The Lost Tribe of Israel - Chinese

The lost tribe of Israel - Chinese

We all know that Israel or Jacob, son of Isaac, fathered 12 sons who started the 12 tribes of Israel. Today, Israel as a nation is from the only surviving tribe of Jews or Judah. All others tribes were vanished with history.

But is this truly so? I remember news running for days on television many years ago about the lost tribe of Israel returning to Israel from Ethiopia. Not long later, I recall I saw on television another group of Israel tribe returning home from Russia. I would not believe the report if I had not seen the real people in the news. The Ethiopia Israelis looks just like any black African. Those returned from Russian look more like Caucasian than the Middle East Jews.

Jews has many traditions originated in the Bible they still observe today. They celebrate the pass over to remember God's mercy on the night of the plague on the first born. In the New Testament, Jews hired the wailers in a funeral to moan with commotion and cries. Today, we still see the same loud cries in a funeral to indicate sincere sorrow they feel for the parted one.

Chinese too, has some traditions and practices exactly the same like the Jews. Rich Chinese funerals still hire people to cry in the funeral with the same meaning as it is intended in the Biblical Jews. We may not see this practice much in China mainland due to some culture up rooting during the Cultural Revolution under the Communist reign. But in Taiwan and Hong Kong, hire wailing is a common phenomenon of the rich.

Another Jewish funeral tradition that Chinese still practice is for the children of the deceased to wear sackcloth and use ashes to hold the jot stick. Although not all Chinese will wear sackcloth in a family funeral today due to the effect of the influential western culture, but we can still see many Chinese who keep the old tradition of wearing sackcloth in a funeral. Those who do not wear it would cut a small piece of sackcloth and clip it to the shirt in the funeral and during the mourning period for 3 months.