[Avodah] ten tribes

[Eli Turkel]

<<I certainly do not question Eliyahu Hanavi's ability to identify
someone al pi nevuah. What I do question is the existence of someone
from the 10 tribes BEN ACHAR BEN after all this time left to identify.
 The galus of the 10 tribes was c. 2600 years ago. Conservatively, at
about 4 or more generations per century this means the probability of
anyone from an all male line  is the inverse of  2 to the 104th power!
This is so tiny that it is a virtual impossibility without the
intervention of nes. You remember the story about the "mere" request
from a king giving a reward for one grain doubled on each square of
the chessboard. This was only 2 to the 64th power.>>

I disagree with the mathematics. We don't start from a person then and
figure out what is the probability. Ignoring intermarriage every Jew
is a descendant of one of the 12/13 tribes. Hence, the probability
that someone is from shevet Ephraim should be 1/12. To this we need to
take into account the realities after the Northern kingdom was exiled.
Assuming all those exiled to Assyria/Babylom etc are lost we would
need to know the percentage of people living in Judea that were from
Ephraim. Though this number is small it is not infinitesimal.

This statistics are of course not perfect. Though I have no numbers I
suspect that the percentage of Jews today that are Cohanim or Leviim
is lower than what was the situation at the end of Bayit Rishon.

<<Though there is the gemara that says that among those Jews who were exiled
and didn't return soon after, all of the women were miraculously childless,
so that we needn't worry about their descendants being Jewish.  Otherwise
we'd have a problem in the countries where the Tanach tells us they were
exiled to, because kol kavua kemechtza al mechtza, so any person in that
country would have a 50% chance of being Jewish, and thus a safek mamzer.>>

Sorry, but I have a problem taking this gemara literally that the
entire population of the Northern kingdom that was
exiled disappeared in one generation because there were no children.
Furthermore, what about all the Moabites and
other nations that we can't intermarry with. Did they also fail to
have children?
In many cases the gemara gives a strained answer to avoid the problem
according to some shitah.

As to believing all the stories, I personally still have trouble
accepting the famous story of Rav Ashi and the king Menashe.
While I don't know the pull of Avodah Zara in those days it is clear
that even among the evil kings of Judea that Menashe was at the
bottom.

Also remember that the 10 tribes were completely estranged from
Judaism, worshipping idols and having limited contact with any Torah
scholars once they were exiled. So it is highly unlikely that they
took steps to preserve their identity and to avoid mamzerim.
-- 
Eli Turkel