 |
 |
||||||||||
 |
Back to Question of the Week Gavriel |
||||||||||
|
 |
A: I'm sorry to tell you this, Gavriel, but the first part is basically true. The only tribal identities that have definitely survived the ravages of time are Judah and Levi. Just to make the matter a bit confusing, in the setting of those synagogues that maintain these distinctions, the tribe of Judah is now often referred to as Yisra'el. (You'll see how confusing this actually is in a little while.) And the tribe of Levi is subdivided into two categories (as it already was in Biblical times); namely the priests, called kohanim, and the rest of the tribe, called Levites or just Levi. So what happened to those ten other tribes? Well, in the good old days of Kings David and Solomon (10th century B.C.E.), there were already three dominant tribes: Judah, Ephraim, and Levi. (Levi wasn't necessarily dominant in numbers, but because of their association with the central Temple in Jerusalem, they were important.) And all the tribes were under the rule of a single King. But that didn't last very long. After the death of Solomon, the northern tribes, led by Ephraim, seceded from the Davidic monarchy and formed their own kingdom. Already in the Bible, the tribes of Judah and Ephraim were so dominant that the two kingdoms were sometimes called by the names of those two tribes. Which is to say, that already then, many of the smaller tribes were apparently losing their separate identities. Oh, and the northern kingdom dominated by Ephraim was also sometimes called "Yisra'el." So in the Bible, Yisra'el often referred specifically to the non-Judah tribes, while today it means Judah. Go figure. Anyway, in 722 B.C.E., the northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrian empire. Of the inhabitants of Ephraim and the other northern tribes, some remained in the same place as conquered peoples, some fled to the Kingdom of Judah, and some were exiled into the Assyrian empire. Now here's where a bit of controversy and a lot of nonsense enters the story. If you ask me (which you did), I'd say that those who fled south were absorbed into the identity of Judah. (As were members of the smaller southern tribes.) Therefore, those of us who are descended from "Judah" are likely also descended from northern refugees from the other tribes. And the rest of them simply lost their Israelite identity. They assimilated or died out, which is what has happened to most peoples in the course of history. So, in my opinion, the "ten lost tribes" are "lost" in the same sense that the Canaanites and the Goths and the Druids are "lost." They just disappeared, as cultural groups tend to do. Especially groups with no land and no political sovereignty. But some people aren't satisfied with the miracle that Judah and Levi have survived to this day in spite of exile, landlessness, oppression, and more than one outright attempt at genocide. They're gluttons for miracles and want the other ten tribes to have survived, too. Or perhaps they're motivated by Jewish millennial longings for a messianic restoration of the good old days of three thousand years ago with twelve tribes under the sovereignty of one king (certainly not a democratically elected Kenesset!). Or maybe they're afraid that you and I won't believe in the Bible if we don't look around and see a couple Zebulonites at the corner store. (More likely, they hope we'll believe in their version of Bible interpretation if they can show us a Zebulonite or two in Mongolia or someplace.) Or they just allow the magic and mystery of the possibility of finding hidden remnants of our ancient brethren in the far corners of the earth to overwhelm their common sense. (There is one group of people that is very clearly related to the Jews, with a very similar Torah and language, lives in the land of Israel, is quite ancient, and does not have a settled scientific explanation of their origins: the Samaritans. If you want to find ancient brethren and sistren, I'd start with them.) And those are just the Jewish reasons for this stuff. The non-Jews have their own set of mishigas, including, but not limited to, an anti-semitic need to undermine our Jewish identity and authenticity. So they (both Jews and non-Jews) "discover" all sorts of preposterous locations for the "ten lost tribes." I mean, I recently saw a book claiming that Moses and Jesus lived in India, and offering as evidence that a handful of place-names in India bear a vague similarity (of course with no linguistically sensible pattern) to place-names in the Bible. Come on! So, Gavriel, if you want to know how to respond, here's my advice: Given what people may have invested in theses theories (Truth and the Messiah may be riding on it!), I would politely say, "That's very interesting. How 'bout them [fill in your favorite sports team here]?!" written by Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz |
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||
 |
[Home] [Lobby] [Library] [Classroom] [Office] [Lounge] [Gift Shop] Kolel: The Adult Centre for Liberal Jewish Learning
|
 |
|
|
|||
