Elad’s blog

One of the more interesting talks I had during my latest travel to Peru, regarded a small indian tribe that lives a bit north of Lima. It was held with one Rabbi, who was sent there to check their claims to be the lost tribe of Asher (if I remember correctly), exiled from Israel over 2700 years ago. It crossed my mind this morning when I read a small note in the paper, about the cancellation of a big operation intended to bring to Israel the lost tribe of Menashe, who apparently was found in northern India.

Since the formation of modern Israel, many jews have immigrated to it. In the past few decades, many unusual communities have claimed roots to biblical judaism and also tried to immigrate to Israel. Most famous, of course, are the Ethiopian jews, who formed a community of some 30,000 persons in Israel after being isolated from the main (european/north-african) branch of Judaism for thousands of years; but there are others, and lately these “ten tribes” started to appear from no-where.

I generally regard this as a good thing. I think that these ethnical groups contribute a lot to the Israeli society; and I don’t really care if they don’t apply to all the strict orthodox rules of “who is a jew” - by merely living here, their grandsons would definitely become closer to the main branch of Judaism - at least as long as the groups are relatively small and don’t change the essence of the local culture, but contibute to it. Of course, many would claim that there is a lot of money involved (Israel gives plenty of support for new jewish immigrants, trying to help them in their new place) and maybe they are taking advantage of the state - a claim I strongly resent: moving to a new country, language, society, is not an easy thing that you do just because the new place helps you; Also, there is the religeous thing - with the old biblical prophecies: some christian evangelists try to help the prophecies to be fulfilled at our days (pointless. These kind of things happen when god wants, regardless of any christian organisation - but you try to explain it to them) and all that.

Actually, those christians are closely connected to the latest story about Menashe tribe. They discovered it in north-eastern India over two decades ago, with some 5000 people claiming to be of the Menashe origin, and they mingled with this affair ever since. It took years to check their claims, and to finally accept (convert?) the tribe into orthodox judaism - a prerequisit towards bringing them to Israel. The chief rabbinate secretely sent some rabbies who converted some 1300 of the tribe before the Indian government found out what’s going on and demanded to stop this process of “mass convertion” on its land. Then, some thousand started to slowly immigrate and formed a small community that already lives in Israel.

Now comes the political stupidity of this story: the Israeli minister of immigration, a guy called Ze’ev Boim, ordered to prepare one big plane, and bring the rest of the tribe at one big event: he planned to make a ceremony at the airport about “saving the lost brothers” and get some good press. Of course, the “lost brothers” don’t need to be “saved” - they could just continue to come slowly, as they’ve been doing for years. Now the Indian government found out that this Israeli minister wants to “save” a tribe from their country. How would you react? Well, they did the same.

I bet the Menashe guys will eventually get here, for the benefit of all of us. It will probably take them a few more years, and will have to be done slowly and silently as was done before. Just don’t let politicians intervean with it - it amazes me each time how much damage they can apply.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 at 10:52 and is filed under Opinions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.