[Avodah] Ten Tribes (was Yovel)

[Zev Sero]

On 29/06/2011 7:55 AM, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
> 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.

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.

On 29/06/2011 11:06 AM, Micha Berger wrote:
> But whether it was a one-time gezeirah or a general rule, the gemara
> itself tells us that the 10 shevatim either no longer exist (no Jewish
> descendents) or are no longer Jewish.

Or Yirmiyahu brought them back.  In any event, it's impossible that
the tribes themselves were completely extirpated, because the nevi'im
tell us that they'll be there when Moshiach comes.  If necessary, I
suppose some of them can just be brought back to life, just as we know
that some of the tzadikim will come to life early, before the general
techiyas hameisim.


On 29/06/2011 11:16 AM, Lisa Liel wrote:
> At 06:22 AM 6/29/2011, Zev Sero wrote:

>> If they only married among themselves (or with other such tribes) then
>> they'd still be Jewish, just like the Bene Israel of the Bombay area,
>> who were kept from intermarrying by the Indian caste system.

> True, but if they didn't have a history of hilchot gittin, the entire
> population might have a chazaka of being mamzerim.

In the case of the Bene Israel, they had a history of not allowing
divorcees to remarry.  Effectively, they had no divorce, just permanent
separation.  Thus no likelihood of mamzerus.  

-- 
Zev Sero
zev at sero.name