Friday, September 16, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
Today I tweeted this meme:
Some Jew-hating idiot responded that today's Jews have nothing to do with the Jews of Jesus' time, and gave as proof "'EDOM IS IN MODERN JEWRY.' The Jewish Ency. 1925 Ed., Vol. 5, Pg. 41."
This was new to me, so, for fun, I looked this up. And this quote is all over antisemitic websites, I even saw a video about it on "GoyimTV."
They are claiming that the Jewish Encyclopedia says that Jews are really descendants of Edom (Esau.)
So I looked up page 41 of volume 5 of the 1925 Jewish Encyclopedia. It really is the entry on Edom, although it doesn't say at all what they claim it says.
What it does say is that during the Hashmonean era, some of the Edomites (Idumeans) were forcibly converted to Judaism by John Hycranus I (which is the only case of forced conversion to Judaism in recorded history.)
The Idumeans did become enthusiastic members of the religion - King Herod was Idumean. They were obviously still a minority among Jews. (There is an interesting halachic issue mentioned in the article about whether Edomites were allowed to join the Jewish people, but that is a separate matter.)
Even so - they were considered Jews living in what would later be called "Palestine" in Jesus' time. They are clearly of MIddle East origin, native to the region. Even if some of them survived to remain Jews today, how, exactly, does this hurt the Jewish claim to Israel? The Idumeans lived as Jews in Judea seven centuries before Islam!
All this proves is that antisemites, like anti-Zionists, will seize a tiny piece of real information and build an entire fictional universe around it to fit their hate.
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