Historical race concepts Classical ideas with the notion that humanity as a whole was descended from Shem, Ham and Japheth, the three sons of Noah, producing distinct Semitic (Asiatic), Hamitic (African), and Japhetic (Indo-European) peoples. This theory dates back to the Babylonian "Talmud", which states, "the descendants of Ham are cursed by being black, and [it] depicts Ham as a sinful man and his progeny as degenerates." In the 9th century, Al-Jahiz, an Afro-Arab Islamic philosopher, attempted to explain the origins of different human skin colors, particularly black skin, which he believed to be the result of the environment. He cited a stony
Elijah Ba'al Shem of Chełm and etch a letter on a certain brick. Because of this, everyone was afraid to touch the bricks. Elijah Ba'al Shem of Chełm Elijah Ba'al Shem or Eliyahu Ba'al Shem of Chełm (government of Lublin) (born 1550; died at Chełm, 1583) was a Polish rabbi who served as chief rabbi of Chełm. He also studied Kabbalah, and, according to his descendant Tzvi Ashkenazi, created a golem. He is credited with creating the first golem with a ""shem"" (that is, using a combination of letters from one of the names of God to form a name; Elijah used ""Sefer Yezirah""), so