Israeli hostage Noa Argamani, 26, embraces family members at the Sheba Tel-HaShomer Medical Centre, after her rescue by the Israeli army from captivity in the Gaza Strip. -/IDF Spokesperson’s unit via GPO/dpa
Dear Senator Wyden.
My 8th. Grandfather John Wilson, is a co-founder of Harvard. His son was a member of the first graduating class, called ‘First Fruits’. There were two books printed in England about the “settler colonization” of the lands the Puritans came to dwell in, and their contact with the Indigenous People. Roger Williams wrote a book that questioned the claims of the Harvard group that they successfully converted Native Americans to Christianity in what could be title “a religious settler colonization.” In the last fifteen hours I read most of these works, which should be the model for all such subsequent endeavors. There is evidence Putin has launched a “religious settler colonization” of Ukraine, which includes the kidnapping of Ukraine Children who are forced to attend Mother Russia Classes aimed at turning these children against their parents – and all their ancestors.
You can safely say, the New Israel is deeply involved in ANCESTOR WORSHIP, which usually involves being in the land of your ancestors- and not be seen as OCCUPIERS! In doing my genealogy, I discovered many of my people were “settler colonizers” who were not welcomed by the people who had lived in America for 25,000. My grandmother was kidnapped by Indians who tied her three young sisters up, put them in the cabin their father made – and burned them alive. A Cherokee Chief took her as his wife, and born her a son – who came out of the woods to meet his kinfolk, then returned to his father. If he had stayed in England, this family would not have endured such hardship, most of it UNFAIR! There are too many people crying – MY HISTORY MAKING – is unfair!
Dear Senator, I saw Dorothy Rosamond-Hodges on the back of a motorcycle, being taken into Gaza by savage men, who saw violent men murder un-armed men and women. I bid you and other elected leaders to invite Noa Argaman to speak before Congress. What will come forth from her mouth, will be lessons for American citizens, and citizens all over the world. She is not the first young woman to be taken captive, nor will she be the last. I see her as….Helen of Troy!
I do not want Netanyahu coming to my Nation and speaking before Congress – unless he reads both Puritan books I mentioned – then tested to see if he comprehends how difficult it has been to become a Democratic Nation – especially for the Native Americans. For a couple of years Netanyahu has wanted to come into our Capitol and – GIVE US LESSONS! I am authoring an oath that foreign guest-speakers must sign, stating they are convinced President Joe Biden – WON THE ELECTION!
It has come to my attention, there are Jewish Billionaires who have weaponized Gift Giving to our Universities. They too should be subjected to the same regiment, John Wilson Jr. underwent, to be titled “A First Graduate Of Harvard”. Did his father, John Wilson, see the need for MORE Millionaires – and billionaires? He did WANT Native Americans to convert to Christianity so they can be trusted to be given rifles, and bring pelts and furs out of – The Wilderness! Consider John The Baptist.
I include a post on my blog Royal Rosamond, that states the position of Israel, that I do not agree with. I will present the Palestinian view of things in my letter to a Pennsylvania Senator.
John Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
https://www.yahoo.com/news/details-published-israeli-hostage-noa-172944385.html
Thank You
Thank you for contacting my office.
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/contact/email-ron
Many Puritans in Massachusetts such as Governor John Winthrop wrote about Wequash’s conversion as the first Native American conversion to Christianity, and New England’s First Fruits was published in 1643 describing Wequash’s experience.[5] This was later used to justify the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s existence as a mission in evangelizing to Native Americans. In A Key Into the Language of America.
Author Roger Williams was a Puritan who was banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony and founded Providence Plantations which grew into the Colony of Rhode Island. He believed that the king had no right to grant title to Indian land without paying for it. He interacted extensively with the Narragansett and Wampanoag tribes as a missionary, friend, and trader. He extolled some elements of Indian culture as superior to European culture, and he wrote a complementary poem at the end of each chapter within the book.
The term “settler colonialism” conjures historical memories of exploitative white European empires militarily invading lands in the Middle East, Asia and Africa[i], implanting their citizens in colonies through the use of force, subjugating the native and indigenous populations and stealing their natural resources.
Many anti-Israel activists and academics use the term “settler colonialism” to describe the political and demographic changes over the last 150 years in what today is the State of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They argue that Jews were only a small minority of the population in the late 19th century (in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire) and that European Jews subsequently “colonized” and seized Palestinian land and resources.
But using the term “settler colonialism” to describe what transpired since the late 19th century misses vital facts and information:
- Jews, like Palestinians, are native and indigenous to the land. The Land of Israel is integral to the Jewish religion and culture, the connection between Jews and the land is a constant in the Bible, and is embedded throughout Jewish rituals and texts. The Europeans who settled in colonies in the Middle East and North Africa were not indigenous or native to the land in any way.
- From the time of the exile the religion, language, culture, holidays, rituals, liturgy, and history of the Jews are permeated with a yearning for a return to the Land of Israel. No colonialists came to a homeland and revived the ancient tongue they had spoken there.
- There is no “motherland” to which the Jewish population in the land of Israel may otherwise return. Whereas, for example, the French in Algeria could return to France, and the British in India could return to the United Kingdom, many Jews in Israel, including the many who fled persecution, have no other country to which they may return. Instead, most Jews who immigrate to Israel use the word “return” to describe the act of making their home in the Jewish state. (The tragic irony is that Israeli Jews are told by some detractors to return to Europe, whereas Diaspora Jews are in turn told to return to Israel.)
- Until the State of Israel was established in 1948, Jews immigrated to the Land of Israel of their own volition, not directed nor overseen by any state or military power like colonialists.
- Many Jews came and still come to Israel escaping antisemitism and other forms of persecution. Typically, European settler colonists were not escaping persecution or bigotry.
- The modern state of Israel enjoys international legitimacy including recognition by the United Nations. It is a democracy that extends rights and protections to all its citizens – Jews and non-Jews alike. European settler colonial powers rarely if ever did so.
- Unlike European settler colonial powers, the modern Zionist movement’s raison d’etre was never to subjugate the existing population and steal their resources and land holdings. Instead, attempts were made at coexistence and interdependent development, for examples: the Zionist movement’s acceptance of the 1947 United Nations partition plan which would have established an Arab independent state alongside a Jewish state.
- Both inside and outside Israel there is much criticism of Israel’s settlement policies in the West Bank. But ascribing the term “settler colonialism” to such activity is also a distortion. Should a mutually negotiated two-state solution establish a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel, it will likely encompass most of the West Bank, but such an outcome does not negate the spiritual, historical, and cultural connection to that land, that Jews cherished for millennia.
Some critics call for Israel’s dissolution or allege that Zionism itself is inherently nefarious by simplistically pointing to the fact that Zionist leaders in the late 19th and early 20th centuries used variations of the word “colonial” or “colonize” to describe their actions to build the yishuv (the pre-1948 Jewish infrastructure). But the use of such terms only signified an effort to promote Jewish immigration to the Jewish people’s historic homeland, establish communities and fulfill the universal right of self-determination. Zionist leaders did not view their actions as identical – ethically or practically – to the European settler colonial projects of that time.
Bottom line: the pre-state Zionist movement and later the State of Israel may certainly be criticized for missteps and particular policies. But ascribing the term settler colonialism to Jewish self-determination and statehood is inaccurate. And linking Israel to historical actions that the international community has rightfully renounced often serves as part of the effort to chip away at or negate Israel’s legitimacy.
Looking at the geographical and geopolitical landscape in the twenty-first century, the Land of Israel before 1948 is almost unrecognizable
When we see modern-day Israel – an ultra-modern country of more than 9 million citizens – it is often difficult to conceptualize what the country was like before 1948. Looking at the skylines of many of Israel’s cities, with gleaming, shiny multi-story office blocks, apartment buildings – and increasingly skyscrapers (at least in Tel Aviv), the geographical landscape is utterly unrecognizable.
The changes and differences, however, do not end there. Before David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, announced Israel’s Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948, 600,000 Jews lived in the land. According to estimates, approximately one-fifth – or up to 120,000 Jews were living in Jerusalem – the newly-declared capital of the nascent state. Approximately 2,000 Jews lived within Jerusalem’s 500-year-old city walls – as they had done for legitimately centuries – certainly since the return from exile in Babylon in the 6th century BCE.
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Outside of Jerusalem, Jews were widely dispersed across Mandate Palestine. Approximately half of the remaining 480,000 Jews living in the country – 244,000 people – lived in the Tel Aviv area. The city’s first Jewish neighborhood – Neve Tzedek – was only established in 1887, the result of a lottery of an initial 60 families; and a need for space in Jaffa, a majority Arab town at the time. Tel Aviv itself was established in 1909. Prior to the civil war between Palestine’s Jews and Arabs in 1947-48 and then the international conflict that followed Israel’s Declaration of Independence, the land was sparsely populated.
Israel Zangwill, a Jewish British novelist and playwright (and someone deeply involved in the women’s rights movement, wrote a series of articles early in his career, in which he described Palestine as “a wilderness… a stony desolation… a deserted home” and a land that had “gone to ruin.”
A popular view of the country at the time was that Palestine was a “land without a people, waiting for a people without a land.” That is not entirely accurate – as there were obviously people populating Palestine, but they were not organized in a way that even gave the impression of a functioning country. It was an administrative backwater of the rapidly crumbling Ottoman Empire, which ruled the region for 400 years and did barely anything to develop it.
The Arabs in the Holy Land
But what of the local Arab population?
By the end of Ottoman rule, there were several thousand living in Jerusalem, and as for the rest – for the most part, they were widely dispersed – mostly in villages and small towns – throughout Judea and Samaria and the Galilee. During the Ottoman period, most lived as tenant farmers in a somewhat feudal system with landowners, but some lived in towns such as Gaza, Hebron, Haifa and elsewhere.
At the end of the 19th century there were stirrings of Arab nationalism, which included wealthier Palestinian Arabs urging Turkish authorities not to allow Jewish refugees and pioneers from settling in the country.
One of the most vexing questions – or issues – today, is the notion that somehow all Palestinian Arabs were unceremoniously expelled from their land – or at the very least denied appropriate remuneration for it. That is simply not the case. It was only in 1856 that the Ottomans had passed a law allowing foreigners to buy land in the empire under the tanzimat reforms, which were a belated and somewhat half-hearted attempt at permitting people to feel part of the state by giving them rights.
By 1881, the Ottomans began banning land purchases by Jews and Christians, also declaring that Jews were still permitted to immigrate to the Ottoman Empire – but with the exception of Palestine. As with so many functions of Turkish rule, official declarations made in Constantinople, were much diluted when it came to Palestine.
The legal path to Jewish acquisition of land in Palestine remained open, and the Yishuv made the most of the opportunity. Arabs were willing to sell to wealthy Jews – such as Moses Montefiore or Baron Edmond de Rothschild – often at inflated prices. The Jewish National Fund was also able to purchase large tracts of land from the Ottomans and much of this was utilized by an enduring legacy of the Second Aliyah (1904-1914); namely the kibbutz movement. The records for those who would wish to open their eyes to see them are clear.
Palestine’s main port was Jaffa, the major point of entry in the Land of Israel before 1948. In the late 1920s, the British developed Haifa as a deep-sea port, attempting to take advantage of the oil found in Persia prior to the outbreak of World War I.
It seems ironic now that the Arab Revolt between 1936-1939 – a violent nationalist Palestinian Arab uprising, in part to protest growing Jewish immigration – led to the development of Tel Aviv as a port. The use of Jaffa was considered too precarious, and an effort to effect systemic change in the country, not for the first time, backfired massively on those it was intended to help. Palestine’s Jews meanwhile, continued to build the infrastructure of a potential state, acquiring land, investing in water technology, continuing to develop the Hebrew language and attempting to create a civic society that would be essential in the future.
The civic society of the Jewish part of Mandate Palestine, known as the Yishuv, included functioning quasi-governmental institutions. The Yishuv’s position was complex – it had to grapple constantly with fluctuating fortunes with regard to the British and their attempts to play Palestinian Arabs and Jews against each other.
A crucial moment arrived in November 1917 with the Balfour Declaration; a hard-won acknowledgment, from an imperial superpower, of the Jews’ long historical connection to the Land of Israel and which, despite its (possibly deliberate) ambiguity, seemed to guarantee a homeland for the Jewish people. Other imperial powers also discussed the fate of Yishuv, particularly in April 1920 in the Italian town of San Remo. Britain, France, Italy and Japan convened to discuss the division of the land that had been held by the Ottoman Empire.
Palestinian Arabs were infuriated that as a result of this, the Jews would have a national home in Palestine. Their response – as was so often the case – and in a pattern that has repeated for more than a century – was to react with violence. The riots in Jaffa in 1921 began to see a more coordinated Jewish defense, manifested in the creation of the Haganah.
In 1922, the Yishuv was dealt a further blow as Winston Churchill, who had until then been seen as a friend to the Zionist cause, decided to redraw the map of the Middle East. He cleaved away the portion of Palestine that was east of the Jordan River and created the country of Transjordan (later known as just Jordan).
The Jewish state that the Yishuv thought it would receive at the Mandate’s end would now be 75% smaller than they had been led to think. It would shrink further still in the decades to come, although they could not have known it at the time. However, despite this massive setback, the overarching goal of achieving a state was still central to the Zionist cause. Ben-Gurion and others were pragmatic enough to understand what that would mean and what that would cost.
The Rapid Development of Israel Before 1948
The Land of Israel before 1948 was a curious mixture of ancient, slow-moving and traditional ways of life and also a place bursting with pioneering spirit. During the early 20th century, a period when the ossifying Ottoman Empire was still dominant, Jewish immigration and land purchases were increasingly changing a seemingly forgotten place. Jewish immigrants rapidly reinvigorated a land that had barely seen any infrastructure or modernization during a 400-year rule.
The physical landscape changed as advancements in water technology – which continued apace during the British Mandate period – particularly, irrigation and the ability to use even brackish water for agriculture, showed that even in the desert, human life could be sustained.
In addition, small towns began to grow into cities and new neighborhoods began to spill out from existing conurbations. In that atmosphere, the Hebrew language developed further, used in books, newspapers, radio and theater – a continued resuscitation from the dead. Political organizations were also critical, as the levers of the state – before there was even a state – were exercised on a daily basis. They created the building blocks of the thriving, modern state of Israel that we see today.
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Responding to False Claims About Israel
One of the growing dangers emerging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is rampant misinformation on social media, in the news, and on college campuses and many classrooms across the country. This guide clarifies the most common falsehoods about Israel making the rounds today.
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False Claim: “Israel is a Settler Colonial Enterprise”
The truth is that the Jewish people are indigenous to the land of Israel and first achieved self-determination there 3,000 years ago.
The Romans expelled the majority of Jews in 70 C.E., but the Jewish people have always been present in the land of Israel. A portion of the Jewish population remained in Israel throughout the years, and those who lived in the Diaspora yearned to return to the Jewish homeland and the holy Jewish city of Jerusalem, both of which are mentioned multiple times in daily Jewish prayers. This historical and religious link for Jewish people to the land of Israel is indisputable—even the word “Jew” comes from Judea, the ancient name for Israel.
Timeline: Key Events in the Israel-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
As Jews around the world faced increasing persecution at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, they began moving to what is now Israel in greater numbers. Since Israel’s establishment shortly after the Holocaust, Jews have moved to Israel from all over the world, seeking a place to call home in which they can live freely and safely as Jews. At the same time, Jewish and Israeli leaders have consistently acknowledged the presence of Palestinian Arabs and have supported efforts to partition the land into Jewish and Arab states, from 1937 to the present day. The best-known attempt to divide the land came in the form of the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which was accepted by the local Jewish population but rejected by their Arab neighbors, who waged war to eliminate the Jewish state. More recently, successive Israeli prime ministers have offered to concede more than 90% of the West Bank and all of Gaza to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Palestinian leaders, however, have consistently rejected efforts at bringing about a two-state solution, as they did in 1947, and they continue to do so to this day.
5 Facts About the Jewish People’s Ancestral Connection to the Land of Israel
“Settler colonialism” refers to an attempt by an imperial power to replace the native population of a land with a new society of settlers. It cannot describe a reality in which a national group, acting on its behalf and not at the behest of an external power, returned to its historic homeland to achieve self-determination while simultaneously supporting the creation of a nation-state for another national group alongside the creation of their own state.
False Claim: “Israel is Ethnically Cleansing the Palestinians”
The truth is the definition of ethnic cleansing is the expulsion, imprisonment, or killing of an ethnic minority by a dominant majority in order to achieve ethnic homogeneity. Israel is a vibrant and diverse society, with sizable non-Jewish minority communities that make up nearly a quarter of the country’s total population.
During Israel’s War of Independence (1948-49), some Palestinians voluntarily left their homes while others were forcibly removed by Jewish forces or at the behest of Arab armies that envisioned quickly defeating and displacing the Jews. While abuses amid the independence struggle have been documented, there was never an Israeli policy or high-level directive to drive out the Palestinian population. Indeed, the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who remained in Israel became citizens of the new state.
Recently, many point to proposed evictions in East Jerusalem neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah as proof that Israel is ethnically cleansing Palestinians. These complex land disputes have worked their way through the Israeli court systems for years, and are not spontaneous government actions. For a brief history on the layered situation in Sheikh Jarrah, read more here. Israel, like all countries, has made its share of mistakes, however, the narrative that Israel is ethnically cleansing the Palestinian population is entirely false. In fact, the Arab populations in both the West Bank and Israel have increased annually since the founding of the state, and are growing at a steady rate of 1% each year.
False Claim: “Zionism is Racism”
The truth is that before 1948, Zionism was an aspiration—the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, founded in its modern form by Theodore Herzl in the late 19th century, to re-establish a Jewish nation-state as a solution to the antisemitism Jews faced in Europe. Today, Zionism is a reality; a homeland not only for persecuted European Jews, but for Jews from all over the globe. The vast majority of Jews around the world identify as Zionists, meaning they support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state in the historic Land of Israel. There is nothing inherent to Zionism that contradicts support for Palestinian self-determination; indeed, many individuals who identify as Zionists support Palestinian aspirations to achieve statehood, just as the Jewish people have.
Opponents of Israel have employed the phrase “Zionism is Racism” to delegitimize the movement for Jewish self-determination and deny the Jewish people a right afforded all peoples under international law. Discrimination against Jews is, by definition, antisemitic. There is nothing wrong with criticizing Israeli government policies, just as one might criticize the policies of any other nation. Rejecting Israel’s right to exist, however, is textbook antisemitism and is regarded as such by the U.S. and other governments—and by 87% of American Jews, according to AJC’s State of Antisemitism in America 2022 report. Read more about this false claim in AJC’s Translate Hate resource.
False Claim: “Israel is White”
Anti-Israel activists frequently try to frame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as being a racial conflict, to draw false comparisons to racial inequality in the U.S. In actuality, Israel is home to both Jews and non-Jews, with Arab Israelis making up more than a fifth of the country’s population. While Israel is the Jewish homeland, it is home not only to once-persecuted European Jews, but to Jews from all over the globe, including India, Turkey, and South Africa, and many who fled persecution in the Arab world, including Iran, Ethiopia, and the former Soviet Union, among others. In fact, more than 60 percent of Israel’s Jewish population comes from other Middle Eastern and African countries, with the same origins as Palestinians. Israel is home to close to 160,000 Jews of Ethiopian descent.
There is no coherent way to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one based on race. Instead, it should be viewed as it always has, as a conflict between two national identities—Palestinian nationalism on the one hand, and Jewish nationalism, or Zionism, on the other. Casting Israel as a “white” oppressor distorts the reality of a multicultural country that guarantees civil rights for all its citizens, regardless of background or origin.
New England’s First Fruits was a book published in London in 1643 about the early evangelization efforts by the Puritans in colonial New England in defense of criticisms from England that little evangelism was being pursued in New England.[1][2] It was the first publication to mention Harvard University.[3]
The book describes various evangelization efforts and results, including the conversion experience of Wequash Cooke (d.1642) as allegedly the first Native American conversion to Protestant Christianity in New England.[4] The book also describes the conversion Dorcas Ye Blackmore, an early African slave to Israel Stoughton, who joined the First Parish Church of Dorchester in 1641 and evangelized her fellow Native American servants and eventually attempted to gained her freedom with the help of the local church.[5][6][7] Roger Williams’ A Key Into the Language of America was written partially to contradict the book’s claims about successful evangelization in New England.
A Key into the Language of America or An help to the Language of the Natives in that part of America called New England is a book written by Roger Williams in 1643 describing the Native American languages in New England in the 17th century, largely Narragansett, an Algonquian language.[1] The book is the first published colonial study of a Native American language in English.
History[edit]
Author Roger Williams was a Puritan who was banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony and founded Providence Plantations which grew into the Colony of Rhode Island. He believed that the king had no right to grant title to Indian land without paying for it. He interacted extensively with the Narragansett and Wampanoag tribes as a missionary, friend, and trader. He extolled some elements of Indian culture as superior to European culture, and he wrote a complementary poem at the end of each chapter within the book.
According to J. Patrick Cesarini, Williams also published the book to rebut Massachusetts’ distorted claims in New England’s First Fruits (1643) about the first Indian conversions to Christianity (particularly that of Wequash Cooke, a Pequot in Connecticut Colony) and to thereby halt Massachusetts Bay’s claims to Rhode Island’s territory.[2] Williams’ friend Gregory Dexter printed the book in London, England, and the publication brought Williams much public attention.[3]
After the Pequot War, as local historians observed, that Wequash was filled with “respect for English power” and “it awakened a spirit of inquiry in regard to the Englishmen’s God, which led him finally to a hearty and influential reception of Christianity”. After this experience, Wequash returned to local Native Americans as a missionary preaching about Christ for which he was persecuted by them. Wequash’s tombstone in Lyme, Connecticut, refers to him as New England’s first Indian convert.[4] Many Puritans in Massachusetts such as Governor John Winthrop wrote about Wequash’s conversion as the first Native American conversion to Christianity, and New England’s First Fruits was published in 1643 describing Wequash’s experience.[5] This was later used to justify the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s existence as a mission in evangelizing to Native Americans. In A Key Into the Language of America Roger Williams spoke more skeptically of Wequash’s conversion and described how on his deathbed Wequash thanked Williams for explaining Christianity to him at his home in Providence, but Williams still had concerns about whether Wequash had truly been converted. Wequash died in 1642 in the home of Colonel George Fenwick, co-founder of the Saybrook Colony, and there were suspicions that Wequash had been poisoned for his relationship with the English.[6]
My Promised Land
Posted on May 19, 2021 by Royal Rosamond Press
When my grandson, Tyler Hunt, was six months old, I got a telephone call from Josef de Mattos. He had come across my blog and said;
“You know more about my family than I do.”
He ended up offering me an acre of land he bought, part of parcel I wrote about that was on the “Jew’s land”. One of Josef’s kin tutored Vincent Van Gogh.
Reform Judaism abolished the RETURN TO ZION desire.
John
Rosamond of Charleston | Rosamond Press
John Hodges Rosamond | Rosamond Press
“With warfare all around them, the Rosamond and Hodge family conducted weddings, and from their unions sprang a Nation. The city of Hodges South Carolina was built on what was called “the Jews land”. Then Dorothy Hodges was taken away by an Indian chief, and a child was born in the wilderness.
“The story of Dorothy being taken by Indians was so interesting, with the loss of her father and four younger sisters and all, that everybody told it faithfully. At least according to my grandfather who got it from his father and compared it to other related Hodges family’s traditions in the1930s. It was his contention that the story was true because he had letters from six different families in six different locations. Each family gave the same basic story.
Dorothy being a young, tall, attractive woman was taken by an Indian Chief before the cabin was torched. She was gone for ten years. When she returned she brought her Indian son with her. He was nine when he arrived. The family talked
Henri Teixeira de Mattos – Wikipedia
134 (133, 113): To Theo van Gogh. Amsterdam, Monday, 19 November 1877. – Vincent van Gogh Letters
“Have taken pains to find a teacher of Algebra and Geometry and have succeeded, namely a cousin of Mendes, Teixeira de Mattos, a teacher at the Jewish School for the Poor.3 He gives me hope that we’ll have met the requirements by around October of next year. If I should then pass the exam, things will have gone very well indeed. Because when I started they said that 2 years would be necessary for the first 4 subjects mentioned, whereas if I should pass in October, I’ll have done more in an even shorter time. May God give me the wisdom I need and grant me my heart’s desire, namely to complete my studies as soon as possible and to be inducted into a living and the practical duties of a minister. Doing that work, and being devoted to it, I believe one would be doing what God wants one to do.
The preparatory studies (i.e. those preceding the actual theological study and practice in preaching and speaking) more or less comes down to the history, languages and geography of Greece, Asia Minor (which can be taken to include Palestine) and Italy. So I have to study these just as diligently as a dog gnaws a bone, and similarly I should like to know the languages, history and geography of the northern countries, i.e. those around the North Sea and the English Channel”.
Historically, Zionism was a secular ideology that was opposed by Orthodox and Conservative and Reform. While Orthodox and Conservative groups opposed Zionism for being more nationalist than religious, Reform Judaism opposed a return to Zion for theological reasons. Reform theology conceived of Judaism as the universal religion of the prophets. In 1845, Samuel Hirsch, David Einhorn and Samuel Holdheim passed a resolution at the Frankfurt Conference that removed references to Palestine and a “Jewish State” from prayers on the grounds that nationalism and statehood were not compatible with Reform theology. Similar resolutions in 1869, 1885 and 1897 rejected the idea of “restoration of the Jewish State”. As early as 1890 the Central Conference of American Rabbis had publicly opposed Zionist ideology.[1]
In the early 20th century many Jewish leaders accepted the ideal of Americanization, which was an undivided political, economic and cultural affiliation with America. Underlying the anti-Zionist views of many American Reform rabbis was their acceptance of Americanization. Zionism was, to them, an ideology of foreign origins that was associated with newly arrived Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Wise said the Zionist movement in America was sponsored by refugees who had been persecuted in Europe. These views were echoed in Jewish newspapers like The American Israelite.[1]
While 27.4% of all voters surveyed believe Israel is responsible for the recent violence in Gaza, that number jumps to 38.5% of Democrats surveyed. Meanwhile, only 15.5% of Democrats blame Hamas. Another 5.7% of Democrats blame the Palestinian Authority for the violent outbreak.
Rosamond Press 