The State Religion of the 50s and being marginalized.....

[agricola]

The Northern Kingdom's population was mass-deported wholesale east into the Mesopotamian area - not all of them, but most of the upper classes at least. Then strangers from other conquered lands were moved IN - and that's the objection the Southern Kingdom of Judah had to the northerners generally and the Samaritans in particular: they weren't Jews, but 'foreigners' who were moved in and who took on some of the practices and beliefs of the original northern Jewish (not at that time called 'Jewish' by the way) except most of the original inhabitants were your basic peasants and not super knowledgeable - so the Samaritans (the northerners) were considered outsiders mostly because they WERE outsiders and also because their practices weren't 'standard' (they still aren't: there are small pockets of existing Samaritans still around today).

What happened to the 'ten lost tribes' - most apparently assimilated into areas of the east (there is some fairly credible evidence that some of them ended up in Afghanistan), some 'escaped' to the Southern kingdom and assimilated 'back' into their ancestral people, and many simply died out. Some - we believe - survived political upheaval and wars in Mesopotamia, and survived to return to Judah when the Babylonian exile ended. They aren't lost exactly, so much as they are dispersed and forgot their origins.

Today's Jewish people don't usually know their tribal ancestry, except (of course) if they are from Levi (priests and levites). I do know a few families who have a strong tradition that they are from this or that tribe. As late as the 1500's, many (though not all) Jews still knew which tribe their family originated in, as far as we can tell from existing writings at least. I know a guy who says he can show he's descended from Hillel, which if true, would make him a real genuine descendant of King David, in the flesh.

[Melanie]

Agricola, thank you for these explanations. It's quite interesting. I am ignorant on this subject, as I have never studied it beyond what we were told in the cofC that no Jew could trace his or her tribal origins since the destruction of the Temple and its records in AD 70. I am intrigued that you say some Jews can indeed chart their lineage. Was the Temple destruction story another misrepresentation of history perpetrated by the cofC?

[Melanie]

We've strayed a bit off our original thread topic, but I'd like to address the first post. I was in high school the first time I had a clue that Protestantism was the de facto official religion, at least in the south. I was in the German Club, and every year our teacher taught us Christmas songs (both sacred and secular) and took us caroling at the homes of several German people she knew in the area. Many of them were elderly and were thrilled to have a group of young people come sing to them in their native language. We would then end the evening with a big Christmas party at the elaborately decorated home of one of our more affluent students. It was quite an event and one we always looked forward to and talked about for weeks after. One year we had 2 Jewish students in the club, and they objected. Of course, the rest of us set up quite the howl! We were young and immature and only saw these boys as trouble making Scrooges or Grinches who wanted to spoil our fun. We couldn't understand why they just couldn't stay home and let the rest of us enjoy ourselves. As an adult, I have more empathy now. I also see how we take our majority status for granted without considering whom we might be marginalizing.

[williamray123]

The Northern Kingdom's population was mass-deported wholesale east into the Mesopotamian area - not all of them, but most of the upper classes at least. Then strangers from other conquered lands were moved IN - and that's the objection the Southern Kingdom of Judah had to the northerners generally and the Samaritans in particular: they weren't Jews, but 'foreigners' who were moved in and who took on some of the practices and beliefs of the original northern Jewish (not at that time called 'Jewish' by the way) except most of the original inhabitants were your basic peasants and not super knowledgeable - so the Samaritans (the northerners) were considered outsiders mostly because they WERE outsiders and also because their practices weren't 'standard' (they still aren't: there are small pockets of existing Samaritans still around today).

What happened to the 'ten lost tribes' - most apparently assimilated into areas of the east (there is some fairly credible evidence that some of them ended up in Afghanistan), some 'escaped' to the Southern kingdom and assimilated 'back' into their ancestral people, and many simply died out. Some - we believe - survived political upheaval and wars in Mesopotamia, and survived to return to Judah when the Babylonian exile ended. They aren't lost exactly, so much as they are dispersed and forgot their origins.

Today's Jewish people don't usually know their tribal ancestry, except (of course) if they are from Levi (priests and levites). I do know a few families who have a strong tradition that they are from this or that tribe. As late as the 1500's, many (though not all) Jews still knew which tribe their family originated in, as far as we can tell from existing writings at least. I know a guy who says he can show he's descended from Hillel, which if true, would make him a real genuine descendant of King David, in the flesh.

I know a guy whose family is from the tribe of Benjamin, and another from Levi. I have heard CoC preachers claim no one knows what tribe they are from and that is patently false. There of course aren't social security records to look at but as you said, families have traditions going back for ages as to what tribe they are from. This may sound crazy, and take it for what it is worth, but my wife went on ancestry.com and she had a direct line from her fathers going back to the time of Jesus. They weren't Jewish, but her paternal line was broken at that point, but a few generations earlier than that on the maternal side was Jewish, and back to the tribe of Judah - all the way to Judah himself. I don't know how accurate it was, but she had gentile ancestry for 2000 years and then Jewish from the maternal side back the rest of the way - like I said, don't know how accurate it was but it showed all the names and such going back to Judah.. pretty cool either way and makes the CoC look dumb for saying no one knows their heritage

[agricola]

It's RARE but not vanished entirely. However, except for priests and levites (both of the tribe of Levi), there are no differences between being, say, of Benjamin or being of, for instance, Issachar. So the distinctions are mostly lost over the centuries. Nowadays, the only 'tribal divisions' are between the two lots of the Levi tribe (priests and levites) and everybody else. Priests are kohanim and levites are leviim, and everybody else is just 'Israel'.

My husband's grandmother was the daughter of a kohen (a priest), but the rest of the family is 'nothing in particular'. But people should be cautious of family tradition, because it can be subtly off or altogether wrong.

As for the temple destruction - probably the only genealogical records the temple would have kept would have been - priests and levites: temple functionaries and temple servants. Maybe they might have kept track of the royal family also, but it is highly unlikely that accurate birth and death etc records were being kept for every single person. Why should they?

[KLP]

Yes, families have traditions and no one knows how accurate things are. Any one set of original records only goes so far. Traditions have been known to have been invented for various reasons and sometimes even an honest mistake maybe. I would not trust any specific details when there is a dependence on so many different source to fill in gaps and ranges on centuries. Supposedly we cannot trust the Bible or ancient text since they were copies of copies and errors are made and things are inserted to embellish here and there and there are forgeries. Some claim just about none of the NT is authentic. So how are birth records from so many sources, cobbled together suddenly to be trusted? DNA showing some commonality is probably the most reliable IMO...everything else IMO is just a good story when someone says they can trace someone to back to Adam or Noah or Levi. To me it starts to sound like reincarnation wishful thinking where someone is always connected to someone or something famous or significant in the past.

[agricola]

We've strayed a bit off our original thread topic, but I'd like to address the first post. I was in high school the first time I had a clue that Protestantism was the de facto official religion, at least in the south. I was in the German Club, and every year our teacher taught us Christmas songs (both sacred and secular) and took us caroling at the homes of several German people she knew in the area. Many of them were elderly and were thrilled to have a group of young people come sing to them in their native language. We would then end the evening with a big Christmas party at the elaborately decorated home of one of our more affluent students. It was quite an event and one we always looked forward to and talked about for weeks after. One year we had 2 Jewish students in the club, and they objected. Of course, the rest of us set up quite the howl! We were young and immature and only saw these boys as trouble making Scrooges or Grinches who wanted to spoil our fun. We couldn't understand why they just couldn't stay home and let the rest of us enjoy ourselves. As an adult, I have more empathy now. I also see how we take our majority status for granted without considering whom we might be marginalizing.

Thank you. Yes you are right. I still see (and deal with) innumerable people (even grown ups) who don't seem to 'get' how the things they take for granted (and get mad about when they can't get it) are marginalizing others who aren't part of their in-group. That caroling group would be perfectly legit IF it were sponsored by and run by any church, and all the action took place outside the PUBLIC school, which ought to be religion-neutral.
I hear that argument a LOT, though 'why can't they just stay home?' Well of course they CAN (and likely WILL) but why should they be forced into that kind of decision by the school system? If something is a school/education activity, then it should be open fully to everyone.

[KLP]

...Thank you. Yes you are right. I still see (and deal with) innumerable people (even grown ups) who don't seem to 'get' how the things they take for granted (and get mad about when they can't get it) are marginalizing others who aren't part of their in-group. That caroling group would be perfectly legit IF it were sponsored by and run by any church, and all the action took place outside the PUBLIC school, which ought to be religion-neutral.
I hear that argument a LOT, though 'why can't they just stay home?' Well of course they CAN (and likely WILL) but why should they be forced into that kind of decision by the school system? If something is a school/education activity, then it should be open fully to everyone.

One reason is that it is an established group with a harmless, enjoyable tradition that was enjoyed by the audience. Why should it be demonized as hurtful? So yes, "staying at home" is one option. Starting your own club and/or a new tradition is another option. Not everything in life will be just perfect to everyone's liking. And yes, I did "just stay home" because we didn't do Christmas. I survived, somehow I lived, it was not the end of the world and I didn't dwell or imagine forcing those folks to change their behaviors to be just like mine or to not exclude me in any way. In a diverse society one option is to learn how to deal with it. But that has fallen out of favor these days it seems. Now we have the "accommodation" to any and all objections. It appears this is a slippery slope which is now on display in schools in the news. All the stuff about micro/macro aggressions and safe spaces and the insistence on needing exclusive clubs/space by race or other groupings or categories. Is it any wonder that schools are performing terribly at the task of actual education? Yes all the inclusion stuff does sound great in theory, but maybe there is a limit and maybe at some point it is better to just deal with life and diversity instead of trying to make everything the least common denominator.

[Struggler]

Religion should not be the state. Nor should the state be the religion.

In high school, most of our student body has some sort of Christian background and we did a Christmas program at school. It incorporated Catholic and Protestant elements. We did talk briefly about Hanukkah, which fell to me, because none of my Jewish classmates that I asked wanted to do it. Nobody that I know of objected to the program.

[agricola]

...Thank you. Yes you are right. I still see (and deal with) innumerable people (even grown ups) who don't seem to 'get' how the things they take for granted (and get mad about when they can't get it) are marginalizing others who aren't part of their in-group. That caroling group would be perfectly legit IF it were sponsored by and run by any church, and all the action took place outside the PUBLIC school, which ought to be religion-neutral.
I hear that argument a LOT, though 'why can't they just stay home?' Well of course they CAN (and likely WILL) but why should they be forced into that kind of decision by the school system? If something is a school/education activity, then it should be open fully to everyone.

One reason is that it is an established group with a harmless, enjoyable tradition that was enjoyed by the audience. Why should it be demonized as hurtful? So yes, "staying at home" is one option. Starting your own club and/or a new tradition is another option. Not everything in life will be just perfect to everyone's liking. And yes, I did "just stay home" because we didn't do Christmas. I survived, somehow I lived, it was not the end of the world and I didn't dwell or imagine forcing those folks to change their behaviors to be just like mine or to not exclude me in any way. In a diverse society one option is to learn how to deal with it. But that has fallen out of favor these days it seems. Now we have the "accommodation" to any and all objections. It appears this is a slippery slope which is now on display in schools in the news. All the stuff about micro/macro aggressions and safe spaces and the insistence on needing exclusive clubs/space by race or other groupings or categories. Is it any wonder that schools are performing terribly at the task of actual education? Yes all the inclusion stuff does sound great in theory, but maybe there is a limit and maybe at some point it is better to just deal with life and diversity instead of trying to make everything the least common denominator.

So did we (drop out of participating in stuff like caroling). And 'it didn't hurt me' either -


But you know what that sounds like? All those people who say 'I was spanked and I grew up okay'. So what? That doesn't make it right. And shouldn't we want better for our kids than the way we had it? I grew up without seat belts either and 'I grew up okay' but that doesn't mean I let my kids ride in the car without buckling up.

We did a lot of things in the past that were fine maybe THEN, but we - one hopes - know better now than we did then, and we don't need to keep repeating the old patterns over and over again just because they were fine THEN.