[Avodah] Hebrews/Israelites/Bnei Yisroel - Jews

[T613K at aol.com]

From: RallisW at aol.com

>>A very common misnomer used by both  clergy and lay  people, is to refer to 
the Bnei Yisroel in the Torah  as  Jews. 

For example; when the Jews left Egypt. Forgetting that 11  other tribes also  
left Egypt?

Let's keep in mind Moshe Rabbeinu  was not a Jew. 

The first person in Tanach that I am aware of, that was  called a Jew, was  
Mordechai.<<




>>>>
Yet Mordechai was from the tribe of Benjamin ("ish  Yemini"), not from the 
tribe of Judah, which proves that already from the time  of galus Bavel, 
"Yehudi" (="Jew") had become the generic word for members of any  of the 12 tribes.
 
This was undoubtedly because Yehuda was by then the largest of the tribes,  
plus the Jews were no longer living in their ancestral homelands and the tribes 
 no longer lived in separate areas, but were all mixed together and became  
subsumed under Yehuda.  (Of course most of the members of the Ten Tribes  were 
already lost among the nations by then but the few who remained  Jews 
identified themselves as "Jews" -- as Yehudim -- mixing with the  largest and most 
dominant tribe.)

 

--Toby  Katz
=============



************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20071017/545d3ade/attachment-0002.htm>