massive. He estimated that the number of Jews expelled from Spain was
300 , 000.^22 The heavy sense of Jewish numerical insignificance cast a shadow
on the “feasibility of Jewish redemption in a realistic manner.” Restoring hope,
forcefully, was of utmost importance for Abravanel, and “the very existence of the
Ten Tribes refuted the contention that everything was lost.”^23 To put it crassly, the
game was not over; the Jews still had some cards up their sleeves.^24
In addition to providing psychological comfort, the ten tribes played an
important role in the theology Abravanel developed in the wake of Christian
anti-Jewish polemics, which argued that the role of Jews in the divine plan had
ended with the destruction of the temple. As Benzion Netanyahu explains,
insisting that the return from Babylon to the Second Temple was not the
complete and final redemption was crucial for Abravanel since he was deter-
mined to show that “not everything was lost.” If the Second Temple was indeed
the redemption promised by the prophets, then its destruction signaled what
Christians had been arguing all along—that God had removed his grace from
the Jews and initiated a new covenant with humanity. On the other hand, if the
Second Temple wasnotthe final redemptive moment, then the biblical prom-
ise was still valid. The central proof that the Second Temple period was not the
final redemption was the fact that the ten tribes did not return with Ezra.
Ultimately, role of the ten tribes ends up embedded in the messianic
process itself. Not only is their return one of the signs of imminent redemp-
tion, it also plays a “prominent part” in the “messianic wars” and the “destruc-
tion of Israel’s enemies.” In sum, “there had to be a realistic and positive
answer to the feeling of national helplessness which was eating away the
essential Jewish spirit. A this-worldly, concrete and understandable answer
was provided by the Ten Tribes.”^25 Abravanel upgraded the place of the ten
tribes by making them an integral part of Jewish political thinking.
Abravanel, a Portuguese Jew who made a remarkable political career in
Spain before the expulsion of 1492 , finalized his ideas about the ten tribes’ role
in the messianic process in Venice, where he died in 1508. This was only
sixteen years before David appeared in Italy, whose Jewry became toward the
mid-sixteenth century what historian Yosef Yerushalmi aptly calls a “news-
agency,” copying and disseminating eschatological and messianic information
and messages.^26 The this-worldliness of Abravanel’s messianic scenario marks
an important commonality between David’s plan to start wars and regain
Palestine and the role he assigns to himself as the spokesman for the ten
tribes’ plan. Perhaps more important than the plan to regain Palestine was the
proof that David introduced that the ten tribes still existed in large numbers.
Abravanel expressed the anxieties and desires of his generation, into which
the advent of David fit extraordinarily well. It is tempting to think that David
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