Exile and the Lost Tribes of Israel | The Jewish Story

November 6, 2021 | 15 Comments »

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  1. @ Edgar

    Take a look at this : https://hebrewnations.com/

    Yair Davidy has done a lot of research. Not everything is a proven fact, but enough to reason out that the LOST tribes do exist regardless of what you call them or where one thinks they are. If this does not change your mind about the lost tribes Nothing will. Not even HaShem.

  3. TED-

    I didn’t know that there are any Jews in Afghanistan. I thought they were all in Israel.

    I read a couple of books about them maybe 15 years or more ago, I was living in Richmond then a suburb of Vancouver. close to my son. I used to go to the library, a 2 mile walk, and bring home a couple of shopping bags full of miscellaneous books. Accidentally, there were a couple which were about the. Afghan Jews and where they came from. Also one by Ernest Renan, (I kept that one, and paid the library for it as being lost). But the Afghan Jews were definitely Jews, according to their DNA. Even some of the |Moslem Pashtuns as well. so they are a mixed lot. Impossible not to be when surrounded by non Jews. Bound to be some assimilation.

    It seems that there were some old tales that they escaped from Israel at the time of Nebuchanezzar, Another theory was that sometime in the first-8-9th centuries, they fled from Iran because of Muslim conversion or the sword. I’m not sure exactly as to the century, because Muslimism, when it broke out from Eastern Desert behind Jordan, and the Arabian Peninsula, swept everywhere like wildfire.

    If they were refugees from Nebuchadnezzar, who knows what Tribes they were from, becausn I strongly believe that Tribal independence was already long lost, as we know that nearly every tribal area was conquered by Assyria in the 8th century BCE. amd the Jews transported away from Israel. This happened more thanonce0a we know.
    I don’t know much about these matters unless I’ve picked up a book and with my interest aroused read several more, also using a little logic. fo my self.

    It seems that conquerors had a policy of exchanging populations and the Assyrian King, shoved into Israel a group of other conquered peoples to curb unrest and rebellion. Exchanging populations. Those transported to Israel inter-married with the remaining Jews and formed the Samaritans, with whom Judaism prevailed, although it was THEIR concept of it.

    In the 19th century, the Turks did the same thing to Israel, bringing foreigners from all over into |Israel.

    I’m sure you know 90% of this at least, and also not everything I posted is as accurate as it could be. So I am making my excuses in advance.

    Memory can be tricky sometimes.

  5. The Tribes of Benjamin, Dan, (possibly Simeon), and one other were assimilated into the Tribe of Yahuda, not fo forget that the Tribe of Levi was scattered amongst all the Tribes, to act as their priests and religious teachers, ,showing-if at all neccessary, that the tale of the 10 Lost Tribes was …..just an old folks yarn.

    AND……according to our history, there were the Tribes of Manassah and Ephraim (the sons of Joseph) . This actually makes THIRTEEN Tribes. And , except for Yahuda, they were taken into exile by the Assyrians about -720

    And that was THAT.

  6. TED-

    It’s really hard to believe that you didn’t know. There was a lot of publicity about it for quite a while. But if you say so, I certainly believe you.

    In the highlighted box there is a very obvious flaw. For the sake of the “argument” let’s assume that they really were a fleeing group of Jews from the tribe of Menashe large enough to fight and survive against unimaginable odds. They had ONE Torah scroll, with the ever present chance of losing it or having some accident befall it.

    How was it that there was not, amongst the obviously large group, a single scribe. Having only ONE scroll would impel them to have it copied several times. They were all religious Jews…could none of them write?????

    And most experts agree that the Torah Scroll was put together around -400. The “B’nei Menashe” are reputed (by themselves) to have departed centuries before that.

    And was their (imaginary) scroll the TaNaCh or The Mosaic Torah -the Chumash….??

  7. @Edgar

    Thanks. I wasn’t aware of that. I relied on what was recently reported in the article about theM making aliya,

    Throughout their exile, and even after their one copy of the written Torah was lost, the Bnei Menashe have continued to observe Jewish traditions, including the Sabbath, keeping kosher, celebrating the festivals, following family purity laws, and remembering the Exodus from Egypt.

  8. TED-

    G’wan ..You’re just trying to get me going….I’d forgotten all about THEM. I don’t need to explain them. Wiki does a reasonable job, detailing the Mizos as previously cannibals, then animists, then a splinter group to a meagre Christianity and about 50 years or so ago; this same small splinter group, -one village I seem to recall -of about 4-5000 people, followed the Headman who…..HAD A DREAM…..

    Which reminds me of the Israeli Black Hebrews…I’d better stop…….!!

    A little vignette…in the US there was/is a Black Hebrew boxer named Zab Judah who always wore a Magen David on his trunks. Before each fight he would kneel in his corner and pray for victory ending up with thanking “the Lord Jesus”.:…

    I seem to recall that Mizoram (and Manipoor) are as far away (NE) from India’s major populations as is possible to be, isolated really, right on the borders of Burma-or is it Bangladesh, that the “B’nei Menashe” are ethnically MIZOs, and that there are several millions of them on the other side of the border, who are definitely NOT Jews. but identical in every genetical way.

    What the Menashe folks are NOT- is ethnically Jews, . Although I suppose they went to their local City Hall (Freund paying) and by “deed poll”, became full fledged certified ,long lost Jews.

    That lunatic Freund has nothing better to do than waste his millions on totally genetically alien groups who have suddenly, around the same time as Israel’s burgeoning prosperity, decided…yes, decided that they were “lost” Jews. They look up some Jewish practices, begin to practice them-sort of- (baigels and lox) and “HEY PRESTO” want nothing more than to re-unite with their (prosperous) brethren in Israel. Freund get’s his bought-and-paid-for Rabbi, to decide they are Jews , ducks them in a mikvah and …………..

    COME ON TED….!!

  10. Except that governments don’t “reign” I would not be surprised if some or even all of your humourous tongue-in-cheek speculation turned out to be right.

    As for bitcoin, I’ve seen reports that Trudeau recommends it very highly and it makes instant millionaires. That alone makes me avoid it like the plague. I can just see him, like “The Pied Piper” dancing to the bank at the head of a procession of half-wits, his mental equals.

  11. nearly all of them stayed there, and only a small remnant returned

    Good observation, Edgar. The US, of course, is the present-day counterpart of “Babylon”; and the Jews here are equally unlikely to return to Jerusalem (other than to fight against it).

    There has been lots of screed written about the “lost tribes” over the millennia. Your guess is as good as mine, how this will turn out. A very good possibility, is that some clever entrepreneur will sell membership in the tribes, exchanging bitcoin, social credit points or vaccination status for a chit acceptable to the reigning government in Jerusalem.

  12. WE- must also remember that of the People transferred to Babylon, nearly all of them stayed there, and only a small remnant returned most of them a second generation. I would strongly assume that by this time, the distinctions between the Tribes had been mostly erased except for folklore stories.

    Perhaps a few kept a written record of their lineage. But it is a fact that even in the Torah, there are about 3 different lists of the High Priests, differing in quite a few instances. Records in a country consumed for hundreds of years with chaotic wars andutter destructions, one after the other, did not tend to make for a clear cut record of anything.

    Don’t we find almost every day, by archaeological discoveries, many things which contradict our “historical” records, showing thet much was guesswork. Also of course there are many other discoveries which show that in those instances the Torah account was accurate.

    Pie in the sky is all very well, but the facts on the ground are often profoundly different. Many of our more religious “historians\’ gloss over these inconvenient facts.

    Tzvi-Gad’s comment is an example of devout belief based on little more than faith. Not a bad thin, but not MY own concepts.

  15. There were NO Ten Tribes lost. That is a fiction that has grown from I don’t know where. A Goyisher story I believe.

    LONG before Roman times, several adjacent tribal territories had amalgamated with the largest and most powerful, which held Jerusalem as it’s capital. Look at the map depicting the original tribal limits and you will be able to work it out, as well as what the Torah itself says.

    That was Yehudah…..