Who Are the Jews

Abstract

Who Are the Jews? Vol. I: Soul of the Israelites, ISBN 0-913993-17-4 Vol. II : A Nation of Philosophers, ISBN 0-913993-18-2 Seymour W. Itzkoff Paideia Publishers, Ashfield, MA, 2004 Within the next several years, Volumes I and II of Who Are the Jews will be joined by a third and final volume, which will survey the historical, ethnic, religious history of the Jewish people into our own time. Volume I, Soul of the Israelites, gains its theme from the role of Moses the law giver, the inner ethical rock upon which Judaism was based. Itzkoff s biblical and historical analysis confirms Sigmund Freud's 1937 view in Moses and Monotheism of the probable Egyptian origins of this figure. The fact that Moses was but sixty or seventy years removed from the Pharaoh Akhenaton, c.1350 BCE, who but for only one generation overthrew the anthropomorphic animal gods of the Egyptian priesthood for a more philosophical monotheistic sun-god, argues for the probable affiliation of Moses with the Egyptians. The Exodus could have taken place c.1275-1225 BCE, a period close to the rule of the Hyksos (1650 BCE) derived Asiatic dynasty of the red-headed Rameses II. That the Hellenistic Egyptian priests of Heliopolis so viewed Moses is additional support for the plausibility of Itzkoff s argument. Much study is given to the origins of the various Israelite tribal units. Here Itzkoff sees three groups amalgamating into one national unity under Saul, David, and Solomon, to defend themselves from the advancing Philistines - unquestionably Mycenaean (Homeric era "sea people") Greeks - who, earlier, had given the Egyptians much trouble. These groups were a) the Exodus Semitic rabble from Egypt, led by a determined and visionary Moses; b) the Yahwist tribes of the Sinai, Negev, northern Arabia, who were essentially monotheistic, sharing their circumcision ritual with the Egyptian aristocracy; c) the northern Canaanite tribes of Israel, worshipping the traditional Babylonian/Syrian chief god, El, Elohim, Elohenu. The glue that held these diverse peoples together, along with an existing Indo-European component of Hyksos, Hurrians, Hittites, and Greeks (here including the peoples of the Jebusite town of Jerusalem that David made his capital) was the mysterious and all-powerful war god Yahweh and the ethical discipline that the Levites and priests had tried to force upon these formerly Habiru ruffians. From the beginning, this century-long monarchy fulfilled the warning that Samuel the judge had given the Israelites about relinquishing their tribal freedoms for a king, to defend them. The moral corruption, the falling away from the difficult disciplines that Moses and then the written Pentateuch had placed before them, undermined the Mosaic vision. First, the breakup of the tribes into two monarchies. Then, the descent of the religion into a Near-Eastern syncretism. By the time Israel, the state, and its ten tribes fell before the Assyrians, c.700 BCE, the northern monarchy envisioned little of the prophetic disciplines. This people thence disappeared, gently expelled by the Assyrians to the murky north; new immigrants unattached to the ancient Hebrew religious teachings replacing them. Between 597 and 582 BCE, much to the Prophet Jeremiah's sad acceptance, Judah was crushed by oncoming Chaldean Babylonians. No longer would these pseudo-Jews immolate their own children in Jerusalem's valley of Hinnom. The theme of the book follows the prophetic prediction of tragedy, for a people and its leadership unable to understand and act on the disciplines of a revolutionary moral vision given to man by God. Volume 11, A Nation of Philosophers, gains its title from the Hellenistic Greek impress by the ethical monotheism of the Jews. This occurred as the Greeks encountered them, after the Alexandrian conquest of the mid-East around 330 BCE. This story picks up after the Babylonian captivity. The Jews who had been transported to the land of the two great rivers, were the elite of Judah. …