This coming December when many people are thinking of skiing holidays or warm Florida vacations a small adventurous group of people will be setting out to visit one of the ten lost tribes.
Tucked away in the Indian provinces of Manipur and Mizoram between Burma & Bangladesh are a group of people that have returned to Judaism after thousands of years. The Bnei Menashe believe that they are descended from the ancient tribe of Menashe. Evidence shows that after the exile of the northern kingdom of Israel in 721 BCE, many Israelites made their way across the silk route ending up in China. The Shinlung tribe, as they were also called in China, eventually migrated to Burma and north east India, losing many of their Jewish customs along the way.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - Shlomo Gangte is a graphic designer, a documentary filmmaker and a recently ordained rabbi.That wouldn't be so unusual, except that Gangte is one of the recently arrived members of the Bnei Menashe, a community from northeastern India that says it is descended from one of the biblical Lost Tribes of Israel.
The Jerusalem Post Magazine
The road to Aizawl winds perilously through lush green hills, with hair-pin turns and narrow, unmarked lanes adding a tangible sense of danger to the journey. The route passes through numerous villages, many of which are essentially small clusters of makeshift homes built from bamboo, wood and whatever else is available.
Though he is only 23 years old, Shi Lei of Kaifeng, China, is laboring hard to reclaim centuries of Jewish tradition and heritage, much of which has all but faded away in his native land.
A descendant of a once prosperous and thriving Jewish community located on the south bank of China's Yellow River, Shi Lei (pronounced Sher Lay) is now enrolled in the one-year Jewish studies program at Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv, where he is busy studying Hebrew and learning about Jewish history and culture.
Descendants of the Tribe of Menashe Reside in Eastern India
Yitzhak Tang-Zhum, aged 30, was born a member of the Shinlung, a group residing in the region between India and Burma. Already at the age of 4, he relates, he became aware of the Shinlungs traditions linking them with the tribe of Menashe (Manasseh), one of the Ten Lost Tribes exiled from the Land of Israel by the Assyrians when they captured the Kingdom of Israel in the 8th century B.C.E.
To understand the relevance of the Jewish presence in Portugal, we must recall the antiquity of the Jews in the Iberian Peninsula and the roots of Portugal as a nation.The truth is that we don’t have any written evidence of the time and circumstances of the arrival of the first Jews to the territory that was to be Portugal.
