Groups claiming affiliation with Israelites
The most notorious exilic occurrences were: the fall of the Kingdom of Israel to the Neo-Assyrian Empire in c. 720 BCE; the fall of the Kingdom of Judah to the Neo-Babylonian Empire in c. 586 BCE; the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE; and the Bar Kokhba revolt in the 130s CE.
The claims made by individuals and groups to Israelite heritage are rooted in different factors, including race, ethnicity, and religion.
According to ancient texts, Israelites began traveling to Central Asia to work as traders during the reign of King David of Jerusalem as far back as the 10th century BCE.
[4] The Bukharan Jews originally called themselves Bnei Israel, which relates specifically to the Israelites of Assyrian captivity.
Some people credit Maimon with causing a revival of Jewish practice among Bukharan Jews which they claim was in danger of dying out.
There is evidence that there were Torah scholars present upon his arrival to Bukhara, but because they followed the Persian rite their practices were forcefully rejected as incorrect by Maimon.
Some sources say that the earliest Jews were those who settled in the Malabar Coast during the reign of Solomon, and after the Kingdom of Israel split into two.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Cochin received an influx of Jewish settlers from the Middle East, North Africa and Spain.
In 1524, the Muslims, backed by the ruler of Calicut (today called Kozhikode), attacked the Jews of Cranganore on the pretext that they were tampering with the pepper trade.
[7] The Samaritans, once a comparatively large, but now a very small ethnic and religious group, consist of about 850 people who are currently living in Israel and Samaria.
The Samaritans also retain ancient Israelite traditions that predate Judaic customs and the Oral Law.
Less archaeological work has been performed on investigating the direction and the regions of the post-Assyrian exile largely because those enthusiastic in pursuing this path of research usually lack skills while archaeologists lack funds; this is contrary to the situation in Israel, where the period of the Judges has been to some degree substantiated by physical finds,[12] and because the interest in pursuing this subject is seen as a semi-mythical pursuit at the edge of serious research.
Usually, the lack of archaeological evidence has been explained by the assimilation theory, which proposes that the exiled Israelites adopted so many of the traits of the surrounding cultures and that any unearthed artefacts cannot be linked to them with any certainty.
Genetic studies upon them had found that the Beta Israel as a general community do not cluster with the rest of the world's Jewry; but in fact are indistinguishable from local non-Jewish Ethiopians.
[18] It also does not negate the authenticity of their Judaism, since Jewish practice among Ethiopian Jews dates back centuries.
In 2005 members of the Bnei Menashe who have studied Hebrew and who observe the Sabbath and other Jewish laws received the support of the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel in arranging formal conversions to Judaism.
The Bene Ephraim trace their observance of Judaism back to ancient times, and they recount a history which is similar to that of the Bnei Menashe in the northeastern Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur.
[22] While not defining the Lemba as Jews, the genetic results confirm the oral accounts of ancestral males originating from outside Africa, and specifically from southern Arabia.
[23] More recently, Mendez et al. (2011) observed that a moderately high frequency of the studied Lemba samples carries Y-DNA haplogroup T, which is also considered to be of Near Eastern origin.
The Lemba T carriers belonged exclusively to T1b, which is rare and was not sampled in indigenous Jews of the Near East or North Africa.
It concluded that "While it was not possible to trace unequivocally the origins of the non-African Y chromosomes in the Lemba and Remba, this study does not support the earlier claims of their Jewish genetic heritage."
The researcher suggested "a stronger link with Middle Eastern populations, probably the result of trade activity in the Indian Ocean.
To varying degrees, Black Hebrews adhere to the religious beliefs and practices of both Christianity and Judaism.
[31] They believe that certain Old Testament passages[32] are prophecies which imply that the tribe of Joseph (Ephraim and Manasseh) will play a prominent role in the spreading of the gospel to all scattered Israelites in the last days, and the tribe of Judah will also play a prominent role in the last days as well as during the Millennium.
