I knew we had been missing something! In our blind imitation of America, we had none of the Black Studies stuff where the Civil War was fought mainly by Afro-Americans and where most of American music and literature were created by Negroes. Thanks Rabbi Menachem Waldman, for the first time we have a new Haggadah (Jewish traditional text) where Ethiopian Jews with its unique traditions and customs are given their due.
The 195-page Haggada features prayers and commentaries on the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt translated from Amharic into Hebrew, as well as an account of how Ethiopia’s Beta Israel community escaped to Israel first via Sudan in Operation Moses in 1984-85 and later during Operation Solomon in 1991. The book also includes extensive photographs and detailed explanations of Ethiopian Jewish traditions and customs connected with Pessah.
I already have seen illustrated bibles where everybody is African. King David himself, although described in the Bible as ruddy and clear-eyed, is painted as a mulatto. The latest representations of Theodore Herzl, the Budapest-born founder of Zionism, show him suspiciously dark skinned. I presume our next step will be a half blood Ethiopian Prime Minister in Israel.
9 comments:
This is an illness.
Beware. It is highly contagious.
Not only are stupid people vulnerable; in fact, the victims are usually mid-range IQ strugglers who are easily led astray, and never recover.
Anon.
King David and Herzl as a black men is payback for all those pictures of Moses as a European with blue eyes who looked like Charlton Heston. If God made man in his own image, everyone's idea of God (and his representatives on earth) looks just like himself and his own race.
Duh, everyone knows that Egypt is in Africa so all the Pharaohs were African. And we all know that African is a euphemism for black.
Turning the ancient Jews black is no less ridiculous than making them fair skinned Europeans as in the old Hollywood movies. It's easy to see the ridiculousness of other people and times, much harder to see our own.
K
Given a few more years the US, or at least its culture of negrolatry will be discredited.
Your correct bro K, real jews are Africans so black!
Charlton Heston as Moses made him look like an emmissary from God, a fierce angel summoning the laid back Hebrews to a great task. For good or ill the image of Moses and the other personages in the Bible that is imprinted on our consciousness comes from the Renaissance artists. Nothing is going to better the genius of Michaelangelo. The African self-esteem movement is misguided as they will not be able to find equally impressive figures. Dentzel Washington might fit the bill but he will look like a Greek god with a dark skin, an oreo, hardly the effect intended.
It's true that the images of Biblical figures as European men drawn/sculpted by Michaelangelo (supposedly the director of the 10 Commandments chose Heston because he reminded him of the Moses in the sculpture) are deeply imprinted on Western culture, but that's all they are - imprinting. They are no more the "real" Moses than I am a duck's mother. God would not have sent a blue eyed white guy to rouse the brownish Israelites from their siestas.
K
According to Egyptian descriptions of the Hebrews, they were light haired and eyed. When Moses marries a brown girl, Tzipporah, it is such a hsame and scandal that even the Bible records it. I think that the Exodus's tone is of anger and indignation of the Hebrews having to submit to swarthy Egyptian task masters. I think that the Hebrews and the Greeks were prejudiced against Africans.
They probably were; the biblical verse relating to "hewers of wood and drawers of water", a curse by Noah on Canaan (one of Ham's sons), has been used to justify prejudice for years (even though it does not explicitly mention race).
The word 'prejudice', I think, is interesting. It means to pre-judge.
But so many people who hold racial views come to them after the experience, rather than before. But we don't have a word for this: "postjudice"???
Is there a word for this in Hebrew?
Anon.
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Is this possible?
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