9　The Jews Search for a Home

You are spells Ur.It is one of the shortest names I know.It is the name of a little place in that part of Babylonia called Chaldea.In this place—about nineteen hundred years B.C.—there lived a man named Abraham.Abraham had a very large family and though he had no money,he was rich.He had large herds of sheep and goats,and these were the chief riches in those days.Now Abraham believed in one God,as we do,while his neighbors,the Babylonians,worshiped many gods and the heavenly bodies,such as the sun,moon,and stars,as I have just said.Abraham did not agree with his neighbors for this reason；and his neighbors didn’t agree with him,either,for they thought his ideas were peculiar or even crazy.So,about nineteen hundred years before Christ,Abraham took his large family,his flocks,and his herds and moved to a land called Canaan,far away near the Mediterranean Sea.

Abraham lived to be a very old man,and he had a large family.One of his grandsons named Jacob,who was also known by the name of Israel,had a son Joseph.You probably remember the Bible story of Jacob’s favorite son Joseph with the coat of many colors.Joseph’s brothers were jealous of him,as children and even dogs are apt to be jealous of