Changing concepts of race amongst Diaspora Jewry and the Essenic Jewish ideal A call to return to ancient Jewish ethics and egalitarianism

בשם יהוה הרחמן הרחם/بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

The Torah is not a racist document.

Today, this is a revolutionary statement. This statement could lead to debate, scorn, and even mocking in some backward communities today.

There are so-called “rabbis” today who assert such deviant statements as “racism originated in the Torah”[1]; saying this to legitimize their goyish prejudices, which are alien to the Torah and to authentic Judaism. These individuals are only nominally Jews, but their practice is not rooted in the Torah, it is uprooted from it. Regarded of a lower status than anyone in Judaism, they are koferim, apostates from Yahadut, who have been exposed to the Light of the Torah, but who willfully cover it up with the urgings of their egos and ego-identities.

In the Torah and in the Tanakh itself, we see no trace of racism. Some inattentive readers may suppose otherwise, but this is because they have not read the entire Torah, and have not seen how any attempt to define a people by race, is ultimately contradicted by later descriptions and characterizations.

The concept of race itself foreign to the Torah and foreign to Judaism. The concept of race is a goyish concept which was learned in the galut. It is during the expulsion from Eretz Yisrael that we see prejudices against Kushim really emerge.

The Torah itself tells a clear, moralistic tale about anti-black, anti-Kushite racism, in the story of Miriam’s slander against Moses’ Kushite wife. Miriam apparently saw a problem with Moses marrying a Kushite, very dark-skinned woman. For her prejudice, she was cursed with leprosy that made her skin “as white as snow” (Bamidbar/Numbers 12.10)

Here we see clearly that Moses, the most elevated prophet in Judaism, married a Kushite woman. Clearly Moses did not see Kushim as in any way deficient or inferior to the Children of Israel. The prophet Amos, as well, tells us:

Are you not as the B’nei Kushim to Me, O B’nei of Israel? says Ha’Shem. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and Aram from Kir?

הֲלוֹא כִבְנֵי כֻשִׁיִּים אַתֶּם לִי בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, נְאֻם-יְהוָה: הֲלוֹא אֶת-יִשְׂרָאֵל, הֶעֱלֵיתִי מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם, וּפְלִשְׁתִּיִּים מִכַּפְתּוֹר, וַאֲרָם מִקִּיר.

What does this mean? Not only does the person who traces their ancestry to the ancient Children of Israel have no superiority over those who trace their ancestry to the Children of Kush, but Amos tells us something else here. The Bavli Talmud (Chullin 60b) explains that the Avvites were the original Philistine people in the days of Abraham and that the Philistines of Moses’ time were descended from the conquering Caphtorites.

Rashi tells us that Amos is explaining that the Philistines of Moses' time literally descended from an integration of the early Philistines of Abraham's day with the Caphtorites of the Egyptian line and empire (Eretz Yisrael was under Egyptian control during the Exodus). Jeremiah 47.4 also tells us the the Philistines in later times were from Caphtor. What then is meant by this analogy of Amos?

The prophet is clearly telling us that just the earliest Philistines no longer existed, but were mixed with the later Caphtorites (though still identifying themselves as Philistines), so too did the earliest Children of Israel no longer exist, but were mixed with the Kushim (and yet identified themselves as Israelites nonetheless). The irony, of course, was that the Israelites in Amos' day needed reminding of this, and needed to be told that they had no advantage over those still associated with Kush in Africa and abroad. To make sure that we do not miss the point, Amos asks – in the Name of the Most High – “have I not brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt?” in order to tell us that we were thoroughly mixed with Africans in Egypt

Were the earliest Semites black?

It would seem, from the sources, that the earliest Semites were in fact indistinguishable from Hamites.

Before explaining further, it has to be emphasized again that the Torah has no concept of race. In Egypt, we clearly see from the accounts of the Miriam’s temporary prejudice, and from numerous hieroglyphics, that the working class of Egypt, and certainly the Akhenatenists were multi-hued and thus of a diverse, mixed back ground, as Amos seems to be reminding us.

This tells us that color was absolutely irrelevant to Israelite identity. We see this also in the account of Pirqei d’rabbi Eliezer. Like the late, Medieval Qabalistic texts, such as the Zohar, what we are probably dealing with is a redacted text, edited together with layers of commentary from many generations, surviving only in recension.

The passage in question is followed by a confusing commentary that speaks about the descendants of Ham being destined for slavery, much as we see in various rabbinical comments. The commentary is at odds with both what it says right before and with the fact that only Canaan, not all the sons of Ham were cursed with slavery.

We can thus, logically infer a redactive break of these passages into two "layers" of composition. In the earliest layer we read:

He blessed Noah and his sons, as it is said, and God granted them their gifts and bequeathed the entire world to them. He blessed Shem and his sons, black (shehorim) and comely and granted them the entire cultivated world. He blessed Ham and his sons, black (shehorim) as the raven, and granted them the coast of the sea [in East Africa]. He blessed Yafet and his sons, all of them white (levanim) and handsome and granted them deserts and fields. 

What we find here is that black is beautiful and white is handsome. All colors are a blessing. No color is a curse. Of course, just as Amos tells us the Children of Israel mixed thoroughly with the Children of Ham, we are told in the Torah that Japhet would "dwell in the tents of Shem" (Berashit/Genesis 9.27). In the later layer we find the commentary:

...Rabbi Akiva says that they cast off the yoke of heaven and made Nimrod, slave son of a slave, king over them so that the sons of Ham are slaves and woe to the land that is ruled by a slave. 

Whoever preserved the text seems to have felt the need to correct the skin color passage by an erroneous reference to the “curse of Ham” from the Torah, which is actually the “curse of Canaan” in the Torah. This seems like a mistake which the original author would not have made, but a mistake that was becoming popular in some circles. Still, it is a misfit with the preceding quote. Had it appeared much later in the document we could perhaps say that the author was at odds with himself on the issue. But the fact that it occurs shortly after makes it seem a “corrective” insertion by a redactor. 

How do we know? Because here, Pseudo-Akiva is commenting on an earlier comment attributed to Rabbi Akiva’s teacher. This, of course, is not the real Akiva, but the commentator who is trying to explain away the earlier comment, under Rabbi Akiva's name.

This passage might seem problematic in that there is apparently a view that the blackness of the B’nei Shem was beautiful, whereas the blackness of the B’nei Ham was simply “as the raven.” But we see here that being black as the raven was a blessing, not a curse. This demonstrates that the author of the earliest layer did not see Ham being under a curse. This is key to understanding that the earliest layer of this pseudoepigraphical account contained an early recollection that black is beautiful and that melanin is a blessing not a curse; furthermore that the earliest Shemites were black, just like Hamites.

So what was the problem with Canaan? Rashi tells us that the enigmatic passage in the Torah “The Canaanite was then in the Land” means that the Canaanite “was in the process of conquering the Land of Israel from the offspring of Shem” (Rashi, Artscroll 119). In the same way, we read that when he returns to the Land, Abraham finds that “the Canaanite and the Perizzite were then dwelling in the Land” (Berashit/Genesis 13.7) This is to indicate that these were not indigenous people, but invaders; as has been discussed in reference to Amos' comments. Their presence in the Land represented a recent colonial endeavor. We find corroboration for this view in the Book of Jubilees, a central text to the Essene Jews, which rejected all forms of slavery, and to Ethiopian Jewry:

Ham and his sons went into the land which he had taken, which fell to him by lot in the land of the north (south); and Canaan saw the land of the Lebanon to the canal of Egypt that it was very good, and he did not go into the land of his inheritance to the west of the sea, and dwelt in the land of Lebanon on the coast of the sea.[2]

For the author of Jubilees, Ham condemned these actions: “Ham his father, and Cush and Mezrem [Mitzrayim], his brothers, said to him: ‘You have settled in a land which is not yours and did not fall to us by lot, you should not do this; for if you do this, then you and your children will fall by condemnation in the land, and as cursed ones by sedition, for by sedition you have settled and by sedition your children will fall and you will be rooted out to eternity.” This emphasizes both that Ham’s entire line was not cursed, and also that Canaan would be rooted out, that they would be removed from the Land, never again to return, “for eternity.”[3]

The Essenic Ideal in Judaism

As mentioned, the Essene Jews rejected all forms of slavery. According to Philo, we read the following:

Not a single slave is to be found among them, but all are free, exchanging services with each other, and they denounce the owners of slaves, not merely for their injustice in outraging the law of equality, but also for their impiety in annulling the statue of Nature, who mother-like has born and regarded all men alike,  and created them genuine brothers, not in mere name, but in very reality, though this kinship has been put to confusion by the triumph of malignant covetousness, which has wrong estrangement instead of affinity and enmity instead of friendship. (Qudo omnis probus ix. 79, 84)

Josephus agrees, in his Antiquities of the Jews (xviii. 1.5 [21]) he says that the Essenes do not “practice slave holding... making use of one another in service.” Josephus seems unable to comprehend the nature of this eschewing in the same way that Philo does. Josephus frequently interpolates explanations that he clearly had not received from the Essenes themselves. He claims here that the prohibition is to prevent insurrections. He also, however, claims that they do not marry, and yet is forced later to recant and acknowledge that there are Essenes that marry and others, apparently the elders, who do not.[4]

Josephus uniquely used the term genos to tell us that the Essenes marry Jews only, whether by family or conversion, but, he explains, “they are more closely united amount themselves by mutual affection” than the general Jewish population, which he elsewhere describes along national lines with the term phyle.

The Essenes, apparently, like the Karaites after them, did not regard converts as “gerim” but simply as Jews. Normative rabbinical Judaism would similarly regard the convert as "an Israelite in all respects" but nevertheless designate converts as the “righteous naturalized” (gerim tzaddiqim, a synonym for proselytes). To the Essenes, the Dead Sea Scrolls references to gerim was apparently to the gerim toshavim; what would be known as yirei ha'shamayim, or in Greektheosebes, God-fearers; those who accepted the Noachid laws at least, but had not undergone gerut, naturalization or “conversion”, which involved circumcision. 

The Essene Jews were very much engaged in the practice of proselyte making, so much so that historians tell us that many in the Greco-Roman world, as well as Judea and Galilee, spent short periods essentially sampling their community's teachings, before giving up and returning home. The group, contrary to those who wish to read contrary practices into the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, was according to Philo one that “do[es] not enlist by race, but by volunteers who have a zeal for righteousness and an ardent love of men.”

It is widely accepted by most secular scholars of Christian origins that John the “Baptist” was actually an Essene proselyte-maker, or missionizer. His activity, described in the Christian Gospel accounts, are second - even third, fourth and fifth - hand accounts of Essenic Jewish proselyte-making. This was not only the context of John's activity, it was the context with the Christian Church deviated from. Christianity not only turned from these roots, away from the group which rabbi Aryeh Kaplan associates with the Talmudic Chassidim Rishonim, but as the centuries continued on, far too many Post-Yavneh, normative Jews in the galut assimilated the racialism and racism of the goyyim. These were ideas which never had and never will have any place in authentic, Torah-based Judaism. 

Today we are finding out more and more about the expressions of Judaism before the Diaspora. Every piece of the puzzle that we reconstruct from this information resurrects an image, not only of what could have been, but of whatwas Judaism. In the Second Temple Era, that including a Judaism based on egalitarianism, piestism, acceptance, eschewing of animal sacrifice (even while the Temple stood) and opposition to all forms of injustice and slavery. Today things have come full circle, more and more have come to the same conclusions that the Chassidim Rishonim came to over 2,000 years ago. The texts of our Essenic Jewish legacy have today been unearthed. Now it is time to consistently apply the Torah-based, righteous ideals that we have found therein.

In recension, Eusebius, having incorrectly believed Philo to have been an early Christian, records the words of this Jewish philosopher, who reports on the Essenes that “Even in our day, there are still those whose only guide is God; ones who live by the true reason of Nature, not only themselves free but filling their neighbors with the spirit of freedom. They are not very numerous indeed, but that is not strange, for the highest nobility is ever rare; and then these ones have turned aside from the vulgar herd to devote themselves to a contemplation of Nature's verities. They pray, if it were possible, that they may reform our fallen lives; but if they cannot, owing to the tide of evils and wrongs which surge up in cities, they flee away, lest they too be swept off their feet by the force of the current. And we, if we had a true zeal for self-improvement, would have to track them to their places of retreat, and, halting as supplicants before them, would beseech them to come to us and tame our life grown too fierce and wild; preaching instead of war and slavery and untold ills, their good news of peace and freedom, and all the fullness of other blessings.”

Notes

[1] Chaim Levinson "Top rabbis move to forbid renting homes to Arabs, say 'racism originated in the Torah'"  http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/top-rabbis-move-to-forbid-renting-homes-to-arabs-say-racism-originated-in-the-torah-1.329327 

[2] George Schodde, The Book of Jubilees: From the Ethiopic. (Oberlin: 1888), 33

[3] Ibid.

[4] Josephus, Flavius, The Jewish War. Penguin Books Ltd., Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1959. 129; also on pp 125 where he admits that they do not prohibit marriage, but find it problematic in that many women will not be faithful to one man. He furthermore here says that they adopt in children, much as we would find in Asian martial-religious Temples. In the Dead Sea Scrolls we find no indication that marriage was generally disdained by the community. Instead, we find reference to it, e.g. The Damascus Document stating that "If they live in camps according to the rule of the Land, marrying and begetting children, they shall walk according to the Torah… (CD VIII 6).