Everyman's History of the Jews

By Sulamith Ish-Kishor

WHETHER OR NOT you have read "Gentleman's Agreement," "Focus," "Eagle At Your Eyes," or have see the motion picture "Crossfire," you owe it to yourself to read EVERYMAN's HISTORY OF THE JEWS, because by doing so you will know and understand the Jewish people.

This book will fill a long-felt want--it is a popular, readable history and it is intended for Jews and Gentiles. It will tell the Jews so much that he has always wanted to know and it will give the Gentile an opportunity to become better acquainted with the people whose destiny remains headline news.

As fascinating page after page unfolds, this book will give you--Jew and Gentile both--an insight into the hearts and minds of the Jews with whom you meet and mingle. It will tell you about their ancient heritage, their triumphs and tragedies, their victories and defeats, the reasons for the indomitable faith that has enabled the Jews to survive through the centuries--and the effect of history on the individual Jews.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frederick Fell Publishers, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9780883913222

Book preview

Non-Jew

1

The Great Idea

THE story of the Jew has no meaning unless it is the story of an Idea.

An idea that gripped the soul of a petty tribe, built them into a people powerful in their day, carried them past the downfall of their State, buoyed them up through thousands of homeless years, and brought them, hunted and torn but still and forever the people of that Idea, to the doorway of tomorrow.

For a hundred thousand years prehistoric man had trembled before natural forces, had feared and worshipped the storm wind, the earthquake, the soil, the sun, the moon, the volcano—everything that could either destroy him or give him sustenance.

Then a thought began to spread, as such thoughts do, and here and there someone began to wonder, and here and there someone risked a spoken word—and after a while there was a group of people thinking much the same thing.

And then a man acted.

Who was that man?

Lost in the desert wilderness of what is now Iraq and was once Babylonia, lie the ruins of a silent street down which no human foot has stepped for some four thousand years. Sun-white and shadow-black, its mud walls of crude clay bricks open here and there into alleyways leading to houses which once a people, vanished long ago, had plastered with stucco and painted in horizontal lines of red and blue. This was the great fortified city of Ur on the Euphrates, then capital of Sumeria, later known as Chaldea. Among its gardens and shrines and market places and vast enclosures surrounding the huge temple towers of the Moon-god Nannar, there once walked a man named Abraham, descendant of a Semitic tribe which had seeped south into more commercialized Sumeria.

Abraham had watched many nights the full moon slowly flooding the sky with light, but when it touched the temple tower and a cry of awe and worship burst from the massed watchers, there was no worship in his heart. To him Nannar could not be God, for the moon went down and was displaced. Neither could the sun be God, for the sun was displaced in its turn. Sun and moon, wind and tide, came and went, waxed and waned. And he saw that none of these was free. Each obeyed some binding force.

So came the astounding realization that shook him to the heart—there was One supreme mind that created all and regulated all, a Power too vast to be seen or imagined by man, the intangible, invisible source, the origin of all—this alone was God.

Thus through Abraham,—a real man though beclouded with biblical legend,—through Abraham and the tribe which he brought up in his own faith, humanity first became aware of the oneness of the universe and the idea of the one God.

With the knowledge of One God, came the consciousness that all human beings were His creation and all equal in His sight. Therefore one had no right to look down on his fellow man. Each man was as God had made him.

The time came when a code of law had to be formulated for the people descended from Abraham and brought up in his faith. What could honestly come of that faith but a code based on the brotherhood of man? So for the first time in human history, a moral Law was proclaimed. Not merely—as in the earlier code of Hammurabi—rules for fair dealing in business. The law of Moses dealt with the heart of man.

If you probe to the core of each of the Ten Commandments, you find a practical guide to a life of peace with oneself, one’s family, and the community. A whole people living according to this Code would create a Paradise. The Hebrews could not live up to it as a people, though many individuals did. The people fell away from it a thousand times. But between their sinning and the sinning of pagans there was always this difference: the Hebrews knew they sinned and with the consciousness of sin there came repentance and reform. They had their great Idea, their guiding Ideal. They had seen the light and they could never claim that they did not know.

As time went on and the Law had to be applied to the daily details of ordinary living, hundreds of bylaws were added, always in the same spirit, seeking the utmost of mercy and justice within a practical world. Slavery was world-wide—but among the Hebrews no one could be a slave for longer than six years; the seventh year all slaves were freed. The ox in the Hebrew field must not be muzzled; let him eat of the harvest he is bringing in. The worker who pawns his tools must have them back each morning that he may not be unable to earn by reason of his necessity.

Ruled only by God and the Law, the Hebrews were a democracy. The priesthood acted as arbiters and interpreters of God. When the Hebrews demanded a king —a military leader—he was not to be considered superior to others; they were his brethren. When the Hebrew kings became, like other kings, tyrants and robbers, the prophets charged them with crime in setting themselves up above the people. They sinned— but they knew they sinned.

The story of the Jew is a story of courage and strife, of purple banners and splendid heroes, of mighty genius and irresistible beauty, of tyrants and wars and great cities laid in ruins,—and it is a story of suffering and degradation beyond belief, of misery that bred cruelty and cunning, of humiliation and despair and pain. It is a vast pageant of human experience, glowing with every emotion mankind has known.

But first, and always, and above all, it is the story of a people’s soul, the adventure of an Idea seeking to create a way of life.

It begins with the story of the Bible.

2

The Book of the Habiru

ANYONE who wants to know the story of the Jews, has to know something about the Bible. The first part of the Bible is nothing more or less than a history of the Jews from their beginning to a certain period when some scribes and prophets got together and began writing it down. Naturally they gave it a religious angle, because they were men of religion and their reason for writing the history was exactly this,—they didn’t want the Hebrews to forget who they were and above all, why they were.

Every race has its sagas, its legends, its epics. They want their story remembered simply because it is their story. They’re entitled to that. But with the Hebrews it was always something else too—they wanted their people to remember what it was that made them different from other nations, and what it was that they had to perpetuate.

It was actually just this—they had an ideal. They made themselves responsible for carrying out that ideal. It had to be remembered, it had to be told and re-told. Thou shalt bind it upon thy forehead and upon thine arm. That’s why you see orthodox Jews praying with black ribbons wound round their heads and arms, and on the ribbons are affixed small black boxes in which are bits of parchment containing portions of the Law.

Such was their horror of idolatry, and so intense their faith that God made all men His equal children,— that He demands justice from man to man.

This is the burden of the Bible as the Hebrews who wrote it down perceived and taught it. They believed too much, perhaps. They tell of miracles. And yet—the latest discoveries of science are proving that those things the Bible’s authors put down did actually happen, even if the interpretation of them was according to faith rather than to fact.

Well—most of us don’t know the Bible any too well. If we were asked, and if we answered honestly, most Jews and non-Jews would have to confess that it’s all pretty vague and mixed up in their minds.

But now read it straight—and it’s a thrilling story, when you get down to the gist of it.

The first adventure of the Idea as it was born in the mind of Abraham was that it turned the comfortable Aramean city dweller and merchant’s son into a pioneering shepherd.

Unwilling to bow down any more before the Sumerian idols or to worship the moon god, Nannar, he could no longer live in Ur. With his kinsfolk and his household of dependents, together with others who had come to his way of thinking, he set out for the shepherd country.

They must have looked back at the stuccoed and painted houses, the towers and gardens of Ur, and feared their future life as shepherds under goatskin tents. Still they went. With their camels and water skins they followed the ancient caravan-route northwest to Haran, and from there around the Aramean desert, then southward until they came to the land of Canaan. It was a fertile strip of soil along the shore of the Mediterranean, later called Palestine. Here four thousand years ago the first Hebrews pitched their tents and here they herded their sheep.

They were not the first Semites to enter the territory. For hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, Semitic tribes had been seeping into Palestine and south- westward into Egypt. Among them were the Amorites, who had taken to the mountains, the Canaanites who inhabited the lowlands. The precedessors of all the tribes later known as Ammonites, Edomites, Moabites and so forth, were already finding their places.

The land which the desert tribes had selected, and which now Abraham and his pioneering followers entered, was chosen by them for its fertile fields and pasture lands, few enough among the mountains and deserts which surrounded them. It seemed a simple, humble place to choose—a place where wanderers might settle down and raise their families and find the freedom of worship for which they had come.

They had not reckoned with the geographical position of the land. It lay at the centre of the eastern world; it was a highway between east and west, between north and south, between one empire and another. Trade routes ran across it, armies tramped through it. No spot could have less hope for peace and independence.

Yet here their camels kneeled and the travelers laid down their bundles and their children, and pitched their tents, beside a well under the shade of the palm trees. As the moon rose white in the chilly sky, Abraham and his household smiled. And they prayed the evening prayer—no more to Nannar of Ur but to the one God in Whom their hearts were uplifted.

The people they came among called them Ha- biru, those who had come from across the river.

It was slowly that the knowledge of God took shape in Abraham’s mind. The idols, representing the gods the heathens worshipped, needed to be fed with blood. With the memory of the human sacrifices made to the idols, Abraham, father at last of a son by his wife Sarah, a son he loved almost too dearly, went brooding by himself. Sarah saw him and felt what was in his thoughts. Everything had prospered with Abraham. His family were healthy, his herds and flocks increased greatly, his son was growing happily. Surely it was necessary now to show God that he was grateful, and surely it could only be done by feeding to Him the greatest treasure he had: his son.

In anguish she saw Abraham rise one morning, his forehead knotted with agony, his eyes desperately determined. She heard him rouse their child. Disregarding her impassioned questions, he went away with his son up the nearby hill. The boy stooped and gathered sticks, and carried them. The father and son were now out of sight.

On the hilltop Abraham bound the lad to a great stone. He must do this thing. He must give this child of his to the God he worshipped. He lifted the knife— but it never came down on the little one’s throat. For a swift understanding had come to Abraham. Not his God—not the God that created all life, that created and kept in motion the whole living world. The God he knew had no need of feeding, no lust for human blood.

And so there were no human sacrifices among the Hebrews. Let the idol-worshippers thrust their children alive into the fires in the brazen belly of Moloch. To the Hebrews, human life was sacred.

Isaac grew up, a pleasant youngster of no particular gifts but that of being cheerful like his name which meant Laughter. It was time for him to marry. It would be little use to have left the comforts of Ur in order to gain and preserve their freedom to worship the one God, if now Isaac were to marry a daughter of the idol-worshipping tribes who dwelled all around them. Abraham sent afar off to Nahor, where his kindred lived, and there his steward selected a girl of kindly hospitable nature, and brought her home.

Isaac married this girl, Rebekah, and they had twin sons. Esau was the elder, and according to custom he would inherit the lands and the herds of Isaac. But he was a wild lad, who spent the whole day out hunting. Jacob was shrewd and quiet and managed the property well; there was no question which was better fitted to inherit. And so, with womanly logic, his mother Rebekah helped him to deceive Isaac into granting him the blessing and the heritage. Jacob had already inveigled the incautious Esau into giving up his rights for a mess of pottage.

The Hebrew story does not leave Jacob in peaceful possession of his questionable gains. Notice this— though it was long before the formation of any official code, Jacob suffered severely for his deceit. Esau’s natural rage forced Jacob to flee the country and he had to work many years on the farm of his kinsman Laban. Here again his acquisitive wiles led him into trouble, for he asked that the speckled and piebald among the newborn cattle be his wages—and then he planted speckled and striped sticks where the ewes would see them. Whether this story is true or not— modern genetics questions the probability of progeny being influenced in this way—it is clear that Jacob was considered to have taken advantage of his uncle. In the east, all over the Orient in fact, nowadays as well as in ancient times, this kind of dealing was considered clever. But in the Hebrew story Jacob was punished for this too: Laban in his resentment gave him Leah, the elder and plainer of his cousins, to wife, before the young and beautiful Rachel whom he loved.

Nevertheless, there were qualities of resourcefulness, hard work, thrift and loyalty in Jacob. Hebrew legend selects him as the ancestor to whom God appeared in a dream, repeating the promise made to Abraham that Canaan should belong to him and his seed forever, and that this seed should be numberless. Odd indeed is the tale which connects this patriarch of the ancient Hebrews with the throne of modern England! Within the seat of the throne in the Abbey of Westminster where England’s monarchs have been crowned for many generations, there lies a jagged grey stone; on this stone, they claim, Jacob laid his head when he slept and dreamed this dream. England is proud to call it the Coronation Stone.

Again Jacob dreamed memorably—his was a troubled heart. He dreamed that he wrestled with an angel, and powerful though this angel was, he could not conquer Jacob. Then the angel revealed himself as sent by God, and thereafter Jacob was called Prince of God, Isra-El, for he had striven with God and with men, and had prevailed. And thereafter his people were known as Israelites.

Jacob’s twelve sons became the progenitors of twelve tribes; of these in the course of time ten were lost. They did not physically lose themselves or disappear, though romantic legends were told to explain their vanishing. The plain fact was that they were deported from Palestine in the Assyrian conquest about 725 BC and there were absorbed into the population because they did not resist assimilation as the other tribes did.

Vivid with life and legend is the story of Jacob’s favorite son Joseph,—the first and most perfect success story ever written! But because the story was told by Hebrews—those scribes and prophets, religious men all, who wrote the Scriptures—the moral side of it was never forgotten.

Joseph is no faultless hero. His elder brothers hated and resented him, which of course was wrong of them, but young Joseph had earned it. It was all very well for him to dream that they all bowed down to him; that was a younger son’s inferiority complex trying to find compensation. But he didn’t have to tell them about it! They were already jealous enough of his good looks, his brilliant mind, and his father’s favoritism. It seems that he irked them to such a degree that they were ready to do any thing to get rid of him—even to kill him. They threw him down a well.

Finally they relented sufficiently to pull him out and sell him to a caravan of merchants traveling to Egypt. To cover their crime, they smeared Joseph’s fine cloak of many colors with animal’s blood, and showed it to their father, who naturally believed a wild beast had eaten the boy.

Joseph in Egypt suffered the humiliation of slavery —appropriate punishment for his arrogance. But his courage and wit brought him to his master’s favor. Potiphar, Pharaoh’s captain of the guard, made him his overseer. Then ensued the temptation—Potiphar’s wife desired him as her lover. But the handsome youth was not to be lured into so dangerous a treachery. To avenge her pride, she accused him of the very fault he had refused to commit. In prison once more, he found his way from chains to glory. For Pharaoh dreamed strangely, and the Hebrew youth was the only one who could read the dreams. Joseph, being keen-witted and having great economic genius, foresaw a boom and bust period in Egypt; he advised Pharaoh to prepare for it by conserving grain and cattle. Pharaoh, deeply impressed, placed his signet ring on Joseph’s hand, arrayed him in fine linen, and set the Hebrew youth to rule over Egypt. When the depression he foretold had occurred, Joseph rescued his family from famine; Jacob and the whole household with all their families and their flocks and herds went down into Egypt.

Because it is a Hebrew story, no sin failed of its natural punishment. The brothers suffered for their cruelty, Joseph for his pride, even Jacob for his favoritism, and perhaps also he was punished as a father for the deceit he had practised on his own father Isaac.

Generations later—about 1650 BC—a militant new dynasty drove out the tolerant and good-willed Pharaohs of the Hyksos (shepherd-king) line. The new Pharaohs feared that the Hebrews who by now numbered many thousands and who formed a colony along the eastern frontier of Egypt—might some day help the former rulers to return; their strategic position on the border made this too great a risk for the conquerors to take. The new Pharaohs, busy establishing their power, had no tenderness for a people with an advanced religion, which rejected the belief that Pharaoh was god and king in one.

To weaken the Hebrews physically and economically so that they could give no aid to an invader, and also to make use of their labor in building the treasure-cities of Pithom and Ramses, and the vast pyramids which would impress the Egyptians with the grandeur of the conquering dynasty, the new Pharaoh enslaved the whole Hebrew people resident in Egypt. These Hebrews were made helpless; they could get no aid from their people who had remained in Canaan and who had not greatly increased or progressed since Jacob’s time.

So the descendants of Jacob’s sinful sons, through whom they had been brought into Egypt, and who had lacked courage to return from the comfortable life of that fertile land, now toiled day and night under the lash, harnessed to huge monoliths, or making bricks without straw. They too had been false to their ancestor Abraham’s faith; they had dwelled among idolaters and forgotten the God who had revealed Himself to them.

Four hundred years, says the Hebrew story, they toiled in hopeless slavery, sinking to a level of mere beasts of burden. Never in the history of Israel, as far as we know, unless there were unrecorded rebellions, did the Hebrews remain so suppressed.

Then the current Pharaoh—about 1300 BC—unwittingly began the chain of events that was to free Israel and bring them back to their own land of Palestine.

Perhaps the occasion was a great festival in honor— or rather in dread—of the fearful Set, the crocodile- god which inhabited the River Nile. Perhaps many Egyptians had been snatched from the marshy banks by the clawed monsters. To him the priests of Egypt had chanted the spell: Stand back, O son of Set, Strike not with thy tail, Seize not with thy two forearms, Open not thy jaws, May the water become a sheet of fire before thee, May the spell of the thirty- seven Gods paralyse thine eye, Be thou bound to the great crook of Ra, Be thou bound to the four bronze pillars of the south…

Yet if the crocodiles still struck, it would be well to give them victims, many victims … And the Hebrews multiplied too fast no matter how bitterly they were oppressed.

Or had there been a revolt in which Hebrews had slain many Egyptians in a desperate effort to escape? Perhaps it was simply to weaken the Hebrew people still further that Pharaoh ordered all male Hebrew babies to be flung into the Nile as soon as born. The Hebrew families tried to hide their newborn sons. One mother had an inspiration: she