistic, conservative religious (halachic observant) to liberal religious (non-halachic) to historic cultural Judaisms.
We are here! And it is our responsibility as Jews across all movements to work together to define our future Jewish way-of-life in an ever-evolving world.