Across the Sabbath River In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel by Hillel Halkin Houghton Mifflin, 394 pp., $28 THE CENTURIES-OLD search for Israel’s “lost tribes” has been experiencing a revival. Last May it was reported that a group of businessmen, scholars, and rabbis had joined forces to raise the awareness of the Jewish roots of the Afghan Pashtuns. And genetic research conducted several years ago suggested that the Lemba, a largely Christian Bantu-speaking tribe in northern South Africa and Zimbabwe, had an uncommonly high incidence of Y chromosomes shared by the Biblical priestly clan originating from the time of Moses and Aaron. What is the origin of the Lost Tribes? According to several Biblical accounts in the books of Kings and Chronicles, the northern kingdom of Israel, which consisted of ten of the twelve tribes named for the sons of Jacob and Joseph, was conquered in the eighth century B.C. by the Assyrians and sent into exile. For some Rabbinical authorities of the Talmudic era, that was the end of the story, since they believed that the exiled tribes of the north had disappeared forever, assimilating into various local populations. (Today’s Jews are descended from the two tribes of the southern kingdom.) But for others, including the pre-Rabbinical Hebrew prophets, the Lost Tribes lived on in imagination and hope for some ultimate and glorious reunification. Their story would become enshrined in a number of popular legends, including one that placed them beyond a river called the Sambatyon, which is said to flow dangerously for six days in a way that prevents its crossing, and which is passable only on the Sabbath, when travel is forbidden. ACCORDING TO Hillel Halkin in “Across the Sabbath River,” the search for the Lost Tribes eventually was transformed “from a vague fable of no practical consequence to a hallucinatory mixture of alleged fact and wild rumor that was to send the minds of men, and in time men themselves, on a fruitless treasure hunt lasting for centuries.” By the twentieth century, a number of serious scholars had entered the fray, but by and large, their work has served to reinforce the view that the existence of Jewish ritual practice in remote communities can be attributed to a variety of factors, including intermarriage and conversion, that have nothing to do with ancient Israel. One who believes otherwise–indeed, who has committed his life to the mission of “restoring Jewish souls” who stood at Mount Sinai–is Rabbi Eliahu Avichail, who runs an organization in Israel called Amishav (“My People Returneth”). Avichail has become the spiritual mentor of a group of Jewish communities in northeastern India that calls itself B’nai Menashe, the children of Menashe (a tribe named for the son of Joseph). His first contact with the community was made a little over twenty years ago after its leaders had written to the head librarian of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem requesting information about Judaism. Their story was, to say the least, unusual. In the early 1950s, an angel revealed to a man named Chala that a largely Christian people of Tibeto-Burmese origin living along the Indian-Burmese border known as the Mizo were descendants of Israelites and should begin living by their true faith. In 1990, after several visits to the Indian state of Mizoram and its northern neighbor Manipur, Rabbi Avichail began bringing groups of “lost” Jews to Israel and arranging for their conversion leading to full citizenship. (The most recent such group arrived in late August, bringing their total in the country to just below seven hundred.) The rabbi’s sixth trip to the region, one made dangerous by ongoing ethnic tribal warfare, took place in 1998. This time he was accompanied by Halkin, an American-born essayist and translator of major Israeli novelists. Halkin doesn’t say much about what motivated him beyond the fact that he had intended to write a magazine piece, but his skepticism about the community’s claims led him to play the role of Sancho Panza to Avichail’s Quixote. Although he never wrote the piece, his curiosity was stimulated enough to return on his own the following year with two Mizo-born translators who had emigrated to Israel, and the result is this extraordinary book. During his first trip to Mizoram, Halkin was introduced to a community that had undergone large-scale conversion to Christianity in the early part of the twentieth century under the influence of British missionaries but that aspired to connect with some remote but glorious past, as he puts it, “of real men and women who fought, killed, lusted, took slaves and prisoners, and worshipped God with animal blood. And were God’s chosen!” At a convention he attends in Mizoram’s capital city of Aizawl, Halkin witnesses a large hall filled with cheering delegates waving Israeli flags and demanding international recognition as an official Lost Tribe. But he soon discovers that few Mizos have any concrete knowledge of their pre-Christian past. Some have been told about the practice of circumcision. There are also stories of four-cornered altars, a seven-day mourning period, and, most intriguingly, a document constructed from memory in the mid-1950s by one of Halkin’s interlocutors, said to be based on local priestly chants. Included in the document are names of the Biblical patriarchs, references to key Biblical settings like Mount Sinai and Egypt, worship of a divine being known as “Ya,” and lyrics from a song about crossing the Red Sea. UPON HIS RETURN to the region, it is known throughout the community that Halkin is conducting Lost Tribe research, and he is painfully aware of the high stakes placed upon his visit by the community. Many are hoping to be welcomed en masse to Israel under the Law of Return once it is proven that they are indeed descendants of ancient Israelites. Halkin is struck by their alienation from the dominant cultures of the region and takes note of how they share this sense of otherness with Jews throughout the ages. And he cannot help but be impressed by their tenacity. In a moving passage, he is asked to give an impromptu sermon at a Saturday morning service, and he responds by offering the observation that his previous visit had taught him “the strength of the ties binding Jews.” He continues, “You know that I hope to write a book about your possible descent from the tribe of Menashe. It would be exciting to discover that this belief is true. But it would not make you less Jewish if it isn’t. Abraham did not have Jewish ancestors. He became a Jew by having the courage to be one. . . . You have the same courage.” But Halkin is not about to succumb to easy sentimentality. To the contrary, he is a careful investigator who is unwilling to accept at face value much of the hearsay evidence presented to him by his hosts, and it is the combination of empathy and tough-mindedness that gives the book its vitality. For example, he rejects the arguments of his hosts that visions, prayers, childhood memories, or even the recollections of conversations with those who practiced certain rituals before the coming of Christian missionaries prove descent from one of the Lost Tribes. He factors into all of these accounts the possibility that these are derived not so much from deliberate deception–although he doesn’t always rule that out–as from retrospective adjustments of childhood memories based upon knowledge of Biblical texts introduced by missionaries. (He is particularly suspicious of exact parallels, as when he hears about a “themzong,” or burial priest, performing third- and seventh-day rituals for mourners, a practice that can easily be traced back to the Book of Numbers.) Assuming the role of historical detective, Halkin searches energetically for actual documentary evidence. First he discovers, among the written recollections of a leading member of the community, the existence of a will that asserts a militant defense of the old religion. What interests him more than its contents of Biblical names in old chants is the fact that it was wr
itten in the 1940s, prior to the visions that triggered the community’s search for its true origins. As he seeks the original copy of the will, he travels north to Manipur, an ethnically complex region of warring tribes. More than the Mizos, the Kukis of Manipur have preserved the old religion, owing primarily to the fact that the region’s strong Hindu character had proven more resistant to the Christianizing influence of the British. It is there that a breakthrough occurs following an introduction to a little-known local ethnographer, a Dr. Khuplam, who had spent much of his childhood listening to old stories passed down through the generations by his ancestors. Referred to as “the old people,” they had predated the Kukis in northeastern India. Having traveled extensively through the region over the course of many years and made careful records of stories, priestly chants, and sacred rituals described by his elderly informants, Dr. Khuplam has compiled a manuscript in which Halkin discovers uncanny parallels with Biblical texts. He concludes that certain phrases known to the area’s priests could not have been learned from Christian missionaries or attributed to other sources. Does this lead to the conclusion that the “Children of Manmase” are, therefore, as they claim, descended from the actual Tribe of Menashe? Not exactly. Making use of his newly uncovered evidence, which includes references to actual places that exist today (such as Kabul) and others that once existed, Halkin develops a hypothesis that charts the possible eastward route taken by wandering Israelites and places them in Southeast Asia long before the Kuki and Mizo tribes migrated to the region. While his hosts are clearly disappointed to learn that their connection to a Lost Tribe is not a direct biological one, Halkin holds out the hope that future genetic testing in the community could well achieve results similar to those discovered for the Lemba of southern Africa. Demonstrating throughout an exceptional command of a highly complex subject, Halkin tells his story with an engaging mixture of wit and irony. He has managed to produce simultaneously an affectionate account of a community’s struggle to apprehend its true identity and a serious study that will no doubt stimulate future research. David Lowe is vice president for government and external relations at the National Endowment for Democracy.
