NEWS FEATURE: Interest in lost Jewish tribes picks up as millenium approaches

c. 1998 Religion News Service JERUSALEM _ For nearly three millenniums the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel have exerted a powerful pull on the popular imagination. Lost to history some 2,700 years ago after being conquered by Assyria, the tribes are enshrined in biblical prophecy and celebrated in religious folklore. The lost tribes were those […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ For nearly three millenniums the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel have exerted a powerful pull on the popular imagination. Lost to history some 2,700 years ago after being conquered by Assyria, the tribes are enshrined in biblical prophecy and celebrated in religious folklore.

The lost tribes were those tribes _ Reuben, Simon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Ephraim and Manasseh _ who constituted the ancient kingdom of Israel, which had split off from the kingdom of Judea to its south following King Solomon’s death.


While the tribes are generally thought to have assimilated into Assyrian culture, various biblical passages hint at their continued existence and eventual reunification with the Jewish mainstream.

Over the centuries, people as disparate as American Indians, the Japanese and even the British have been identified with the lost tribes, though scholars widely discount such claims. Among both believing Jews and Christians, the”return”of the lost tribes is viewed as one sign of the imminent coming of the messianic era.

With the approaching millennium, a new interest in the subject has surfaced among some religiously motivated researchers, who say ethnic groups in remote corners of Africa and Asia could be descendant from the lost tribes.

Still, most researchers reject the notion that groups such as the Shinlung people of the India-Myanamar (Burma) border region, the Lemba of central and southern Africa, the Pathan tribesman of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, or the Chiangmin of China have any connection to the lost tribes.

Shalva Weil, a professor of anthropology at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University who has studied the phenomenon, said virtually all claims of descent from the lost tribes are as valid, or invalid, as the claim that the Danes derive from the tribe of Dan _ interesting, even fascinating, but scientifically unprovable.

Also highly skeptical are the Israeli government, which is fearful of being overwhelmed by a flood of Third World immigrants, and Israel’s Orthodox Jewish rabbinical establishment, which maintains strict standards for bestowing Jewish identity.”Our experience is that you start off talking about a small number of people and before you known it you have an endless line,”Rafi Cohen, director of the Israeli Interior Ministry’s population registry, told a Jerusalem newspaper.”We are certainly afraid of a flood.” On the remote India-Burma border live 1 million members of the Shinlung tribe, all but a handful of whom are Christians as a result of intensive Christian missionizing in the 19th century. But the Shinlung regard themselves as a remnant of the tribe of Manasseh.

In their traditional songs, these”B’nai Menashe,”as they call themselves _ Children of Manasseh _ sing of”crossing over the Red Sea, running dry before us.”They wear a fringed garment somewhat similar to the Jewish prayer shawl and, like traditional Jews, ritually slaughter their animals and do not eat milk and meat together.


Moreover, the name Manasseh appears in many of the tribe’s traditional songs and stories.

Sarah Olanoff, a Shinlung who now lives in Israel with her American-born husband, said that in times of crisis, Shinlungs go outdoors and ritually chant,”We are the tribe of Manasseh. We are secure.” Only about 4,000 Shinlung continue to practice what they believe is Judaism. In the last 20 years, with the help of a small Israeli organization called Amishav (“My people returns”), about 300 Shinlung have resettled in Israel and undergone formal conversion to mainstream Judaism.

Jerusalem Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail, Amishav’s founder and director, who has spent 37 years searching for lost tribes, noted the Shinlung arrive in Israel with no money, are not Jewish according to Orthodox standards, know no Hebrew and are unfamiliar with the norms of Western society.

If thousands came at once,”where would we put them?”he said, noting it costs about $3,000 to bring one Shinlung to Israel.”What would we do with them? … We have to do it carefully and bring people slowly.” The Talmud, the authoritative body of Jewish law and tradition, divides the lost tribes into three categories: those still living as Jews, those living as non-Jews who exhibit”signs”of Jewish origin, and those lost for all time.

In recent years, two groups _ in Ethiopia and India _ have been acknowledged by Israel’s rabbinic authorities as descendents of the lost tribes, in part because they had continued to live as Jews.

The Ethiopian Jews, who call themselves”Beta Israel,”or the House of Israel, were separated from the main body of Judaism more than 2,000 years ago. Having never developed the Talmudic literature that elsewhere became the basis of Jewish life in exile, they had no knowledge of Hanukkah and other post-biblical Jewish holidays and retained the Torah only in an Ethiopian language, not in Hebrew. Yet they continued to live as Jews, according to their understanding.

Certified by rabbinical authorities as a remnant of the tribe of Dan, 50,000 Ethiopians now live in Israel.


The”Bene Israel,”or Children of Israel, are a community of Jews who lived in India. According to their tradition, their ancestors fled persecutions by the Syrian-Greek king Antiochus Ephiphanes about 175 B.C., not long after the first Hanukkah.

Although they adopted the language and dress of the surrounding Hindu population, they adhered to Jewish dietary laws, the Sabbath and the rite of circumcision, and retained knowledge of some basic Jewish prayers.

The majority of the community, about 13,000 individuals, immigrated to Israel during the two decades after the state’s establishment in 1948.

But an additional 20 million Third World peoples in Asia and Africa _ none of them Jewish by current definition _ also exhibit signs of ancient communal traditions hinting at a Jewish past.

For example, members of the almost 300,000-strong Lemba tribe of central and southern Africa eat no pork or animals that have died on their own, practice circumcision, do not mix milk and meat and have complex personal purity rituals _ all of which suggests antecedents in the Hebrew Bible.

Many who were converted to Christianity now say they want to”return”to their Jewish roots. Others are Muslim but call themselves”Israelites who believe in Muhammad.”They claim kinship with the Ethiopian Jews and descent from the tribe of Dan, but can provide no proof.


Then there are the 18-million Pathan tribespeople of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India who trace some of their observances and beliefs to Judaism. Muslims, they use names, observe rituals such as male circumcision on the eighth day, and have some tribal legends pointing to ancient Jewish origins. Their legal code also bears some similarities to Jewish law.

Another group is the Chinese Chiangmin tribe, which makes no claim of Jewish descent yet worships one God, whom they call Ja’wa _ similar to YHWH, the Tetragammon Jews consider God’s name but traditionally never pronounce.

Other Chiangmin customs mirroring Jewish practices are immersion in ritual baths, having 12 flags to represent themselves, offering animal sacrifices and observing the biblical practice of a childless widow marrying her deceased husband’s brother.

Are the Lemba, Pathans, Chiangmin and Shinlung people exhibiting signs of Jewish origin in accordance with the Talmud? Amishav’s Avichail is convinced the Shinlung and Pathans, at least, could be descendents of the lost tribes.”Not every individual”among them is of Israelite descent,”he said.”But when we look at all the signs, I am convinced that they are part of our past.”

DEA END MARGOLIS

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