Quest For The Lost Tribes (Biblical Documentary) | Timeline

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[Music] in the Bible there's a prophecy and that prophecy says that in the end of time all these people that were exiled that we call the Lost Tribes of Israel will get up and come back to Israel and it'll start happening all over in four corners of the world and they'll just get up and start moving back and what if it was actually happening here you have this prophecy and people are actually getting up there maybe in your own neighborhood and they're packing their bags and to you they're just somebody else packing their bags and moving but in actual fact they're responding to some kind of biblical posthypnotic suggestion I'm not talking about a thousand M as I like twenty-seven hundred year old suggestion that they're responding to now and we could actually phone these people and match the prophecy with the events and the reason that should matter is that because once they do what they have to do they trigger the apocalypse [Music] on these altars children were sacrificed in pagan rituals [Applause] scripture tells us that the tribes of Israel deserted the god of their forefathers and worshiped idols and places like this the prophets said that for this sin the Israelite tribes would be conquered and exiled until the end of time when they would be found and redeemed har Megiddo a fortress city in northern Israel it is known to the world as Armageddon a name synonymous with the apocalypse but it won't happen before the Israelite tribes who once lived here returned according to prophecy the countdown to the apocalypse and final Redemption begins when the tribes are found one by one so this is the challenge before us how are we going to find millions of people that no one has noticed when I say find them I don't mean discovering a people that's never made contact with Westerners I mean taking very obscure pieces of a puzzle and going to very remote sometimes dangerous places on the earth and taking those pieces and putting them together and seeing does this a court with a Biblical prophecy I have been on a journey and I invite you to go on this journey with me [Music] in the early 1980s I went to Africa to document the plight of the Palacios the black Jews of Ethiopia these people were caught in the midst of persecutions war and famine in 1991 the Falaschi Intl headlines when they were airlifted by the Israeli Secret Service to Jerusalem but was little noticed is that the Israelis acted only after the Chief Rabbi ruled that the Philosopher's descendants of the Lost Tribe of done [Music] can you imagine the Lost Tribes of Israel making front page news can you imagine the government of Israel acting on the words of rabbis who say this is the Lost Tribe of done and suddenly modern aircraft swooping in to Civil War Ethiopia as people from ages ago are airlifted into modern Israel seeing the sea opens in Jerusalem I thought was this just an anomaly or was the Biblical prophecy beginning to unfold [Music] seven years after the Falaschi airlift in a tomato packing plant near the Gaza Strip I came across a small group that most Israelis take for Thai guests workers there are people who come from the hill country on the India Burma border they say they are descendants of the lost tribe of manasseh and there is at least one rabbi here who believes them we have to go we bring them before the Messiah arrives in Israel our tradition teaches us that in the end of days the Jews who are the descendants of the tribes of Benjamin and Judah will bring the Lost Tribes to Israel so that they will participate in messianic times I believe that the whole thing is in the realm of religious belief rather than in the realm of reality that there is a strong necessity to find the tribes for religious theological reason both Jewish and Christian and those are the two religions that are active in tribe seeking each one in its own way and all the attempts to find them I think have no historical sound historical evidence it is the belief that keeps the Ten Lost Tribes alive not the people themselves [Music] [Applause] [Music] despite the skeptics Rabbi Aviv hal has assisted hundreds of these people to emigrate to Israel and has supervised their formal return to Judaism can the rabbi be right is the key to the future submerged in these peoples past the story begins twenty nine hundred years ago when after Solomon's death his biblical kingdoms split into two in the South Judea home to three tribes including Judah which gave its name to modern-day Jews in the North there was Israel home to the people that would later be called the Lost Tribes of Israel [Music] a hundred years after the prophets predicted the event the Assyrian Empire bore down on the Northern Kingdom of Israel the Assyrians they are considered to be the real heavies I guess you could call them the stormtroopers the Prussians they created what many in fact would tell you was probably the most potent military machine of its age that is sometime from about the end of the second millennium BCE they began this inexorable march from their headquarters in the upper reaches of the Tigris what is now eastern Iraq the borders with Iran and year after year a campaign after campaign they just marched westwards they marched as far as Israel as far as the coast in 721 BC the Assyrians put to the torch many Israelite cities and deported to most of the population [Music] most scholars believe that the tribes were lost because in exile they could not have held on to their identities they must have assimilated we're talking about 2700 years ago there are historical documentation historical records actually found in excavations from say the 5th century BC that record israelite names in Assyria so at that time maybe they still existed there or a trickle of them existed there after that there is nothing no documentation so if you look at it historically all kinds of people were exiled and got lost and I believe that the ten tribes also got lost but what if they are not lost and have preserved the memory of their ancient origins what if they are waiting in their millions for their prophesied return the hill country where Burma meets India is home to the people called man Massa or Manasa were now claiming descent from the lost tribe of manasseh [Music] so we went there what we found there is a war zone over and over in pursuit of the tribes we found ourselves in the middle of a war zone and what's the war about it's about territory and ethnicity and these people that call themselves Manasseh are fighting a people called Nagas and the Nagas are saying their enemies are saying you don't belong here you know and we know that you're not from here did you ever think that on the Indian Burmese border there's a tribal conflict and being an Israelite is part of the issue this area is called money port it swarms with insurrectionist groups and the Indian government has responded by turning money poor into a police state [Music] the local mortuary receives daily deliveries of the victims of Naga violence in response the manasa have begun to organize an underground army my village was attacked my own house was burnt and my uncle was killed they destroyed my village Israelites are good fighters we are good fighters that is why we are not afraid we are not afraid to fight us we feel we are worried about it from a NASA guerillas were dedicated to setting up an independent Israelite state in India the flag of gellan gum which is the flag for the future sovereign state has the Star of David in the middle one because the grandmas sake believe they are one of the Lost Tribes of Israel from the tribe of manasseh secondly the Star of David is a neutral figure or symbol all the clans would find it acceptable into this cauldron comes Rebecca he's drawn here by the fact that for reasons no one can explain thousands of locals are now claiming to be Israelites [Music] love me shallow charmer in the bagel is right the rabbi has been researching the lost tribes for more than 35 years he firmly believes that the Manasseh are indeed remnants of the tribe of Manasseh sent into exile 2700 years ago this particular tribe seems to have been a rather lowly tribe in the area economically poor socially on the lower scale of society and to people like that the idea that they may be related to some divine promise of a huge and glorious future may have a very big appeal and when rabbi avec isle came he already found a tribe that has managed to convince itself that it belongs to the Ten Lost Tribes we believe to be a Jew is not by body to be a Jew is by soul so you can be sometime in all the generation to change your body here and there but the soul remains after all Jewish soul and I believe all my heart the do people have Jewish soul I want to go to Israel as soon as possible so that I can worship my god in peace and without any obstacle today do it very very slowly my opinion is the main thing to bring old Menasha the ten tribe will be the main goal of Messiah thousands of Manasseh have decided not to wait passively for the Messiah they have applied to emigrate to Israel despite those who challenge their Israelite claims they continue to practice Judaism in virtual isolation from the rest of the Jewish world in this small place called Manipur which is at the corner of India we're still alive and we accuse and we like to go back to the place where we belong we were appreciated if things become better for us and we're allowed to go to that place which is our fatherland that is Israel if this is really happening it should be happening everywhere because the prophecy is clear it's not a few people here and there Ezekiel talks about the staff of Judah being rejoined with a staff of Joseph and the staff of Joseph are the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel there's a million and a half Manasseh that's a lot of people where the rest so we said ok let's go back to the ancient sources where did they go where did they go the Assyrians who destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel and took the people into exile had a propensity for making wall reliefs and this is very fortunate for us because it's almost like having someone with a video camera journalist or the video camera present 2700 years ago because after they destroyed the Israelites they went home created palaces and created this huge wall reliefs showing the destruction you see them being killed and you see them being taken prisoner and you see them being deported and it's very clear difference obviously killing is one thing you see them being flayed alive taken prisoner you only see men taking prisoner and you see them being deported you see them being deported in family units so we've got a lot of evidence they never deported people as just the men or just the women to be concubines or something they deported families they kept them together the only group of charioteers that the Assyrians retain intact as a elite unit of charioteers is an Israelite unit from Samaria what this means is that they were appropriated by the core of the Empire to the service of the center of the Empire the Israelite charioteers are retained intact the fact that they were kept together in military and family units gave us hope that perhaps they had survived the deportations after all that's a beautiful way of stop doing that that's beautiful I cannot say that it's impossible no I can't say it's impossible I would say it's very optimistic people were thrown into nowhere amongst many other peoples and we have no evidence whatsoever that anything survived the Assyrian melting pot maybe the evidence lay elsewhere we return to the Assyrian reliefs hoping that they could tell us their ancient story from the Assyrian records we learned that in the first assault a serious act seven Israelite cities of the tribe of Naphtali and put the nefta lights on the volatile border with Medea as the Assyrians lost ground to the Medes the Israelites found themselves under Midian rule in an empire that extended from modern Iran to Central Asia any Israelites living in Iran were later absorbed by mainstream Judaism it was pointless to search here perhaps we would find the lost Israelites behind the former Midian empire along the super highways of the ancient world across as Becky Stan on the road to China [Music] we picked up the trail in Uzbekistan home to the legendary cities of bahara and Samarkand here we found ourselves in the Forgotten region that had once been the prize of Alexander the Great and the Mongol warlord Genghis Khan [Music] founded over 2,500 years ago Mahara was the cultural center of the region from this place one could go and trade in all directions the City of Goo Hara is really at the crossroads the legendary Silk Route which started in the second century came right through Mahara in the 12th century the famous Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela wrote that there was a Hebrew tribe here which considered itself to be one of the lost tribes that were exiled by the Assyrians [Music] [Music] sang-doo as late as the 19th century British missionary and explorer Joseph Wolfe reported that the lost Israelites could still be found living in Bukhara legend has it that the most ancient tombs here date back to biblical times but we could find no markings linking them to Israelites not far from these tombs is a Jewish community of uncertain origin the first clue that they are related to the Lost Tribes is the name is a Haram common in this area and nowhere else in Sahar is one of the Lost Tribes and many of the people here including the local rabbi claim is a heart as an ancestor they say harley did not take us any further so we explored the mahalo the Jewish quarter to see if there was a connection to the tribe of Naphtali also exiled to this area at first it seemed that all we could ascertain is that the community is very old for many hundreds of years we've been preparing matzah in this oven it is a very very old custom these customs are ancient thousands of years old when God gave us Jerusalem we were preparing matzah by hand just like this [Music] while the women prepare unleavened bread for Passover the men slaughter a sheep in accordance with the biblical law the tradition of the Paschal Lamb is as old as the Bible itself a sheep is slaughtered with an extra sharp knife in one quick cut the blood is then drained and removed at the time of the exodus of bush would be dipped in the blood and smeared on doorpost then to find those homes as Israelite I'm rendering this animal kosher as we have always done it how are you doing that I'm discarding the sciatic nerve here in accordance with Jewish law when they were first discovered they didn't claim to be Jews they claim to be Israelites it's only in the last few hundred years that they've integrated themselves into the body of the world Jewish community and the baharon Jews are important because they tip you off that the history of the Lost Tribes is a hidden history that there are political reasons why their history would have been hidden so for example in Mahara in Uzbekistan this country that was part of the former Soviet Union anything Israelite was hidden and locked up because it was not in the interests of the local authorities to say that Israelites were here before the supposedly indigenous people and in Mahara we actually had a guide who ran the baharon Museum who was torn between pursuing the truth and looking out for himself in a political climate where it's still policy to hide anything Israelite so for example he gave us access to the basement of the Blue Heron Museum on top in the museum you have all the official history and in the basement locked up you have anything Israelite [Music] and what's in this musty dank basement prayer books silver platters with Hebrew alphabet on them locked up Torah scrolls Bible scrolls are locked up as if there's some kind of state secret anything anything with a Hebrew letter anything signifying some kind of historical Israelite presence locked up [Music] and then when we asked him about Israelites he didn't want to talk directly about Israelites but he said you know there were these people here that ruled Central Asia for 200 years and they were called f2 lights from our recent digs we've learned that in the 6th century boo Hara was the capital of a mighty kingdom of Semites which also ruled parts of India Pakistan and Afghanistan now in the 19th century the Russian writer chevensky believed that it was in this region that the Israelites were settled but the people who rule the area were called as crystallites and right up to the present day we are still debating the origins of the heftily dynasty of bukhara were these half delights have you ever heard of half delights and you have the lights here I don't want to offend anybody looking in the Britannica and I found half delights and what does the first line say it says this much named and enigmatic tribe ruled Central Asia in the fifths and 6th centuries are we following here much named many names and enigmatic mysterious tribe now why is a tribe that ruled Central Asia for 200 years mysterious you'd think you'd get to know them after the first hundred years of rule the second sentence was revelatory as well because it says they were known to medieval writers as f2 lights and nefta lights it seems to us that the nefta lights must have been the lost tribe of Naphtali but we wanted some hard archaeological evidence we went to the Tashkent Institute of Archaeology where we gained access to a restricted facility containing a treasure of ancient artifacts among them twenty-two hundred year old portraits clearly displayed on the ancient clay his aramaic script the day-to-day language of the Israelite tribes here we also met professors manova a semi-retired archaeologist and what does she have she has wrapped in a tea towel wrapped in a tea towel 1700 year old religious ritual object with Hebrew writings with an Israelite name with ram's horns a religious object of Israelite origin from exactly the area that the Lost Tribes went to a thousand years after their supposedly disappeared unbeknownst to most Israelis the majority of baharon jews have now emigrated to Israel but the chain has been broken they do not know that they may be descendants of the nefta lights they say that we are descendants of the Lost Tribes but we don't know which one all we know is that Jewish that's what it's important I hope that with God's help the redemption will come and with it the in gathering of the tribes then we'll know which tribe we belong to until then we identify with the tribe of Judah if by my laws you walk and my Commandments you guard and do them I will give your reign in due season and you shall eat your bread to the full and you will dwell in your land safely and I will be your God and you shall be my people I am God your God who brought you up from the land of Egypt that you shall not be slaves to them and I have broken the bonds of your yoke that you may go up right back into Hara it seems that the nefta lights a once mighty tribe of rulers have been reduced to a tiny community of a few thousand who did not flee after the collapse of the Soviet Union Oh [Music] Oh No [Music] [Music] once you could find these people in dozens of towns darling the area now there are only a few isolated Bihar and Jewish enclaves including this one in the jewel of Central Asia summer county a city with a history dating back more than twenty-five hundred years [Music] the word conned in the local dialect means city Samarkand translates as the city of the Sumerians Sumeria was the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel [Music] we continued along the Silk Route towards China the city of Kazan was the capital city of the Han Dynasty following the NAFTA light trail we learned that the Chinese records say that the nefta lights were here they were labeled Jews or Yuda by the Chinese is virtually impossible to identify during Chi Fang today but there was one government official who was willing to talk there was a Jewish community but now there is no more Jewish community there's no no Jewish community anymore we are only a few families this is the synagogue former site of a synagogue it can be vital to hear that the to plan aims only for your reference is done and most likely and you will be refused to your name no no no no put that up on your window we did not find Lost Tribes in China waiting in their Millions but could the last use of Chi Fang help us in our quest [Music] again about 300 years ago our synagogue ceased to exist without the synagogue there was no place for the Jews to congregate without a congregation there were no more rabbis without the congregation without the rabbis without the religious rituals or readings of the Scriptures there was no more worship nothing was left nonetheless to this day there are Chinese people in Chi Fang whose identity papers still describe them as Jews Judah see you die you die this is his name right yes does he think he is a Jew [Music] amidst mementos of the last Jews of Chi Fang we thought is it possible that the Manasseh of Indian Burma are the remnants of an unknown exodus across Central Asia and China perhaps it was time to further investigate the Manasseh claim [Music] since time immemorial we long for this Israel and we have sympathy for Israelis nobody told us to feel like that I don't know how it comes you know whenever there is earthquake then the eldest man of the house he will run out of the house and salt oh we children of mud machine are alive we children of Mercia life he will serve the least importance and the top of his voice then he will company then he said nobody don't worry nobody then he he will tell us our ancestor has shaken the earth to find out whether he descend there are still alive or not [Music] there's something very poetic about the possibility that the Benassi of north-east india are the descendants of an unknown long-forgotten israelite trek across china into burma finally ending up in india and when we were with the elders of the Manasi they pulled out a map that illustrated exactly the journey we had suspected showing them starting in israel going across Central Asia to China down into Burma into India and in fact they went further and started singing a song in an archaic form of their language a song not of the unknown Exodus but this time a song of the known Exodus the Exodus will with which we're all familiar the exodus of the Red Sea parting the exodus of eating quail that falls from heaven water coming from the rock and the enemies of the Israelites drowning in the Red Sea soon Asuma [Music] in Bakke overall the first verse is telling that the Big Red Sea is a part than the second verse those who are going on foot across that part at sea then the water came up together again and the enemies were being swallowed by the sea they were being guided by a flame at night and cloud during the day then this one pointed that you please pick up those birds being scattered there and then draw the water which is flowing out of the rock though their history demonstrates that their ancestors passed through China the manasa insists that they are not Chinese and that they have preserved customs which are distinctly biblical if we upon China then how come we are not following the religion of the Chinese people Chinese people religion is too broadly two one is confusion and another one is Buddhist into an in-depth two religions there is no animal sacrifice but when I was a small boy we kill some animal then we put big plate the blood of the animal was sent there then the priest took some bushes branches and dip it and thus painted the doorpost in 1894 Protestant missionaries came to these hills although they thought they were converting pagans it seems that the people here were easily persuaded to embrace Christianity because they saw elements of their own history and mythology in the biblical stories told to them the manasa always believed that they were from a far-off land kept many biblical practices and worship in a single God [Music] when we learned that Manasa eat pork we thought these could not be Israelites but interestingly they mix the pork with the ashes and regarded as a meal of shame to be eaten outside the home these are the ashes ashes and then they'll put water in here but this is what I wear we call it soul inside this they used to put pork meat inside it and then they ferment it and then it becomes smelly when it becomes smelly they take out this portion then then we take it and then we put it and then we boil it it's not the middle of morning but I think it shows us that we have been cursed the reason why we have been thrown out from the land of our ancestors but according to our forefathers once you make this meat and their pork in here that means you have made this thing unclean if people ask us how long you've been eating this thing this has been a curse from generation to generation so we are still using this so we're waiting for shit over to come and deliver us from all these things she lava will redeem us now that's a very strange construction because Jehovah is the God of Israel and Shiloh Shiloh and Hebrew was the holy place for the northern tribes for the Lost Tribes and she lava seems to be a fusion of those two terms she lava will redeem and the same person who said that appeared to us in a tallit in a prayer shawl which looked identical to the prayer shawls that the Jews were all over the world this shawl is known as the loop 1 so this telephone is a long traditional clothes worn by our forefather when they make a vow suppose if they make a vow of a killing one mitten or a tiger without killing a tiger they will not come home once they make the vow with wearing this shawl in missile Ptolemy never returned back turning back these are made with the Bible commanded the Israelites to tie a blue thread to the corners of their garments yes this always a blue thread these people have had a problem and that the Jewish world couldn't relate to them no one answered their appeals no one answered their cry about fifty years ago a man named cella who was one of their leaders they regard him as a prophet told them that the time had come for them to return to the land of their forefathers many got up and were willing to follow him nobody said what land of our forefathers are you talking about they all knew that the Holy Land was their ancestral people call my father a prophet and in a sense he was it was revealed to him that we were Israel but he wasn't a prophet in the sense that Jeremiah Ezekiel or Hosea were prophets no he wasn't a prophet in that way but in order for us to realize who we are he did have a revelation God did not want us to be lost forever Daniel Benjamin's father was a follower of chala like charla he sought to emigrate to Israel the winner's lifetime the Israeli authorities ignored Daniels father he was buried facing Jerusalem my father wanted very much to immigrate to Israel it was in fact one of the first to return to Judaism to start practicing Judaism in this part of India he was a leader of our community he also taught me a lot about Israel about Zionism and about Chuey [Music] after chela's death some of his followers concluded that maybe they should return to Judaism before returning to Zion since they were reluctant to completely abandon Christianity they opted for a homegrown version of Messianic Judaism Jews for Jesus type of worship but for some of the Manasseh the call of their ancestors eventually proved too strong to ignore this picture a picture which shows how the Torah is being brought from Ethiopia to Israel see how great it is the Ethiopian Jews were like us they had great reverence for the Covenant and studied the Torah with great dedication they loved Torah here they entered Jerusalem bringing their Torah with them with great joy we too will soon enter Jerusalem thousands of manasseh have now forsaken Christianity and adopted Orthodox Judaism could these people really be Menasha because if they are we may have identified as many as four of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel Menasha done being the Ethiopians in essa heart and Naphtali among the baharon Jews of Central Asia and if we were right to think of the blue herons as the descendants of Naphtali then maybe we should be looking for Zebulon because Evelyn was the brother tribe of Naphtali in ancient Israel and history records that the same time as the nefta lights were ruling Central Asia in the 1st and 6th centuries another tribe was ruling parts of Afghanistan Pakistan and India this tribe was called Zavala [Music] so maybe we could find in the Indian subcontinent not on the border of Burma descendants of the Zavala just as we had found descendants of the naphtha lights in Central Asia [Music] [Applause] in the course of our research we repeatedly came across a little-known group in India that could not be easily related to other Jews so we made our way to Bombay in search of Zebulun Bombay is home to 8 million Hindus and 1 million Muslims here we found a community numbering about 5,000 that by all accounts should have assimilated into the dominant culture long ago and though they do not call themselves by any particular tribal name significantly like the Lost Tribes and unlike other Jews they call themselves the children of Israel not Judah I am NOT UD I am Ben Israel you dis those Jews who migrated to India from Baghdad my family even Israel [Music] [Applause] [Music] 300 years ago a Jewish merchant travelling through the coastal region was done to see Indian peasants chanting Jewish prayers fascinated he stopped inquire as to how they knew these prayers and was shocked when they replied that they were Israelites who had lived in India from ancient times skeptical of these claims the merchant visited the village and presented the B'nai Israel with an assortment of fish to be made into a meal some kosher some not when he saw that the villagers knew which fish were kosher he was convinced that they were an Israelite community and he helped them return to Judaism [Music] unique to the bnei yisrael community is the melida ceremony which is a kind of offering of rice scented flowers and fruit [Music] the shop is the manager God is about [Music] though they had forgotten the reasons behind some of their practices the B'nai Israel had clung to them as something precious to be passed through the generations there were observing certain rules and regulations of Judaism and when they got an opportunity of being told I said what the meaning was of that particular thing differed only to happy why should they lose and nobody forced us if they had said no you must become Hindu no you must become mohammedans but nobody ever cost us because we were such a minority in the whole population of India nobody worried about this but what if they were not always a tiny minority what if the mysterious rulers of northern India in the 5th and 6th centuries were indeed the Lost Tribe of Zebulun so y'all chill ahem it's mom's shit beneath the Bene Israel community's own historian his name was high in Qarth wrote a book about the Bene Israel at the turn of the 20th century he believed that they are descendants of the Lost Tribes he thought the tribes were scattered to the ends of the earth and some made their way to India he talks about various practices they have and compares them to the rituals of the jerusalem temple for example the Malita ceremony he argues that in an earlier period they even had sacrifices like those in the temple but these are all speculations there is no documentation or proof [Music] after nearly three millennia they may not be proof but there is a tantalizing hint the holiest site for denial of India is a rock outcrop 100 kilometers south of Bombay [Music] gee honey honey Malika shell Elia Ohana be here we learned that the most revered figure for the B'nai Israel is not King David or Abraham or even Moses it is the prophet Elijah the Jews in India believed that the prophet Elijah went to heavens from this place the mark of his chariot can be seen on the stone rock that we are standing on the hooves can be seen laid down there and they said that his chariots lived here and on the top of the mountains over there you can see another sign of the hooves of his horses [Music] using the rock as a kind of altar Japanese I'll make an offering of coconut on the mark of Elijah's chariot this veneration of Elijah is suggestive since Elijah was the prophet of the Israelite tribes that came to be lost [Music] but how would they have gotten here the community has its own myths of origin 2,000 years ago a shift of Israel got caught in a swamp and the ship was erect on the course of Bombay and only seven couples survived that particular shipwreck and the seven copies landed at a place known as now down and we are supposed to be the offshoot of those seven couples the Ori optional makes more sense that those Israelites came not directly from Israel but from the north that is the area of the Silk Road [Music] Israelites of the tribes exiled by the Assyrians became involved in the silk trade trading along one of the branches of the ancient route that became known as the Silk Road I believe that these Israelites God as far as Afghanistan Pakistan and Kashmir from there they got to where the Persian Gulf meets the Indian Ocean and then in the course of their trade they may have sailed along the Indian coast [Music] whichever way they got here double al can still point to the graves where the survivors of the shipwreck are said to be buried it now seems that we can draw a plausible link between the B'nai Israel and seafarers coming from the north but does this prove that the ancient rulers of northern India had any connection whatsoever to the Lost Tribe of Seville on we have coins that say Java London we have recorded history of the capital city called boroughs which in Hebrew means blessed we know that the title of their King was mere hag Ola which in Hebrew means light of the Exile and we know the name of the king their most famous King was Torah manna which in Hebrew or Hindi means or seems to mean belief in the Torah faith in the Torah faith in the books of Moses so unless these were all coincidental we could speculate that the Zavala of India and Pakistan were really the lost tribe of Zebulun as if responding to an ancient call many of the B'nai Israel of Bombay have returned to their ancestral home in Israel they gravitate towards Elijah's cave and continue to demonstrate their reverence for the biblical prophet Elijah Scaife is in the old territory of Zebulun standing in this cave I must confess that I felt that I was in a Twilight Zone because I was among people who were acting out a script that was written almost 3,000 years ago and they seemed to be fixated on the Prophet that warned the tribes of their exile and promised them Redemption in the end of days but there was a problem here the prophecy speaks of millions and this was a small group the biggest tribe we had found was Menasha a million and a half perhaps the clue was there because the brother tribe of Manasseh was a frying so perhaps we had to look for a frame for that we had to go back to our treasure map we had to go back to the Bible in the 8th century BC the biblical account of the facts is fully reliable about the reasoning about the wise and and house that is something else but about what happened we can fully trust the biblical account it is fully parallel to what we found in archaeological excavations you miss tequila that volume I look at things as a believer for me the scriptures are paramount in the book of Kings we find in several places references to where the tribes were exiled also in the book of Chronicles it says in these texts that they were exiled to five places first the mountains of the Medes this is in the direction of Kurdistan and the Caucasus second the river goes in third Halla fourth Jara Jara where are these places in modern Syria there are places that roughly correspond to the biblical locations there is a river called hvar and nearby there is a city called goes on it's very interesting few documents were found recently in the in the city on the river hub or called rocket limo a german excavation and 1993 they were published so only four documents I think and in one or two of them there are Israelite names one of them is Hezekiah Hezekiah now the date is the first years here dear to our what of Nebuchadnezzar so that means they are not Julian's the definitely Israelites Israelites on in the area of Kippur where they should be today there are no Israelites waiting by the river hvar but what if they moved east taking their place names with them [Music] one of the passes between Afghanistan and Pakistan is known to the world as the Khyber Pass [Music] [Music] the Khyber Pass is one of the most lawless and dangerous places on earth it is the heart of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier the Wild West of the East the first thing one notices is that the Pakistani government has no real authority here the only way to obtain safe passage is to travel with an armed escort from the ruling people in the area the path ends they have guarded the Khyber Pass for more than 2,000 years driving away Genghis Khan the British Army and most recently the Soviets in Hebrew it's known as hovel pass the same name as in the Bible and next to the Khyber Pass there's a city called Peshawar in Pakistan Peshawar means the same thing the hover pass so we thought could the Khyber behave or in the Bible if it is there should be here a river called Gaza and right there flowing into the Kabul River is the river Ghazni if this is hvar we thought there should be somewhere around here the city Hara and 300 kilometers away in Afghanistan there's a city Herat [Music] the whole world knows this area is a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism there are 15 million paths ends and not a single Jew among them but we set out to investigate whether under the Islamic surface lies an Israelite past [Music] the first clue was the fact that the Pathan's claimed to descend from Afghan son of King Saul of Israel from their perspective Afghanistan is an Israelite name at worship is seem like any other Muslims on studying the Quran however they rocked their bodies in the manner of Jews [Applause] to this day it is an ancient code called Putin wali rather than Islamic law which commands their ultimate loyalty it is edible for tuna roll Putin is really as a fifth region itself is not we have got our own code of conduct and not that whatever is Quran says Putin are believing that we don't do much other thing which are that turn red by foreign really that's why it is said it is provoked they took to him Quran nominee Oh pocket opens up mazhab do a talk to Wally the code of the portal and what is this poster Wally it's basically Old Testament law in a kind of unforgiving way where you don't have any kind of rabbinical softening of it I for an I means I for an I literally adultery you're finished if there is a conflict between your own Putin wali law and Islam which is the path times choose our customs are those of the Poquelin or pathology there are eleven Pathan tribes in the crap we all have the same customs the main law here is the Islamic sharia but we Pathan follow our own specific port and male customers for example according to Islam there must be established evidence for the conviction of adultery you cannot convict anyone without sufficient evidence of fact but according to booked and wali if there is even the slightest suspicion of an illegitimate relationship between a man and a woman both are convicted and killed the matter is closed and there is nothing left to discuss as in the Bible the path and still engage in animal sacrifices for religious purposes I am of the moose ahem the people of Moses we make sacrifices of sheep for example at a wedding festival our elders would sacrifice for sheep today when times are good a man can sacrifice 10 sheep we make these sacrifices to please God and the people too also some people used to light oil lamps on Friday nights to ask for forgiveness and blessings from God such are our traditions we are in a country that is supposedly dominated by Muslims but not Muslims just any Muslims Muslim fundamentalism and yet we come face to face with people that say we are Musa hell we are from the people of Moses [Music] and as we travel among these people who look like this stepped off the pages of the Bible somatic faces long beards biblical garbed prayer Schultz and as the evidence mounted we could not help but feel that maybe here among the patterns of Afghanistan and Pakistan we would find the answers to our quest [Music] we were astounded to learn that the patterns adhere to biblical laws that were thought to have disappeared thousands of years ago as in the Bible those accused of manslaughter can escape to designated cities of refuge it is mentioned in our old books that if you kill someone and intentionally then you can flee to a designated place of refuge our books tell us that Moses ordered Joshua to establish cities of refuge and told the people that they should honor today we educated people think it is backwards to protect a criminal in this way but the people in those areas of Refuge look upon the matter as holy to protect a fugitive is the sacred job of the elders they treat him as the guest it seemed the path hands are trapped in time tenaciously adhering to their ancient ways they've literally created a wall between themselves in the outside world they live in these extended family compounds they're women hidden inside as in the Bible the Pathan women observe a code of modesty which rarely allows them to emerge I asked the pattern how could you have loved songs when you keep your woman hidden it's what a man singing a song to someone in the kitchen from the other room the dining room he said no he laughed and he said all our love songs take place that dwells the only legitimate place for a woman in modesty to be seen as at the well and immediately it struck me that every one of the biblical romances happens that a well Moses means sapore a - well right Jacob meets Rachel and Leah at - well Rebecca for Isaac is method - well it's only that the world [Music] to enter the path and marketplaces is to step back in time defying all probabilities the path and still live in tribal groups with israelite names Rabbani is similar to the tribe of reuben Levani the tribe of levy and shin wari the tribe of Shem on one path and tribe known as garden is very small in numbers not unlike the Lost Tribe of God interestingly the most numerous tribe among the path hands is Afridi and the most numerous tribe in ancient Israel was a frame [Music] [Music] there is even a sub tribe called was Erie known for wearing its hair long in biblical times nas Erie such as Samson also did not cut their hair [Music] so you have Reuven God Ephraim Shimon four more tribes so we'd actually located nine of the tribes or let me put it differently we think we located nine of the tribes if we haven't located nine of the tribes then it's a very strange coincidence going on that you have all these people with biblical names with biblical practices with an Israelite memory exactly where they should be according to the biblical map someone can come up with another explanation I'm open to it but I couldn't understand it there are people living among the paths hands who claimed descent from the Assyrians and still preserve an oral tradition of the conquest of Israel our tradition is that 2,700 years ago my people conquered Israel and took the tribes there to the areas we ruled Iran Turkey Armenia whose Becca stands and Afghanistan the Israelites were taken to all of these places they acted as our surface they acted as tutors for the Assyrian children they were also used in the army to help us earlier in warfare when I was young and had no beard my grandfather's uncle died at the age of 115 we called him Baba or grandfather he used to say that we are the children of Israel I was young and that that age people forget things they don't care much about history or talk of this kind but now I would like to know what are our origins where do we come from our grandfather's always told us that we are from the Bani Israel the children of Israel they said the Jews are as pathan as we are it's clear that a Judaic memory persists but were there ever people here who openly identified with Judaism if you look up Herat in the encyclopedia Judaica for example you'll find one or two paragraphs if you look up a western jewish community you'll find pages and pages and pages and when you look up Herat it says the jewish community may have been in Herat for somewhere between a thousand and two thousand years they're talking about a community that lived somewhere for at least a thousand years and there's a paragraph or two on them what does this tell us it tells us that they're lost or consciousness that they've fallen off the Western radar screen [Applause] [Music] in Herat we find this cemetery covered with stars of david and hebrew script for at least a thousand years it served one of the oldest continuous Jewish communities in the world the Jews of Herat are no more the last of them left in the late 1980s following the Soviet invasion the country is now torn by Civil War and yet a Pathan tribesman agrees to take us to one of the old synagogue [Music] so Melissa for hundreds of years people entered this house of prayer through the grand doorways leading into its beautiful sanctuary today we enter through an artillery hole blasted by Soviet shells [Music] there is now a tiny community of Afghani Jews in Israel like the blue herons they are largely unknown here they remember their former Pathan neighbors is not quite Jewish but perhaps related to them in some way they were the ones who wore these prayer shawls four-cornered garments like we do and they didn't really know what they were and they used to be surprised to see us wearing similar things they would say to us you're Jews how could you be Jews they'd be surprised I remember them coming from the border areas from the mountains from Pakistan places like Jalalabad and I remember people said that to this day they still lit candles on the Sabbath and they would put the candles under these baskets and didn't know why they were doing it they had all these traditions they didn't know the origins of except they said that is what our forefathers did did they think they were Jewish they thought they were more Jewish than us the prophets say that equal numbers of Israelites and Judeans will herald the Messiah interestingly the number of path hands and Jews in the world is virtually identical the prophecy also foretells that it is Menasha and a frame that will take the lead in the return in India we had encountered the Menasha if we were right here among the Afridi we had come face to face with a frame however before we could accept at the end of days was upon us we needed more proof on the road to Armageddon it now seemed appropriate that our journey take us through a minefield we needed harder evidence that the path hands were of the Lost Tribes so we went to the Afghani city of Kandahar where in the 1950s a stone covered an ancient script was discovered during the Soviet invasion this stone was buried under rubble and surrounded by mines here red dots mark undetonated mines which we skirted to get to the site [Music] 2,300 years ago the buddhist emperor ashoka put our propaganda pillars throughout his empire until the kandahar discovery it was thought that these stones were always written in Sanskrit but the stone buried here is written in Aramaic in other words the people then living here spoke in the everyday language of the Israelite tribes we came here with a local elder in the hope of photographing it but in its present state that proved impossible it's under here the stone is very big and there is ancient writing all over it same hard surface as this one but no one can get to it now this is definitely the place there's no point in looking any further we did look further we were tipped off that across the border in Pakistan there was another stone rarely mentioned by Western scholars here the stone was accessible to our surprise we discovered that it too was not written in Sanskrit but in the Aramaic alphabet I see all the letters the olive the iron and I'm standing in front of this twenty three hundred year old postcard from the Lost Tribes and when we pack up our gear and we go and I'm like in shock cuz I didn't expect to find it I was thinking it's in ghandahar I didn't know there was another one here and there's two more in places we didn't go and one has on it the Hebrew month of Elul so then this guy comes up to me and they told me don't say you're Jewish don't say anything because people here are very Muslim they may not take kindly to you so he says why were you able to read that and I feel I don't want to lie to this guy and I said because I'm a Jew and this person who's supposed to be my enemy leans over with tears in his eyes embraces me and says then you are my brother so maybe it was happening maybe the end of time was unfolding I was standing there and I got goose bumps I said wait a minute is this it am I gonna am I making a film or am i turning into the reporter from Armageddon but then something struck me we never found people who claim to be Cohen's priests and that's a big problem because if we're really analyzing prophecy return of the tribes leads to messianic times messianic times leads to the rebuilding of the temple of God in Jerusalem and that leads to the renewed rituals that take place there and that requires a ritually pure cast of priests and there are none among the tribes and in western Jews none that can claim that they are ritually pure descendants of all of this priestly class so what's going on here on the one hand it seems that prophecy is unfolding and on the other hand key characters in the biblical drama are missing perhaps we had stumbled on some kind of eternal punishment preserved in their tribal units on the edges of deserts the lost Israelites were waiting for a Redemption that would never come or perhaps everything we thought we had found was a passing Mirage [Music] there was one lead we hadn't followed one tribe whose descendants we had not encountered the tribe of Asher since the Cohen priests were not living among the other tribes perhaps if we located Ashur we would find the key to the Cohen enigma is it possible that there's little enclose somewhere of pure cones kept there until the blast of the great horn the tribes have come home that heavenly trumpets will call them out and say do your priestly duty for that we went looking to the place that usher would be there were seafarers and they were an alliance with the Canaanites they sailed the seas together and the biggest definition or Canaanite colony was in Carthage modern Tunisia so we went to the one place we hadn't been to to look for the one tribe that we had made no contact with and just a few hundred kilometers down the road after coast of Tunisia there's an island and on that island there's a community that are being there since biblical times [Music] the name of the island is Djerba it is home to a Jewish community the Tunisians value for its silversmiths most historians maintain the theory that the Jewish community in Juba is the oldest community in jewelry in the whole world some of them they say that the Jewish community was established even before the construction the first temple but we now learned is that the community split into two distinct quarters one for Spanish Jews who arrived here in the 16th century and one made up not of Ash rights but of Cohens and no one else how's the hostility there is a small quarter on the island near the ancient synagogue there is a bigger Jewish neighborhood called the large quarter the larger quarter is mainly made up of Jews who arrived here after their expulsion from Spain also are the Jews of various ethnic backgrounds came to live there the smaller quarters on the other hand is made up essentially of Cohen three sets who arrived here after the destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem in biblical times a new chief queen I am from the Joseph Cohen family I have it from my father and my father's father that our tradition is that we came from the priestly neighborhood we are coins and it is two thousand years that we have been living here in this tiny island the story goes that this community was founded in biblical times by temple priests that quarreled with the religious hierarchy in Jerusalem here they found a place of refuge setting up the grievous synagogue which locals still consider one of the holiest sites in Judaism [Music] according to the Cohen's tradition the greeba contains a treasure trove of gold and silver relics destined for use by the Kohen priests in the future jerusalem temple to be erected after the apocalypse the sacred treasure is supposedly buried beneath the shrine in a crawl space under the main sanctuary we did not find any relics what we did find however is the foundation stone whose original inscriptions if there were any had been covered by the black soot of countless candles very treasure or not what is clear is that the cones of Gerba have maintained a communal priestly tradition found nowhere else in the world you know Gerba is the island of : priests all our Cohens are you a corn yes and so is he when did you cons get here with Ezra the scribe in biblical times it's a heritage passed on from generation to generation we are some of the very few Kohanim who have the authentic Christian lineage from those days up to the present the Ash rights had eluded us but they did lead us to the counts it appears that if needed temple priests are available to bring in the Messianic age ensuring that the return of the tribes would not be in vain there is a divine promise in the Bible that the tribes will return that they will be united that they will prosper and grow and this is a promise that was uttered by many of the prophets Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel in very flowery language in very nice metaphors like in Ezekiel but now there is a flaw there is a promise hanging there which has not been fulfilled if the divine promises fulfilled millions believe that this place Armageddon will be at the center of events [Music] it is here that long ago Israelite tribes put up one of their fiercest battles against the Assyrians but the new age will be heralded only when the descendants of those ancient warriors return [Music] Daniel Benjamin is one of the few who have made it from the India Burma border to Israel if he is from the lost tribe of manasseh he is one of the first Israelites to serve in the Jewish army in nearly 3,000 years the very first time I came here all my thoughts everything that was in my mind was about my father Thoth blessed Mary who passed to the next world before he got the opportunity to come here to our country so the first time I arrived in this place I cried in my heart my dream is that every one of the Bnei Menashe at least a million two will come here with God's help our young people will then go into the army and we'll build the Land of Israel and in the end Messiah will come and rebuild the holy temple I pray for this I pray that the ingathering takes place and the Messiah leaders seeing Daniel praying next to an Ethiopian Israeli I couldn't help but wonder if the story had come full circle if the tribes of Dan and Manasseh had begun the long prophesied return of the lost Israelites the lost tribes of Israel are no longer lost the lost tribes of Israel have never been lost what was lost is our consciousness what was lost is our sensitivity to parts of the world that are not Western we were lost to them they've never been lost to themselves [Applause] long ago the Israelites were given the prophetic promise that once atonement had been made there would be a bright messianic future and the staff of Judah would be rejoined with the staff of Joseph the tribes finally reunited these people now believe that there are nearly three thousand year exile is over and that their redemption is at hand celebrating with their rabbi they proclaim not the beginning of the end but the beginning of a new beginning [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you

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Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 195,897

Rating: 4.2403202 out of 5

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, israel, religion, christian history, ancient history, bible, judaism

Id: ZdYbQKthqoE

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Length: 93min 29sec (5609 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 23 2019

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