Thankful For Vindication By יהוה? Let Me Explain Why

 One thing for which I’m thankful this year: יהוה vindicates in His own time, and I don’t have to defend the people whom were giving me drek when they need someone to defend them. They might get to acutely feel the effects of having driven away people whom would have otherwise spoken up for them when other people were given them drek. 

A few specific incidents come to mind, with one incident being that someone who frequently wrote k’tav hara against me—a public figure within the genealogy realm—has gotten her Sefardi Jewish heritage questioned (and in quite the passive-aggressive way, too). I don’t know whether she knows about it, and I don’t care to bring it to her attention either way. I thought about speaking up for her, even though she treated me and others similarly, though I just let it go—if she can write k’tav hara, she can read it.

In any case, I hope that if she ever reads the allegations against her, she feels at least similarly to how I and others felt when she would mistreat us—especially when she encouraged others to gang up on us. 

PS In case anyone is curious to know who she is, Google “Sephardic Jews in Poland?” 

The allegations are unfair, wild, and not unlike what she has written about others and me.

Update: screenshot and quote in case the k’tav hara against the genealogist gets deleted after all (My problem can be that I’m too nice even regarding people whom treat me like drek, and I ended up rebuking the person in question about his allegation once he recently used a different forum to try to gaslight me into thinking he did not know what Jewish DNA is): 

“Generally, the simplest explanation is best. An Ashkenazi genealogist with a large platform claims that their TALALAY ancestors from Mogilev, Belarus, adopted the surname in the 19th Century not from local Slavs called TALALAY but from a similarly named family in 14th Century Catalonia. Allegedly the family crossed Europe from one end to the other, secretly remembering (or misremembering) the surname for 500 years. There is no evidence to support the claim. There is no evidence of equivalent family histories. Anyone is free to mythologise their ancestors like this, but it is not genealogy. Is it more likely a surname was adopted locally or from someone generations and a continent away?

“I think such fantasies contain a belief that Sephardic ancestry is somehow superior to Ashkenazi. It seems to me that the story of how a family reached eastern Europe from the Rhineland, survived the collapse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the horrendous history thereafter, is in every way equally deserving of serious study.”

Commentary: What Should Humble The Arabs and Us Jews Alike

Ishmael was an in-law father of his nephew Esau, and Esau was the twin brother of Jacob. Esau’s and Jacob’s common grandparent with Ishmael’s children (including Esau’s wife Machalat) was Abraham, whose brother Nahor married his niece (Haran’s daughter) Milcah (whom was the mother of Rebecca’s father, Bethuel). Abraham, meanwhile, married his (and Haran’s and Terah’s) sister Sarah.

So, think about this: Isaac and Rebecca were primarily once-removed first cousins, and Isaac was also a nephew to his father (Abraham) and to his mother (Sarah). He was a double nephew to Nahor and Haran, and an in-law nephew to his first cousin Milcah. He also was in-law first cousin to his uncle Nahor, and a direct and once-removed first cousin to Bethuel (which also made him a second cousin to Rebecca). 

Keep in mind that this made both Isaac and Rebecca twice-removed first cousins to Jacob and Esau…

And I think that ought to humble us Jews and the Arabs a little more. We all are literally descended from a sibling couple (as Abraham and Sarah were children of Terah through different mothers), an avuncular (uncle-niece) couple, a multiethnic couple (It can be assumed that Rebecca’s unnamed mother was Aramean or Syrian, as Bethuel was Hebrew and Numbers describes Jacob as “‘a wandering Aramean’”), and a couple whom were once-removed cousins whom were related in other ways.

A Quick-Enough Update: New Book, My Purpose In Writing, Etc.

 

TL:DW: I will never aggressively promote my books. Nonetheless, I ask others to at least consider them. PS See https://www.amazon.com/author/nicoleczarnecki.

#WoofWednesday: some pictures from the behind-the-scenes belated Halloween photoshoot