On the day before the 13th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, I attended a talk in Petah Tikva by a learned rabbi who had spent much of his life looking for remnants of the lost tribes of Israel.

There were some twenty other people in the room listening to the old rabbi; most of them were religious, and eager to learn more about where their ancient lost brethren, the tribes of Menashe, Dan, Zevulun, Efraim and the others, had ended up and what had become of them. At one point, the rabbi said that some of the lost tribes, who had left Israel 2,700 years ago after a Jewish civil war, reached as far away as the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Fascinating, I thought, and pointed a question at the old rabbi, a question that I thought was quite insightful. “Rabbi, don’t you think its quite ironic that even though lost Israelite tribes settled in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, this area now is now the number one terrorist base in the world; the most dangerous place in the world; al-Qaeda’s headquarters; a place where they hate Jews more than any other and from which they plan to destroy Israel”? Continue reading →