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Hundreds of members of the Bnei Menashe community in India over the weekend celebrated the start of the weeklong Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, which began last Thursday night. The main candle-lighting event was staged in Churachandpur, in the southwestern corner of the Indian state of Manipur. During the ceremony, members of the community prayed for Israel’s soldiers fighting in Gaza, and the safe return of the hostages still being held by Hamas. The Bnei Menashe, or sons of Manasseh, is a community of Indian Jews from various Tibeto-Burmese ethnic groups from the border of India and Burma. They claim descent...

The rectangular building, measuring about 70 feet by 20 feet, was composed of two rooms, each about 650 square feet, the Oleg Deripaska's Volnoe Delo Foundation said. It was destroyed in the middle of the sixth century when tribes attacked and burned down the city. The synagogue also offers experts insight into Judaism practice during the religion's "Second Temple Period," experts with the foundation said. From 516 B.C. until 70 A.D., most Jewish rituals took place at the second Jerusalem Temple, so it was rare for synagogues to be built elsewhere. Kuban is in southeast Russia, bordering the Black Sea.

Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue, the first-ever house of prayer in Israel for Bnei Menashe immigrants from India, was inaugurated last Shabbat (Nov. 19) in the northern Israeli city of Nof Hagalil. About 150 worshippers, most of them members of the community, attended. ..... “The opening of the first synagogue in Israel for the Bnei Menashe is an historic and exciting event. Just like any other Jewish community, the Bnei Menashe have their own unique customs, traditions and hymns, which are worthy of preservation. We are delighted that the Bnei Menashe immigrants will now have a synagogue of their own in which...

Archaeologists excavating the site of Rabana-Merquly, suggest that the mountain fortress could be the lost city of Natounia.Rabana-Merquly is located on the flanks of Mt. Piramagrun in the Zagros Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. The fortress consists of nearly 4km of fortifications, in addition to two smaller settlements, for which Rabana-Merquly is named.Rabana-Merquly is located on the eastern border of Adiabene, which was governed by the kings of a local dynasty dependent on the Parthians. It may have been used, among other things, to conduct trade with the pastoral tribes in the back country, maintain diplomatic relations, or exert military pressure.Within...

Assyria conquered the kingdom of Israel, and deported many of the residents of Samaria and its surroundings to other Assyrian provinces, and brought deportees from other conquered territories to Samaria to take their place. Excavations at Tel Hadid, near Lod in Israel, have unearthed material remains that contribute to our understanding of these transformative years. Deportation of residents from rebellious vassal states was one of the ways Mesopotamian empires maintained control of their territory. This practice was devised, and largely used, during the Neo-Assyrian Empire... Mass deportations and resettlement of conquered peoples served as a fundamental tool of statecraft, economic...

The Lord’s Judgment Will Not Be Delayed Forever – A Meditation on the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel Msgr. Charles Pope • June 20, 2016 • This post is a kind of follow-on from yesterday’s post as we read the stories of wickedness in ancient Israel and what God did about it.The first reading from Monday’s Mass (of the 12th week of the year) describes a crucial, crushing moment in the history of ancient Israel: the loss of the Northern Kingdom and the destruction and deportation of what came to be called the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.Shalmaneser, king...

During the 1990s, Welsh professor Tudor Parfitt, known around the world as the “British Indiana Jones,” discovered evidence that the Lemba tribe in central Zimbabwe and northern South Africa has Jewish roots. He identified a genetic element in the male chromosomes of the tribe that comes from the Kohanim, the Jewish priestly line. This year, Dr. Parfitt published his latest of 25 books, Black Jews in Africa and the Americas. He also joined the faculty of Florida International University (FIU) and led an expedition to Papua New Guinea to visit the Gogodala tribe, which like the Lemba claims to be...

For archaeologists and historians interested in the ancient politics, religion and language of the Indian subcontinent, two UCLA professors and their student researchers have creatively pinpointed sites that are likely to yield valuable transcriptions of the proclamations of Ashoka, the Buddhist king of northern India's Mauryan Dynasty who ruled from 304 B.C. to 232 B.C. In a study published this week in Current Science, archaeologist Monica Smith and geographer Thomas Gillespie identified 121 possible locations of what are known as Ashoka's "edicts." First they isolated shared features of 29 known locations of Ashokan edicts, which were found carved into natural...

TAU–Cornell collaboration provides insight into unique community whose history is largely unknown A new study from Tel Aviv University, Cornell University and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine reveals genetic proof of the Jewish roots of the Bene Israel community in the western part of India. They have always considered themselves Jewish. "Almost nothing is known about the Bene Israel community before the 18th century, when Cochin Jews and later Christian missionaries first came into contact with it," says first author Yedael Waldman of both TAU's Department of Molecular Microbiology and Cornell's Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology. "Beyond...

ERRIADH, TUNISIA // In 586BC the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar laid waste to Jerusalem, inadvertently sowing seeds for a Jewish haven across the sea that has outlived his realm by 25 centuries and counting. Legend tells that refugees fled to the Tunisian island of Djerba, carrying a block from the ruined Temple of Solomon. Today it lies beneath the El Ghriba synagogue, the cornerstone of a thriving Jewish community. And after decades of Jewish exodus from Arab countries, that community is growing. For western holidaymakers, Djerba is a strip of lavish resorts along a sandy Mediterranean coast. For Tunisians, it also...

Of all the dozens and dozens of signs pointing to the imminent return of Christ, two clearly stand above the rest: 1. In a technical sense the Gospel has now been preached to every nation on earth in fulfillment of Mark 13:10.  Some scholars argue that we must interpret the Greek word for "nation" strictly as an individual ethnic group, but even if that is the correct interpretation, this prophecy was likely fulfilled sometime toward the end of the 20th century or the beginning of this century.  There are certainly still several isolated tribes where the Gospel has not been preached,...

Tuesday, May 10, 2016 Who Can Count the Dust of Jacob Posted by Daniel Greenfield "Who can count the dust of Jacob or number the seed of Israel." Numbers 23:10 The sun sets above the hills. The siren cries out and on the busy highways that wend among the hills, the traffic stops, the people stop, and a moment of silence comes to a noisy country. Flags fly at half mast, the torch of remembrance is lit, memorial candles are held in shaking hands and the country's own version of the Flanders Field poppy, the Red Everlasting daisy, dubbed Blood...

A 2500 year old Persian treasure dubbed the world's 'first bill of human rights' has been branded a piece of shameless 'propaganda' by German historians. The Cyrus cylinder, which is held by the British Museum, is a legacy of Cyrus the Great - the Persian emperor famed for freeing the Jews of ancient Babylon after conquering the city in 539 BC. A copy of the cylinder, which is covered in cuneiform script supposed to detail the ancient charter of rights, also hangs next to the Security Council Chamber in the United Nations headquarters in New York, where it is held...

They have adopted mehendi and haldi ceremonies from Indian weddings, they speak fluent Marathi and many of them have enrolled their children in Marathi medium schools. As fond as they are of their adoptive home, the 250-odd members of the Bene Israel community in the city were pleasantly surprised to open the Sunday Times of India on July 21. An STOI exclusive report highlighted the results of four-year-long DNA tests in London which confirms their genetical link to the "original children of Israel" (literal translation of Bene Israel), who are said to have migrated to this country 2,000 years ago....

Results could shed light on origins of various diseasesJune 3, 2010 — (BRONX, NY) — Using sophisticated genetic analysis, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and New York University School of Medicine have published a study indicating that Jews are a widely dispersed people with a common ancestry. Jews from different regions of the world were found to share many genetic traits that are distinct from other groups and that date back to ancient times. The study also provides the first detailed genetic maps of the major Jewish subpopulations, a resource that can be used to...

The Israeli government is expected to approve the long awaited 'aliyah' (immigration) of more than 7,200 Indian Jews from the north-eastern states of Manipur and Mizoram in the coming weeks, a media report said. The decision to allow the last members of the "lost" Bnei Menashe tribe to immigrate to Israel is being greeted with excitement by local Evangelical Christian groups, who view it as fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and who have pledged financial support for the move, 'The Jerusalem Post' daily reported. The ministerial committee on immigration and absorption, headed by foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, decided, about three months...

Early reports that two heavily armed Islamist extremists had broken into a mottled apartment block in south Mumbai almost escaped notice. Within hours, however, it had dawned on India’s Jews, a community that traces its roots to the court of King Solomon, that for the first time in their history they had been targeted because of their religion. SNIP “We are a tolerant society, we’ve never had any antiSemitism in India. We can’t fathom the reasons for this attack,” Elijah Jacob, a local Jewish leader, said. “We can no longer remain complacent.” Numbering only about 5,000 in a city of...

Explorer Marco Polo traveled from Venice to China in the year 1260 AD, returning a few years later with tales of black stones that heated rooms (coal), clothing laced with gold, and the presence of prosperous Jews in Beijing. These outlandish claims earned him the nickname "man of a million lies." Two hundred years later Jesuit missionaries confirmed, at least, the presence of Jews in Beijing. Jesuit Matthew Ricci, in 1605, encountered a young Chinese man, Ai T’ien. In stark contrast to the rest of the Chinese population, Ai T'ien claimed to worship a single God. Further questioning (after Ai...

It is well known that "jiaozi," world's earliest paper money, originated in China some 800 years ago. But latest research indicate that Jews used to assist ancient China in doing this might surprise most people. "Jiaozi," also named "jiaochao," appeared in China in 1154 during the reign of the Jin regime (1115-1234). It was believed in the past that Jin regime hired coining workers of Song (960-1279), Jin's preceding dynasty, to make the paper notes. But Qiu Shiyu, researcher of the Harbin Academy of Sciences and expert of Jin history, concluded that Jews used to take part in the work...

King Jehoiachin was only 18 years old and had occupied the throne of Judah barely three months when he was led off into Babylonian captivity in 598 BCE together with his wives, his mother, his servants, his eunuchs and thousands of "the chief men of the land." But what happened to them when they reached Babylon? And what happened there to the tens of thousands of others who joined them in exile when the First Temple was destroyed a decade later? The Bible tells us of the return to Judah half a century later but virtually nothing of what the...