Fine, Now maybe he will shut up about the ISC ruling from last week that validates Reform and Conservative conversions. If they want to come to israel let them. If Americans want to be dunned by the UJF, them too as long as they contribute.

The notion of letting any of the hairballs from the Sephardic or Ashkenazaic Orthodox establishment to decide who can and cannot immigrate to Israel is a dreadful cave-in to the worst of our faith.

As an aside, during Purim, do Hasidim wear costumes that make them look like normal human beings?

I have read some exposition on the Lost Tribes at:

http://ohr.edu/yhiy/article.php/1876,

which is certainly fascinating reading. I haven't the faintest idea if the good Rabbi is even remotely correct, or Judaism's version of Hal Lindsay. Can any informed commenter recommend a good website/book/article which deals authoritatively with this question?

Bruce Cleaver:

National Review had a GREAT review of a book on this subject a few years ago...absolutely fascinating. The book, whose title I forget, traced the story of an anthropologist as he studied this group of Indians who claimed to be descended from the 10 Lost Tribes Of Israel. Reportedly, both their language and their cultural practices are close enough to those of the ancient Hebrews that some connection between the two is a possibility.

If I can find a copy of the review, I'll send it to you or tell you where to look it up.

Thanks, Matt!

Bruce:

Is this what you're looking for?

Sorry, this?

Yeah, OJ, that's some fine sieve they're using.

[From the BBC:

Other Israeli groups have dismissed the claim as "historically untenable." DNA studies at the Central Forensic Institute in Calcutta suggest that while the masculine side of the tribes bears no links to Israel, the feminine side suggests a genetic profile with Middle Eastern people that may have arisen through inter-marriage.]

I should also mention that I'm pretty sure that the BBC story is misleading [No!]. The DNA tests that show consanguinity with the Indian Jews are of mitochondrial DNA, which passes solely from the mother but which show that both the men and women in the community are descended from middle eastern Jews.

Peter - Thanks!

David:

The Inquisitors get to decide the fineness of the sieve.

I'm just not going to start this up again on a Monday morning, so I'm not going to respond after this no matter what you say. Really. But ... the essential relationship between a nation-state deciding who gets to immigrate and the Catholic Church torturing the Conversos does escape me.

It shouldn't. What better way to rehabilitate the Inquisition? (Or dilute its significance. Same thing, really.)

Nation-state?

"Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar has dispatched a team of rabbinical judges to formally convert them to Orthodox Jewry so they can immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return"

BTW: As long as I've beaten you into submission, have I mentioned lately that MicroSoft should be prosecuted under RICO?

Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar

As long as they vote Shas

And that Laurie Partridge was David Cassidy in a skirt?