The Ten Lost Tribes are all of us
Approaching the legends as metaphor, not pseudohistory
To be fully honest, I get tired of hearing about the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. I’m tired of conspiracy theories, of claims that they ended up in the Americas, and so on. This post is not about that; it’s not about history; it’s about greater meaning.
Much later than the account of the banishment of the Ten Tribes in Tanakh, legends sprung up about them among Jews and Christians alike. It was held that they lived beyond the Sambation River, which raged impassably for six days of the week, but was passable on Shabbos. But because of the prohibition on travelling on Shabbos, the Ten Tribes could not cross the river to leave their exile. Their return to the Jewish community thus became an aspect of messianic prediction, since in the end, the Law would become outdated, as merely a necessity of a past imperfect age. With the abolition of the Law, Moshiach could bring the Ten Tribes across the Sambation. Thus it was that Nathan of Gaza claimed that Sabbatai Zevi’s death was merely a material illusion, and that his spirit had gone to cross the Sambation and restore the Ten Tribes, to return with them – but only if the other Jews behaved well enough.
It is this messianist perspective on the Lost Tribes and the Sambation that called them to my attention as a potent metaphor.
No, Sabbatai Zevi did not cross the Sambation, which does not exist, and Nathan of Gaza’s prophecies along this line conveniently involved Sabbatai leaving his wife, Sarah the Ashkenazi, for a daughter of Moses, named Rebecca. Nathan was often overtly throwing shade in his “prophecies,” because he personally hated Sarah.1 So petty!
Anyway, Sabbatean extravagances aside, I think the idea that the messianic age entails the reuniting of Jewry has a point, even in a Reform line of thinking that would not involve Moshiach. The Lost Tribes, for me, are not just an obscure historical fact, but rather a model of the structure of Jewish experience and of tikkun olam.
How many Jews have been isolated from the rest of the Jewish community? How many have even been forced to apostatise and lead their descendants away from Judaism and Jewish life? Surely there are more lost tribes of Jews than connected ones.
The story and mythos of the Lost Tribes remind us that tikkun olam entails reaching out to Jews who have been lost to oppression, isolation, or both. The idea of Moshiach leading them across the Sambation can be a simple, pointed reminder that a repaired world is a world where Jews are free to be Jews and in community with one another. As Tanakh tells us in a passage we recite so often, redemption involves a restored oneness at all levels, divine and among humankind. Surely this also means: among Jews.
To me, we are all a part of one or another Lost Tribe. And I don’t mean that we are literally descendants of a historical group of vanished exiles. You, reader, might have a clear lineage straight from the Matriarchs. What I mean is many of us have, for one reason or another, been separate from our own Jewish souls, and from Jewish community. The Ten Lost Tribes are present in all Jews as a separation to be overcome, a separation from each other and from our own Jewishness.
As a last point, I will be mildly spicy and suggest that part of the Sambation mythos is a reminder to not let us exclude one another. Primarily, Jews are lost to external oppression, which may become internalised, or may not. But many Jews have certainly been excluded by our own communities.
That you can’t cross the Sambation on Shabbos means: our reading of Torah means that you can’t be both LGBT and welcome in our community. It means that converts within a different hashkafah from one’s own aren’t Jewish. It means assuming Jews of colour aren’t really Jews until proven otherwise. It means proper Jewish women are subordinate participants in life and tradition. Concretely, it means alienating people – and I refer to the experience of a friend of mine – from Jewish community because they will not go to conversion therapy to “cure” their sexual orientation.
The Sambation is most importantly representative of the external world that is at constant pains to alienate Jews and make us forget ourselves. The external threat is certainly the greatest threat. But let’s not let the Sambation flow through our own kehillot. This is not to say that we should allow in anyone who claims to be Jewish, but it is to say, we should not let our reading of Torah keep Jews away from other Jews.
Sabbatai Zevi is not, 348 years later, on the verge of bringing the Ten Tribes back. Restoring the Ten Lost Tribes is our task as individual Jews and as a community, and most of us can count ourselves as being, or having been, to some extent, among the ranks of the lost.
Tikkun olam entails gathering and repairing all that has been shattered, including ourselves and our community.
Edited for doctrine, 17/4/25.
In Nathan’s messianist and convenient reading of Tanakh, Sabbatai as Hosea had been seduced and perverted by Sarah as Gomer, and that needed to be fixed by Sabbatai marrying a legendarily pure daughter of Moses, and Moses’ children were thought to live across the Sambation.