Echoes of Exile: The Lost Tribes Still Calling Home

Two days ago, the Israeli cabinet did something it hasn’t done in years. It opened the gates.

On November 23, 2025, the government approved a plan to bring home every last member of the Bnei Menashe community still waiting in India. All 5,800 of them. By 2030, they’ll all call Israel home. The first 1,200 will arrive by the end of 2026, settling primarily in the north, in places like Nof HaGalil. The government is funding the entire operation.

For those of us watching, this feels like vindication. The Bnei Menashe claim descent from the Tribe of Manasseh, one of the Ten Lost Tribes scattered by the Assyrian conquest in 722 BCE. Their story has been debated in rabbinical circles for decades. But now Israel has made its decision. These are our people. They’re coming home.

Yet even as we celebrate this homecoming, we need to remember something. The Bnei Menashe aren’t alone out there. Around the world, in places most Jews have never heard of, other communities practice Judaism and claim our ancient lineage. They preserve fragments of Torah. They keep Shabbat in languages we don’t speak. They wait for the same thing the Bnei Menashe waited for: recognition that they belong to us, and we to them.

What follows is their story. Not all of it is comfortable. Some of these claims challenge how we think about Jewish identity. Some force us to confront hard questions about halacha, DNA, and who gets to decide what makes someone Jewish. But if we’re serious about Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, all Israel is responsible for one another, then we need to know who’s still out there. We need to understand what they’re facing. And we need to ask ourselves: what does it mean when the gates open for some but not for others?

The Bnei Menashe: A 2,700-Year Journey Home

Let’s start with what we know happened. In 722 BCE, the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel. They exiled ten tribes. Most disappeared into history. But the Bnei Menashe say their ancestors kept moving east, carrying their identity with them through Persia, through Central Asia, finally settling in the highlands where India meets Myanmar.

Over the centuries, they blended into the Tibeto-Burman cultures around them. But they never entirely let go. They circumcised their sons on the eighth day. They observed something resembling Shabbat. They sang songs about Jerusalem’s destruction in languages no one else understood. When British missionaries arrived centuries earlier, many converted to Christianity. The old practices seemed to fade.

Then came 1951. A tribal leader named Challianthanga had a vision that the Mizo people were descendants of the Israelites. The vision sparked something. People started talking openly about the traditions their grandparents had whispered about. They started keeping kosher. They built synagogues. They began calling themselves Bnei Menashe, Children of Menashe.

By the 1980s, they were making contact with Israel. The first families made aliyah. Slowly, the numbers grew. Today about 4,000 to 5,000 Bnei Menashe live in Israel. But the process has never been simple.

Israel recognized them as descendants of Menashe in 2005. That should have been the end of it. But recognition as descendants doesn’t mean recognition as Jews under halacha. Every single member still needs to undergo Orthodox conversion. We’re talking about months of study in remote villages where Hebrew is completely foreign. Rabbinic oversight. Exams. Mikvehs that need to be built from scratch.

Then there’s the logistics. Flights from northeastern India aren’t cheap. India’s exit requirements add layers of bureaucracy. Families arrive not speaking Hebrew, not understanding Israeli society, carrying trauma from a place where being Jewish meant being different, being targeted.

The 2023 Manipur violence made everything urgent. Ethnic clashes displaced over 1,000 Bnei Menashe. At least one was killed. Synagogues burned. One community member told reporters, “This is not our land. We are just a guest in India.”

That’s the context for this week’s decision. It’s not just policy. For these families, it’s the difference between waiting indefinitely and knowing exactly when they’ll be home. For us, it’s a reminder that aliyah isn’t automatic. Even when the claim is recognized, even when the DNA studies support it, even when the practices are documented, bringing people home requires political will and government funding and rabbinic cooperation. The Bnei Menashe got all three. Not everyone does.

India’s Other Hidden Jews: The Bene Ephraim

About 800 miles southwest of Manipur, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, another community has been watching the Bnei Menashe story unfold. They call themselves Bene Ephraim. They number around 350 individuals, roughly 50 families. And for them, Judaism isn’t about recovering a lost identity. It’s about escaping the one they were born into.

The Bene Ephraim are Dalits. Until recently, they would have been called “untouchables.” In Hindu society, that means barred from temples, barred from certain jobs, barred from dignity. For many Bene Ephraim families, embracing Judaism became an act of rebellion. If Hinduism consigned them to the bottom, they would find a tradition that said every soul was created b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s image.

The modern movement started in the 1980s. A man named Sadok Yacobi converted and built a synagogue in 1991. Hundreds came to services that mixed Telugu hymns with Hebrew prayers. “Our elders used to talk about our Jewishness at home,” Yacobi has said. Whether that’s historical memory or reconstruction, the practice became real. They keep kosher. They study Torah. They observe Shabbat and the holidays.

But India hasn’t made it easy. Government officials pressure them to register as Hindu for benefits. Their identity erodes in bureaucratic limbo. About 100 have made aliyah since the 2000s, mostly through Shavei Israel, an organization that helps reconnect lost Jewish communities. The rest are stuck. Israel hasn’t granted them group recognition. Each person needs a private Orthodox conversion. In a community struggling with poverty, where mainstream rabbis question whether this is “rediscovered” faith or opportunistic conversion, those conversions are nearly impossible to obtain.

This is where the Bnei Menashe comparison gets uncomfortable. Both communities have oral traditions linking them to ancient Israel. Both practice Judaism today. Both face discrimination in their home countries. But one received government approval for mass aliyah. The other hasn’t. The difference often comes down to politics, timing, and which rabbis are willing to vouch for authenticity. It’s not a system anyone would call fair.

Myanmar’s Jews: Practicing Judaism in a War Zone

Cross the border from Manipur into Myanmar’s Chin Hills, and you’ll find the Shinlung. They’re ethnically connected to the Bnei Menashe, part of the same Tibeto-Burman group. About 1,000 to 2,000 identify as Jews. They have an active synagogue in the town of Kalay, which they’ve named Talpiot.

They hold Shabbat services. They keep the holidays. And they do it while their country tears itself apart.

Myanmar has never been particularly tolerant of minorities. The Shinlung face pressure from the Buddhist majority. Then in 2021, the military staged a coup. The resulting civil war has displaced hundreds of thousands. For a tiny Jewish community with no international support structure, it’s become nearly impossible to maintain normal life.

About 500 Shinlung have made it to Israel since the 2010s. But there’s no government program for them. No mass airlift. Each person who gets out does so through individual conversion, private funding, and often dangerous border crossings. The ones still in Kalay keep practicing, keep hoping, and keep watching their Bnei Menashe cousins board planes they can’t get on.

The Pashtuns: When Folklore Isn’t Enough

Travel northwest from India into Afghanistan and Pakistan, and you enter Pashtun territory. The Pashtuns are one of the world’s largest ethnic groups. Millions of people. And for centuries, there have been stories.

Stories about Israelite ancestors who fled through Persia after the Assyrian conquest. Stories about why Pashtuns follow certain customs: the refusal to eat pork, the emphasis on hospitality, the codes of honor that resemble ancient Near Eastern tribal law. Some Pashtuns will tell you their tribal structure mirrors the Israelite system. They’ll point to DNA studies showing Semitic markers in their population.

Activists like Rudy Rochman have tried to build bridges between Pashtun communities and Israel. A handful of individuals, maybe two dozen total, have converted to Judaism and made aliyah. They’re fleeing Taliban rule that torches what few synagogues existed and executes religious minorities as a matter of policy.

But here’s the problem. Folklore doesn’t constitute halachic proof. Genetic markers are interesting but not decisive. Without a continuous chain of Jewish practice, without communities actively keeping Torah and mitzvot, there’s no rabbinic authority willing to grant mass recognition. The Pashtuns might have Israelite ancestors. But 2,700 years of separation, conversion to Islam, and loss of practice means they’re not considered Jews today. Individual conversions remain possible. Mass aliyah is not.

China’s Kaifeng Jews: Erased by Assimilation

In China’s Henan Province, there’s a city called Kaifeng. Between the 8th and 10th centuries, Jewish merchants traveling the Silk Road settled there. They built synagogues. They created a thriving community. Then, slowly, they disappeared.

Imperial bans restricted Jewish practice. Intermarriage became common. By the time the Communists took power, the last synagogue had been destroyed for decades. The Jews of Kaifeng had been absorbed into Han Chinese society. They had Chinese names, Chinese customs, Chinese appearances. Only family records remained: scrolls with Hebrew inscriptions, genealogies tracing back to Jewish ancestors.

Today, about 1,000 people in Kaifeng can trace their ancestry to those Jewish merchants. Some have tried to reclaim that heritage. A man named Shi Lei spent a year converting in Israel. “I was the first person from Kaifeng that studied in Israel,” he’s said. Around 100 others have followed, mostly since the 2010s.

But every single one needs a full conversion. Israel doesn’t recognize Kaifeng ancestry as conferring Jewish status. The centuries of assimilation severed the halachic chain. Now China’s government has cracked down on “foreign” religions, making it even harder for Kaifeng descendants to study Judaism or obtain the necessary documents for emigration. They’re caught between a government that sees them as suspiciously foreign and a Jewish world that sees them as too assimilated to count.

Central Asia’s Vanishing Communities

The Bukharan Jews are different. We know they’re Jews. Their lineage is documented, their practices unbroken. But they’re still worth discussing because they show what happens to even recognized Jewish communities when the political situation deteriorates.

Bukharan Jews trace their origins to Persian exile, centuries before the Common Era. They developed their own language, Judeo-Tajik. Their own musical traditions. Their own distinct culture. In 1989, about 35,000 lived in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Today, fewer than 1,500 remain.

The exodus happened after the Soviet Union collapsed. Economic devastation. Rising antisemitism. Border conflicts. About 100,000 Bukharan Jews now live in Israel, a successful mass aliyah that saved a community from extinction.

The elderly who remain in cities like Bukhara gather in dwindling synagogues and teahouses. Many are too frail to make the journey. Some are waiting for family members to get papers in order. But the trajectory is clear. In another generation, there may be no Bukharan Jews left in Central Asia. Not because anyone doubted their Jewishness. Just because staying became impossible.

Africa’s Jewish Mosaic

Africa has multiple communities claiming Jewish descent. Each story is different. Each faces its own obstacles.

The Igbo Jews of Nigeria

In southeastern Nigeria, the Igbo people have maintained oral traditions linking them to the tribes of Gad or Ephraim. About 2,000 to 3,000 Igbo identify as Jews today. They observe Yom Kippur. They practice circumcision. They keep traditions passed down since a revival movement in the 1930s.

Remy Ilona, a community leader, describes families hiding Torah scrolls during the Biafran War pogroms of the 1960s. Now they face different pressures: oil-driven unrest, Islamist violence spilling over from the north, economic collapse. About 50 have converted and made aliyah since the 2010s.

But Israel hasn’t granted group recognition. The Chief Rabbinate considers their practices insufficiently halachic. Ilona himself has said, “I have my reservations about using DNA to determine who is a descendant of Jacob.” Without DNA evidence and without full halachic observance, each person needs an individual Orthodox conversion. In a region torn by secessionist movements and violence, that’s a nearly impossible bar to clear.

The Lemba of Southern Africa

The Lemba have something the Igbo don’t: genetic proof. Studies show that about 50% of Lemba men carry the Cohen modal haplotype, the genetic signature of the Jewish priestly line. This population of 70,000 to 80,000 people spread across Zimbabwe and South Africa’s Limpopo province has maintained Jewish practices for generations: no pork, no shellfish, circumcision, and oral histories about coming from Judea.

Since the 1990s, there’s been a Jewish renaissance. Young Lemba in places like Harare have started wearing kippot, building synagogues, studying Torah. They’re driven by economic hardship and post-Mugabe xenophobic violence. But they’re also driven by the desire to reclaim an identity that was nearly lost to centuries of blending with African neighbors.

About 20 have converted individually and made aliyah. But most Lemba also practice Christianity. That dual identity, common in communities that have survived by adapting, becomes an obstacle to collective recognition. The rabbinic authorities aren’t willing to grant group status when practices blend ancestral traditions with other religions. So most remain stranded, genetically linked to the priesthood but halachically outside the community.

Uganda’s Abayudaya: The Convert Community

The Abayudaya aren’t claiming ancient lineage. Their Judaism is recent. In 1919, a Ugandan military leader named Semei Kakungulu converted after reading the Bible and concluding Christianity was corrupted. He brought thousands of followers with him.

They’ve been Jews ever since. They survived Idi Amin burning their synagogues in the 1970s. They survived AIDS decimating their elders. They survived famine and drought in eastern Uganda. Today, 2,000 to 3,000 Abayudaya practice Judaism, most having undergone Conservative conversions in 2008.

The problem? Israel’s Interior Ministry doesn’t recognize Conservative conversions as automatically conferring the right to aliyah. A man named Yosef Kibita was denied three times before finally winning citizenship in August 2024 after a High Court battle. “I cannot describe how I feel at this moment after being approved as an Israeli,” he said.

About 200 Abayudaya have made it to Israel, but only after undergoing Orthodox conversion processes. One rabbi described the Ministry’s rejections as creating “personal and family problems.” For a community that has practiced Judaism for over a century, that practices it sincerely, it’s a bitter reminder that institutional recognition depends on which movement converted you.

Ghana’s House of Israel

In Ghana’s remote Sefwi Wiawso region, about 300 to 500 people belong to the House of Israel. They claim a 200-year oral tradition of Jewish ancestry. Today, first-generation children are being bar and bat mitzvahed in mud-brick synagogues.

Alex Armah, a community leader, describes rediscovering Shabbat candles amid cocoa plantation isolation. Young people seek education and escape from tribal conflicts. “If you are in Israel or Ghana, you have one God, one Torah,” Armah says.

A few dozen have converted and made aliyah. But the community is small, isolated, and lacks infrastructure. Chabad has a center in Accra that offers some support, but for most, aliyah remains a distant dream. There’s no mass movement, no government program. Each person who wants to go must make it happen alone.

South America and the Pacific: The Geographic Extremes

Peru’s Bnei Moshe

In the 1980s, a Catholic villager in Trujillo, Peru, started studying the Bible seriously. What he found led him to Judaism. Eventually, 500 families followed him. They underwent conversions. They made aliyah to the West Bank, settling on kibbutzim in the 1990s.

It sounds like a success story. And for most of the 500 who made it, it has been. But stragglers still face deportation threats if their conversions lapse or if they can’t meet the ongoing requirements. Their acceptance remains fragile, dependent on maintaining standards that can be revoked.

Papua New Guinea’s Gogodala

The Gogodala live in Papua New Guinea’s Western Province. They were headhunters until relatively recently. In the 2010s, some communities began claiming Manasseh lineage based on missionary teachings. They started keeping kosher, studying Torah, avoiding shellfish.

About a dozen have converted and made aliyah. But scholars like Tudor Parfitt note that the commitment seems more about curiosity than deep practice. The region’s remoteness makes sustained contact impossible. There are no roads, no infrastructure. It’s unclear whether this represents a genuine Jewish revival or a passing interest sparked by missionary contact.

What DNA Can and Cannot Tell Us

Genetic studies have revolutionized how we think about these communities. The Lemba’s Cohen modal haplotype is striking evidence of Jewish ancestry. Pashtun populations show Semitic markers. Some Bnei Menashe genetic studies suggest connections to Middle Eastern populations.

But DNA alone doesn’t determine Jewish status under halacha. We’ve never used blood quantum to define membership. Judaism passes through practice, through maternal lineage according to Orthodox interpretation, through conversion processes that incorporate someone into the covenant. A person can have zero Israelite DNA and be unquestionably Jewish after conversion. Another can have strong genetic links to ancient Israel and be halachically non-Jewish without proper conversion or lineage.

This creates an uncomfortable tension. We want to believe that these genetic findings matter. They provide scientific validation for oral traditions we might otherwise dismiss. Yet relying too heavily on DNA risks turning Judaism into an ethnic club rather than a covenantal community.

The Chief Rabbinate’s position has been consistent: continuous practice of Judaism matters more than genetic ancestry. But that raises questions too. What counts as continuous? The Bnei Menashe maintained certain practices for centuries before reembracing fuller observance in 1951. Is that continuous enough? The Kaifeng Jews lost practice entirely for generations. Is that beyond recovery?

There are no easy answers. But the genetic evidence makes one thing clear: the Assyrian exile scattered Israelite populations far more widely than we imagined. Some of those populations maintained enough Jewish identity to deserve our attention.

The Questions We Need to Ask Ourselves

This week’s decision about the Bnei Menashe forces us to confront questions we’d rather avoid.

Why did they receive government support for mass aliyah when other communities with similar claims haven’t? Part of it is timing. Their case was championed by influential rabbis and organizations at a moment when the Israeli government was receptive. Part of it is documentation. Their practices were studied, recorded, and deemed sufficiently authentic. Part of it is politics. Northern Israel needs Jewish residents, and the Bnei Menashe are willing to settle there.

But it’s hard not to notice the arbitrariness. The Shinlung in Myanmar have essentially identical claims and practices. They’re even the same ethnic group. Yet they get no government program. The Bene Ephraim practice Judaism earnestly but face skepticism because their embrace of the religion coincided with their desire to escape caste oppression.

Then there’s the conversion requirement. For communities recognized as descendants but not as halachically Jewish, every member still needs Orthodox conversion. Is this reasonable? It ensures halachic standards are met. It prevents fraudulent claims. But it also creates enormous practical obstacles. Poor communities can’t afford months of intensive study. Remote communities lack access to qualified rabbis. The requirement becomes a filter that lets through the most determined and most resourced, not necessarily the most deserving.

And what about communities like the Abayudaya, whose Conservative conversions aren’t recognized? They practice Judaism. They’ve done so for over a century. They’re sincere. But because the wrong denomination performed their conversion, they face additional hurdles. Is this about preserving halachic standards, or is it about denominational politics?

These aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re challenges we need to address honestly.

Who Else Waits in the Wings?

As the Bnei Menashe board their flights over the next five years, other communities will be watching. The Shinlung in Myanmar, practicing Judaism under military rule. The Bene Ephraim in India, trying to escape caste discrimination. The Igbo in Nigeria, maintaining traditions despite violence. The Lemba in Zimbabwe and South Africa, carrying priestly genetics but lacking full recognition.

They’ll see that it’s possible. That the gates can open. But they’ll also see that it requires more than practice, more than sincerity, more than even genetic proof. It requires political will, organizational support, rabbinic approval, and often just luck in timing.

The broader Jewish world has a choice. We can view these communities as interesting anomalies, curious footnotes in Jewish history. Or we can take seriously the possibility that the exile scattered our people much farther than we knew, and some of those exiles kept the faith in forms we barely recognize.

If we take Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh seriously, if we believe all Israel is truly responsible for one another, then we can’t dismiss these communities just because their practice looks different or their claims are hard to verify. We need robust standards, yes. We need to prevent fraud and maintain halachic integrity. But we also need compassion, flexibility, and the humility to admit that 2,700 years of exile created situations our legal categories weren’t designed to handle.

The Bnei Menashe waited decades for this moment. How many more decades will others wait? And when history looks back at this era, will we be remembered as the generation that opened the gates wider, or as the one that kept them closed to all but a fortunate few?

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The genetic and historical connections discussed in this piece are explored in greater depth in my recent article on hidden Jewish ancestry in DNA. The science is fascinating, but as this story shows, it raises as many questions as it answers.