The arrival in Ethiopia of this “Jewish missionary,” as some disturbed rival
Protestant missionaries called him, started a long relationship between him
and the Falasha community there. The Protestants had good reason to feel
threatened. Faitlovitch, “a tough man,” fought hard to “protect” the Falasha
from Christian missionary drives. At the same time, Faitlovitch introduced
Jewish customs and liturgy and helped to build Jewish schools in Ethiopia.
Between 1904 and 1950 , Faitlovitch made several long visits, looking for traces
of the ten tribes—and bolstering the Falashas’ Judaism. In between trips, he
published reports on the Falasha in Europe and raised money for his Ethiopian
activities, skillfully maneuvering among various world powers, the Italian
colonial administration in Ethiopia, and worldwide Jewish and Zionist organi-
zations.^61 These were the beginnings of a long and complicated relationship
between the Zionist movement and, later, the state of Israel and the Falasha of
Ethiopia.
The modern Jewish gaze turned elsewhere as well. In 1928 , Zvi Kasdoi
( 1862 – 1937 ) publishedTribes of Jacob and the Preserved of Israel,arguing that the
ten tribes were located—no surprise here—somewhere in the Caucasus. He
particularly pointed to the “Dagestanis, and Georgians,” but also suggested that
many of the Armenians were also related to the ten tribes. Indeed, a great deal of
the book was a rewriting of Armenian history—combined with numerous clues
from Talmudic and biblical sources—in an attempt to expose Armenia’s Israel-
ite past.^62 What was really at stake was what had troubled ha-Lorki five centuries
before him: acute anxiety about the size and fate of the Jewish people in modern
times. He was trying to combat this fear with the reassuring claim: the ten tribes
are not lost, they are still here, they are part of “us.”^63 Kasdoi was the brother-in-
law of none other than Yitzhak Ben-Zvi ( 1884 – 1963 ), the future second presi-
dent of Israel, who was busy at the time in a vast effort to collect information on
the ten tribes and other “distant Jews” from all corners of the earth.^64
These efforts are characteristic of the growing links between study of the
ten tribes and Zionist thought. In the same period, Aaron Zeev Aescoly,
the David Reuveni scholar, produced the monumental studyIsrael,covering
“the essence of the Jewish people” and the “history of the Jewish race.”
Including the fields of anthropology, geography, linguistics, and demography,
Aescoly’s study—published only after he died—was meant to assess the scope
of the Jewish people.^65 Special appendixes discussed converts to Judaism and,
predictably, the ten tribes. Aescoly was also a scholar of messianic movements
in Jewish history,^66 and he saw a clear connection between the scope of the
Jewish people and Zionism.
The logic of this new breed of seeker was simple: if the Zionist movement
was engaged in bringing the redemption of the Jews, why not bring the ten
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