Originally on LinkedIn: Re Joe "JoJo" Dixon: Plenty Of People Weren't Doing Their Jobs, And JoJo Is Likely Deceased As a Result

1. Darren Dixon as a father didn't do his job. If he had married JoJo's mother, JoJo might still be alive and might be in an in-tact home instead of the vulnerable home in which he lived. After all, homes without good fathers are vulnerable homes.
2. JoJo's grandparents didn't do their job. JoJo's grandmother even knew that "was concerned his mother was planning to take him out of the country'", and she did nothing about it. Why didn't she call the UK's department of child protective services?
3. The UK and the US governments didn't do their jobs to at least give JoJo's mother a chance to turn in herself to British authorities. If for no other reason than to let her turn in herself and bring home JoJo, take a plea deal and have prosecutorial immunity, and help the UK and the US fight against Daesh, the UK and the US should've let her surrender to the UK and US governments at the either the British and American embassies in Iraq or the the British and American consulates there. "CIA officials told their UK counterparts that a US Air Force Predator killed 50-year-old Jones in June as she tried to flee the group's stronghold in Raqqa," and "[i]n July a friend described Jones as being desperate to return to the UK, but she was apparently being forced to stay by her husband's comrades."
4. Whoever continues to call Daesh "ISIS" or "ISIL" is not doing his or her job to not recognize a terror group as a state. When countries like Egypt are calling Daesh "Da'ish" (the Arabic equivalent of the name that Daesh absolutely hates) while the UK and the US somehow think that they're being as politically correct as one can be, I have to wonder where British and American exceptionalism went, by the way.

There are also others whom didn't and don't do their jobs. For example, where was L'Oreal in noticing when their employee was acting unusually, and where are individuals and other communities making sure that other single-parent homes and fatherless children aren't as vulnerable as JoJo's home and JoJo were?

An Example Of A Hurt That Only Truth Can Heal (To At Least Some Extent)

"Notwithstanding the opportunity to reach for a better outcome, there was no need for Jonathan, or for us, his parents, to live in shame, and certainly no benefit in living with the weight of such a lie."

This is the exact opposite of how my father feels; and this is notwithstanding that I inherited his OCD/Anxiety, Depression, and ADD. I found out from one of his maternal cousins that his paternal grandfather committed suicide, not died of Black Lung. When I confronted Dad, he gave the excuse that I was too young to know the truth about Great-Granddad's death; and this is despite that the sons of my Granduncle Tony (z"l) was honest with his own children upfront about how their grandfather died, meaning that Dad could've been as honest with me as Granduncle Tony was with his children.

Too often, people who have other things that they want to hide, hide whatever they can with bubbe meises instead of telling the stranger-than-fiction truth; and it has only "certainly no benefit in living with the weight of such a lie." In fact, the bubbe meises make it worse, especially when the truth hits—and when you, for example, ended up in Sheppard Pratt for threatening suicide before you knew what partially explained it: i.e., that your father's paternal grandfather actually committed suicide and passed on his Depression to your grandfather (and you've figured out that your late grandfather had Depression, and that he passed it on to his oldest child), your father, and you.

Why I Disagree With The Following Proverb

"The kind of ancestors you have is not as important as the ones your children have." Amish Proverb, as seen on Twitter.

My take: the kind of ancestors whom you have is as important as the ones that your descendants have; because if you don't understand your ancestors to some extent, you're not going to learn from and be better than them--after all, "You're only as good as your parents" (as my friend Jim states) and "Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it."

Is Matrilineal Jewishness Valid? The Answer Is...

Yes, but not because of the P'rushim is Matrilineal Jewishness valid. I should've at least saved my posts from one group that I was in with Asher Romero ben Israel and Adam Klein (who is not Nehemia Gordon's friend, as he stated, and clearly not my friend-- on his own volition), because I'm so damned lazy and don't really want to rewrite what I already wrote (Maybe I'm more depressed lately as well, thus more lazy. Anyway...).

First, let's begin with B'resheet 17:19-21:

¹⁹ Then God said: “No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him.²⁰ And as for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation.²¹ But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this set time next year.”

We see that Yitzhak had to have Sarah-- not anyone else-- as his mother and Avraham-- not anyone else-- as his dad (which is why, incidentally, I believe that some Kara'im argue that both parents must be Jewish in order for the child to be Jewish). We also see that Yitzhak was the first Yehudi:

²² For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. ²³ But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, ²⁴ which things are symbolic. For these are the^[d] two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar— ²⁵ for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children— ²⁶ but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all. ²⁷ For it is written:

“Rejoice, O barren,
You who do not bear!
Break forth and shout,
You who are not in labor!
For the desolate has many more children

Than she who has a husband.”^[e].

Yitzhak was "born of the promise". We see that in this way, Yitzhak was the first Jew and that Patrilineal Jewishness is as valid as Matrilineal Jewishness. But let's get back to Matrilineal Jewishness. We've seen so far that the contribution of the mother cannot be left out (thus part of why I stated that  I believe that some Kara'im argue that both parents must be Jewish in order for the child to be Jewish). The contribution certainly was not left out in the cases of the young Dani of Mitzrayimi parentage, Hiram the king of Phoenicia and Huram his dad(? See Wikipedia for the dispute on this.), and Timothy HaYavani:

• ^"10 Now the son of an Israelite woman, whose father was an Egyptian, went out among the children of Israel; and this Israelite woman’s son and a man of Israel fought each other in the camp. ¹¹ And the Israelite woman’s son blasphemed the name of the Lord and cursed; and so they brought him to Moses. (His mother’s name was Shelomith the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan.) ¹² Then they put him in custody, that the mind of the Lord might be shown to them. ¹³ And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ¹⁴ “Take outside the camp him who has cursed; then let all who heard him lay their hands on his head, and let all the congregation stone him." The P'rushim use this, but only to attempt to invalidate Patrilineal Jewishness; thus, they don't use this for the right reasons. 
• "So he said, “What kind of cities are these which you have given me, my brother?” And he called them the land of Cabul,^[a] as they are to this day." Here, Hiram calls Shlomo "brother" because " ³ Now King Solomon sent and brought Huram^[a] from Tyre. ¹⁴ He was the son of a widow from the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a bronze worker; he was filled with wisdom and understanding and skill in working with all kinds of bronze work. So he came to King Solomon and did all his work. " Hiram also blessed G-d. "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who made heaven and earth, for He has given King David a wise son, endowed with prudence and understanding, who will build a temple for the Lord and a royal house for himself!"
• Then he came to Derbe and Lystra. And behold, a certain disciple was there, named Timothy, theson of a certain Jewish woman who believed, but his father was Greek. ² He was well spoken of by the brethren who were at Lystra and Iconium. ³ Paul wanted to have him go on with him. And he took himand circumcised him because of the Jews who were in that region, for they all knew that his father was Greek. ⁴ And as they went through the cities, they delivered to them the decrees to keep, which were determined by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem.

One more quick example; which is not Scriptural, nonetheless valid: Geraldo Rivera's daughter Sol. Are we to say that she is not Jewish because her dad's paternal granddad was a Spaniard and his paternal grandmother a Taino Native American? Is Sol then only a Spaniard of Taino and Jewish descent? To rule out Lillian Friedman Rivera's contribution and Erica Levy Rivera's contribution (which, by the way, makes Sol a Matrilineal Levit) would be entirely unfair and unpractical, especially since Sol is 3/4 Jewish. 

Darn Right That I'm Estranged From Much Of My Dad's Family...

And I, unlike some of them, make no secret or even falsehood about it. If you want me to lie about my family; you're asking me to be like my dad and his parents (among others), and I'm not going to do that. Unlike them, I'm going to be honest about our family history. The funny (strange and ironic) thing, meanwhile, is that they probably don't think that I check my blog stats. They can guess again:

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If Anyone Knows Anything About These Family Members Buried At New Cathedral Cemetery...

Please let me know. Thanks.

I'm Basically Getting "Peh"ed and "Meh"ed With This Discouragment In Family Research....

I mean, nothing-- nothing-- on direct relatives and other relatives who I'm specifically looking for information on... and I have hints on other relatives and relatives of relatives (and relatives of relatives of relatives...) who I'll worry about later. I couldn't even get DNA tests-- and they were going to be gifts for the benefit of the whole family.

I'm not trying to get caught up in genealogy; I just want to establish what I can: e.g., find out if I'm a kohenet or Levit (and Kevin luckily didn't need DNA to find out that he's a Levi, by the way; but what we don't know if he's also a Levi on the Fosko and Hanzok sides-- meaning guess who also would be m'bnei Levi)? Also, who is the real "John McCoy" (the Spaniard that he was, not the Irishized "McCoy" that he became when he fled Spain and married MaryAnn Elizabeth McCoy); and was he a Sephardic Jew?

(Hey; none of his daughters were named "Mary" or "Maria"-- they were Rosalita "Rose" or "Rosa", Lavinia Teresa(?), Lucy, and Jane--, and his granddaughters were Anne, Alice Marie (Notice that Grandma was MaryAnn.), Loretta Rose, Sara Catherine, Helen Lavinia, and Agnes Genevieve "Sister Mary Rosalita" (which she took upon herself).).

Does any family member want to step forward, do the right thing, and help me figure out some of the (so to speak) roadblocks? 

Why I've Suffered So Much: At Least Partly Because of That Kapo Mary Rusnak Gaydos

I don't exactly remember who Jack Feldman is descended from, by the way; but I begin to suspect more and more that his Chron's-- besides his trief eating-- comes from his Fosko-Rusnak matriarch being a kapo as well. My side (the Fosko-Rusnak-Gaydos side) has been visited for certain:

Numbers 14:18
‘The LORD is longsuffering and abundant in mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He by no means clears the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation.’


I mean, I don't think that we can any more into entering the abyss zone than having four of the five Rusnak-Gaydos children (Grandaunt Mary Ann and Grandma included) being absolutely wicked (The only one who would not be wicked by doing or enabling any wickedness was Grandaunt Helen, who I didn't know was habat tzedekah until after she was gone.), having even some of habnei v'banot shel habat tzedekah take after the bnei-v'banot ra'im (Ashley and Matt, I'll name you as two of them. Shame on you for not acknowledging our Yiddishkeit and Eloheinu v'Elohim Avinu.), and having some of us bnei v'banot suffer abuse which we have not (or at least tried not to have) perpetuated the cycle of.


While I'm on the subject of Matt, by the way, why does he have Spina Bifida? And why do I have Cerebral Palsy? And why does Jack have Chron's (if his Fosko-Rusnak matriarch was indeed also a wicked kapo)?


Deuteronomy 7:13
And He will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of yourcattle and the offspring of your flock, in the land of which He swore to your fathers to give you.


Let me give you a hint: Great-Grandma Gaydos and her zerim sure haven't been blessed:

Leviticus 21:17-24

New King James Version (NKJV)

¹⁷ “Speak to Aaron, saying: ‘No man of your descendants in succeeding generations, who has anydefect, may approach to offer the bread of his God. ¹⁸ For any man who has a defect shall not approach: a man blind or lame, who has a marred face or any limb too long, ¹⁹ a man who has a broken foot or broken hand, ²⁰ or is a hunchback or a dwarf, or a man who has a defect in his eye, or eczema or scab, or is a eunuch. ²¹ No man of the descendants of Aaron the priest, who has a defect, shall come near to offer the offerings made by fire to the LORD. He has a defect; he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God. ²² He may eat the bread of his God, both the most holy and the holy; ²³ only he shall not go near the veil or approach the altar, because he has a defect, lest he profane My sanctuaries; for I the LORD sanctify them.’”
²⁴ And Moses told it to Aaron and his sons, and to all the children of Israel.


Hint two: 


While we may not be koheinim, let me ask you this: if being one "who has a defect" (including one that results in the said one being "blind or lame, who has a marred face or any limb too long, a man who has a broken foot or broken hand, or is a hunchback or a dwarf") is even a (for a lack of a better term) just-because curse to zerim shel Aharon; how likely would you think that any one of those defects could be inflicted even on non koheinim who are or whose predecessors were kapos?


Numbers 14:18
‘The LORD is longsuffering and abundant in mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He by no means clears the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation.’


As I said, by the way, being crippled and being sickened (with me, Matt, and Jack-- if his Fosko-Rusnak matriarch was indeed also a wicked kapo-- included) aren't the only curses which the zerim of the kapo Fosko Rusnaks-- especially those of Mary Rusnak Gaydos-- have had to endure.