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 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 he was known as a "Ba'al Shem." He is the first rabbi in history to be known by