"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." "
The Globe and Mail, Friday, November 20, 1998