[Avodah] yovel

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Eli Turkel wrote:

> Why would one assume that there are any remnants left of the 10
> tribes to bring back? By now they are intermarried over many
> centuries.

What does intermarriage prove? Half of all intermarriages result in Jewish children.

Let's take a population of 100 Jews and 100 non-Jews, all of whom intermarried. So we have 100 families, half of whose children are Jewish, and half are not.

Let's use "N" as the average number of children per family. So in this first generation of kids who have intermarried parents, there are a total of 100*N children, of whom 50*N are Jewish, and 50*N are not.

Let's say they all randomly marry each other, either because they consider themselves to be non-Jewish, or because they don't care. So we now have 50*N couples, and they will have 50*N*N children. Of those children, half will have a Jewish mother and half will not, so the next generation has 25*N*N Jews, and 25*N*N non-Jews.

Do you see where this is going? Because we presume that each generation has an equal number of fathers and mothers, and because of the halacha that a child's religion follows exactly 50% of its parents, in the long run, the Jewish population will never change. (At least, it won't vary beyond the statistical limits of probability.)

And so whatever the Jewish population of the world (as a percentage) was at some point in history, random intermarriages will not change that. Jewish population might go up as a result of a high birth rate, and it might go down as a result of persecution. But as long as the intermarriages are done randomly (which I presume to be the case because they aren't even aware that they are Jewish), it will not affect the numbers one way or the other.

Granted that these people are totally unaware that they are Jewish. But I've never heard that that would make a difference. This is an issue of *identity*, not belief or culture. My understanding has always been similar to that of R"n Toby Katz, who wrote yesterday:

> I agree that it is highly unlikely that pockets of the Ten Tribes
> are still living somewhere ... but ... Eliyahu Hanavi will be
> able to point to specific Yehudim and say, "You are really from
> the tribe of Ephraim... or Shimon... or Naftali... ben achar ben."

If anyone sees an error in my math (or elsewhere), please correct me.

Akiva Miller

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