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Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Gays Have a Right to Serve their Country
Every person has a right to serve his country, gays included. All have a right to serve their country openly without hiding who they are. It’s kind of odd that so many heterosexuals who are not prepared to make that kind of sacrifice, refusing to enlist in the military and preferring instead to live as armchair warriors, are condemning those with a patriotic passion to fight for freedom.
The other day a woman called my radio show on WABC 770AM in NYC to argue with me. She was adamantly against the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.’ She said a homosexual lifestyle was dirty and against the Bible. I asked her whether she had children of military age and whether they, as good, clean, heterosexuals would enlist in place of the gays whom she would ban. She responded, “They are doing other things to serve their country.” I thought so.
Homosexuality is a religious sin. The Bible makes that much clear. But it is not a moral sin. Rather than being like the moral (and religious) sin of adultery, in which lying, deception, and injury to an innocent party are committed, homosexuality is an infraction between G-d and man. In that sense it is akin to lighting a fire on the Sabbath, an act strictly forbidden by the Bible. No moral sin has taken place, but it is forbidden on religious grounds.
I am a Rabbi and I take the words of the Bible seriously. But I will not call gay men and women names, I will not become a homophobe, and I will not make the error of mistaking sins that are deeply unethical, like ‘Do Not Steal,’ with those that are simply irreligious, like gay men living together.
On the same radio show a member of the military called in and said, having served with homosexuals in the military under ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,’ he too was opposed to the reversal of the ban. ‘Too many gay men hit on me in the showers and the barracks, and were pretty aggressive about it, for me to think that they should ever be allowed to serve openly in the military. It will only make things worse.” To be sure, I don’t agree with the sentiment. I have worked with gay men and have become very close to many of them and they have yet to hit on me even once. Granted, I am about five-foot-six, have a bushy beard, and have a monopack rather than a six-pack. But jokes aside, even if I disagree with the sentiment I respect the veteran offering the opinion because he actually served. He fought, he sacrificed, and he has earned the right to a strong opinion on the matter. I believe his opinion is flawed in that it is probably more of an argument for the complete and utter separation of men and women in the military than it is against the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.’ Still, he is a veteran and has earned the right to be strongly heard. The rest of us, however, who have, for the most part, put personal considerations like fear of injury or love of making a little bit more money that what’s on offer in the military ahead of giving our country a few years of our lives, and perhaps life itself, should perhaps be a little bit more humble about elevating our opinions on a par with those who have enlisted.
In general, America has become homosexual-obsessed. In nearly every election cycle it’s all-gay’s-all-the-time. Rather than talking the need for values in American life, like greater spirituality and less materialism, we talking incessantly about gay marriage. We have a 50 percent divorce rate. We’ve got about half of all teens having heterosexual sex at ages where they are absolutely not ready for that kind of adult experience and it is deeply injurious to their ability to later create bonds of intimacy. But do ever talk about this stuff? Nope. Because the breakdown of marriage, many contend, is all due to gay marriage. But if we straight people were just a little bit more honest with ourselves we would have to confess that we’ve done a pretty good job of ruining marriage on our own without any outside help, thank you very much. There is no need for easy scapegoats.
The Bible uses the word ‘abomination’ approximately 122 times. True, it uses it for homosexual sex, but it does so also for envy, jealousy, and arrogance. Perhaps, at times, we religious heterosexuals are guilty of allowing our principles to spill over into outright homophobia, which is a sin against G-d and might just constitute something of an abomination itself. For all are G-d’s children, and all try their best, amid a fallible nature, to serve G-d and country as best they can.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the founder of This World: The Values Network, has just published ‘Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life.’ http://www.shmuley.com. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
Comments
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Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Brian Kresge
Excellent article as always, Rabbi.
A couple of considerations from the voice of military experience, but mind you, we live in a nation that values civilian control of its military, for precisely the reason that our forces should be the highest reflection of their moral fiber. That said, if the general population determines, and it seems that it has by polling and support in our elected government, that DADT should go away, then go away it shall.
A caution, however, one that goes beyond shower homophobia. A little known fact, perhaps a byproduct of our forces’ gender integration decades ago, is that only rape counselors and police investigators perhaps spend more time receiving sexual assault training than the military. Because the military has a problem with violence and then subsequent under-reporting, we spend an inordinate amount of time covering the topic, watching corny videos that we laugh at when we should be taking it seriously.
Why do we laugh? Because both the statistics and the video highlight a very sad fact… a significant portion of sexual assault is conducted by male service members identifying as heterosexual against fellow male service members. Not unlike those stories we hear of effeminate fellows in prison becoming gang “property.” We laugh, yes, at the apparent absurdity, but in a highly sexualized environment, especially where sexuality is so pent up yet porn is on every laptop, it is indeed a problem.
And therein lies my concern. Repealing DADT may have the effect of equalizing a form of discrimination that we know to have its origin in religious law, something we can’t truly and respectfully legislate in a nation that separates religious law from ethical law. Yes, I feel strongly that it’s wrong, and for the same reasons I hate murder, rape, and theft, because the Torah and our sages say so, but there’s a common causality behind the others that doesn’t exist with our dietary or this particular sexual law.
One of the other arguments made, is that chaplains being forced to officiate for gays against their doctrine, is false. There is a partition between serving troops in an official capacity and within the religious proscriptions of their ecclesiastical endorsers. Just as an Orthodox rabbinical chaplain does not have to convene an intergender minyan, neither will an Evangelical chaplain have to provide communion to an openly gay individual if that is against his faith.
But back to my original concerns, we must brace ourselves for the real possibility that by ending DADT, we are introducing another victim class to the military. We can say, but not substantively support, that gender integration has been successful in spite of the value women have brought to the service, but the amount of time a soldier spends in sexual assault training is about equal in time and resources to components of vital combat training.
Repealing DADT will introduce a new component of “how do we handle this?” especially the first few times an openly gay soldier is raped. These are distractions for even the lowest level of command that are deliterious when a military is in its peacetime lull, let alone whilst waging two wars.
That said, the military will find a way. It’s what we do, but just so long as civilians and the press don’t do their surprised outrage bit when we run into the challenges of implementation. DADT has been such a poor policy for so long that instant gratification has dulled our senses as to what will follow repeal.
Food for thought. Thank you so much, Rabbi, for offering up a Jewish voice on this issue. Thus far, only PA’s Guard rabbi has commented on Jews in Green about it. It’s a tough issue, which brings out divisions even within our various movements, let alone the wider culture.
Be well.
B -
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Grizzly Bear Mom
I’m a female veteran with service acquired disabilities. I see gays in the military as a logistical problem. When I was the only woman assigned to combat units, I would decline to go into the field with them because I didn’t want to further burden the supply Sgt by making him provide me toilet and billeting facilities. I was also uncomfortable being “in the woods with 300 men”, 299 of which were behaved professionally. No, healthy gays won’t be coming on to uninterested straights, just like straight people, but I can understand people not feeling comfortable disrobing and showering around either the same or opposite gender potentially interested in them sexually. Outside of deployments, the genders have different housing, but I can’t imagine having a gay barracks. I’ve been out of the service quite a while, but I am not aware of a significant portion of sexual assaults being males raping males. That sounds like a bull s… story to me, as does the comparison of equal numbers of training for combat preparation and rape prevention. We would handle the rape of a gay service member exactly the same way we handle it for a straight one. I am aware of violence against woman and attended only one hour of training on it in a ten year career. I know that that for every combat “soldier” in the field, 10 people support them, some of which are women, so to say that we can’t support gender integration is the service is ludicrous.
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Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Brian Kresge
Grizzly Bear Mom, I’ve been in for 16 years, and I’ve served in combat units, and I’ve only seen the uptick in sexual violence training in the last four, because of a significant rise in it. I know a unit of 120 or so guys that would concur, to say the least, so your experience may be dated at this point.
The statistics speak for themselves. If you haven’t been in for a while, then you haven’t seen the DoD-prepared slide shows nor the videos they show during sexual assault prevention training. The statistic is not BS, it is a harsh reality that sexual assault does not know gender barriers within the military. As I said above, there is still a problem with under-reporting of sexual assault, especially with the stigma associated with male-on-male sexual violence.
And as for calling out a comparison of sexual assault prevention training - consider this, in mobilization, Soldiers spend as much time in sexual assault prevention training as they do in, say for instance, vehicle rollover training, which is in fact killing troops. We also spend more time in finance classes about how to handle our pay than some aspects of combat training, and grunts always gripe about admin training. I’m not saying the aggregate combat training is approached by sexual assault, merely that we spend more time doing that than some aspects of our combat training.
And my point was missed in its entirety - no one suggests gender integration should be repealed - what I’m saying is that we don’t consider the challenges, and even you highlighted them, insurmountable as far as women and men serving alongside. Similarly, the challenges resulting from repealing DADT are not insurmountable either, but in the interest of internal force protection, we have to consider what is inevitably in store for some gay troops and be prepared for it. It’s happening now without openly gay troops. Hopefully this will be identified in the DoD review so it doesn’t become the distraction that sexual assault prevention training unfortunately has to be. We deal with the current circumstances because our military is fighting two wars, and historically, force-on-force crime does increase during frequent mobilizations. Rape in a combat zone is especially demoralizing because of the profound isolation one is already experiencing. It’s a facet of DADT that absolutely must be considered.
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Friday, December 03, 2010
Larry
No Problem With Gays In The Army!
Yo! Shmuley,
Gay should have their own Regiment. They could be used as Shock Troops, to be sent into battle first to soften-up the enemy! With all their make-up & rainbow colored uniforms, the enemy will die laughing!!!
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Friday, December 03, 2010
Larry
Afghan Men Struggle With Sexual Identity, Study Finds
Published January 28, 2010
| FOXNews.com
As if U.S. troops and diplomats didn’t have enough to worry about in trying to understand Afghan culture, a new report suggests an entire region in the country is coping with a sexual identity crisis.
An unclassified study from a military research unit in southern Afghanistan details how homosexual behavior is unusually common among men in the large ethnic group known as Pashtuns—though they seem to be in complete denial about it.
The study, obtained by Fox News, found that Pashtun men commonly have sex with other men, admire other men physically, have sexual relationships with boys and shun women both socially and sexually—yet they completely reject the label of “homosexual.” The research was conducted as part of a longstanding effort to better understand Afghan culture and improve Western interaction with the local people.
The research unit, which was attached to a Marine battalion in southern Afghanistan, acknowledged that the behavior of some Afghan men has left Western forces “frequently confused.”
The report details the bizarre interactions a U.S. Army medic and her colleagues had with Afghan men in the southern province of Kandahar.
In one instance, a group of local male interpreters had contracted gonorrhea anally but refused to believe they could have contracted it sexually—“because they were not homosexuals.”
Apparently, according to the report, Pashtun men interpret the Islamic prohibition on homosexuality to mean they cannot “love” another man—but that doesn’t mean they can’t use men for “sexual gratification.”
The group of interpreters who had contracted gonorrhea joked in the camp that they actually got the disease by “mixing green and black tea.” But since they refused to heed the medics’ warnings, many of them re-contracted the disease after receiving treatment.
The U.S. army medic also told members of the research unit that she and her colleagues had to explain to a local man how to get his wife pregnant.
The report said: “When it was explained to him what was necessary, he reacted with disgust and asked, ‘How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean, when one could be with a man, who is clean? Surely this must be wrong.’”
The Pashtun populations are concentrated in the southern and eastern parts of the country. The Human Terrain Team that conducted the research is part of a military effort to learn more about local populations.
The report also detailed a disturbing practice in which older “men of status” keep young boys on hand for sexual relationships. One of the country’s favorite sayings, the report said, is “women are for children, boys are for pleasure.”
The report concluded that the widespread homosexual behavior stems from several factors, including the “severe segregation” of women in the society and the “prohibitive” cost of marriage.
Though U.S. troops are commonly taught in training for Afghanistan that the “effeminate characteristics” of Pashtun men are “normal” and not an indicator of homosexuality, the report said U.S. forces should not “dismiss” the unique version of homosexuality that is actually practiced in the region “out of desire to avoid western discomfort.”
Otherwise, the report said, Westerners could “risk failing to comprehend an essential social force underlying Pashtun culture.”
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Friday, December 03, 2010
Larry
Shmuley & His Taliban Brothers
Taliban may have origin in ancient tribe of Israel
Anthropologist finds many similaritiesFrank Viviano, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, October 20, 2001
(10-20) 04:00 PST Jerusalem—Preoccupied with their own terrorist war at home, Israelis have paid less attention than the rest of the world to the campaign against Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban.
Just as well, says an Israeli anthropologist—because the Taliban might have had Jewish origins.
According to Shalva Weil, there is considerable body of evidence suggesting that the Pathan ethnic group, from which most of the Taliban are drawn, is one of the fabled “10 lost tribes” of ancient Israel. Indeed, as recently as half a century ago, Pathan tribesmen themselves claimed that they were descended from wandering Jews.
Writing in the weekly magazine “Jerusalem Report,” Weil cites a report delivered to Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi in the 1950s, based on the encounter of a Jewish traveler with Pathan nomads.
The Pathans, who are also called Pashtuns, were said to wear cloaks decorated with a symbol that closely resembled the lamps lit by Jews at Hanukkah. The traveler also reported that they donned prayer shawls similar to those of their Jewish counterparts in the West, insisted that men grow side curls, and lit votive candles on Friday evenings, the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath.
Some anthropologists have also found Pathan families that circumcise sons on the eighth day after their birth, in keeping with Jewish custom.
A legend of the Pathans, as recounted to Weil when she did field research among them in the 1980s along the Pakistani border, tells of a “Jeremiah,” a son of King Saul—but not the more familiar Jeremiah of the Old Testament—who sired a daughter named “Afghana.” Her descendants, the legend maintains, made their way to the Central Asian land that now bears her name.
A Jewish connection of more recent and well-documented origin leads just across Afghanistan’s western frontier to the Iranian city of Mashhad. It is the traditional home of the “Mashhadi Jews,” who were forcibly converted to Shiite Islam after a pogrom in 1839.
Like some of their distant Sephardic cousins in Islamic Spain, the Mashhadi Jews behaved in public as faithful Muslims—even making the pilgrimage to Mecca when they could afford it—but clung secretly to Judaism at home.
Hundreds of them emigrated to the Shiite region around Herat in western Afghanistan over the years, which is today a major stronghold of the anti- Taliban resistance.
The U.S. war against terrorism, in short, may be unfolding amid a second war between two lost tribes of Israel.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/10/20/MN.DTL
This article appeared on page A - 10 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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Friday, December 03, 2010
Larry
The Israeli Source of the Pathan Tribes
From the book, Lost Tribes from Assyria, by A Avihail and A Brin, 1978, in Hebrew
by Issachar Katzir
As children, we heard from our parents, who come from Afghanistan, stories about the Ten Tribes who were lost during the destruction of the Temple, about meetings with the country people with whom they had contact in trade matters, about Jewish customs and names – and it all sounded inconceivable and fascinating. Like all children, we enjoyed hearing about tribes of Israel preserving their forefathers’ tradition, bearing arms and awaiting the day of redemption.
From Mr Yisrael Mishal, who lived in Afulah and was formerly President of the Afghanistan Jewish community, I often heard unusually fascinating quotations and stories uttered repeatedly and Mr Mishal gave live examples of his meetings with Pathans who dwell on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Who are the Pathans? They are also called Afghans or Pishtus after their language. They identify themselves with their former name ‘sons of Israel’, even though nowadays they live as Muslims. In Afghanistan they are said to number six to seven million, and in Pakistan seven to eight million. Two million of them live as beduins. Outwardly, the Pathans are similar to the Jews.
From their ancient customs, one can point to a connection between the Pathans and the Jewish people. They make up about half of the population of Afghanistan, in the region called Pushtunistan, on the eastern border of Afghanistan. Over ninety per cent of the inhabitants are Sunni Muslims. Later modernisation has penetrated into this State, and even less in the hilly areas near the border. In these places, the Pathans continue to live in the tribal framework as their fathers and forefathers did. The legal system operates according to the Pashtunwali,” the Pashtun Laws, parts of which are similar to the laws of the Torah.
The Pathans are known for their physical strength. They are tall, light-coloured and handsome, good soldiers and for the most part bear arms from a young age. They are diligent and intelligent, faithful to an exemplary degree and are known in the world as outstanding hosts.
What is the Ethnic Origin of the Panthim?
The Panthim are not similar in their outward appearance or in their character to any of the ethnic groups which populate this environment: the Indian group-Iranians, Mongolians, Turks or Persians. Most of the researchers are of the opinion that the origin of the Pathans is indeed Israeli. The aliyah to Israel of Afghanistan Jews and the volume of evidence heard from them on this subject about the customs of the Pathans corroborate this idea.
Relationship to the Tribes of Israel
There is interesting evidence about the preservation among the tribes of family trees on their origin, and on their relationship to the fathers of the Israeli people. These family trees are well preserved. Some of them are penned in golden lettering on deerskin. The names of the tribes speak for themselves: the tribe of Harabni (in the Afghan tongue) is the tribe of Reuben, the shinwari is Shimeon, the Levani – Levi, Daftani – Naftali, Jaji – Gad, Ashuri – Asher, Yusuf Su, sons of Josef, Afridi – Ephraim, and so on.
The former monarchy in Afghanistan has a widely-spread tradition according to which their origin was from the tribe of Benjamin and the family of King Saul. According to this tradition, Saul had a son called Jeremia and he in turn had a son called Afghana. Jeremia died at about the same time as Saul and the son Afghana was raised by King David and remained in the royal palace during the reign of Solomon too. About 400 years later, in the days of Nebuchadnezer, the Afghana family fled to the Gur region (Jat in our times). This is in central Afghanistan and here the family settled down and traded with the people of the area. In the year 622, with the appearance of Islam, Muhammed sent Khaled ibn Waleed to the ‘sons of Ishrail’ to spread the word of Islam among the Afghanistan tribes. He succeeded in his mission, returned to Muhammed with seven representatives of the residents of Afghanistan and with 76 supporters. The leader of these people was ‘Kish’ (the name of the father of Solomon). According to the tradition, the emissaries succeeded in their assignment and Muhammed praised them for this.
The Place of the Assyrian Exile
According to the Bible (the second Book of Kings, Chronicles 1 and 2), the ten tribes were exiled to Halah and Havor and the river Gozan and to the cities of Maday. According to the tradition of the Jews of Afghanistan, the river gozan is ‘rod jichan’ (river in Persian is rod), one of the tributaries of the Emo-daria, which descends in the vicinity of the town of Maimane. The city of Havor is, they say, peh-Shauor (Pash-Havor’) which means ‘Over Havor’ in Afghanistan, and today serves as the centre of the Pathans on the Pakistan that the whole area populated the ancient Assyrian Exile. There are researchers who claim that all the Jews living in southern U.S.S.R. along the Emor-daria’ are the descendants of the ten tribes - the Bucharins, Georgians, etc. As we know, a group of ‘‘B’nei Yisrael’ some of whom settled in Israel, is also found in India and Afghanistan. The existence of the Pathan tribes is therefore in the heart of the area in which the ten tribes are found.
The Similarity of the Pathans to the Jews
The British, who ruled Afghanistan for a long time, found it difficult to distinguish between the Pathans and the Jews, and called the Pathans ‘Juz’ - Jews. The Jews, too found it hard to distinguish between themselves and the Pathans when the latter are not wearing traditional dress. Afghanistan has about 21 peoples and languages and only the Pathans, apart from the Jews, look clearly Semitic; their countenance is lighter than that of other peoples and their nose is long. Some of them also have blue eyes. Since most of them grow beards and sidelocks like Jews, this also adds difficulty to an attempt to distinguish between them and the Jews.
Jewish Customs
Even though the Pathans accepted Islam voluntarily and forcibly, they maintain Jewish customs preserved from the recesses of their past. The book contains considerable evidence taken from Jews of Afghanistan who lived in the neighbourhoods of the Pathans and had contact with them. The evidence doesn’t relate to all the Pathans or to all the tribes and places. However, it does prove the existence of Jewish customs among the Pathans. The research on this subject still requires completion, both quantitative and qualitative. Let us note the customs in headline form only: sidelock, circumcision within eight days, a Talith (prayer shawl) and four fringes (Tsitsit), a Jewish wedding (Hupah and ring), women’s customs (immersion in a river or spring), levirate marriage (Yibum), honouring the father, forbidden foods (horse and camel food), refraining from cooking meat and milk, a tradition of clean and unclean poultry, the Shabbat (preparation of 12 Hallah loaves, refraining from work), lighting a candle in honour of the Shabbat, the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) prayer (some of them pray turned in the direction of Jerusalem), blood on the threshold and on the two Mezzuzot (in times of plague or trouble), a scapegoat, curing the ill with the help of the Book of Psalms (placing the Book under the patient’s head), a Hebrew amulet (Kamia), Hebrew names (also. for neighbourhoods and villages), Holy Books (they especially honour ‘the Law of Sharif’ which is the Law of Moses), and rising when the name of Moshe is mentioned.
As for the Pathan law, they have laws similar to the Jewish law. The Magen David symbol is found in almost every Pathan house on an island in the Pehshauor district. The rich make it of expensive metals, the poor from simple wood. The Magen David can be seen on the towers of schools and on tools and ornaments.
Archaeological and Other Evidence
Apart from synagogues, Sifrei Torah, Hebrew placenames and tribal family trees, there also exists evidence on important archeological finds: near the town of Herat in Tchcharan, old graves were found on which the writing was in Persian and in the Hebrew language. The graves date from the 11th to the 13th centuries. In an opposite fashion, so it seems, there are a number of inscriptions engraved on rocks in ancient Hebrew script near the town of Netchaset.
In the ‘Dar el amman’ museum in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, there is a black stone found in Kandahar, on which is written in Hebrew.
It would be appropriate to end this article with one of the pieces of evidence. Mr Chiya Zorov of Tel Aviv notes: When the Bolsheviks rose to power in Russia, they divided the large area of the southern part of central Russia into smaller districts such as Tanjekistan, Turkemanistan, Kazchastan, etc. In Tanjekistan, which is in northern Afghanistan, there was a village by the name of Dushme. When Stalin gained power, he called the village in his name, Stalinabad. It started to develop and grow and many Jews then began to stream into Tangekistan. They found that the Tanyakis light candles on Friday evening. When the Jews went to visit them, they revealed that they eat a dish made of meat stuffed with rice called Pacha, which is characteristic of the Bucharian Jews and is eaten on Friday night. When they asked them what it was, the Tajiks replied that this is an ancient traditional food of theirs and its name is Pacha. They also said that they have a tradition that they were once Jews.
Rabbi Saadia Gaon discussed at length with the Hacham Hivay Habalchi and in the opinion of the speaker, in that period (10th century) the Jews were inclined to assimilate into Islam and it was about this that they were arguing.
The scholar Ibn Sina, born in Buchara, also lived at the time. The teacher Tajiki said that he, too, belongs to the Jews who were forced to convert, assimilated into Islam and are called Tchale. As recounted, the meaning of his name is Even Sina – son of sinal (and up to this day in many languages, and also in Hebrew, the words are similarly pronounced – Sinai, Sin Sina) and perhaps this is why he called himself Ben Sinai, in other words, son of the Torah which came forth from Sinai.
The Maharaja of Mardan was a scholar who completed his studies at the University of London and would often visit the converts of Mishhad who lived in Pehshaurf. He also visited a Jew called Carmeli, who told Mr Hiya Zorov that the Maharaja always said the day would come when they would learn to distinguish the origins of all people and then they would know that all the peoples in the vicinity of Afghanistan were once Jews. The Maharaja published a book in English and wrote of this in the introduction to the book. But the book was lost. There was a time when the author Hiya Zorov, with late President Ben-Tsvi, who considered it of great importance, tried to find the book, but in vain.
Some of the Bucharian Jews have a tradition that they are among the people of the First Temple possibly from the Ten Tribes, but he doesn’t know about this and afterwards they were joined by Jews from the Second Temple Exile.
Scribe:
Pakistani Cricketer Imran Khan who married Jemima Goldsmith is a Pathan.
Destroying Idols
The move by Afghanistan’s religious leaders to destroy the idols of Buddhism is to be applauded. They offend the followers of monotheism, worshippers of the one true God, Creator and Sustainer of our universe, especially Jews and Moslems.
So who is ranged against the courageous Afghan move? It is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the fundamentalist regime of Iran, the puritan kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the supreme authority of Al Azhar Imam of Cairo. President Hosni Mubarak tells the Afghans that Egypt has not destroyed the pharaonic idols. But the followers of these idols no longer exist, whereas Buddhism is thriving. The tradition of destroying idols goes back to Abraham, ancestor of both Jews and Arabs.
What makes Afghanistan head and shoulders above the rest of Islam? It is the Jewish connection of the Afghan people. “The Afghans have a tradition that they descend from the lost Ten Tribes. They were carried away by Buktunaser. In the book (Taaqati-Nasiri) a native book, it is stated that at the time of the Shansabi Dynasty there were a people called Bani Israel who settled in Ghor, S.E. of Herat, and about the year 622 CE (the Hegra took place that year) converted the Islam by a person called Qais or Kish, who led some Afghan nobles to Arabia to embrace Islam. Mohammed greeted him as “malik” (king) as he claimed descent through 47 generations from Saul. Qais died in 662 aged 87. All the modern chiefs of Afghanisatan claim descent from him. The Afghans still call themselves Beni-Israel. Their claim to Israeli-tish descent is allowed by most Mohammedan writers. King Amanullah Khan once stated they were of the tribe of Benjamin.” (Jewish Encyclopaedia).
Additional references: Afghanistan (Khorasan in medieval Muslim and Hebrew sources). Early Karaite and Rabbinite biblical commentators regarded Khorasan as a location of the Ten Tribes of Israel. Afghanistan annals also trace the Hebrew origin of some of the Afghan tribes, in particular the Durrani, the Yussafzai and the Afridi to King Saul (Talut). This belief appears in the 17th century Afghan Chronicle, Makhzan-i-Afghan.” (Enc. Jud.)
Naim Dangoor writes:
Years ago I went to the Afghan Embassy in London to enquire if it was known that the Afghan Royal Family was of Jewish origin. I was told they will find out. Six months later the Royal Family was toppled and the exiled Afghan king still lives in Italy. -
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Friday, July 29, 2011
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