be remembered any more?”^14 In case Israel’s doom was indeed the reason for
the conversion, ha-Lorki had a ready answer:
I know that you are well aware of what is famous among us from the
books of travels of those who pass through the itineraries of the earth... ,
from the epistle of Maimonides, and from what we hear from the
merchants at the edges of [the] earth, that in this day the majority of our
people is in the lands of Babylon and Yemen where the exile of
Jerusalem first went, in addition to those who dwell in the lands of Persia
and Media who are of the exile of Samaria, [the ten tribes] who are today a
great nation [countless] as the sand of the sea... and according to the
true faith, even if God decreed that the Jews of Christendom be
annihilated and destroyed, still the nation shall exist and be whole, and
this [calamity] shall not bring the weakening of the trust [in God].^15
Pablo de Santa Maria answered the letter (in “bad” Hebrew, for which he
apologized), but unfortunately restricted himself to general comments; we can
only imagine what he made of ha-Lorki’s argument. He went on to a career as a
Christian theologian that culminated in his 1415 appointment as bishop of
Burgos—a rare achievement, in that he managed over the course of his life to
preside over two different religious communities in the same town.^16
Ha-Lorki’s letter is an excellent illustration of the potent and growing
significance of the ten tribes within the context of an acute problem—the
“perishing of the nation.” The pogroms of 1391 had been the most destructive,
in terms of the loss of Jewish lives, since the Crusades. The most significant
outcome was a massive wave of conversion to Christianity that created a large
converso community in Spain.^17 It is not clear how many lives were lost and
how many Jews did convert, but the numbers were perceived, at the time and
much later, to be very high.^18
In such a context, the promise of the “countless” ten tribes, innumerable in
person, was a source of hope. One can conjecture that the countlessness of the
tribes was already a source of comfort for Benjamin of Tudela and perhaps even
for Josephus—the first to discuss their large number. It is clear that Benjamin
and Josephus were the source of ha-Lorki’s confidence in his statements about
the tribes. Ha-Lorki’s argument provides us with the first clear sign, chrono-
logically speaking, that in this period Jewish sources such as the Talmud were
not the only ones considered authoritative. Books of travels and news from
merchants at the edges of the earth were also referenced in support of the given
truth of the tribes’ existence.
It is not coincidental that ha-Lorki, a physician well versed in Greek
philosophy, was the first to include travel accounts as evidence in support of