Where Are the Tribes Going?

There are only two left. Only two out of what was once twelve: twelve tribes named after each of the twelve sons of our father Jacob, grandson of Abraham, the first Jew. They were the twelve tribes of Israel, named after Jacob’s other name: Israel. Ten were forced into exile by the Babylonians and Assyrians. Two continued to live in what the Romans called Judea. Two. Only two.

It wasn’t always so. There was a time when all twelve of the tribes, after wandering through the wilderness for an entire generation, crossed into what was then Canaan. We named it Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, Jacob’s land, and that of his twelve sons, leaders of the twelve tribes.

But even then, not all the tribes ended up in the Land of Israel. Not all of the twelve wanted to go. When the tribes were poised to cross the Jordan, we read in the Torah:

The Reubenites and Gadites owned cattle in very great numbers. Noting that the lands [where they were, on that side of the Jordan] were a region suitable for cattle, they came to Moses… “This land is cattle country and [we] have cattle. It would be a favor to us if this land were given to your servants; do not move us across the Jordan.

Moses replied, “Are your brothers to go to war while you stay here?” Then they stepped up to him and said, “We will build here sheepfolds for our flock and towns for our children. And we will go as shock-troops in the vanguard of the Israelites until we have established them in their home… We will not return to our homes until every one of the Israelites is in possession of his portion.” [Numbers 32: 1, 4-6, 16-18]

Shock troops. Those who go into battle first. Those who are in the midst of the fiercest fighting. Those who suffer the highest number of causalities so that those who come after them may have the greatest chance at survival. I know this first hand because had circumstances been slightly different I would probably not be here because I would probably not have been born:

During World War II my father was a Captain in the Army Corps of Engineers. He was trained, among other things, to be in charge of vehicles that landed soldiers and materiel onto beaches, especially those under enemy fire.

There was a duty roster the soldiers were supposed to check each morning. One day my father and many others were to report to such-and-such a room at such-and-such a time. When he appeared at the designated time and place there was a list outside of all the men who were supposed to be there. My father’s name and the names of several others were crossed out and initialed by a superior officer. My father left.

The men who were in that room were in the first wave of the Normandy invasion. The percentage of casualties was astoundingly high. There was an equally high chance that had my father been there he would have been one of them and I would never have been born.

Shock troops. For whatever the reason, others went first into the battle. For whatever the reason, my father and those with him played a supporting role. No one doubts both were necessary.

That’s been our pattern with the land of Israel, too, right from the beginning. Two tribes, Reuven and Gad, went as shock troops, then left to play a supporting role. Two tribes helped from without. Ten tribes helped from within, settling the land. Two outside, ten inside.

Then, say the historians, the pattern changed. When the Assyrians conquered Israel in 722 BCE and destroyed the First Temple, the Temple of Solomon, many of our people were scattered all over the Middle East. About 125 years later, King Nebuchadnezzar conquered Israel and deported much of the Hebrew population to Babylonia.

Although there was always an indigenous Jewish population in Israel, a new pattern was set called the Diaspora, the dispersal of the Jews all over the world. Even the name was “dispersed,” though in calling what used to be Israel “Judea,” the Romans at least used a name derived from the name of one of the twelve tribes: Judah.

Roman occupation was a total horror. The Jews revolted in 70 CE, a revolt that was put down so brutally it gave us the word “decimate” in which people were lined up and every tenth one was executed. Since the people used animal blood to fertilize their crops, Roman brutality inspired the saying: “For seven years after the revolt, the ground was so soaked in blood there was no need for any additional fertilizer. The Second Temple was destroyed, and many of those who weren’t murdered by the Romans either fled or were exiled to communities all over the globe.

The next to last chapter was written at Masada. After a two year siege in the mountain fort known as Masada, starving, about to be taken by the Romans, the 1,000 men, women, and children took their own lives rather than surrender to the Romans and the torture they knew was awaiting them. To this day Masada is a symbol of Jewish response to evil. Soldiers of the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, take an oath there: Masada Shall Not Fall Again!

The final chapter was written in 132 CE when a man named Bar Kochba led another revolt against the Romans, which was just as brutally suppressed. Then, for 2,000 years, although there were always Jews living there, there was no Jewish state, no sovereign country of our own.

The legend developed of the ten lost tribes, lost since the first dispersal by the Assyrians. It grew, as such things have a way of doing. Why didn’t the other ten tribes come back to re-unite with the two that were still around, many of them living in Jerusalem and its environs? There had to be a reason. Of course, some said they had found one. The first to disseminate the legends was [a man named] Eldad ha-Dani:

The Bene Mosheh [the Children of Moses] are surrounded by a river like a fortress, which without water rolls sand and stones with such force that if in its course it encountered a mountain of iron it would grind it to powder. On Friday at sunset a cloud envelops the river [in another version, the river is surrounded by fire], so that no man is able to cross it.

[Plus, the cross it on the Saturday would be to desecrate the Shabbat.] At the close of the Sabbath the river resumes its torrent of stones and sand. The general width of the river is two hundred ells, but in certain places it is only sixty ells wide: so that we [on this side of the river] may talk to them [on the other side], but neither can they come to us nor can we go to them.

So that’s why the Ten Lost Tribes haven’t come back! They’re not lost, they’re trapped on the other side of the Sabbath River, the River Sambatyon.

You can imagine what gave rise to this legend. How could our own people, wailed the poor and hungry Jews of Israel, forsake us? It must be that they wish to return, but can’t.

Now? After two thousand years we have our sovereignty, and the lost tribes are no longer lost. They have managed, somehow, to cross the huge river to escape the Nazi animals, cross the other rivers to escape, some to settle, some to return to the Land of Israel.

Israel is now composed of our shock troops. As a country, they fight against such things as the United Church of Canada’s recent proposal to boycott Israel, a resolution which, fortunately, failed. It is our shock troops in Israel who fight against Sweden’s refusal thus far to condemn the vicious anti-Semitic slur that says Israeli soldiers are killing Arabs to harvest their organs. Every day it fights, physically and at the risk of death, those who hate Jews so much that they hold up signs like the one I saw at last Spring’s Israel Day parade: Close Guantanamo. Reopen Auschwitz.

They are our shock troops and our protectors. They give concrete meaning to our shouts of Never Again. There is a rumor that no one will either confirm or deny that during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Golda Meir had Israel’s nuclear weapons loaded onto trucks, but called them back when Israel won.

Here we sit, safe and secure, we hope, on Yom Kippur. Most of us are not moving to Israel to be one of the shock troops. But if we stay here, we have a job to do, an obligation. The Israelis protect us, often at the cost of their lives. We must protect them, not only with our donations, but by enhancing strong Jewish communities that produce self aware, Jews, secure in their people hood, proud in their Jewishness.

After two thousand years the twelve tribes survive and prosper on the world stage. Two of them protect us all from inside Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel. The other ten, us, are chutz la’aretz, outside the land. It is our job to support them. It is our sacred obligation to see to it that all the tribes prosper – all twelve tribes.