Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel (In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel) - Hardcover

Halkin, Hillel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0618029982 ISBN 13: 9780618029983

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 2002

Synopsis

Traces the author's search in the Indian states of Manipur and Mizoram, during which he came to believe that a little-known ethinc group living along the Indian-Burmese border is descended from the lost ancient biblical tribe of Manasseh. 20,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Hillel Halkin was born in New York City and has lived in Israel since 1970.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

1
Siyata Di-Shmaya

Hillerh, I have bad news," said Chen-Hua, waking me from my nap in
our fourth-floor room in the Wenchuan County Teachers Center Guest
House. The news must have been bad, because he usually pronounced all
the l"s in my name without difficulty.
"The police are here," Chen-Hua said. "They say we must move
immediately. They say this is not a hotel for tourists. They say we
broke the law by going to the Chiang village today. It is in a
restricted area."
"Restricted for whom?"
"For foreigners. We are close to Tibet."
"Tibet is hundreds of miles from here. Who told them we went
to the
village?"
"I don"t know. Perhaps our driver."
Of course. The man had driven like a maniac, using his horn
instead of his brakes. An hour ago he had been in our room, demanding
the two hundred yen promised him for the day. The day had ended for
him in midmorning at the bottom of a pitted jeep trail he had refused
to drive his jeep up, leaving us to climb to the village on foot. In
the end he had settled for fifty — and the satisfaction of snitching.
My watch said five-thirty. Although it was the week of the
summer solstice, the sun had already dropped behind the high
mountains across the river. The river"s roar pounded through the open
window like a trucking route.
"Have you told Rabbi Avichail?"
"No," Chen-Hua said.
"Well, he"s not going to move now," I said. "It"s too close
to the Sabbath. Go tell the police it"s against our religion to
change hotels before tomorrow night."
Chen-Hua stood in the doorway beside the earthenware spittoon
that the Wenchuan County Teachers Center Guest House provided for its
guests. He was wearing the green shorts and cream-colored polo shirt
with black squiggles that were the only clothing he had brought with
him and holding the transistor radio he took everywhere. He was
wondering how to explain our religion to the police.
"Go tell them," I repeated.
Chen-Hua must have stopped on his way down to the lobby at
Avichail"s room on the second floor, because when I knocked on the
door, Avichail already knew. Dressed in his trousers, a large knitted
skullcap, and a tallit katan, the fringed undershirt worn by Orthodox
Jews, he was steering a head of cabbage through a hand-turned grinder
on the dresser. The hotel table was covered by a white cloth set with
four paper plates and cups, an open can of Israeli gefilte fish, a
bottle of Carmel-Mizrachi grape juice in lieu of wine, and two
crackers standing in for the traditional challah. Avichail"s
traveling companion, Micha Gross, sat on a bed, slicing the main
course for our Sabbath meal, thick slabs of Israeli baloney.
"When will you pray?" I asked. There was no pressing need to
decide on a course of action. Chen-Hua was still talking to the
police, a conversation Avichail deemed it best to keep out of.
Whatever came of it, he and Micha would stay put unless dragged off
bodily.
"Six-thirty," he said.
I glanced down at the courtyard on my way back to the fourth
floor. Two soldiers with rifles were standing beside a pickup truck.
Its tailgate down, it was waiting for our bags.
The Teachers Center Guest House was the only hotel that had
seemed livable to us when we arrived the night before in Wenchuan, a
city of fifty thousand in the Min River Valley of western Szechwan
Province. It had toilets that actually flushed, faucets that yielded
hot water, electric fixtures that did not dangle from the walls with
copper wires extruding from their casings like the tongues of
poisonous snakes. No one had told us it was reserved for teachers.
The manager, Mrs. Li, a carefully groomed woman with a smile of hot
lipstick and cool amusement, appeared happy to take our money. The
place looked empty. It would be a blow to have to leave it, even
though Wenchuan was a drab town that attracted few travelers, except
for those on their way to Juizhai Gou, a famed nature reserve a day"s
drive past the valley"s head to the north.
I showered and stepped out of the bathroom to find Chen-Hua
jumping on his bed. He leaped three or four times, straining to touch
the ceiling, fell back on the mattress, reached for his radio on the
night table, and switched it on.
"Chen-Hua, what are you doing?"
"Exercising." He held the radio close to his ear, playing
with the dial. "It is good for the leg muscles. Soon President
Clinton will give a press conference."
The president was in Beijing. Chen-Hua did not have much in
the way of muscles. He was twenty-one years old, an interpreter we
had picked up in Chengdu, Szechwan"s capital, and weighed perhaps a
hundred pounds with his transistor. Yet on our ascent to the village
he not only had carried all our packs, he had run ahead with them
like a gazelle.
"What happened with the police?"
"The police." Chen-Hua had a Chinese habit of thoughtfully
repeating the last part of one"s question. "They are considering
letting us stay until tomorrow night. Mrs. Li spoke to someone on the
telephone. I think he was the local party boss."
The radio glued to his ear, he leaned over the edge of the
bed to switch on the television while opening a book. Presently he
asked, "There is an English sentence — "That was quite an
accomplishment." Is it also correct to say, "The man paid the woman
an accomplishment"?"
"No," I said. "What he paid was a compliment."
He looked again at his dictionary and asked, "Then what
exactly is the meaning of the phrase "A left-handed compliment"?"
I was becoming fond of Chen-Hua. "Suppose I told you," I
said, "that for a Chinese you were extremely intelligent. That would
be pretty lefthanded."
He went back to his book. Troubled, he glanced up from
it. "So you think I am intelligent only for a Chinese?"
By the time I had extricated myself it was time for the
Sabbath prayer. "It will take half an hour," I told Chen-Hua. "Then
I"ll come for you and we"ll eat."
"Oh, good," he said. Having never before tasted Western
cuisine, he had developed a liking for canned Israeli hummus and
cucumber-and-tomato salad smeared with mayonnaise. His face fell each
time I insisted, desperate to get away from such fare, that he
accompany me to a local restaurant instead of partaking of Avichail"s
kosher food.
I returned to the second floor. The soldiers and the pickup
truck were gone from the courtyard. Avichail and Micha, in clean
white shirts, were already swaying back and forth, facing west toward
the river and Jerusalem. Unlike them, I had to use a little prayer
book I"d brought from Israel, because I no longer remembered what I"d
known by heart as a boy. Only now did I notice that, by an odd
coincidence, the book"s silver-plated cover was stamped with the
names and symbols of the biblical tribes: Reuben, Simon, Judah, Dan,
Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, Ephraim, and
Manasseh.
Avichail"s prayer was pleasant. It had a droning sadness like
my father"s, a melancholy that asked for nothing but its own
bittersweet longing. Only his melody for "Come, My Love, to Meet the
Bride" was different, importuning. It had a faster, more urgent tempo:

Shake off the dust from thee and arise,
My people, and don thy glorious clothes;
The son of Jesse soon arrives;
My soul"s redemption draweth nigh.

When the prayer was over I went to get Chen-Hua, and the four
of us sat down at the table. Avichail recited the Kiddush, the
blessing for the fruit of the vine, over the grape juice and rose to
go to the bathroom, followed by Micha and me. "Oh, wash hands," Chen-
Hua said happily, coming after us. It was the one Jewish ritual that
made sense to him. Hands washed, he asked Avichail, "What will we do
about a hotel tomorrow night?"
"Mmmmm!" Avichail said, putting a finger to his lips and
shaking his head. "Mmm-mmmmmm!" Unable to explain that one was
prohibited from talking between hand washing and bread blessing, he
waited for Micha to take his seat. "Blessed art thou, O God, our
Lord, King of the Universe, who bringeth forth bread from the earth,"
he intoned, breaking the crackers and giving each of us a half. "You
may speak now," he told Chen-Hua.
But when Chen-Hua repeated the question, Arichail still
refused to answer it. It was the Sabbath; vexing and worrisome topics
were forbidden. "Eat," he said, passing the cole slaw.
Chen-Hua took the bowl but not the hint. "My opinion is that
we should leave Wenchuan," he said. "It is boring here anyway. We can
go to Jiuzhai Gou. There is much to see there."
Avichail and Micha exchanged glances. I said, in Hebrew, "I
think it"s time to tell our friend what we"re up to. We can"t go on
hiding it from him."
"I"m not so sure," Micha said. "If the police question him,
he may talk. What do you think, Eliahu?"
Avichail said, "I don"t think it makes much difference at
this point. You can tell him after dinner. Have some potato salad."
The potatoes had been boiled in an electric kettle and drenched in
mayonnaise too. "Ya ribon o-o-lam ve"olmaya, ve"olma-a-a-aya,"
Avichail sang, breaking into a Sabbath hymn. Micha joined him. They
both had good voices. We sang some more hymns and recited the Grace
After Meals.
When the table was cleared, we went for a walk by the river.
Micha and Avichail fell behind, and I strolled ahead with Chen-
Hua. "So you"ve had enough of Wenchuan," I said.
"Yes. Jiuzhai Gou is beautiful."
"So is the Min River Valley."
In a way, once you got past the industry in its lower
stretches, it was, with its gray, angrily foaming water bordered by a
narrow strip of farmed land on each bank and towered over by green
peaks, heavily terraced below and shooting up to heights of nine and
ten thousand feet.
"There is nothing in it but Chiang villages."
"Look, Chen-Hua," I said, "there"s something you should know.
The Chiang are the purpose of this trip."
"The Chiang?" We had turned onto a bridge that crossed the
Min slightly below its confluence with its tributary, the To.
"They"re a people found nowhere else in China."
"But what is interesting about them?"
"Rabbi Avichail suspects they are lost Jews."
Chen-Hua consulted a mental dictionary. "I think lost means
misplaced," he said in puzzlement.
Since he knew no more about the Bible than most Chinese, it
took a long walk up the To"s right bank for me to explain. We were
out of the center of town now, and the low current of the Chinese
street lamps left the buildings in dingy obscurity. A few families
still sat at their dinners at the sidewalk restaurants, where the
day"s dirty pots and pans had been piled on the outdoor stoves for
washing in the street.
Long ago, I told Chen-Hua, when the Jewish people first lived
in their land, they were divided into twelve tribes: two in the
southern kingdom of Judah and the others in the northern kingdom of
Israel. The tribes were small, surrounded by powerful enemies, and in
720 B.C.E. the northern capital of Samaria was conquered by one of
them, the Assyrians. According to the Bible, they carried away the
northern tribes into exile and replaced them with people uprooted
from elsewhere. The exiles were never heard from again.
"What happened to them?"
"No one knows. Some think they assimilated into their new
environment and disappeared. Others say that only the ruling class
was carried off and that the peasantry stayed behind and mixed with
the newcomers to form a people called the Samaritans. Their religion
was similar to that of the Judeans, who became the ancestors of
today"s Jews. Most of the Samaritans eventually converted to
Christianity and Islam, and today their descendants are Palestinian
Moslems. Less than a thousand of them still practice the old
Samaritan religion."
"You still have not said who was lost."
"For thousands of years there have been legends about the
northern tribes still existing somewhere in remote and inaccessible
regions. People have searched for them all over."
"Has anyone found them?"
"Many have claimed to. The scholars don"t take them
seriously."
"Then Rabbi Avichail is not a scholar."
"No. He"s a rabbi from Jerusalem who believes some of the
legends are true and has traveled widely trying to prove that. He"s
come to China to investigate the Chiang."
"But the Chiang don"t look like you Jews," Chen-Hua
said. "They look like us Han."
"That"s true." When they weren"t wearing their traditional
clothing, I couldn"t tell them apart from Chinese. "Rabbi Avichail
believes they may be lost Jews because of some books written by a man
named Thomas Torrance."
It began to drizzle, the first rain we had seen in China.
Chen-Hua and I passed the last bridge across the To and headed toward
the toll gate at the road to Songpan and Jiuzhai Gou. Trucks loaded
with big logs were parked near the barrier. All the way from Chengdu
they had kept rolling by, the logging trucks, carting away whole
forests from up north.
"Torrance was a Scots missionary who lived among the Chiang
after World War One. They still spoke their old language and
practiced their old religion then, not like the villagers we met
today. He wanted to make Christians of them. But the more he came to
know them, the more he believed they were descended from an ancient
tribe of Israel. Rabbi Avichail wants to see if the customs and
beliefs he described in his books still exist."
"But we saw today that they didn"t."
"That was only in one village. Rabbi Avichail hopes to find
Chiang who are more knowledgeable. The problem is that the
authorities mustn"t know what we"re doing. We didn"t ask for a
research permit, because it could have been denied us or taken too
long to be issued."
We reached the barrier and turned back. The blurry lights of
Wenchuan were now ahead of us.
"Does that mean we will stay in this place?"
"If we can."
"We will not go to Jiuzhai Gou?"
"I"m afraid not."
"Do you think the Chiang are lost Jews?"
"I doubt it."
Chen-Hua mulled this over while we retraced our steps along
the To. He said, "Hillerh, I am very disappointed."

I couldn"t say I was. My expectations had been low from the start.
I first met Eliahu Avichail the year before, in the summer of
1997. For some time I had heard of him as a Lost Tribes hunter, one
of the last of a nearly extinct breed that had once roamed the earth
more prolifically. Scholars and academics considered him a
crackpot. "You"ve got to be kidding," one said when I told him that I
planned to join the rabbi on an expedition.
Yet in the living room of his small Jerusalem apartment,
through which his grandchildren wandered freely in search of
chocolates and crayons, he had seemed level-headed enough as he
described his travels to Moslems in Kashmir, Tatars in Dagestan,
Knanites in Kerala, the Karens in Burma, and other peoples whose
customs supposedly resembled those described in the Bible. The
Kashmir trip, made in 1982 in the hope of meeting Pashtuns from
across the border in Pakistan, a country for which his Israeli
passport was invalid, was the first. The Pashtuns had caught his
attention when, while teaching in a religious hig...

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0618029982
• ISBN 13: 9780618029983
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 394