Scattered Of Judah Are Returning!

"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." " - Lila Sarick


11. 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.
12. 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.

Isaiah 11:11-12


3 “The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will bring my people Israel and Judah back from captivity and restore them to the land I gave their ancestors to possess,” says the LORD.

Jeremiah 30:3


24 “For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land.”

Ezekiel 36:24


11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.
13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
14 I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity.[a] I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

Jeremiah 29:11-14


4 For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or household gods.
5 Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the LORD and to his blessings in the last days.

Hosea 3:4-5



“There are prophecies which predict the restoration of the Jews to the land of Israel near the end of the age. For close on 2000 years this seemed utterly impossible, and yet we have now seen it fulfilled in our own generation! Ezekiel 36:24 For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Jeremiah 30:3 For, lo, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah, saith the Lord: and I will cause them to {return to the land} that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it. (Here are just a few more of the many references to this fulfilment: Ezekial 37:21; Isaiah 11:11; Jeremiah 29:14).”

http://users.multipro.com


"More than 2,000 years after they first claimed to have set foot in India, the mystery of the world's most obscure Jewish community—the Marathi-speaking, Bene Israel—may finally have been solved with genetic carbon-dating revealing they carry the unusual "Moses" gene that would make them, literally, the original children of Israel. Four years of DNA tests on the 4,000-strong Bene Israel, now mainly based in Mumbai, Pune, Thane and Ahmedabad, indicates they are probable descendants of a small group of hereditary Israelite priests or Cohanim. Tudor Parfitt, Jewish Studies professor at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, who initiated and led the research, says this is the first concrete proof that "exiles from Palestine made it as far as India and managed to maintain Judaism in the sea of Hinduism and Islam". Their Indian appearance, cricket-playing, sari-wearing, curry-eating and Marathi-speaking habits led to a bitter battle for recognition as "real Jews" and for years they were not allowed to emigrate to Israel."

Times of India, London, UK, July 20, 2002

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


Encyclopedia of Judaism: Ten Lost Tribes

The ten "lost" tribes consisted of the tribes of Reuben, Simon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Ephraim, and half the tribe of Manasseh. They constituted the northern kingdom of Israel that broke away from the kingdom of Judah after the death of King Solomon. In 722 BCE, the kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians under King Shalmaneser, who deported many Israelites to Halah and Habor by the river Gozan and to the cities of the Medes (II Kings 17:6; 18:11). Not all Israelites, however, were deported (see II Chr. 35:17-19).

Although it was generally believed that the Israelites who were "carried away into Assyria" (II Kings 17:3) assimilated, a passage in I Chronicles 5:26 suggests that the lost tribes survive "unto this day." This belief was kept alive by prophetic utterances that God would gather in the "remnants of Israel" from the four corners of the globe (Isa. 11:12). Ezekiel (37:15-28) spoke of his vision of the union of Israel and Judah, who would together partake of the blessings of Messianic times (Zech. 8:13).

Belief in the continued existence of the "lost" ten tribes is maintained in the talmudic and midrashic literature. They were generally thought to reside on the other side of the legendary Sambatyon river, whose waters run regularly, though fiercely, during the week but rest on the Sabbath. Rabbis made attempts to identify the localities to which the ten tribes had been carried away. In the Jerusalem Talmud it is stated that only a third of the exiles live beyond the Sambatyon river, but all will eventually return (Sanh. 10:6, 29c). One dissenter from this view was R. Akiva, who said that "the ten tribes shall not return again" (Sanh. 10:3).

Particularly during appearances of false Messiah, though intermittently until today, reports have been received of the "discovery" of lost tribes. The ninth-century traveler Eldad ha-Dani claimed to be a member of the tribe of Dan. He is generally thought to have come from Ethiopia, though some scholars have associated him with Jews as far afield as China. In the second half of the 12th century, the Spanish traveler Benjamin of Tudela described the four tribes of Dan, Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali as dwelling near the river Gozan. He also mentioned the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh as living in Khaibar in Yemen. Similar references are found in the letters of the legendary Christian figure Prester John. Reference to Prester John, the Sambatyon river, and the lost tribes can be found in a 1488 letter by R. Obadiah di Bertinoro. In the 16th century, David Reuveni, purportedly of the tribe of Reuben, claimed to be the descendant of King Solomon and the brother of Joseph, the king of the descendants of the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh, who were living in the desert of Khaibar (Habor) in Arabia. He claimed he was sent on a mission to Rome by the king of the "lost" Israelites in order to hasten the era of the redemption.

In 1644, Aaron Levi de Montezinos reported to Manasseh Ben Israel in Amsterdam that the Indians in South America were of the lost tribes. Ben Israel used this, and reports of other Jews dispersed the world over, as an argument to Oliver Cromwell to allow Jews to live in England on the grounds that the dispersal of Jews to all countries would bring the Messianic return of Jews to the Holy Land. He disseminated the idea that the Twelve Tribes will be joined together in the Messianic age in his book Hope of Israel (1650).

In the 19th century, many Jewish emissaries left Erets Israel for remote parts in order to search for the "lost" tribes. Noteworthy among these are Jacob Sapir (1822-1888), who visited Yemen and India and reported their dispersion in those countries, and Benjamin II (1818-1864), who emulated the medieval traveler Benjamin of Tudela.

Today, legends of descent from the "lost" ten tribes abound. Jewish communities of Kurdish, Bokharan, and Indian (the Bene´ Israel) origin claim their forefathers were exiled from the Kingdom of Israel, while the Israel Chief Rabbinate has taken the position that the Jews of Ethiopia come from the tribe of Dan. In addition, a wide range of non-Jewish tribes and groups claim descent from the Israelites, ranging from sections of the Nigerian Yoruba tribe to the "Manipur Jews" from northeast India, who claim to belong to the tribe of Manasseh. Fifteen million Pathans spread over Afghanistan and Pakistan (and Kashmir) are divided into sub-tribal groupings with names like Reubeni (Reuben), Efridar (Ephraim), and Ashuri (Asher), leading to the suggestion that they come from the lost tribes. The British Israelites derive the word "British" from the Hebrew "berit-ish" (man of the covenant).

Encyclopedia of Judaism: Ten Lost Tribes