When I arrived in Tsfat for a summer to study, the rosh yeshiva told me, “You don’t choose Tsfat; Tsfat chooses you.” I arrived at my dorm room and saw a photo of my roommate on the wall. I got goose bumps when I noticed myself in the background of the photo taken at the Kotel. Months before I knew I would ever end up in Tsfat, there was a picture of me on my dorm-room door.
In Tsfat, I experienced many life-changing moments. Most significantly, I was given as a gift Torah CDs about the redemption by Rabbi Shimon Kessin, and I read the book Eim HaBanim Semeicha by Rabbi Yissachar Shlomo Teichtel.
Rabbi Teichtel’s book discusses the precious mitzvah to settle the land of Israel, and the history and future of the people of Israel and their homeland. In the book, he imparts a strong piece of advice that would change my and my friends’ lives forever. He teaches that there is a tremendous amount of blessing stored in the heavens yearning to descend to the world. However, humans don’t receive the blessing themselves; they receive it only through their handiwork. Rabbi Teichtel advises to gather a group of friends who share unconditional love and a common desire to settle the land of Israel, and to create a vessel that can receive the blessing. Whatever entity is created will be guaranteed success and inevitably foster the settlement of the land of Israel. In my eyes, this was a promise from the Torah, and we accepted the challenge.
A close group of friends gathered and founded a nonprofit organization and a brewing company as vessels to receive the blessing. We flew to Israel and sought out land on which to live—and make beer. We found many hidden gems in distressed kibbutzim and moshavim, but were met with nothing but bureaucracy. While in Israel, however, we did find out that two of the Lost Tribes of Israel that had returned to the land—the Ethiopians, believed to be from shevet Dan, and the Bnei Menashe from India—had delicious ancient beer recipes that they were willing to share with our crew. We gained the blessings of the tribal leaders to scale up the beverages and bring them to market.
Shortly after launching our brewing company in the U.S., Lost Tribes Beverage, our team began receiving e-mails from around the world from groups claiming to be from the Lost Tribes of Israel.
Nearly three thousand years ago, the twelve tribes of Israel were split into two nations—the Northern Kingdom called Israel, and the Southern Kingdom called Judea. Today’s Jews descended from the Judeans, while the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom were sent into exile, towards the Far East, by the Assyrians. Every day in Jewish prayer, the prophetic reunion of the kingdoms is spoken of in terms of the two separate entities, Yehudah and Yisrael.
The Pashtunim Are Our Lost Brothers
Research from organizations such as Amishav reveals that many tribal names in Afghanistan today are identical to the tribes of Israel: the Ashuri, Rubeni, Gadi, and Yosefzai (zai meaning “son of”), among others. Tribal practices include levirate marriage and cities of refuge, both major concepts of Mosaic Law. These tribes were forcibly converted to Islam, yet maintain their own legal code, called Pashtunwali, that supersedes the Koran. They refer to their collective nation as Bani Israel (the children of Israel). This 2,700-year-old nation resides in a location referred to as the graveyard of empires, as no nation was ever able to conquer them—not Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, the Soviets, the British, etc.
My friends and I started to search the tribal names on Facebook, making “friends” and inquiring whether the legend was true. Were they the lost tribes of Israel? Almost every time the answer was “Yes, we were told by our grandparents that we are Israelites, and we await the son of David to come and redeem us.”
Throughout the Silk Road, there is evidence of the legends and customs of these tribes from Afghanistan to Japan, the oldest monarchy in the world. The Japanese Empire was founded in 660 BCE. The Israelite exile was said to have happened 722 BCE, just 82 years prior to the founding of the Empire.
We learned that the Japanese claim to have been a chosen nation exiled from their homeland and resettled in the Far East. Their alphabet resembles the Hebrew alphabet. Their holy temple on Mount Moriyah—the same name as the Temple Mount that hosted King Solomon’s temple—contains three chambers: an outer section for people to celebrate, an inner chamber where priests practice animal sacrifice, and an inner chamber with a golden ark on four poles adorned with sculptures of birds, and with three symbolic items kept inside. The priests, called Yamabushi, all wear headgear strikingly similar to tefillin (phylacteries) and blow a horn resembling a shofar.
It was also fascinating to discover that there are large tribes in Africa that claim decent from the Judean kingdom from the time of the destruction of the First Temple. One of those groups in South Africa, the Lemba, practice circumcision, eat kosher, and observe the Shabbat. A professor from Duke University traveled there and did DNA testing on the tribe. His findings were astonishing. They all have Semitic genes, with 10 percent of them having the Kohen gene!
Written by Harry Rozemberg
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