Faces Of The Lost Tribes
Saga Of The Lost Tribes Of Israel
To Moses We did
give Nine Clear Signs:
As the Children of Israel: when he came to them, Pharaoh
said to him:
"O Moses! I consider thee, indeed, to have been worked upon
by sorcery!
Moses said,
"Thou knowest well that these things have been sent down by
none,
But the Lord of the heavens and the earth as eye-opening
evidence:
And I consider thee indeed, O Pharaoh, to be one doomed to
destruction!"
So he resolved to remove them from the face of the earth:
But We did drown him and all who were with him.
And We said thereafter to the Children of Israel,
"Dwell securely in the land (of promise)":
But when the second of the warnings came to pass,
We gather you together in a mingled crowd.
(2314)
surah 17:101-104
Al Isra' (The Night Journey)
"2314. Some
commentators understand the second warning to be the Day of
Judgment, the Promise of the Hereafter."
Abdullah Yusuf
Ali, The Holy Qur'an
(Abdullah Yusuf
Ali, The Holy Qur'an, p. 703.)
"And it shall
come to pass on that day, that the Lord will set His hand
again the second time to recover the remnant of His people,
that shall remain from Assyria, and from Egypt and from
Pathros and from Kush and from Eklam and from Shinar and
from Hamath and from the islands of the sea. And he shall
set up an ensign for the nations and will assemble the
dispersed of Israel and gather together the scattered of
Judah from the four corners of the Earth."
"THE SAGA OF THE LOST TRIBES
Descendants alive today, filmmaker says . . .
Lila Sarick, The Globe and Mail
The search for
the lost tribes of Israel, dispersed nearly 3,000 years ago,
is a romantic quest that has mesmerized explorers and
adventurers for hundreds of years. The stakes are
tantalizing. Not only is there the thrill of finding people
alive today who are the descendants of those who apparently
disappeared without a trace, but according to biblical
prophecy, their reappearance signals the approach of a
Messianic time.
The latest bid
to separate the fact from the myth comes from award winning
documentary filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici in
Quest for the Lost Tribes of Israel. . . .
Quest documents
his travels to Tunisia, Afghanistan, Burma and Uzbekistan.
In every place, he found evidence that not only had the Jews
been there thousands of years ago but that people still had
Israelites names, practices and an Israel consciousness.
"I didn't
approach this differently than any other story. I was quite
prepared to report there ain't nothing here," Mr. Jacobovici
said in an interview. "If I land in Afghanistan and the
Pathans say they're Israelites, it's my job to report it
honestly."
The quest for
the lost tribes was one of the three great mysteries pursued
by Western adventurers through the ages, along with the
search for the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant.
Of the three,
the story of the tribes is the most clearly detailed in the
historical narratives of the Bible and other texts.
During the time
of King Solomon, 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel lived in an
area north of Jerusalem in the Kingdom of Israel, while the
tribes of Judah and Benjamin inhabited the southern Kingdom
of Judah.
With the
Assyrian conquest of the Kingdom of Israel in 721 BC, the 10
tribes were captured, enslaved and deported. They vanished.
The tribes of Judah and Benjamin were captured and exiled to
Babylon in 586 BC. They were freed 50 years later and
allowed to return to Israel.
Historians assume the 10 tribes were not truly lost but
assimilated into the larger society. . .
His quest began
inadvertently when he made a film about the Ethiopian Jews.
Before they were airlifted to safety in the mid-1980s,
Israeli chief rabbi declared they were descendants of the
tribe of Dan.
Several years
later, Mr. Jacobovici heard about an Israel rabbi claiming
to have discovered Jews on the Burmese-Indian border. These
people, who called themselves Menmasseh, had ancient songs
about crossing the sea with the water parting before them
and following a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day,
stories strikingly similar to the biblical account of the
exodus from Egypt. . . .
"If the chief
rabbis are right and the Ethiopians are Dan, and if this
rabbi is right and these people are Menashe, could this be
happening?" Mr. Jacobovici recalled thinking. "If this
prophecy were to unfold, what do you think it would look
like? Would the tribes come on camel back from heaven? . . .
Or do they get on boats and airplanes, just regular people
buying tickets going to their travel agent and suddenly
prophecy can unfold on the nightly news and we don't even
know it?"
His quixotic
trek took him to Afghanistan, where he found hill-dwelling
people who belonged to the tribes of Shinwari, Efredi,
Reuveni and Gadun, corruptions, he believes, of the tribal
names of Simeon, Ephraim, Reuven and Gad.
They also call
themselves children of Isaac, an odd appellation for Muslims
who would more likely to follow the tradition of Ishmael,
the father of the Arab nation, not his Jewish half-brother
Isaac. . . .
In Central Asia,
where Mr. Jacobovici found treasure troves of objects with
Hebrew and Aramaic writing hidden away in museum basements,
there was, he believes a deliberate effort by the former
Soviet Union to suppress the history of the tribes.
In other
instances, Western myopia means that dangerous and
inaccessible places have simply fallen off our radar.
Volumes are written about the Jewish communities of Poland,
but next to nothing is documented about the Afghani
communities, which are hundreds, if not thousands, of years
older.
Citing his
journalist's objectivity, Mr. Jacobovici declines to
speculate on the biblical prophecy that the discovery of the
tribes is the first step toward the end of days.
"All I know is,
I went out to look for a story and I came home with the
goods," he said.
But for
believers, the idea "we may be living in times of ultimate
reunification of families is mind-blowing in a very positive
way," he said. "The idea that biblical prophecy is unfolding
in the nightly news is wow for people." "
