The Japanese have been considered by some early travelers and explorers to be descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes. This theory was formulated by N. McLeod, a Scottish missionary who arrived in Japan in 1867. McLeod detailed his observations, interpretations and speculations in Epitome of the Ancient History of Japan, a book published in Nagasaki in 1875. He described what he thought to be proofs of the origin of the Japanese people from the Ten Lost Tribes. He endeavored in an elaborate way to reconstruct and explain the ancient Japanese history according to his interpretation of the Bible and its sacred history. McLeod's ideas were adopted by a number of European Christian missionaries, but they also became popular with some Japanese, especially among those who converted to Christianity. Bishop Juji Nakada (1869-1939), of the Holiness Church Movement, Dr. Zen'ichiro Oyabe, and Dr. Chikao Fujisawa, a lecturer at Nihon University, were among the most outspoken supporters of the theory linking the origin of the Japanese people to the Ten Lost Tribes. They described their findings and beliefs in books published in Japan during the first half of the 20tyh century.

The supposed connection between the people of the British Isles and the Ten Lost Tribes started with the ideas of Richard Brothers (1757-1824). This Canadian-born, self-proclaimed prophet, who spent his later years of life incarcerated in a lunatic asylum, founded a millenarian movement that towards the end of the 18^th century attracted many adherents in England. According to Brothers, salvation would include the Jews' return to the Land of Israel, including that of the Ten Lost Tribes. In his opinion descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes can be found among the inhabitants of the British Isles. This idea was later on developed by John Finleyson, a Scottish lawyer, in a book he published in 1849, by Ralph Wedgwood, in a separate book published in 1814, and William Henry Poole (b. 1820) in Anglo-Israel; The Saxon race proved to be the lost tribes of Israel (Toronto, 1889). However, it was John Wilson (d.1871), an Irishman, who turned these ideas into the movement of British Israelism. He and his followers strove to discover and describe the historic connection between the Ten Lost Tribes and the British people, via various waves of migrations and immigrations from Central Asia to the north shores of the Black Sea and ultimately to Britain. The movement consequently gained many adherents in Britain and from there it spread to other English speaking countries, especially to the US. British Israelism continued to flourish in the first half of the 20^th century and still has followers in many countries.

Traditions and legends speaking about a supposed origin from the Ten Lost Tribes can be found among various Jewish communities in the Diaspora and immigrants to Israel. The contacts that could be established between European Jewish communities and non-European Jewish communities in Asia and Africa in the modern ages, led to an increased curiosity into the origin and traditions of some Jewish communities living at the outskirts of the traditional area of settlement of the Jewish communities during the Middle Ages and early modern times. For instance, the Jews of Bukhara, in Central Asia, a region that at the beginning of the 19^th century came under Russian domination, received in 1802 a letter from the Jews of Shklov, in Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, asking them whether they were descendants from the Ten Lost Tribes.

One of the traditions of the Bene Israel community of India asserts that this community descends from the tribe of Judah, while according to a concurrent tradition the Bene Israel are descendants from the tribe of Zebulon. The Jews of Cochin, India, although themselves do not uphold a belief in an Israelite origin, were occasionally described as descendants from the Ten Lost Tribes by early travelers, Jews and non-Jews alike, who visited them in the early 19^th century.

In the Caucasus traditions and beliefs concerning possible origin from the Ten Lost Tribes have been documented among the Jews of Georgia, one of the oldest Jewish communities in the Diaspora.

In the late 18^th century some members of the Karaite community of Crimea tried to prove that they are descendants from the Ten Lost Tribes and that they settled in that country already in the 7^th century BCE. Their aim was to obtain tax and military exemptions from the Czarist authorities by arguing that unlike Rabbanic Jews, they were not guilty of the death of Jesus. The most prominent exponent of this theory was Abraham ben Samuel Firkovich (1786-1874), a Karaite scholar who, in his endeavors to prove the antiquity of the Crimean Karaite community, forged documents and archeological findings.

Perhaps the best example of traditions upholding beliefs of an origin from the Ten Lost Tribes can be found among the Jews of Ethiopia. The Beta Israel community of Ethiopia regarded themselves as descendants from the tribe of Dan. It should be pointed out that when Rabbi Ovadiah Yossef, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, recognized the Jewishness of the Jews of Ethiopia in 1973, he too emphasised that they were descendants of the lost tribe of Dan.

The myth of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel is also a recurrent theme of the folklore of numerous Jewish communities in the Diaspora. Legends describing the fate of the Ten Lost Tribes, people who either belong to them or met them, the location and the features of the Sambatyon river as well as a belief in their eventual return to the Land of Israel are found among the traditions of the Jews of Morocco, Yemen, and Eastern Europe, among others.

Women of the Lemba tribe during the Moon Festival Zimbabwe, 1980's Photo: Tudor Parfitt, UK Beth Hatefutsoth – Visual Documentation Center Courtesy of Tudor Parfitt, UK

Moses ben Isaac Edrehi (1774-c.1842), a Moroccan-born rabbi and author of a book about the Ten Lost Tribes Beth Hatefutsoth – Visual Documentation Center

Extending the Quest

The major events in the story of the Jewish people in the 20^th century added a new impetus to the quest for the Ten Lost Tribes. The increased emigration and dispersion of Jews among practically all corners of the earth, the Holocaust, and the Establishment of the State of Israel and its subsequent absorption of Jewish mass immigration from all countries were all seen by many, Jews and non-Jews alike, as episodes of the Divine plan for the final redemption and salvation. According to their view there will never be a true salvation without the return of the Ten Lost Tribes to the Land of Israel. Therefore the search for the Ten Lost Tribes is continuing those very days with new places and ethnic groups coming under the scrutiny of contemporary explorers and emissaries. Of them, Amishav ("My people returns", in Hebrew), a Jerusalem based organization under the leadership of Rabbi Eliyahu Avihail has been particularly active in sending emissaries and researchers to the most remote regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the search for the descendants of Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.

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