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By Aran, son of Ya'aqub Younan-Levine
January 2009.

Mindful of our own ancient Hebrew-Aramaic heritage, we continue to be a community that desires to maintain and carefully preserve the cultural aspects, religious ideals, customs and time honored traditions of our ancestors from Zacho, Urmia and surrounding areas, even though today most of us are separated by many miles. This has been a difficult task due to two main reasons: 1) our people are scattered all over the United States and other countries instead of being concentrated into one area, and 2) while the culture and traditions are similar, not all hold the exact same religious beliefs.

Many of us have adopted elements of the cultures in which we moved into. For example, my own family, after fleeing from Turkey, intermingled with Syrian and Spanish Jews. My father was Assyrian and held to the traditions handed down to him by his father and grandfather. My mother was from Spain (with her ancestors being from Aleppo, Syria); thus, after the marriage of my father and mother, my family began to adopt many Ladino and Syrian Jewish customs, including the language. Our family was a multi-lingual home, speaking Aramaic (two different dialects) and Ladino (Jewish Spanish) with some Hebrew.

I was raised in a Jewish Spanish community which often times used Ladino, which was also a language of my mother. My father hired two Spanish Jews to assist in translating some of the Hebrew and Aramaic texts into Ladino (and modern Spanish) for the benefit of my mother.

Among the membership of this Hebrew Aramaic fellowship are those of Babylonian (Iraqi) Jewry, Assyrian Jewry (Zacho, Urmia and other areas), and Aleppo Jews. My family, consisting of myself, my wife and three children (two daughters and a son), consider ourselves to be "Assyrian Jews" because of the tradition that was handed down by my great grandfather. Many of the traditions outlined in Asahel Grant's book from 1841, The Nestorians; or, The Lost Tribes, are identical to those of my own family and including yours which include belief in a coming Messiah, weekly Sabbath observance, and many other Hebrew elements, but within the confines of our personal religious beliefs or philosophy. This too has been a difficult task to maintain due to the way modern society looks upon those of us who appear to be "different" than them. Society tends to ostracize that which it fears or does not understand.

The main reason I founded the Hebrew Aramaic fellowship with Misters Akbulut, Seif and Spira was not necessarily to form a "denomination", but rather, to assist in maintaining a dialog between those of similar backgrounds, and to assist in the preservation of our unique culture and traditions - to record the experiences of those who are from the same or similar ethnic-religious heritage, whether they are Christians, Jews or both. The method in which this is taking place is by the use of manuscripts held by families within our fellowship and eye-witness accounts from older members, as well as through research concerning the practices and peculiarities of our ancestors through research.

For those of us who consider ourselves to be practitioners of "Assyrian Judaism" or "Judaism of Akara", we have developed, through consensus and a careful election process in prayerful consideration, a committee to translate and maintain our own liturgies and other religious documents based on our respective traditions, in order to preserve our own religious ideals and culture. It is our prayer that our children, God willing, will carry on these same traditions after us. My son, Aran Ya'aqub, has been assisting in the preparation of English translations of some of our Hebrew and Aramaic texts for the last four years and I have recently invited the assistance of Misters Akbulut, Seif and Spira.

Today we have founded what we're unofficially calling the "Hebrew Aramaic Research Society." The purpose of the Foundation is specifically for research in the Hebrew Aramaic Scriptures and for publishing translations of the Peshitta and Targumim for both the Scriptures of the Tanakh (the Aramaic Jewish Bible). We wish everyone here to know that the foundation is a not-for-profit religious organization, which is open to the public.

And while our main goal is not to have a 'denomination', many of you here and others by letter and email, have expressed otherwise; they have said they wish, due to assimilation and other unwelcome factors within mainstream American and European Judaism, to form such a community with their full support. I don't stand in the way of that. I would welcome this only if a set tradition can be established with one hundred percent agreement by the membership of the fellowship here today.

"Bene Hakkari, fathers, sons, mothers and daughters, the seed of Israel from the ancient mountains, based on your unanimous vote this afternoon, the committee presents before you, our Hakham Bashi, our rabban of Akara Judaism, Ya'aqub Younan-Levine. He is a son of Hakkari and a champion of our holy tongue, he is our brother and our father. May Alaha bless his footsteps in guiding those of ours."