Jews and the Search for the Ten Lost Tribes

chapter 7 Jews and the Search for the Ten Lost Tribes

Latin Christians in the West were not the only polities inventing mythologies of distant coreligionists. Jewish knowledge and belief in unexplored regions was, likewise, based on a combination of scholarship, myth and religious text, but, like Christians, there was a strong belief among European Jewish commu- nities in the existence of unseen coreligionists. Often, Jews envisioned these coreligionists as members of the so-called Lost or Ten Tribes, who had not re- turned to Israel following the Babylonian exile.1 Their return, as the Prophets claimed, would herald the coming the Messiah.2 In this way, the search or de- sire to make contact with these hidden Jews always held a special significance for Jewish commentators that went beyond the hunger for political liberation from Christian or Muslim oppressors. Comparing Jewish with Christian de- signs regarding distant coreligionists will allow us to garner a fuller picture of the European mythological landscape. Jewish claims of the existence of powerful coreligionists dwelling in some unknown and distant place, hold particular importance in the ongoing polem- ical debate between Jews and Christians in medieval and early modern Eu- rope. Christian, anti-Jewish polemic had long maintained that the Jews were a stateless people. That their lack of a king or army was proof of their doctrinal errors in light of Jesus’ assumption of David messiahship.3 For Jews, on the other hand, the belief in the existence of a distant and powerful Jewish state gave lie to Christian polemic. It also allowed for the Jewish assumption of a type of power Christians claimed as exclusively their own. And it used the notion of the eventual return of these armies/tribes as proof that the Davidic messiah had not yet come (i.e. that Jesus was a false messiah). In truth, medieval Jewish notions of geography and distance varied little from their Christian contemporaries, using Biblical and Talmudic geographi- cal concepts to envision the world. India and Ethiopia/Cush, according to the book of Esther, marked the edges of the known world as personified in this

1 IChron. 4:43, 5:26. On this phenomenon see Ben-Dor Benite, Ten lost tribes. 2 Is. 11:11; Jer. 31:7; Eze. 37:8. On this, see Adolf Neubauer, “Where are the ten tribes?” Jewish quarterly review, 14–16; Muslim traditions about the Lost tribes also exist, see Uri Rubin, Be- tween Bible and Qurʿan: the children of Israel and the Islamic self-image (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1999), 26–30, 46–48. 3 Isidore of Seville, Fide, col. 465.

Jews And The Search For The Ten Lost Tribes 97 case by the boundaries of Ahasuerus’ kingdom.4 The Indies were, likewise, viewed by both groups as lands of great material wealth.5 Christians in the west came to know of their coreligionists and their kingdom in Ethiopia. Psalm 67 speaks of Ethiopia stretching out its hand to God was interpreted (as it was by later Christian commentators) as meaning the acceptance of monotheism in the country.6 Jews in Spain and Ashkenaz also came to believe in the strength of their brethren in northeastern Africa where Jewish traditions regarding Ethiopia were based on mishnaic sources regarding Moses, who, according to Josephus, was asked by Pharaoh to lead an army against the Ethiopians and subsequently wed an Ethiopian woman.7 The words of the Prophets regarding the wealth of Cush came to be enhanced by a midrashic tradition that linked

4 Est. 1:1, 8:9. Talmudic commentators come to interpret this as being from one end of the earth to the other. (bt. Megillah 11a; EstR 1:1). On European Jewish views of Ethiopia, see Jacob Lass- ner, Demonizing the Queen of Sheba :boundaries of gender and culture in postbiblical Judaism and medieval Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). For Cush as a place of wealth and merchandise, see Seder ʿolam, ed. Hayim Milikovski, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Yad Yitshak Ben- Tsevi, 2013), 23. 5 Job 28:19; Is. 45:14; S.D. Goitein and Mordechai Akiva Friedman, India traders of the Middle Ages: documents from the Cairo Geniza (“India Book”), 2 vols. (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008), passim. 6 For Christian interpretations of Psalm 67, see John Block Friedman, The monstrous races in medieval art and thought (Syracuse, ny: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 174; Aurelius Augus- tinus, Obras de San Agustin/20. Enarraciones sobre los Salmos, 2, ed. Balbino Martin Perez, 4 vols. (Madrid: Biblioteca de autores cristianos, 1965), 746–747; Saint Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, Sancti Hilarii Pictaviensis Episcopi Tractatus super Psalmos, eds. Jean Doignin and R. Demeu- lenaere, 3 vols. (Turnholt: Brepols, 1997–2009), 67.32, 33. 7 In general, see A.Z. Aescoly, “Yehudi habash ve-sefrut ha-ivrit.” Tsiyon 1 (1935), 316–36, 411–435). See Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, transls. Henrietta Szold and Paul Radin, 7 volumes. (Philadelphia: The Jewish publication society of America, 1936–1942), 2: 286; Tessa Rajak, “Moses in Ethiopia: Legend and Literature,” Journal of Jewish studies 29 (1978), 111–122; Avigdor Shinan, “Moses and the Ethiopian woman: sources of a story in the Chronicles of Moses,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 27 (1978), 66–78; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities in Josephus, ed./ transl. H.St.J. Thackeray, 10 vols. (London: Heinemann/New York: Putnam, 1926–1981), 2.242ff. See later medieval re-workings of Josephus in the Chronicles of Moses, ed. Avigdor Shinan, Hasifrut 24 (1977), 100–116. See also, Shimʾon, ha-Darshan mi-Frankfort, Yalkut Shimʾoni, eds. Arthur B. Hyman, Isaac N. Lerer and Yitshak Shiloni, 10 vols. (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kuk, 1973), 1.168 and the Sefer ha-yashar, ed. Joseph Dan (Jerusalem: Mosad Byalik, 1986); see also the English translation Sefer Hayasher: the Book of the generations of Adam, eds./transls. Abraham B. Walzer and Na- chum Y. Kornfeld (Brooklyn: Simcha Graphic, 1993). See also, see Elʾazar ben Asher, ha-Levi, The chronicles of Jerahmeel; or, The Hebrew Bible historiale. Being a collection of apocryphal and pseudo-epigraphical books dealing with the history of the world from the creation to the