Vilna Gaon: Letter to the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel (transcribed) REPOST

Letter to the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel

אגרת אל עשרת השבטים

A letter sent by the elders and Rabbis of the Ashkenazi community in the Land of Israel to the Bnei Moshe A”H and the ten tribes, written and presented by the great sage, knowledgeable in the hidden and revealed, the great light, our teacher: Israel, author of the book Taklin Hadtin, the appointed head and leader of the Ashkenazi community known as Medrash Perushim, in the city of Tzfat, may it speedily be rebuilt in our days amen.

2With the help of Hashem, Rosh hodesh (the new month of) Marheshvan 5591 years to the creation of the world (1830), in the land of Israel, the holy cities – Jerusalem, Hevron and the holy city of the upper Galilee, Tzfat.

3Thus send the dwellers of the land of Israel, who abide by the Torah of Moses, [which is] a gift and inherited portion, to our brothers - the children of Israel, the son of Isaaq the son of Abraham who revealed the belief in Hashem - they are our holy and pure brothers, the righteous upon whom the world rests - the Bnei Moshe, servant of Hashem - who dwell across the river Shevatyon also known as Sambatyon, and who pledge allegiance to the king – the King of Israel – who sits upon a mighty throne and who rules over the Ten Tribes, whose settlement is in the land of beyond the rivers of Nubia (Kush), who camp according to their banners, the tribe of Dan, of Naftali, of Gad and Asher, the tribe of Issachar who understand the movements of the celestial bodies – constantly involved in Torah study - and the tribe of Zebulun encamped at Mt. Friyan(?), and across them: the tribe of Reuven, of Efrayim and Menashe, and the tribe of Shimon, may Hashem be with them...and their King...and to our honored brothers, the children of Israel: the upright and righteous sons of Jehonadav the son of Rekhav, upon whom the prophet Jeremiah prophesied, “Therefore said Hashem Z-vaot G-d of Israel, no male offspring of Jonadav ben Rekhav will ever be cut off from standing before me for eternity.”

4Accept abundant greetings from your brethren, the children of Israel, the last remnant of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi, dispersed among the four corners of the earth; and from your brethren in the Land of Israel from the diaspora of the land of Ashkenaz, who out of their burning desire for the holy land - the land adored by the higher and lower: land of Israel holiest of lands, put their lives on the line and have left their home countries and families, and have traversed seas and deserts until reaching our holy city Jerusalem, and the burial place of our fathers, that is Hebron, and to the holy city [of changed name] Tzfat, attaching themselves to the plot of Hashem and rolling in its dust, who sit in the tents of the houses of study of Torah and divine worship, they all send regards as abundant as the dew and the mist, to endeared brothers and friends, champions of Torah and mitzvot. Our hearts yearn, our hearts thirst, our hearts desire to see their faces, to kiss the dust of their feet, and to witness the grand countenance of our master the king pure and holy, and to hear of their wellbeing and their encampment, and may their eyes witness as ours when Hashem returns to Zion, and the prophesy of Isaiah the prophet become fulfilled “saying: to the imprisoned – go free; those in darkness – to the light.”....[more psukim]…

5Thus said your brothers: “how pleasant are your tents, O Jacob” - as we have heard from afar that Hashem has chosen them and protected them and has allowed them to retain the ruler's staff and they remain [politically] independent, and have a king who rules them, and don't suffer from the nations of the world. As our Rabbis have told us, that in the year 4640 (780 c.e.) a man, one righteous and upright, from the tribe of Dan, Eldad Hadani, testified of their greatness and grandeur, righteousness and holiness saying that Hashem has helped them remain secure in their settlement, safe from the surrounding nations, and that the ways of our holy Torah clear to them as transmitted by Moses our teacher at Sinai, and that they adjudicate capital and civil cases in their council, and have reaped the rewards of longevity prosperity and honor, as Solomon said…

6At the mention of this my innards rejoice and my heart is gladdened, as we have merited to witness the fruition of the scripture, “Israel nor Judah are widowed from their God”, and our spirits are strengthened vis a vis foreigners who say, as we have been led as sheep to slaughter to be decimated: there is no hope nor salvation and “where is your God let him come and save you”, and we are disgraced; and all cities are built and standing, yet the city of God is downtrodden and in ruins, and each nation has political independence with a king to rule it, and this nation of Hashem is left to to be trodden upon and pillaged, to the point where we have declared that we can be no longer...Yet the staff of their majesty and might and their vast bountiful lands and their wealth and success in war, how pleasant is the voice of the messenger over the hills who brings us these tidings, as we will have witnessed with our very own eyes Hashem's salvation of Zion and he shall choose Jerusalem once more as redeemers shall ascend mount Zion.

7Nevertheless, as our lands of settlement are far away and traveling difficult, “Israel is a sheep far flung”, and Israel has dwindled and been subjugated to their enemies – in body, mind and possessions, and our enemies have placed harsh decrees upon us, it hasn't been possible for us to contemplate sending emissaries to our brethren, our allies…

8 And now, as we have heard the testimony of an eyewitnesses, we have been inspired to go seek out and inquire of our brethren. Our fathers tell us that in the 5th millennium there was a harsh decree in the land of Ashkenaz, given by one evil gentile sorcerer, as he wanted to decimate the Jews, and our brethren there sent out trustworthy emissaries to the holy camp of the sons of Moshe our teacher, and found them encamped beyond the river Sambatyon, and one R' Meir Hazan (composer of the liturgical poem “Akdamot” read on Shavuot by Ashkenazim), crossed the Sambatyon on Shabbat as pikuah nefesh was involved, and approached our holy brothers, and they in return dispatched [along with him] one righteous man by the name R' Dan, and with great bravery he sanctified Hashem's name and rescued our brethren in that land, and he too described to them of their majesty and grandeur. And furthermore, in the year 5283 (1523), a man from among them, his name David ben Shlomo, their war minister, came to Italy. And now recently, two years ago our emissaries were in Yemen, and with their own eyes saw a man from the tribe of Dan named Issachar, and he described to them their land and greatness and majesty...and then he disappeared inexplicably.

9As we have relied on the words of our sages, “do not discredit anything”, and as our holy teacher R' Shimon bar Yohai revealed to us in his Zohar, in the days preceding the coming of Moshiach some of our brethren of the ten tribes will be discovered, and likewise our Rabbis have a tradition regarding the scripture stated by King David, “Gilead is mine, Menashe is mine, the Holy One blessed be he said to the men of Yabesh Gilead [on the eastern bank of the Jordan], 'you have performed a kindness with Saul and his sons, so too will I reward your offspring in the future', therefore when the holy one blessed be he gathers Israel, he does so first with the tribe of Menashe, as it says Gilead is mine, Menashe is mine” (Yalkut Tehilim 779); and as each endeavor initially requires an effort from below, and also as our Rabbis have commented on the scripture “my uncle you are beautiful – at the time you exact revenge from the nations, pleasant too - when you reward those who fear you, our bed - these are the ten tribes who have been exiled to beyond the Sambatyon, whom the diaspora of Judah and Benjamin will in the future go and bring, so that they will merit together the experience of Moshiach and life in the world to come, as it says, in those days the house of Judah will go to the house of Israel and they shall arrive together from the land of the north to the land I have given to your forefathers.” (yalkut song of songs 985). Therefore we have found the strength, we the Ashkenazi community in the land of Israel, and are dispatching to you an upright and wise emissary Rabbi Baruch ben Shmuel from the holy city of Tzfat, who is willing to endanger himself and cross seas and deserts until the Merciful One shall bring him before your great throne.

10And now, we will first give an account of the fate of our brothers who are dispersed among the nations. First, the quality and quantity of our holy Torah knowledge: You should know that we have in our hands Torah literature more voluminous than the sea is wide, Torah prophets and ketubim with their translations, and their elucidations from our earlier and later sages – many in number; oral law from our rabbis the tannaim and amoraim – six orders of mishna arranged by our holy teacher R' Yehuda Hanasi, who in his divine wisdom included in them all nine hundred orders of mishna previously existing; and on top of those R' Johanan arranged the Palestinian Talmud in Israel, and R' Ashi the Babylonian Talmud in Iraq; Safra from Rav, Sifri, toseftas of R' Hiyya and R' Oshaya, Psikta Rabati and Zuta; books of exegesis as numerous as letters of the alphabet: Seder Olam, haBahir, Sefer Yetzirah, exegesis of the Aleph Bet by R' Akiva - the same R' Akiva the holy tanna, the student of R' Eliezer the great, who was the student of R' Johanan ben Zakai who was the student of Hillel the Elder who lived during the second temple period; he is the R' Akiva who entered the [mystical] orchard in peace and left in peace...[more superlatives]...and among his students were the holy tanna R' Shimon bar Yohai and his colleagues - he is the R' Shimon who lived with his son R' Eleazar in a cave for thirteen years (during periods of [Roman] persecution) in which he sat in dirt up to his neck and survived off a carob tree and freshwater spring and during which time composed the holy Zohar on the Torah – entirely esoteric knowledge: new Zohar, the Tikkunim...of which the celestial retinue declared “This composition will provide nourishment to many people in the later generations and through it 'you shall proclaim liberty in the land.'” And generation after generation these secrets were passed along through our teachers: the pious R' Isaac the blind (the son of the Ra'avad), who was intimate with Elijah the prophet, and the holy teacher R' Eleazar of Worms and the holy Ramban, and of late, the holy man our teacher R' Isaac Luria Ashkenazi, who elucidated the secrets of the Zohar, who also merited a revelation from Elijah, and who was versed in the deepest of the deep: creation, merkabah (chariot), and would communicate with spirits, all as described in his writings, which we are sending along with our emissary.

11And our earlier Rabbis compiled law codices: R' Isaac Alfasi, R' Moses ben Maimon (who brought down in the language of the mishnah final decisions for the oral law in its entirety), until the “set table”, which was compiled by our rabbis the esteemed R' Joseph Karo and R' Moses Isserles, in which all issues are laid out before the reader, and many more books without number on both the revealed and hidden, until the latest of the sages in our times he is our master, our teacher, the holy sage, the guide of the whole diaspora, our rabbi: Elijah the pious (The Vilna Gaon), who composed 72 holy deep clear compositions on the entire Torah, who sifted through and brought to light out of darkness the torah in its entirety – both revealed and hidden ; who made understandable the deepest of the exegetical Talmudic texts, the zohar and the Arizal's writings; mysteries were revealed to him by Yaakaov avinu, Moses and Elijah – much ink would have to be spilled to reveal them. We are henceforth sending a few of his holy books dealing with the hidden, in them some of the secrets he revealed which were until then unknown to any mortal.

12And all Jews in all Diasporas maintain faith in our God, and wherever they be they are busy in Torah study, but upon them and upon us the yoke of exile has been too heavy. There is no space to describe fully what we have gone through since our temple was destroyed, these past 1763 years; many catastrophes have befallen us, too great in number to describe; and in the year 5408 (1648) gentiles murdered of our Jewish brethren more than 200,000 souls in various methods of death, and filled up many pits with men, women and children who all sanctified his blessed name and surrendered themselves to death and bared their necks to slaughter; this is besides all the sufferings befalling every generation in each country, and all the curses have been manifested through us, but nevertheless, we've never forgotten his great name.

13Currently, the burden of all the taxes and tributes we have to pay has been heavy upon us, and they tell us: measure and bring, and livelihoods are hard to come by; Israel has become destitute, the poor beg for bread yet cannot find, and additional harsh decrees – 'sons have reached a breaking point', 'it is a troublesome time for Jacob and from it he shall be delivered’.

14In light of all of the above, we request three things from his majesty Our Master the King of Israel , and from our most holy brethren the Bnei Moshe and from all our brothers, the Ten Tribes.

15First, we plead with you on behalf of the entire congregation of Israel, whose dignity has been trampled upon, and his holy name which has become desecrated, as we are asked 'where is your God?', our energies are depleted and our minds clouded and have not the strength to pray effectively before our creator as the scripture says 'you have become drunk – but not from wine, and as the tanna R' Eleazar ben Azaria said,”From the day the temple has been destroyed onwards, I can exempt the entire world from prayer, as it says '...you have become drunk - but not from wine'”, and now, in the later generations, as the tribulations are more frequent and sustenance is hard to come across...we thereby beseech our master, help us! Oh help us! You are our brothers, we are the sons of one man, aid us, aid us in prayer! As Avishai ben Zruyah helped King David when he was in straits as it says 'And Avishai ben Zruyah aided him' on which the gemara says “R' Yehuda said in the name of Rav, that his help was that he prayed for him”, and if that was just for one man by another man, how much more so would it be if it was one congregation for another congregation......and The Creator will help as the suffering we've endured from the nations has been more than requisite and they have transgressed the oath that Hashem bound them by that they shouldn't add to the difficulty of the exile. 

Thus have our fathers prayed “our desire is to do your desire but the yeast in the dough and subjugation to the nations prevent this from happening”: Through the subjugation to the nations it's easier for satan to get the chosen people to sin, and so our rabbis have brought three verses from the prophets to support this assertion, one from Micah[...]one from Jeremiah[...]and Ezekiel[...]please pray profusely for us ...For if He won't redeem us for our sake he'll do it for His sake, as Rashbi taught us in his Tikkunim that the final redemption will be come for His sake just as the men of the great assembly taught us in their formulation of the daily prayers, 'and brings a redeemer to their descendants for the sake of His name with love'....and our master Rashbi taught us furthermore in the tikkunim...

16Second, what our hearts desire, this thing: it is well known from our rabbis (rambam first chapter sanhedrin) that before the messiah comes there must be in the land of Israel a court comprised of those ordained in classical semikha [ordination], yet through our sins and through the harsh decrees of the multiple exiles the ordination has disappeared, and the law is that only an ordained can ordain, and Hashem promised that there will be a high court [bet din] as it says, 'I will restore your judges as it was in the past...afterwards you'll be known as the city of justice, a center of truth; Zion shall be redeemed through justice and its returnees through charity'. 

And this will happen without a doubt once The Creator helps people become attracted to the Torah before the coming of moshiach, and as we have heard that you have a Sanhedrin - ordained from ordained, as you adjudicate capital cases (seemingly this is not the view of r yehoshua b levi in sanhedrin 14a...) please select some of your ordained wise men to come to Israel to ordain scholars so that we'll have in Israel a court comprised of ordained, because the beginning of the redemption hinges on this, and how appropriate would it be for great personages as they are to come to Israel, the land that the tannas and amoras would kiss....and our rabbis said that whoever dwells in the land his sins are expiated...and, even if he's just walked 4 cubits in it he merits the world to come...[continues with praises for the land from the gemara], and our great rabbis said that living in the land of Israel is considered a positive Torah commandment even today, as we learned in the sifri regarding the verse 'you shall inherit them and live in their land', that “living in the land is equal to all the commandments of the torah”...[another gemara stating so]...and currently the land has respite from the oppression of the nations excepting the tributes that we have to pay the ruler of the land; and even if the Torah didn't permit the nation in its entirety to come to the land [during the exile], nowadays for individuals there is no prohibition, as indeed throughout the generations Jews have come. 

Furthermore, we have a tradition from the sages of the Talmud (maaser sheni chapter 8) that the temple will be rebuilt before the dynasty of David will be restored, and R Shimon bar Yohai also revealed to us that Hashem first rebuilds Jerusalem and then gathers in the exiles, and when your scholars arrive here and we will get a glimpse of their holy faces, the downtrodden souls of oppressed will be returned to life, joy shall be restored, strength given, the crooked will become straight...and the laws of God will become clear and their holy words will amplify the love of The Creator and inspire people to unite and learn Torah and serve Hashem and a redeemer shall come to Zion.

17Third we ask of you, as our brethren in the diaspora assist Jews in Israel, and as currently their assistance has been cut off, as we have reached a low point and many debts have been burdening us, on which we were forced to take interest, and the tributes we must surrender have ransacked us as they total astronomical sums per annum, and to support the poor and scholars...In any event the financial burden reaches in the tens of thousands just in interest, which must be payed at set times, and if these debts aren't settled, lives are at stake. 

Our hearts are saddened as there is possibility of a total collapse, and we can't rely on our brethren from our countries of origin, as they too are going through many hardships and lack prosperity and can barely survive themselves, and as there are no greater mizvahs than redeeming captives, torah education for the masses, and settlement of Israel, we therefore ask that donations should be collected from the generous of heart for our salvation, and that the great king should give a decree to raise funds from our brethren the ten tribes and deposit them with our emissary, and should assist him to bring them here for restoring dignity to our land and helping us get out of debt; debt that is eating us alive and is a source of much agony; and also for the future, lest our redemption become delayed somewhat and the pangs of moshiach become great – they should be compassionate and assist us per annum as Hashem will show them the way, so that scholars in the land will be able to fortify themselves in Torah study...

18And fourth, something that will surely make us very happy, we ask of you to send us written communication in the holy Hebrew tongue, answering our inquiries and putting to rest our uncertainties, describing their lands, their status, their numbers, and their Torah knowledge, so that all the righteous residents of our Diasporas – who are oppressed in body and mind and who suffer and toil under harsh conditions – would have something to rejoice about...

19And as travel is difficult, it was impossible to send one of the weaker congregation elders, and this man Baruch – Hashem bless him - is a trustworthy and loyal representative. He has volunteered to traverse the deserts and make his way, may The Creator be at his side and accommodate him.

20And we, brothers from afar prostrate ourselves in front of his majesty our master, the king of Israel, and beg him to acquiesce to our requests and in the meantime we in the holy land raise our hands to heaven in prayer at the holy places, the western Kotel where the divine presence has always remained and at the tomb of Rachel and at the tombs of the saintly patriarchs and matriarchs and at the resting places of the prophets and the tannas and amoras: Hoseha ben Beeri, R' Pinhas ben Yair, R Shimon Bar Yochai and his son Eleazar, Jonathan ben Uziel, Hillel the elder and the Israelite general Benayahu ben Yehoyada and many others in the vicinity of the Galilee. Our eyes are towards heaven, may the above be good advocates for us before The Creator, may He once more have mercy on us and grant all of us freedom and rebuild His temple. Amen.