When Adam received his soul, the pristine world retained a stronger 'memory' of the holy source from which it emerged. This compelled people of all emerging cultures to pursue their journey of spiritual discovery. After the flood and the physical re-population of the world, the most righteous people like Noah, Malchitzedek and Abraham continued their journey, delving toward the center of the mystical source that had left its magical imprint in the world that surrounded them. It is from this common root that today's cultures are still found to be sharing spiritual and mystical rituals as well as a single language source.
Ishmael (Abraham's son and the source of Islamic lineage) and his Egyptian mother Hagar (Pharaohs daughter in servitude to the house of Abraham to learn monotheistic mysticsm), were eventually banished from Abraham's increasingly spiritual home. They traveled back to Egypt where Ishmael established a family of 12 sons. Isaac (Abraham's son with Sarah) remained committed to a deep state of holiness and purity. He remained in the area which later became Israel where his wife Rebecca bore the twin sons of 'future nations', Jacob (representing Israel) and Esau (representing Rome - and all Christian nations). Esau was first and the Bible recounts that Jacob was born grasping Esau's heel, this is important in context of Torah's later prophecies for the development of humanity.
When Abraham died his grandchildren, Jacob and Esau, were 15 years old. Like Ishmael, Esau was more comfortable living and playing in the field while Jacob devoted his time to study and prayer in the continuation of Abraham and Isaacs deeply spiritual, doctrine. At 63, when Jacob received Isaac's blessing, he finally prepared himself for marriage, the ritual unification of the male and female soul. It was 50 years before Jacobs death when, at the Yabbok river, on his way to the site where Jerusalem is today, that he encountered Esau and fought the angel of death, prevailing over it and receiving its blessing, together with the name Israel that was bestowed on him. In the last 17 years of his 147 year life Jacob followed Joseph (his son) into Egypt with his 11 other sons and their families. After their long awaited reconciliation with Joseph, who by that time had become the most powerful man in Egypt next to Pharaoh, the sons of Israel (Jacob) became enormously influential in Egyptian culture and society, especially in the North. Within a few generations they had grown from 70 people to many thousands of influential descendants of Jacob all of whom enjoyed a privileged, aristocratic status in the Egypt.
The mystical construct of their monotheistic belief was substantially different from any other in Egypt and it fascinated the highly spiritual Egyptian intellectual class, including the priests. It is quite apparent from the detailed stories of Joseph that the Egyptian high priests and aristocracy, including Pharaoh, searched for and found a deeper meaning in their actions through Josephs mystical explanations. Pharaoh was consumed by Joseph's abilities of interpretation, foresight and prophecy. During Joseph's reign he opened the way for the rapid spread and integration of Abrahamic mysticism into Egyptian religious culture. The 90 years of Joseph's life in Egypt marked a peak of Israel's tribal growth and influence. Then, because of his death and that of the Pharaoh ruling at that time, Israel's demise was exacerbated by a hostile objenctionable aristocracy over the next 120 years, ultimately leading to their exodus from Egypt. The total exile period was 430 years (since Abraham's first arrival in Egypt), but this shorter 210 year period is arguably the most pivotal point in the history of all civilization. During their lives Jacob and Joseph were celebrated by Egyptians and upon their deaths, they were embalmed, receiving formal and extensive burials sponsored and endorsed by Pharaoh, the nation of Egypt and their allies.
After Israel's exodus from Egypt and at the end of Egypt's Middle Kingdom (a period of great turbulence in the Pharaonic lineage), the New Kingdom was formed, but things were never quite the same because, as the spiritual center of the world, Egyptian culture had been greatly diminished by the seismic shift of Israel's departure leaving behind a massive vacuum that could not be filled with anything as sophisticated, detailed or perfected as the deep mystical construct and logic of ancient Judaism. Israel's departure left Egypt in chaos, grappling with a return to its flawed past, eventually it led to the complete demise as the worlds primary spiritual authority 1000 years later at the end of the New Kingdom.
Following Israel's exile, at the crossing of the Sea and at Mt. Sinai, they (more than 3 million people) were simultaneously subjected to the most intense enlightenment any single mass population group has ever experienced. After 40 years in the desert, committed to a life of purity, the 12 tribes of Israel separated and settled in the land promised to Abraham. There was a hiatus of several hundred years as they built their new cities and integrated into or fought off some of the existing communities. Apart from each other for the first time in their approximate 300 year history since becoming a nation under Jacob, only their holy teachings and common faith, strengthened by G-d's revelation at the crossing of the sea and their receipt of Torah at Mt. Sinai, kept Israel's tribes bonded together as a common people with a common religious identity.
After several hundred years Israel's tribes gathered in two distinct groups represented by the Kingdom of Judah (including the priesthood) in the South and Israel more generally represented in the North. Their variation in religious practices and the influence of other cultures caused them to drift from their absolute common root, but each remained fundamentally connected to the Torah, to its mystical Kabbalah, and key prayers and meditations. Their principle and common belief in G-d, His commandments and their societal commitment to the laws of Torah, kept them from over zealously competing with each other and provided the magnetism that progressively drew them closer to ultimately become the Iron Age United Kingdom of Israel.
Around 800 BCE, King David fought for possession of the strategically placed Jebusite city and he purchased land that eventually led to the establishment of Jerusalem as a city and religious site. This was centered at Mt. Moriah the mountain, which contains the rock of creation, the foundation stone around which the entire world was formed, where Abraham offered Isaac to G-d and where Jacob pledged to build a house for G-d. David's son King Solomon built the first permanent Israelite Temple to house the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant holding the stones of the 10 Commandments that were transported through the dessert from Mt. Sinai. Jerusalem progressively became the undisputed mystical and spiritual center of the world, the place where people of all nations came to repent their sins and give sacrifice to G-d for their individual and collective redemption.
Following approximately 300[2] years of the first temple period, mainstream Israelites began to drift away from the purity of their post exile commitments including their direct and daily connection with G-d through the temple. During this time increasingly large groups from other cultures integrated and converted to Judaism. 150 years later, the Jews (including the priesthood) under the Kingdom of Judah, keepers of the land in the south, where the temple was based, were attacked by the Babylonians. The first temple was destroyed and all of Judah and Israel placed into a permanent state of exile, banished from the Holy Land to Babylon (Iran). This marks the beginning of Israel's long diaspora when the Jewish masses continued their migration to other countries and integrated more broadly into other cultures. Then Imperial Greece, under Alexander the Great, conquered Jerusalem and after 70 years of exile, the Holy Priests, with permission from the Babylonian King, cautiously began returning to Jerusalem. The rebuilding of the temple commenced immediately and later in Jerusalem, under Roman rule, massive construction of the second temple continued, and was ultimately completed making it arguably the most important religious site in history.
After 400 hundred years of the second temple period, toward the end of the first century of the Common Era (CE), Jews in Jerusalem, their temple and the increasingly recalcitrant priesthood were destroyed. This occurred because fragmented groups of increasingly powerful secular Jews, including many recent converts, spurred Imperial Rome's politicians to directly oppose Israel's religious core who remained entrenched and unwavering in their commitment to G-d over any national interests. Amongst the Jewish opposition, Yehoshua (Hebrew),Yeshua (Aramaic) or (Jesus), a particularly rebellious spiritual and mystical leader who, from amongst the many false Mesiah's at the time, was tried and crucified for his attempts to stop Roman corruption of temple priesthood and practices. Rome attacked and the Jews were placed into a deep and longlasting exile one more time. This time all Jews in Jerusalem were viciously persecuted and no Jew permitted to live within the cities walls. During this period Israel was scattered in the diaspora, North, through modern day Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Greece, Italy, France and Spain and South through Egypt, Libya and Morocco. Those Jews who remained committed to the core of their spiritual belief adopted the prescribed practices of the Great Council of Elders who after the destruction of the first Temple documented the entire body of Oral Torah handed down through the millennia. However, non-Jews who had previously benefited by bringing sacrifices at the Temple were left in a directionless spiritual void to fend for themselves.
By the end of the 4th century (CE), following Emperor Constantine's official adoption of Christianity (313CE) and the founding of the Byzantine Empire, the Land of Israel had become a predominantly Christian country. Churches were built on once Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Galilee. Around 600 years after this, Arab rulers, followed by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire attacked and took control of Jerusalem in the period before the beginning of Islam (around 800 CE). Successive attempts were made to destroy all that Jerusalem represented, its buildings, monuments, artifacts and articles of substance in order to remove any remnant of Israel's hated Jewish religious culture for fear that it may rise to undermine its opponents one last time. Then, following an appeal by Pope Urban II to reclaim the holy land, the Crusaders of Europe were sent. Initially successful in 1187 (CE) they were eventually overthrown by the Arab's under Saladin. The Arab communities who occupied Jerusalem at that time were particularly vigilant, building over and raising to the ground the remnants of anything that Rome had failed to destroy at the begining of the millennia prior.
At the time of the destruction of the second temple by the Romans (after the time of Jesus), it became evident to the most learned Rabbis that Kabbalah, its rituals, meditation and its teachings were to be strictly practiced underground in order to retain correct standards of its delicately constructed laws and avoid further persecution by those that opposed it. The Holiest Sages and Rabbis continued to move into the north, ( the old Kingdom of Israel) to Tiberias and Zefad where they continued to study and reveal the most mystical aspects of the Torah. Zefad is the site where Jacob studied for 14 years in the school of Malchitzedek. The practices of the Rabbi's began to change to meet the demands of the more modern pragmatic era and teachings of the Kabbalah (representing the scapegoat) became feared by Jewish mainstream communities for the tyranny that the Jews had experienced. Mysticism was buried, allowed only in the deepest underground groups, for almost 1000 years, until around 1100 CE,when the Zohar (the teachings of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his pupils recovered from around 100 CE) was first published and open study resumed in certain European cities, but only amongst the most learned holy scholars. As these teachings began to re-emerge for the first time, Jews in exile were persecuted in Spain and throughout Europe. The spread of Catholicism caused serious spiritual, religious and cultural conflict and many newly established derivatives of Christianity and Islam had difficulty reconciling intellectually with their root teachings in Jewish mysticism, so they were forced to 'shape' the views of its teachers and commentators. It was not until approximately 1600-1700 CE when the Chassidic Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe re-established the study of Kabbalah and its' more practical application through the teachings of the Chassidic Masters (first taught by the ba'al Shem Tov) known as Chassidus. Progressively, although not without serious contention from their fellow Jews, certain Rabbi's (led by The Alter Rebbe - founder of modern Chabad) felt that the time had arrived to reveal more and more of the wisdom of Kabbalah through Chassidus.
Around the end of the First World War Russian and Eastern European Jews began to immigrate west toward the major cities of Europe. Following the pogroms in Russia under Stalin, wave after wave of immigrants joined their fellow Jews in Poland, Germany, France and Hungary causing significant social upheavel. Through their practice and study of Torah they remained motivated to struggle and survive despite very difficult conditions imposed on them. Speaking Hebrew and Yiddish, they were the outcasts of society almost everywhere they went, therefore secular Judaism became the 'easier' alternative causing assimilation to spread rapidly into the heart of European Jewish culture and society. This new wave of assimilated 'Jewishness' mixed in with the remnant of ancient Jewish righteousness and mysticsm, once again, became the wekest link, the focus of resentment, stirring up the darkest forces manifest in Hitler and his alien nation principals.
Hitler distorted the views of the role of Judas in the death of Christ, sourced in the comparatively independent and contained writings of the New Testament, which planted the seeds for anti-Semitism and established the ideal conditions for a headonistic disaster. Like a head-on collision of two oncoming trains, it was Hitler's train of steel that crushed and destroyed the train of Jews imigrating into Europe. Through this, the souls of the 6 million Jews, who perished by Hilters evil hand, were elevated to return to the higher worlds to empower the forces of good and G-d's heavenly tribunal was called to weigh scales, judging the nation of Israel and the world. A direct result of these events, 3 years after the end of World War II, was the establishment of the State of Israel. Finally the major nations of the world formally and officially recognized the national right of Jews to the land of Israel as a permanent home for the descendants of Jacob, the keepers of the Jewish faith.
Despite the re-establishment of the modern State of Israel, there remains a fundamental opposition to the Jewish mystical core that protects, shields and benefits all descendants of Israel. This is the same opposition that followed Abraham, Jacob and Joseph into Egypt, the one that caused Egypts resentment, the one that the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Spanish and the Germans followed in order to crush and control Israel's spiritual ideal. This opposition, manifest in ongoing anti-Semitism, (see Iran's latest attempt to deny the holocaust) is so strong that only a comprehensive knowledge, understanding, possesion and identification with Torah and its' inner meanings by the nations of the world will finaly render opposition to the ideal neutral. This is the vision of the Ba'al Shem Tov who, in a deep meditation was told 'when the well springs (his teachings) burst forth and reach the furthest extremities' then the 'shells' (concealers of truth) will cease to exist and the Messiah will be seen in the world.
[1] http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Facts+About+Israel/History/Facts+About+Israel-+History.htm
[2] http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Facts+About+Israel/History/HISTORY-+Foreign+Domination.htm
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