21st Century Jews

Jews do have their own style of martial arts, in fact there is a guy in Israel who teaches what's left of them. Sometimes there are passing references to the unique martial arts of the ancient Jews in our texts.

For example we have this line from the song of songs: They all hold the sword, skilled in warfare; each one with his sword on his thigh because of fear at night.

What stands out about this is that the swords are not held on his waist but on his thigh. The sheath of the sword is strapped to the thigh. That also means the sword will be pulled out differntly from one that is hung around ones waste, which means as you pull the sword out in battle that the resulting sword motions will be different as well. Also from the line, one can infer that there are two swords one is being held and the other still in sheath strapped to the thigh. So Jewish warriors were skilled in fightign with two swords at once.

other examples of Jewish martial arts, not so subtle, is Jacob's wrestling moves which broke angels hip in a famous contest. The angel if I am not mistake however hurt one of Jacob's nerves in his leg so we have nerve pressure techniques as well