Tribes of Israel

As a historical phenomenon of a culture, a religion, a traditional way of life struggling against dreadful events throughout history to maintain itself, to resist attempts to obliterate it, obstinately and with great faith in its ability to survive, what else quite equals the continued existence of world Jewry? The historical expulsions of the Jews from their traditional homelands in the Middle East resulted in their group dispersals and adaptations to all manner of other countries, many of which bore no resemblance whatever to their native origins.

And the mystery of the disappearance of many of the ancient tribes of Israel, the magical stories handed down through the Old Testament has held civilization in thrall for millennia, while those very civilizations have indulged themselves in the mass hysteria of Jew-suspicion, Jew-baiting, Jew-hating and Jewicide. So many societies have benefited from the residence of entrepreneurial Jews in their midst, yet those same societies have seen it to be expedient from time to time to scapegoat and expel Jews from their midst, accusing them of harbouring ill will and intent to the host society.

Despite, and even at times because of the horrendous obstacles placed before Jewry time and again throughout history Jews have nonetheless remained true to themselves, staunchly defiant and yet cautiously hopeful about their futures. Time and again totalitarian, theocratic or royal regimes have earmarked their Jewish populations for expulsion, incarceration, conversion, or death, none exemplifying the extent of murderous determination more than fascist Germany, but all convinced they had good cause to express hatred and contempt for this group of people that truly constitute a people.

Yet there exists a universal undying spirit in Jews, a refusal to submit, a willingness to co-operate when feasible, a denial of defeat. That enduring spirit has ensured that Jews, or those who claim to have been Jews with vestiges of unmistakable practise and adherence still visible over the transfer of millennia, in places as disparate as India, China and Africa to survive with dim memories of handed-down tales of antecedents. How these people maintained their allegiance to a long-past culture and religion while in the embrace of diverse countries so alien to their own beginnings is a mystery.

And here is the enduring vision of Israel welcoming in one wave after another, Jews of Ethiopian ancestry and Jewish devotion to swell the population of Israel. What courage it must take to leave an ancestral cultural homeland to join an original unmemoried homeland of fabled religious/cultural beginnings? As vast a difference as leaving a wattle-hut existence for a flush-toilet lifestyle, with all those differences in between. An alien social system and culture, a new language and value system, a struggle to realize potential in unfamiliar surroundings.

It is the elders giving new life to the burgeoning young, to inherit their history and their place in a new society.