“Who, then, are the Jews, and what part shall they yet play in the gathering of Israel and the return of their King? There is a maze of fuzzy thinking and shoddy scholarship, both in the world and in the Church, that seeks to identify the Jews, both ancient and modern, and to expound upon what they have believed and do believe. It is not strange that the divines of the day-not knowing that the kingdom is to be restored to Israel at that glorious day; not having the Book of Mormon and latter-day revelation to guide them-it is not strange that they come up with false and twisted views about the mission and destiny of the Jews. It is a little sad that church members sometimes partake of these false views and of this secular spirit so as to misread the signs of the times
The term Jew is a contraction of the name Judah, but the Jews are not the members of the tribe of Judah as such. After the reign of Solomon, the Lord’s people divided into the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah. Nearly ten tribes served Jeroboam in Israel and two and a half tribes served Rehoboam in Judah. The Levites were scattered among all the tribes. Judah, Simeon, and part of Benjamin comprised the kingdom of Judah. In actual fact, and considering blood lineage only, both kingdoms had in them people from all of the tribes. Lehi, who lived in Judah and was a Jew, was of the tribe of Manasseh. The Jews were nationals of the kingdom of Judah without reference to tribal ancestry. Thus the descendants of Lehi, both the Nephites and the Lamanites, were Jews because they came out from Jerusalem and from the kingdom of Judah. (2 Ne. 33:8.)
The Jews today are also those whose origins stem back to the kingdom of their fathers. Clearly the dominant tribe-dominant, however, only in the sense of political power and rulership-was Judah. As to the bloodlines, who knows whether there are more of Judah or of Simeon or of Benjamin or of some other tribe among the Jews as we know them? Paul, a Jew, was of the tribe of Benjamin. The name Judea, now used as a noun, is actually an adjective meaning Jewish and is the Greek and Roman designation for the land of Judah.
Since the Ten Tribes were taken into Assyria and lost from the knowledge of their fellows more than a century before the Jews went into Babylonian captivity, the prophets began to speak of Jews and Gentiles and to consider as a Gentile everyone who was not a Jew. This classifies Ephraim and the rest of scattered Israel as Gentiles. Everyone, in this sense, who is not a Jew is a Gentile, a concept that will enable us, in due course, to set forth what is meant by the fulness of the Gentiles.” (Bruce R. McConkie The Millennial Messiah: The Second Coming of the Son of Man, p.221-222)
We need to look no further than the scriptures to know the Lamanites ARE DESCENDANTS of the JEWS.
“And again, I command thee that thou shalt not covet thine own property, but impart it freely to the printing of the Book of Mormon, which contains the truth and the word of God—Which is my word to the Gentile, that soon it may go to the Jew, of whom the Lamanites are a remnant, that they may believe the gospel, and look not for a Messiah to come who has already come.” D&C 29:26-27
“Which is my word to the Gentile, that soon it may go to the Jew, of whom the Lamanites are a remnant, that they may believe the gospel, and look not for a Messiah to come who has already come.” D&C 19:27 “And then shall the remnant of our seed know concerning us, how that we came out from Jerusalem, and that they are descendants of the Jews.” 2 Nephi 30:4
“I would say to the Lamanites, if I could speak to them understandingly, that you are also a branch of the house of Israel, and chiefly of the house of Joseph, and your forefathers have fallen through the same examples of unbelief and sins, as have the Jews, and you, as their posterity, have wandered in sin and darkness for many generations; and you, like the Jews, have been driven and trampled under the foot of the Gentiles, and put to death through your wars with each other, and with the white man, until you are almost destroyed. But there is still a redemption and salvation for a remnant of you in the latter days. It is time for you to cease shedding each other’s blood or making war upon your fellow-man. Cease to destroy one another, learn to cultivate the earth, and raise your food therefrom; call upon the Great Spirit to protect you and deliver you from bondage and darkness, and the Great Spirit will hear you and deliver you, and a remnant of you will again become a delightsome people as your forefathers were when they kept the commandments of God.” Wilford Woodruff History of His Life and Labors AS RECORDED IN HIS DAILY JOURNALS PREPARED FOR PUBLICATION BY MATTHIAS F. COWLEY Salt Lake City, Utah 1909
Jewish Immigration to America: Three Waves
Sephardic, German, and Eastern European immigrants each contributed to he formation of American Jewry.
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-immigration-to-america-three-waves/ BY JOELLYN ZOLLMAN
Today, America’s Jewish community is largely Ashkenazi, meaning it is made up of Jews who trace their ancestry to Germany and Eastern Europe. However, the first Jews to arrive in what would become the United States were Sephardic — tracing their ancestry to Spain and Portugal. The following article looks at the three major waves of Sephardic and Ashkenazic immigration to America.
Historians have traditionally divided American Jewish immigration into three periods: Sephardic, German, and Eastern European. While the case can be made that during each period, immigrants were not solely of any one origin (Some Germans came during the “Sephardic” period and some Eastern Europeans arrived during the “German” era, for example), the fact remains that the dominant immigrant group at the time influenced the character of the American Jewish community.
Sephardic Jews
The first group of Sephardic settlers arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654 from Brazil. For several decades afterward, adventurous Sephardic and Ashkenazic merchants established homes in American colonial ports, including Newport, R.I., New Amsterdam (later New York), Philadelphia, Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga.
While the Ashkenazi Jews outnumbered the Sephardic ones by 1730, the character of the American Jewish community remained Sephardic through the American Revolution. Colonial American synagogues adhered to Sephardic ritual customs and administered all aspects of Jewish religious life. The synagogue did not, however, attempt to govern the economic activities of its (mostly mercantile) members. This was a departure from the Old World, where synagogues in places like Amsterdam, London, and Recife, taxed commercial transactions, regulated Jewish publications, and punished members for lapses in individual or commercial morality. In this manner, colonial synagogues set a precedent of compartmentalization — a division between Jewish and worldly domains — in American Jewish life.
Colonial American Sephardic synagogues also sought to combine modern notions of aesthetics with traditional Judaism, creating congregations that were rational and refined. Synagogues established rules of order so that services and meetings proceeded with the proper amount of deference and decorum. For example, colonial synagogues assigned seats for male and female members so that everyone knew their place in the congregation. This not only eliminated shuffling and bickering over seating each week, but also established a sort of congregational hierarchy in which the best seats went to the most prestigious congregational families (who, in turn, paid the highest dues). (In Europe, so few women attended services that there was no need to designate seats; American women, in contrast, regularly attended religious services.)
This theme — the reconciliation of modern manners with Jewish tradition — would also occupy subsequent waves of Jewish immigrants as Germans and Eastern Europeans struggled to build the Reform and Conservative movements in America.
The Germans
German Jews began to come to America in significant numbers in the 1840s. Jews left Germany because of persecution, restrictive laws, economic hardship, and the failure of movements — widely supported by German Jews — advocating revolution and reform there. They looked to America as an antidote to these ills — a place of economic and social opportunity.
Some 250,000 German-speaking Jews came to America by the outbreak of World War I. This sizable immigrant community expanded American Jewish geography by establishing themselves in smaller cities and towns in the Midwest, West, and the South. German Jewish immigrants often started out as peddlers and settled in one of the towns on their route, starting a small store there. This dispersion helped to establish American Judaism as a national faith.
If German Jews had one city of their own invention, it was Cincinnati. German immigrants flocked to this area, which was considered a gateway to trade in the Midwest and West. Cincinnati became the seat of American Reform Judaism, home to the movement’s first American leader, Isaac Mayer Wise (an immigrant from Bohemia), and its newspaper and seminary.
In addition to promoting Reform Judaism in America, German Jewish immigrants created institutions as significant and longstanding as B’nai B’rith, the American Jewish Committee, and the National Council of Jewish Women.
The Eastern Europeans
A 19th-century Jewish school on the Lower East Side. (Wikimedia Commons)
Eastern European Jews began to immigrate to the United States in large numbers after 1880. Pushed out of Europe by overpopulation, oppressive legislation and poverty, they were pulled toward America by the prospect of financial and social advancement. Between 1880 and the onset of restrictive immigration quotas in 1924, over 2 million Jews from Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Romania came to America. Once again, the character of American Jewry was transformed, as the Eastern Europeans became the majority.
Jewish Immigrants in the Garment Industry
The immigrants tended to settle in the poorer neighborhoods of major cities. New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and Chicago, for example, all featured Jewish sections by the turn of the 20th century. Living conditions in these neighborhoods were often cramped and squalid. The immigrants found work in factories, especially in the garment industry, but also in cigar manufacturing, food production, and construction. Jewish workers supported the labor movement’s struggle for better working conditions. Yiddish culture, in the form of drama, journalism, and prose, flourished in American Jewish immigrant neighborhoods, and the plight of the immigrant worker was a common cultural theme.
Jewish Immigrants and Trade Unions
The Eastern European Jews also brought with them certain ideological principles that would influence American Jewry. Many of the workers supported socialism or communism as a means of securing economic and social equality. In this manner, the Eastern Europeans established a strong link between American Jews and liberal politics.
Yiddish Theater in New York
In addition, Eastern Europeans brought with them unprecedented support for Jewish nationalism. They educated the American Jewish community on this topic, even if they did not appear among its early leaders. (Henrietta Szold, the founder of the women’s group Hadassah, credited her immigrant night school students for her introduction to the fundamentals of Zionism.)
Finally, Eastern European Jews ensured a more religiously diverse American Jewish population. The Eastern Europeans did not, for the most part, feel comfortable with Reform Judaism. Their insistence on maintaining tradition, albeit in a modern context, contributed to the establishment of Conservative Judaism and infused Orthodox Judaism with new energy and purpose.
Large-scale Jewish immigration to the United States ended in 1924. Still, the contemporary American Jewish community remains very much a product of these founding groups.
Blogs about DNA connection with Israel and Native Americans
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