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In 2017, while I was traveling through India, a friend from the northeastern state of Assam told me about the communities of Lost Tribe Jews in the neighboring state of Mizoram. Having grown up in a Jewish family without ever fully embracing the religion of my observant parents, I was intrigued and wanted to know more.....
Lost Tribe Jews, I soon learned, believe they are descended from the 10 tribes of Israel that were exiled from the ancient kingdom of Israel by Assyrians around the eighth century B.C. I decided to seek out members of the Lost Tribes and see if they would allow me to photograph their rituals and daily lives.
Over the last 30 years, thousands of members of the Lost Tribe communities in northeast India have relocated to Israel — partly because, in 2005, the Bnei Menashe were officially declared to have descended from the original tribe of Manasseh.
And right in the middle of the busiest block, one of the most unusual archaeological projects ever undertaken in Brazil is under way: the excavation and reconstruction of the first synagogue built in the New World.The synagogue, Kahal Zur Israel, or Rock of Israel, flourished in the mid-1600's when the Dutch briefly controlled this part of northeastern Brazil and the sugar and tobacco plantations that made it rich. With the return of the Portuguese, though, Recife's Jews made their way to Manhattan, where they founded New York City's Jewish community.....
Even today, when Dr. Kaufman lectures in the interior, ''I am often approached by people who tell me, 'I think I might be Jewish,' '' she said. ''When I ask them why, they produce a menorah or a tattered prayer book and tell me it was handed down to their grandparents by their grandparents before them, or they tell me of family customs that fit squarely within the Sephardic tradition.''
''The ability of elements of faith to persist for so long in such isolation is truly an amazing thing,'' she said.
I have always been fascinated by Jewish history. Obviously our history is full of migration, usually under chaotic conditions. The disposition of the "Ten Lost Tribes" that had earlier separated, as the Kingdom of Israel from the Kingdom of Judea after King Solomon z"l died was of course totally without discernible pattern. Literally no one knows what happened to them, though there are Jewish or proto-Jewish communities in various places in Africa, India, possibly the above-referenced Myanmar, etc. The Recife community has a very strong claim to legitimacy as Jewish since it erupted into view right after more hospitable local government came into power.
What are the readings, thoughts and experience of others?
I recently read about the Jews of Sicily who were forced to leave in the 15th century. Some of them went into hiding and pretended to be Christians, so that they wouldn't have to suffer homelessness.
I don't think this counts as "a lost tribe" -- but many European Jews were definitely lost to us when European nations either forced Christian conversion on them, expelled them from their homes, or outright murdered them.
I was especially fascinated to read how the hidden Sicilian Jews (as well as the hidden Jews of Spain and Portugal) managed to keep alive their faith and traditions.
I recently read about the Jews of Sicily who were forced to leave in the 15th century. Some of them went into hiding and pretended to be Christians, so that they wouldn't have to suffer homelessness. .
Was this similar to what the Spanish pejoratively called the "Marraños"?
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