Jewish History Channel: The 10 lost tribes still lost ?

Jewish History Channel: The 10 lost tribes are apparently still lost (Part 1)

I remember reading a pamphlet quite a few years ago which was published by the Amishav institute (Now known as Shavei Israel) called The Lost Tribes of Assyria. In it, the author, Rabbi Eliyahu Avihail seeks to prove that the Pashtun (Pathan) tribesmen of Afghanistan and Kashmir are descended of the 10 lost tribes of Israel. Their Hebrew sounding names and Israelite-like customs convinced Avihail of the veracity of the claim.

Ha-historion continues by bringing recent Genetic evidence that seems to prove the opposite to be true.

"Two populations, the Kashmiris and the Pathans also lay claim to a
possible Jewish origin. Jewish populations commonly have a moderate
frequency of haplogroup 21(20%) and a high frequency of haplogroup
9(36%). The frequencies of both of these haplogroups are low in both
the Pathans and Kashmiris so no support of Jewish origin is found,
although again this conclusion is limited both by the small sample size
available from Kashmir and by the assumption that the modern samples
are representative of ancient populations"

While I'm not sure that I'd like to have the Taliban for cousins, I'm not sure if the above proof is conclusive.

Besides two comments left on the above posts -that we're speaking about people who left the rest of the Jewish community after the destruction of the First Temple (that's more then 2,500 years ago) and that Mitochondrial DNA had not been checked (which comes from the maternal line, and would therefore be the test needed to link them to their 'Jewish' roots)

It would seem to me that all hope is not yet lost . . .

In Simcha Jacobovici's documentary, Quest for the Lost Tribes, he makes note of prevalent Judaic customs (Such as a tzitzis like blue fringed garment) and even more interestingly, a tablet left by the Mongol kings with the edicts of the land chiseled in the local language -Aramiac (in Hebrew characters) . . .

Perhaps then, the land of the Afghans had been a stopping place where the tribes had stayed- thus leaving their cultural fingerprints- before moving on.







Technorati Tags: Lost Tribes, Afghanistan, Taliban, Jewish History