Ashkenazim & Sephardic Jews.

[- Qatada -]

:salamext:


I've heard about the jews being split up into two; one is the bani israel (children of israel) [Sephardic Jews] and the other is what i'll try to describe below insha Allaah.


There was a pagan leader near the area of eastern turkey, and he wanted his kingdom to spread. He never knew how to do it, so he thought that religion would have a big effect, and increase his chances of having a greater kingdom.

He thought about becoming muslim, but he feared that he would fall into the power of the ottoman turks. Then he thought about becoming a christian, but he feared that he would fall into the power of the pope in Rome. So his only last option was becoming a jew. He pretended to become a jew, and forced every single person in his nation to become jewish too.

Remember that these people weren't really from the children of israel (descendants of ishaq) but they were similar to russians by race, and only chose judaism to expand their kingdom.


This kind of turned out well, and right now - the population of the jews in israel (the ones that have the most authority) are the Ashkenazim (russian jews) [90%] & the real bani israel (children of israel) are the Sephardic Jews [10%].


Just wanted to know if anyone has any more info. regarding this? And if anyones interested?


The reason for this is because, within the US - 95% of the people doing islamic studies are jews, and 0% of muslim professors are doing judaic studies. Which means - that there are 95 out of 100 people within the US that are most likely preparing to attack islam, whereas there are no muslims who are studying to understand the religion of judaism.


For once, i want some opinions from jews too, regarding this topic. And obviously, some responses from our muslim brothers and sisters insha Allaah.


I heard all this in a lecture by yasir qadhi by the way.



:wasalamex

 

[Lina]

95% does not mean that all of 95% are studying Islam to attack islam as goal Wa Allah ou A'lam, they will more likely be amazed by it which has been shown trough out history and nowadays.

On their course evaluation forms, two students in my "Introduction to Islamic Civilization" wrote remarks that I found especially gratifying. The first wrote, "When I signed up for this course, I had nothing but disdain for Muslims; now I am actually able to see the beauty of their religion." The other wrote, "Studying Islam has made me better able to see what it means for me to say that I am Christian." These students articulated well what I consider the two main reasons for us to come to an appreciation of Islam. Doing so will enable us not only to affirm this important "other" in our midst and but also to clarify our own identity.

said by Fr. Theodore Pulcini


In the development of Islamic studies in European and, later, American universities, Jews, and in particular Jews of Orthodox background and education, play an altogether disproportionate role....The role of these scholars in the development of every aspect of Islamic studies has been immense — not only in the advancement of scholarship but also in the enrichment of the Western view of Oriental religion, literature, and history, by the substitution of knowledge and understanding for prejudice and ignorance.

A major accession of strength resulted from the emancipation of Jews in central and western Europe and their consequent entry into the universities. Jewish scholars brought up in the Jewish religion and trained in the Hebrew language found Islam and Arabic far easier to understand than did their Christian colleagues, and were, moreover, even less affected by nostalgia for the Crusades, preoccupation with imperial policy, or the desire to convert the "heathen." Jewish scholars like Gustav Weil, Ignaz Goldziher, and others played a key role in the development of an objective, nonpolemical, and positive evaluation of Islamic civilization

Goldziher regarded Judaism and Islam as kindred faiths. Islam originated as a "Judaized Meccan cult," but evolved into "the only religion which, even in its doctrinal and official formulation, can satisfy philosophical minds. My ideal was to elevate Judaism to a similar rational level."37 During his stay in Damascus, Goldziher's assimilation of the two faiths reached a point where "I became inwardly convinced that I myself was a Muslim." In Cairo he even prayed as a Muslim: "In the midst of the thousands of the pious, I rubbed my forehead against the floor of the mosque. Never in my life was I more devout, more truly devout, than on that exalted Friday."38 He nevertheless remained a committed Jew, convinced that a reformed Judaism, salvaged from rabbinic obscurantism, could attain Islam's degree of rationality without sacrificing its spirituality. During his career, he continued to produce studies on Jewish themes, of a kind that followed the path pioneered by Geiger before him.

From The Jewish Discovery of Islam


Wa Allah ou A'lam

 

[DaSangarTalib]

i've never heard of these types of jews :?

 

[TSpot]

The distinction between Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews is not as described above. The word Ashkenazic is derived from the Hebrew word for "Germany" as these peoples populated France, Germany and Eastern Europe. Sephardic Jews are typically from Spain, Portugal, North Africa and the Middle East. Sephardic is derived from the Hebrew word for "Spain". Sephardic Jews include the Mizrachim, the jews from Africa and the Middle East. In Isreal, about half are Mizrachim.

The beliefs are essentially the same but they are different in some ways (Yiddish, based on German and Hebrew, is not typically a language of the Sephardic). Many think that the differences (and the general increased willingness of Sephardic Jews to integrate) comes from the fact that they are from lands that were ruled by Muslims until the 1400s, rather than Christians. Generally, the Muslims treated the Jews better than the Christians during those days and the Sephardic Jews were better able to integrate than their brethren in Christian dominated countries.

It has nothing to do with someone wanting to convert to save their hide--more to do with natural migration and the rulers of the countries to which they migrated.

 

[edil]

Its very interesting to learn something new each time.

 

[Ibn Abi Ahmed]

Review of The Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koestler
Grace Halsell, from The Washington Report for Middle East Affairs, 1991

This review first appeared in The Washington Report For Middle East Affairs, June 1991

"A check at the Library of Congress reveals that the most prestigious library of our land had one reading copy. That one copy, however, is 'missing from the shelf' " .​

Since 1948, when Zionists succeeded in carving out a Jewish state from the land of the Palestinians, the question "who is a Jew" has been endlessly debated. Zionists (both Christian and Jewish) often declare that "God gave the land" of Palestine "to the Jews." They infer that God deeded territories, in perpetuity, to a biblical tribe of Oriental Middle Eastern people. Since millions of American Christians accept a dogma that God has a Chosen Land and a Chosen People (the Jews), then the question "who is a Jew?" takes on political connotations that impinge on national and international decisions.
In his carefully researched book entitled The Thirteenth Tribe, Arthur Koestler refutes the idea of a Jewish "race." Moreover, he says that most Jews of the contemporary world did not come from Palestine and are not even of Semitic origin. His research shows that most Jews originated in what today is the Soviet Union. And that a group of people there became Jews through conversion, on the orders of their king. "The bulk of modern Jewry is not of Palestinian, but of Caucasian origin," Koestler writes. "Their ancestors came not from the Jordan but from the Volga, not from Canaan but from the Caucasus." And he stresses:

"The mainstream of Jewish migrations did not flow from the Mediterranean across France and Germany to the east and then back again. The stream moved in a consistently western direction, from the Caucasus, from the Ukraine into Poland and thence into Central Europe." ​

While Jews of different origin also contributed to the existing Jewish world community, "the main bulk originated from the Khazar country" in the USSR. Koestler, a Jew born in 1905 in Budapest, writes that the Khazars, who flourished from the 7th to the 11th century, were a major power. Their empire extended from the Black Sea to the Caspian and from the Caucasus to the Volga. They were located "between two major world powers: the Eastern Roman Empire in Byzantium and the triumphant followers of Muhammad." Since the world was polarized between these two superpowers representing Christianity and Islam, the Khazar Empire, representing a Third Force,

"Could only maintain its independence by accepting neither Christianity nor Islam - for either choice would have automatically subordinated it to the authority of the Roman Emperor or the Caliph of Baghdad." ​

Not wishing to be dominated by either of the two, the Khazar king "embraced the Jewish faith" in AD 740 and ordered his subjects to do the same. Judaism thus became the state religion of the Khazars. The king's motives in adopting Judaism, Koestler stresses, were purely political. At the peak of its power, from the seventh to the tenth centuries AD, the Khazar kingdom controlled or exacted tribute from some 30 different nations and tribes inhabiting the vast territories between the Caucasus , the Aral Sea, the Ural Mountains, the town of Kiev and the Ukrainian steppes. People under Khazar suzerainty included the Bulgars, Burtas, Ghuzz, Magyars (Hungarians), the Gothic and Greek colonies of the Crimea, and the Slavonic tribes in the northwestern woodland.
According to The Jewish Encyclopedia, in the 16th century Jews numbered about one million. Koestler quotes scholars as documenting that "the majority of those who professed the Judaic faith were Khazars." Koestler, who after the Second World War became a British citizen, and whose most famous book, Darkness at Noon, was translated into 33 languages, has one main thesis: the bulk of Eastern Jewry -and hence of world Jewry is of Khazar-Turkish, rather than Semitic, origin.
As Koestier points out, Jews of our times fall into two main divisions: Sephardim and Ashkenazim. The Sephardi, descendants of the Jews who had lived in Spain until their expulsion, with the Muslims, at the end of the 15th century, and who later settled in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, spoke a Spanish-Hebrew dialect, Ladino. In the 1960s, the Sephardim numbered about 500,000. The Ashkenazim, at the same period, were about 11 million. Thus, "in common parlance, Jew is practically synonymous with Ashkenazi Jew."
However, Koestler adds, the term Ashkenazim is misleading because it is generally applied to Germany, thus contributing to the legend that modem Jewry originated on the Rhine. There is, however, no other term to refer to the non-Sephardic majority of contemporary Jewry,which came after conversion to Judaism from the Khazar country. After the destruction of their empire (in the 12th or 13th century), the Jewish Khazars migrated into those regions of Eastern Europe, mainly Russia and Poland, where, at the dawn of the modem age, the greatest concentrations of Jews were found. It is "well documented," Koestler writes, that the numerically and socially dominant element in the Jewish population of Hungary during the Middle Ages was of Khazar origin.
An Israeli scholar, A.N. Poliak, a Tel Aviv University professor of medieval Jewish history, quoted by Koestler, states that the descendants of Khazar Jews,

"those who stayed where they were (in Khazaria), those who emigrated to the United States and to other countries, and those who went to Israel - constitute now the large majority of world Jewry." ​

Since Israel's support among millions of American Christians is founded on a concept that God had bequeathed territory to a biblical "tribe" of Oriental Middle Eastern Jews, it becomes ironic to learn from Koestler's research that most Jews today are not descended from natives of the "holy land," or even of the Middle East. Koestler, who originally published The Thirteenth Tribe in 1976, noted that the story of the Khazar empire "begins to look like the most cruel hoax history has ever perpetrated." The Palestinians, imprisoned and brutalized by Zionism's "hoax," would be the first to agree. Needless to say, the book has been difficult to find. It disappears from many library shelves. A check at the Library of Congress reveals that the most prestigious library of our land had one reading copy. That one copy, however, is "missing from the shelf.

Grace Halsell is a journalist based in Washington, DC, USA, and the author of more than 10 books.

© The Washington Report For Middle East Affairs, 1991

Read the book online. Must read. Also, Copy/Paste it unto your computer just in case it gets taken down.

http://www.missionislam.com/nwo/tribe.htm

Other Reads on the Khazars:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/khazars1.html

 

[therebbe]

The reason for this is because, within the US - 95% of the people doing islamic studies are jews

Can you provide a source for this?

___________

Ashkenazem Jews went to Europe after being kicked out of the Holy Land by invaders.

Sephardim went to Spain, Portugual and other places when kicked off of there land in the Holy Land.

 

[duskiness]

therebbe: could you point out some diffrences between Ashkenazim & Sephardic Jews?
I've heard that Ashkenazim put only stones on graves and Sephardic light candles...is it true??
n.

 

[therebbe]

therebbe: could you point out some diffrences between Ashkenazim & Sephardic Jews?
I've heard that Ashkenazim put only stones on graves and Sephardic light candles...is it true??
n.

To tell you the truth, I do not know much about Sephardim traditions.

 

[duskiness]

now you really did disappoint me...
n.
ps: i've heard that Sephardic Jew can have more than one wife. That would be 2 difference

 

[therebbe]

i've heard that Sephardic Jew can have more than one wife. That would be 2 difference

Actually Judaism says you can have two wives, but BOTH must agree, and it must be legal in whatever country your in.

Therefore good luck getting any two women to agree and find a country it is legal in. lol. I personally if given the option would not take it. I love my wife enough. I would never have two wives, but that is just me.

This kind of turned out well, and right now - the population of the jews in israel (the ones that have the most authority) are the Ashkenazim (russian jews) [90%] & the real bani israel (children of israel) are the Sephardic Jews [10%].

Actually those facts are completly wrong. Mizrakhi (Middle Eastern Jews) make up the majority with over 50%.

Most Ashenazim live in America, so maybe you should do some more research about Israel before throwing out your "facts".

Thank you.