Community Magazine May 2021

46 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE It seems as though they just fell off the map! Since the exile of the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel by the armies of the Assyrian King Sanheriv, the whereabouts of this illustrious people have remained a mystery. However, a number of isolated and ambiguous encounters with members of the ten lost tribes have been recorded over the centuries. Below are abstracts of some of the more famous such encounters. Eldad Hadani Around the year 880 CE (4640), a mysterious man named Rabbi Eldad Hadani – “Eldad from the Tribe of Dan” – came before the sages of the time, claiming to be a member of the lost tribe of Dan who had inadvertently made his way to the civilized world. He was found to be an erudite scholar with proficiency in all areas of the Torah, and he earned the admiration of all the hachamim of that time. The most famous of them was Rabbi Semah Gaon, head of the great Babylonian yeshiva of Masa Mahsia, who wrote a detailed letter validating many of Eldad’s claims. Eldad gave a detailed description of the ten tribes, their kings, the wars they waged, and their way of life, as well as their exact locations. He recorded his claims in a treatise which is still in circulation today. It is clear from his description that the ten tribes had remained faithful to the Torah traditions passed down to them from the days of the First Temple. Eldad Hadani’s accounts are the first, and assumed to be the most consistent and authentic, of all descriptions of the lost tribes. For over half a millennia after Eldad Hadani, reliable news of the lost tribes remained sparse. The limited means of communication and travel made it exceedingly difficult to conduct a competent search or study of their whereabouts. However, in the late-15 th century, when, with the invention of the compass and other advances, the civilized world began discovering new regions on the American continent and parts of Asia, renewed interest in locating the vanished Jewish kingdom was sparked. Many books written by Jews and gentiles alike were published at this time which attempted to piece together the tidbits of information and different reports that surfaced concerning the lost tribes. Our sages tell us that the punishment of the ten tribes included being exiled from the land of Israel to a remote, uncharted land, isolated from the rest of the world, where they would remain until the end of days. At that point, according to the Midrash, the tribes of Yehuda and Binyamin will bring the ten lost tribes from their exile across the river Sambatyon, and return them to the land of Israel. Many scholars concluded on the basis of this Midrash that in our times, as the end of the exile draws near, we must make attempts to determine the whereabouts of the ten tribes and reunite them with the rest of the Jewish nation. Some even claimed that restoring the ten tribes will bring the redemption closer. This added to the newfound interest in searching for the ten tribes that arose in the 15 th century, as many Jews, sensing that the final redemption would soon unfold, felt the urgent need to find the lost tribes. David Hareuveni In the year 1524 (5284 on the Jewish calendar), a man calling himself David Hareuveni – “David from the Tribe of Reuven” – appeared and claimed to be a messenger from the ten lost tribes. He said he lived in the desert of Havor – one of the places to which the prophets said the ten tribes were exiled – where the tribes of Reuven, Gad and half of Menashe resided. David further claimed that his father, Shlomo, was the previous Finding the Ten Lost Tribes - Part IX R’ ELIYAHU CHAIM ABOUD