Does this ancient warrior art actually exist? You be the judge. Shalom joshua saltzman, Many people have told me in e-mails that I have received that they have always felt that there must have been a system of warfare specific to the ancient Israelites. That was validated for them with their discovery of Abir Qesheth. Others held a belief that the system or remnants of it must have survived in a manner just as I have described, by communities that were unknown to the rest of the Jewish world for the most part. The Bani Abir or Bnei Abir clan of Habban ( also Hhabban ) in the Shabwa governate of todays Yemen was a fierce community of Judean warriors. The truth is that legends about Habbani Jewish feats of battle were told among many Yemeni Jews and Muslims alike in the region for centuries. Habbani Jews like myself were the bodyguards of the regions emirates, kingdoms, sheikdoms, British military brass and diplomats until the demise of the British rule in southern Arabia. Directly after this the Yemen which was divided into two states with a communist regime in the south was unified. The Jews of Habban left the region well before the British. The Habbani Jewish community did not come into the awareness of the Jewish world until the mid 1940s. That awareness was very limited back then, and all but diminished completely since. A fellow Israeli martial arts instructor who hails from the former Soviet Union insists that my familys prowess in combat and the whole story of Jewish Habbani warriors was basically a new phenomena that developed through the empowerment of our community by the British mandate. Ha ha...verrrry funny. Unfotunately he is not joking. There is no arguing with this wonderful self made expert. He shares not only the martial arts in common with me but is also very well read in anthropological study of the ancient near east. He says he has met Habbani Jews in Rosh Haain, once exclusively a Yemenite community near his home in PetaH Tiqwah. Those Habbani Jews told him that this prowess was probably a newer development since the commencement of the British Mandate in southern Yemen. I personally know better. Many people do. These Habbani Jews had read that view which was postured in an article published in some academic journal which I myself once read online. That view was the authors own personal expert scholarly assumption. My martial arts buddy loves things that academicians say.The Torah is not a qualified source for him and Midrashic texts are out of the question. Nothing more than one academics say-so and a whole chapter of history is dashed away. This instructors Habbani friends could not have been more than infants when they left the region for Israel in 1949 if they were not born here. I told this to the former Russian who does not believe in the Torah at all and tends to rely on first hand testimonies unless they are mine or members of my family including my father and his cousins who recount stories of Abir that they personally heard or experienced in their youth in Yemen). He prefers those views published by secular academicians in their accepted journals. His next response, a question, was so evil, as only a friend like him could ask. How big a place was Habban and how many Jews were there in your community? He wanted to imply that a place as small as Habban made it mandatory that if a group of Jews were warriors with a system of combat of their own, than the entire community would have all shared that knowledge to the same extent. In other words he was telling me that I am wrong and considerably less Habbani having not been born there. The real implication is one that postures that I have no proof and that for his money, Im probably lying. He does not want my version to be true. Go figure. Many Jews do not want to believe me. I can not help them. They have an investment in being neurotic mommys boys and nashers when they are not championing some other peoples causes, usually anti Semitic peoples causes at that. My Russian buddy is a champion of his own cause. We still talk though, now and then when he calls me from the prison payphone. A community is comprised of scholars and laymen craftsmen, farmers, laborers, artisans, medical personnel, builders with a ruling class, civil government and a military. Ofcourse, the list could get really long but hopefully you get the idea. Society has many more subdivisions. Let us not forget that some of us are male and female of various age brackets. Nowhere on earth is there a place where everyone shares all the same roles. Not all tribesmen are warriors. Not in Habban and not anywhere. Ethiopians in Israel from the Gondar province in Ethiopia worked the land and grew their own food. They had herds. In just 20 years, I have watched these people acclimate into Israeli society and its glamorized modern third world lifestyle that is dead set on mimicry of Americas most negative aspects. Their youth are rather clueless these days regarding the skills they would have mastered for their own daily survival back in Africa. In close to 60 years the Habbani Jews have retained the retainable traditions to some degree. Not many experts can show us studies on Habbani life before the late 40s just before they were brought to the Land of Israel. The place is still one of the worlds most primitive hot spots. It would seem that progress itself is allergic to much of Yemen. The Hadhramawt is even further behind. Believe it or not, Im not here to prove anything. I cant. About who and what our people are... were... and where we came from or when we arrived in this land. I cant. This letter will be continued with an additional two parts. So the next letter will be Part 2. Until then, Tell your people how much you love them. GURUS BLESSINGS ART OF LIVING DAILY SUTRAS , Aluf Abir, Mori Yehoshua Sofer (Maatuf DoHh)
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 17:35:48 +0000
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