Shalom, I am Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg, of the Ezra-Habonim, Niles Township Jewish Congregation in Skokie Illinois, This is a brief primer on Jewish history. If you memorize just a few dates we will now the first two thousand years in a very systematic way. Now there some dispute among scholars as to the exact dates but let us just pick the date 1800 B.C .E before zero for Abraham the first Jew. Okay 1800 BCE for Abraham and then Moses date roughly at 1250 B.C.E. so Moses then takes the Israelites out of Egypt God of course doing all the work. Moses then wonders in the Dessert for forty years they get to the land. Moses Dies and Joshua takes them in. So that move a couple a hundred years to Joshua judges Samuel and the early kings of Israel and about a thousand, dated 1000 B.C.E the first king. Soul and then David then Solomon and then David’s reign he established Jerusalem in 995 was the capital of Israel. Solomon builds the holy temple.
Now immediately after Solomon, the northern tenth tribes split away from the away from the southern two tribes and form Israel. The Southern tribes are called Judah. In 722 B.C.E. you have the Assyrian’s conquering those ten northern tribes and scattering them and naturally get the ten lost tribes. So let us now review Abrahams as what date? 1800B.C.E. Moses 1250 B.C.E first kings of Israel 1000 B.C.E. The Assyrian conquest the ten northern tribes 722 B.C.E well then the Babylonians today conquered the Assyrians and they conquer Judah, they destroyed Solomon’s temple and let the Jews go back to Babylonia but they kept them intact with the Jews lived until now. They established great academy and great learning and great books like the Talmud. Well shortly they are after the Persians conquered the Babylonian and let the Jews go back and rebuilt the Temple and that is where we get the second temple period.
The story of Ester, it occurs during that period. In 333 B.C.E Alexander the great, the Macedonian Greek conquers the Persians who had conquered the Babylonians and he died10 years later in 323 or so B.C.E. Following that there is an internal battle between his two his Kingdom and two parts the Seleucid in the North approximately where Syria is and the Petalamist in the South of Egypt is and that culminates in mechanic story about 165 B.C.E. and for a hundred of years after Judah drove the Assyrian Greeks back to Syria. They have sovereignty over the promise land until the Romans took over about 63 B.C.E. So I preview this 2000 years, what date do we have for Abraham? 1800 B.C.E. about. What date from Moses? 1250 B.C.E. for the early kings of Israel Soul, David and Solomon a thousand, the Assyrian conquest of the ten northern tribes 722, the Babylonian destructor of the temple conquering of Judah 586 B.C.E., the Persians 4 century, Alexander the great 333, Hannukah 165. There you have it about 2000 years of history in just a couple of minute’s, burn this dates and you feel so much comfortable about this basic piece of our Jewish historical experience.
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