Igereth HaSheluchah MeChachmei V’Rabbanei HaAschkenazim Sheb’Eretz Yisrael L’B'nei Moshe Rabbeinu V’Asereth HaShevatim [“Letter sent from the Aschkenazic sages and rabbis in the Land of Israel to the descendants of Moses and the Ten Tribes.”]

(TEN LOST TRIBES)

for Hirschel Lehren

Amsterdam

1830

Printed without a title-page. On front fly, signature "Yitzchak Dov Halevi Bamberger" (The Wuerzburger Rav). On f.4r. scholarly marginalium in Bamberger's hand.

Vinograd, Amsterdam 2554

An extraordinary letter written by the renowned leader of the Old Yishuv, Israel of Shklov, on behalf of Baruch b. Samuel of Pinsk in his search of the remnants of the Ten Tribes. This published version details the development of the Oral Law, the bitter history of exilic Israel, the struggle to resettle the Holy Land, and concludes with requests for prayer, charity and an increase in the number of righteous scholars resident in the Holy Land. It is thought the primary motivation in seeking out the Ten Tribes was the belief that they still possessed an active Sanhedrin. Jewish law stipulates that the judges on the Sanhedrin must have been ordained in an unbroken chain going back to Moses. R. Israel of Shklov requested that one of the judges in this exotic Sanhedrin travel to Eretz Israel to ordain the scholars there, thus enabling the renewal of the Sanhedrin (ff.3v.-4r.) In his search, R. Baruch traveled across Syria, Mesopotamia and Kurdistan, reaching Yemen in 1833. However, it was there, in San’a he was executed under suspicion of espionage. See Yaari, Sheluchei Eretz Yisrael pp.147-48, 779-80; L. Jung, Men of the Spirit (1964), pp. 75-76. Isaac Dov Halevi (Seligmannn Baer) Bamberger (1807-1878) was the pre-eminent halachist in the second half of the 19th-century. He has been called "one of the last great German-style talmudists." (EJ, Vol. IV, col. 155). Bamberger was a keen supporter of the Yishuv in Eretz Israel and an initiator of the Batei Machseh housing project in the Old City of Jerusalem. See L. Jung, Jewish Leaders (1964), pp. 179-195; E. M. Klugman, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1996), pp. 160-162.