Monday, April 25, 2005
The Lost Tribes of Mizoram?
I suppose many of you are familiar with the story of the Menashe tribe of Mizoram and Manipur, who have for the longest time argued that they have Jewish roots. This Passover, they got an early surprise when the chief Sephardic Rabbi recognised the B'nei Menashe as one of the fabled lost tribes of Israel. The Rabbi is planning to send a team of rabbis to convert them formally and take them back to Israel.
On the face of it, it is hard to imagine a more unlikely story. A tribe, exiled from Israel by the Assyrians around 720 B.C. somehow finds its way, via Afghanistan and China, to this thin slice of India sandwiched between Bangladesh and Myanmar. On the way, they forget their language, their history and most of their traditions. Their genes are so mixed up they look like their Mongoloid neighbours, their memories so faded they speak a Tibeto-Burmese language, rear pigs and eat pork. Almost all that remains is a name -- Manasseh, Menasia or Manmase, an ancestor whose spirit they invoke to ward off evil.
Before Christian missionaries came from Wales and England to these misty, forested hills in the late nineteenth century, the Mizo, Kuki and Chin peoples worshipped one Almighty God, albeit challenged by more than a dozen other spirits. Some of the practices involved in animal sacrifice were similar to ancient Hebrew traditions, while an ancient song among one tribe talked of "crossing the Red Sea", with enemies in chariots at their heels, she says. Mizo woven shawls are not unlike Jewish prayer shawls in design. In place of circumcision, is a cleansing ceremony eight days after a child is born, involving burning of incense.
Science has yet to give a conclusive answer to Mizoram's mystery. Calcutta's Forensic Science Laboratory found no trace of typical Jewish genes in the male Y chromosomes of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo, but found some evidence of a possible, but diluted, maternal link to the Near East. Research by Israel's Technion institute and the University of Arizona may provide more conclusive results, even if they are unlikely to change the Menashe's fate. For now, the ball is in the court of Israel's Chief Rabbinate -- a spokesman said a final decision on whether to allow mass conversions outside Israel would be taken after Passover ends on April 30.
On the face of it, it is hard to imagine a more unlikely story. A tribe, exiled from Israel by the Assyrians around 720 B.C. somehow finds its way, via Afghanistan and China, to this thin slice of India sandwiched between Bangladesh and Myanmar. On the way, they forget their language, their history and most of their traditions. Their genes are so mixed up they look like their Mongoloid neighbours, their memories so faded they speak a Tibeto-Burmese language, rear pigs and eat pork. Almost all that remains is a name -- Manasseh, Menasia or Manmase, an ancestor whose spirit they invoke to ward off evil.
Before Christian missionaries came from Wales and England to these misty, forested hills in the late nineteenth century, the Mizo, Kuki and Chin peoples worshipped one Almighty God, albeit challenged by more than a dozen other spirits. Some of the practices involved in animal sacrifice were similar to ancient Hebrew traditions, while an ancient song among one tribe talked of "crossing the Red Sea", with enemies in chariots at their heels, she says. Mizo woven shawls are not unlike Jewish prayer shawls in design. In place of circumcision, is a cleansing ceremony eight days after a child is born, involving burning of incense.
Science has yet to give a conclusive answer to Mizoram's mystery. Calcutta's Forensic Science Laboratory found no trace of typical Jewish genes in the male Y chromosomes of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo, but found some evidence of a possible, but diluted, maternal link to the Near East. Research by Israel's Technion institute and the University of Arizona may provide more conclusive results, even if they are unlikely to change the Menashe's fate. For now, the ball is in the court of Israel's Chief Rabbinate -- a spokesman said a final decision on whether to allow mass conversions outside Israel would be taken after Passover ends on April 30.
