Origins of the Binah: An Introduction

Binah has been Jewish before the Europeans came, or so it was said. Legend has it that the people of Binah received their names long ago. They were Hebrew slaves who had escaped Egypt. They had stolen one of the Pharaoh’s boats and sailed down the Nile into the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic and into legend. They had arrived in the shadow of Mount Abaddon when the destruction of the volcano was fresh in human memory. The natives believed that a vengeful demon had made the mountain rain fire upon them. When the people came from the east, the native people were slowly beginning to come back to the area and rebuild. The refugees from Egypt were hoping to build anew. Together, they found a mutual need and worked together as they built their homes around the mountain.

Places from around the world have legends about a great deluge and people from far away who came in to civilize and that age was foretold to end by fire. The Hebrews fulfilled a prophecy of the indigenous, and the volcano fulfilled a prophecy of the Hebrews, of an age ushered in by fire. Binah and its area have legends of people who came from far away after the fire to usher in that new age. The newly formed Binah civilization believed the eruption and vengeance of Abaddon fulfilled that prophecy and believed a new age had begun. The natives viewed the Hebrews as their salvation and the Hebrews viewed the natives as their salvation. The people saved one another and lived in peace for millennia. It was easy to live with one another because the native people and the Hebrews shared each other’s visions of creating a better world, a world where slavery did not exist and people did not waste. The Hebrews knew waste too well, breaking their backs for Pharaoh’s latest building whim such as building large temples where only one room was used yet many slaves died during the construction. The days of working in the hot desert sun for some distant person’s fancies turned to days of working in the mild weather of the mountains for the benefit of all.

Like I said, the history of Binah was just a legend according to the Europeans. After all, these small villages tucked in the Black Hills of South Dakota, off the main roads, aren’t supposed to attract any attention or rewrite history. People fleeing Egypt in a stolen boat in the days before the Ten Commandments were issued, drifting to the other side of the ocean, and then ending up in South Dakota.

No one likes to admit that it could have happened. It was too impossible, except that it actually happened.

I am Rachel bat Samuel, and I will share with you the story of my people.

Our story begins almost a century before Moses of the Bible freed the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. It begins with fifteen strong-willed women, their equally strong-willed husbands, and five men who would help us strike roots in the New World.

Our story begins with Ganya, a woman whose concern was to improve the welfare and happiness of her people. She wanted to ease the suffering of others. Her name means “Garden of God” and she planted the seeds of our culture with care, cultivated them, and helped create a culture whose traditions survive to this very day. She surpassed many of her people in her wisdom. She was married to Chanaya, whose very name means “compassion of God”. He was a good family man who loved peace and longed for a life of harmony which could not be found as a slave in Egypt. He was generous, talented, and creative. They were a strong team, and together they helped create hope in the most desperate of situations.

We also have Yadid, the beloved. He was a secret scholar who learned to read and write. He was a copyist of the Egyptian priests and learned to read and write in the language of the priests. His surreptitious work enabled him to learn the secrets of the universe, of older civilizations, of things even the Pharaoh did not know. Yadid was creative, innovative, and ambitious. Despite his birth as a slave, he was a natural-born leader and determined to create a better life for himself. He was confident and attentive to details. It was Yadid who set the plans for escape in motion, and Yadid who taught the refugees how to read and write, preserving their thoughts for those who came after them.

It is because of Yadid that I am able to tell you what I know of my people thousands of years later. We have a long history, and it will take a lot of time to tell it...