Thread by @jessnevins

By request—yes, someone actually asked me to do this!—a little discourse on the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

You remember: King Friday XIII, Henrietta Pussycat, X the Owl, Daniel Striped Tiger, Lady Elaine Fairchilde, and all the rest?

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Now, you may not remember this, but Big Bird appeared once in the Neighborhood; as Wiki says, “he came to deliver his entry to the ‘Draw the Neighborhood’ art contest.” ()
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(Sidenote: this is not the first crossover involving Mr. Rogers, as that video shows: Captain Kangaroo, Levar Burton, Arthur, the Wicked Witch of the West, etc. Sesame Street, of course, has had many *many* guest appearances. Where’s our Mr. Rogers’ Cinematic Universe?)

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As I’ve been writing about (), Big Bird is an avatar of Veðrfaðir, who sits atop Yggdrasil in the Norse myths. So what we’ve got going on in this episode of the Neighborhood is not just a crossover between children’s tv shows--

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but the symbolic meeting of two separate pantheons: the Norse and…well, let’s think about this.
Who did the Norse traders meet? They were and are justly famous as far-travelers who were a central part of the international trade network of the Viking Era (circa 750-1066).
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They went everywhere and traded everything. And they returned to Scandinavia with trade goods & evidence of their travels. Which is why archaeologists have found dirhams (coins) from Muslim lands in many digs in Scandinavia.

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& which is why there are Viking graves indicating that the buried converted to Islam or Buddhism. And why there were Viking colonies in Spain, and visits to North Africa, and an Ethiopian Viking, and Chinese trade goods in Scandinavia.
So who did Big Bird/Veðrfaðir meet?
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Jews. More specifically, the Radhanites.
(“The who, now?”)
Let’s take a dive into Jewish history. I’ll try to keep this simple.
First there was—no, let’s keep this brief. Jews went through cycles of independence and captivity/exile until the Romans conquered Judea, when--
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--hundreds of thousands of Jews were taken as slaves to Rome, from which they or their descendants emigrated all across the Roman & Persian Empire & Babylon.

By the early Middle Ages (circa 500 C.E.) there are Jews *everywhere*.

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Including working as merchants across the entire trans-Eurasian trade network, pictured here. By 870 you’ve got small and large Jewish populations from Cordoba to Kaifeng in China.

The year 870 is relevant, because that’s when Ibn Khordadbeh wrote about them.

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Ibn Khordadbeh was an Abbasid postmaster, chief of police, and spymaster. He wrote KITAB AL-MASALIK WAL-MAMALIK (“Book of Roads and Kingdoms”), a geography text that described the Muslim trading routes as of 870, and included descriptions of Japan, Korea, and China.

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Ibn Khordadbeh wrote about a set of Jewish merchants known as the “Radhanites” who traded from France to China, across the trading routes seen in the previous post.

Ibn Khordadbeh mentions “Radhan” as a canton on the eastern shore of the Tigris. However--

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Where “Radhan” might have been has been the source of a long scholarly controversy. Centuries of scholars put “Radhan” in France, where the Radhanites often sailed from. In the 1970s “Radhan” was more accurately placed in Iraq; “Radhan” was a canton of Baghdad.
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The Radhanites were described as sophisticated and multilingual—the image below is Ibn Khordadbeh’s description of them, taken from Wikipedia.

Not a lot is known about the Radhanites from this time, unfortunately. But we can say two things for certain:

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One, that the Radhanites carried on a substantial trade with the T’ang Chinese, especially for Chinese aromatics.
And two, that the Norse traded with the Radhanites, who were their source for the Chinese goods that made their way into Viking lands & Viking graves.
So…
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We’ve got Big Bird traveling to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Norse traders meet the Radhanites, probably in Baghdad (see the map in tweet #4). Veðrfaðir meets…

…who?

The angel Michael is the guardian of the Jewish people? But Michael’s a warrior angel.

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Veðrfaðir isn’t. What he would deserve would be a messenger, not a warrior. Fortunately, in the Tanakh (canonical Hebrew scripture), messenger angels often appear. They are nameless and are disguised as ordinary humans, so Big Bird/Veðrfaðir’s angel might look like this:

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Yes, Dr. Teeth is canonically Jewish. More importantly, he and the rest of the Electric Maynem always seemed to be from a different reality than the rest of the Muppets. It makes sense to me that they’re actually messenger angels set to watch over the Muppets.

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Or to interact with Big Bird/Veðrfaðir. Which would be problematic, because he’s one of the pantheon of gods worshiped by idolators. (Norse as idolators: lots of statues & icons & graven images of the Aesir survive. They were an essential part of Norse services).

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(There were also things like the niðstang, the “nithing poles”--horses’ heads put at the front entrance of Norse houses as an apotropaic device, which is idolatry, just of a different kind than the worship of the idols of gods and goddesses).

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(DO NOT Google Image search for “niðstang” or “nithing pole.” Trust me on this one.)
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For the Radhanites & the messenger angels, interacting with Big Bird/Veðrfaðir—trading with the Norse—is a very bad idea. Interacting with idolators is a sin, per the halakha. In fact, the Norse routinely violate five of the Seven Laws of Noah (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Law…).
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(For that matter, Vikings—at least the writers of the eddas, poems, and sagas—weren’t fond of Jews. See Richard Cole’s “One or Several Jews? The Jewish massed body in Old Norse literature,” postmedieval, 5:346-358 (2014). & Snorri was a big Jew-hater, we all knew that).
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I’ve made a mistake, though, haven’t I? Dr. Teeth isn’t a part of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. So I think Big Bird/Veðrfaðir meets the messenger angel whose avatar canonically meets Big Bird in this episode: Henrietta Pussycat.

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Which of course prompts me to wonder who the rest of the puppets and muppets in the Neighborhood are angels. I think almost all of them are—but Jewish angels are largely nameless, with only the Talmudic archangels being named. Well, and a few others.

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So Gabriel, of the tribe of Judah and defender of the Jewish people with Michael, is represented by X the Owl. Owls will mess you up, and don’t let the gentle X fool you into thinking he’s safe. Plus his name is “X,” so he has to be a badass.

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Michael, the warrior angel, of the tribe of Reuben, is as mentioned Dr. Teeth. Uriel, of the tribe of Dan (one of the “lost tribes”), destroyer and poet. *Clearly* their Neighborhood avatar is Daniel Stripèd Tiger.

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And Raphael, of the tribe of Ephraim, healer and herald. Their Neighborhood representative is Queen Sara Saturday.

“Ah!” I hear you triumphantly crowing, “You’re leaving out the most important—”

No, I’m not, smart guy.

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Metatron, the second power in Heaven (per Hagigah 15a), the “lesser YHVH” (per the Sefer Hakhalot), is *clearly* Mr. Rogers. Can there be any question of that?

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And Samael, the angel of death, the commander of the satans, is none other than Lady Elaine Fairchilde. That one is *obvious*.

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Which leaves only King Friday XIII. Vain, imperious, temperamental, and resistant to change, though he is open-minded enough to listen when he’s been wrong. I think he’s the representative of the Radhanites themselves, and by extension all of humanity.
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Literally, we’ve got Norse traders (personified by Big Bird/Veðrfaðir) meeting Radhanite traders (personified by the muppets and puppets of the Neighborhood, who are also various angels) and engaging in trade. Figuratively, though, what does this mean?
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I think what it represents figuratively/symbolically is Israel, which is to say the Jewish people, teaching the goyim, in this case the Norse traders. After all, isn’t there (theapolloniantransmission.com/2018/12/26/nor…) some evidence for Jewish influence on Norse myth?

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Certainly there’s evidence for a Christian influence on Norse myth before the Christianization of the North: Baldr as Christ figure, Snorri’s addition of a post-Ragnarǫk heavenly place to the Norse myths, and so on. Why not the Jews?

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Allegorically—which is to say, interpreting all this as representing a hidden meaning with moral or political significance—Big Bird traveling to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe is a prophecy and a warning: to the viewers, to the Norse, and to the Radhanites.

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The prophetic warning to the Radhanites is of the necessity of a two-way exchange between the goyim and the Radhanites, as trade between them works both ways. The Radhanites, you see, would eventually disappear en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radhanite…

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The two-way exchange of trade stands in for the assimilationism debate, which in this case is symbolic: had the Radhanites assimilated with their surroundings, they might not have vanished so thoroughly, but instead survived as they did in Moorish Spain.

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The warning works in reverse for the Norse: had they been more like the Radhanites, more exclusionary and more protective of their religion, Christianization might not have dealt them the deathblow it did.

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And for the (mostly white) viewers of the Neighborhood, it’s a warning to be open to learning from others, so that the future—our present—would not be so filled with racism & xenophobia & prejudice.

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Anagogically—that is, the interpretation of the events that detects allusions to the afterlife—the meaning is clear: the afterlife of the Radhanites and all Jews of the Viking Era is ultimately Israel (the country).

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And—but would you look at that! The clock’s struck half past arguing-about-Israel-is-a-fool’s-errand.

Instead, I’ll quote the Great Eagle on Ibn Khordadbeh.

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“’They transport from the West eunuchs, female slaves, boys, brocade, castor, marten, and other furs, and swords.’

“What did they transport? Themselves. There is in each Radhanite, which is to say each Israelite, the eunuch, the very pure of heart, who—

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Who does not desire even the little that the body needs. There are female slaves, which is to say men and women who are ruled by their appetites and who will never be satisfied from pursuing their desires, as those women who are enslaved to the desires of the body are not.
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There are boys, those creatures in men’s bodies who have not yet put away childish wants & desires and had their spiritual and moral bar mitzvah. There is brocade, those men and women whose souls are shot through with bright colors & whose behavior is pleasing to the eye.
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There is castor, from which we make the oil for our lamps; we call some men and women castor because they light the way for others. There is marten, whose furs warm us; we call some men and women martens because like the fur they warm us through their words and deeds.

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And there are swords, because in all times and all places the people must not only know to defend themselves but must be able to defend themselves.

But what Israelite does not carry with him are the very thing which Deuteronomy 28:9 commands us to do:

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“And you shall walk in His ways.” Our sages taught the following explanation of this mitzvah: Just as He is called “Gracious,” you shall be gracious. Just as He is called “Merciful,” you shall be merciful. Just as He is called “Holy,” you shall be holy.

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But where in all the Radhan is graciousness, mercy, holiness? For the Radhanites bring themselves everywhere—but bring others with them. Eunuchs. Boys. Female slaves. Genesis 18:19 states “for I have known Him so that he will command his descendants:

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To keep the path of God.” Is *this* the path of God? To trade in human flesh and souls? To oppress those in your power, the helpless and abused? To torture and maim? To expand your lands at the expense of your others, and to keep them in squalor and pain?

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Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. The Lord was not pleased with the Radhanites and made them disappear from their Radhan—whether working through others or directly is not known but irrelevant. They disappeared and are no more, just as

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The Amalekites, the Canaanites, the Midianites, and the Moabites are no more. Beware, those who stray from the path of God, for you too will he make vanish.”

Next time: we return to Sesame Street and learn more about the Æsir muppets.

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