Customer Reviews

Quest For The Lost Tribes [VHS]

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is a fascinating film that I ordered from A&E after catching a portion of it on their classroom series. I have never ordered a video from television before but I had to have it to see the begining and review what I had all ready seen.

Not only is the material and it's implications staggering but they are presented in a compeling format. If Indiana Jones had made a documentary...it would have looked like this. Producer Simcha Jacobovici is charismatic as the narrator but more importantly he asks questions that carefully lead you through the reasoning that proves his research to be one of the most important finds in civilization. When we discover that the lost tribes of Israel have all been living in the ways of their fore fathers for nearly 3,000 years we see that the characters who will fullfill the ancient prophesies of the bible have been carefully kept waiting in the wings....there is no way that this could be possible except divine intervention.

From the fundamentalist muslim guide who, with tears in his eyes says: "Then you are my brother" in reply to discovering the reporter of the film is a jew in Muslim territory, to the unveiling of the most ancient continuous civilization of the world as the group of ancestral priests who continue their practices waiting to usher in the activities of the new temple of the Messianic era, you will be amazed that the ancient book of the bible is not a myth but a mystery unfolding revelation to us today.

If you have any interest in religion, history or the meaning of life you might find proof here that will change your life.

This is a well researched and nicely produced documentary. Due to time limitations, and its broad subject, it lacks some scholarly depth. I could have done without the sensationalistic "end of days" stuff and the spooky music - at times it was reminiscent of the old "In Search Of" show with Leonard Nimoy. Nevertheless, the scholarship seems solid and the conclusions range from the merely interesting to the truly amazing (and maybe a little disconcerting).

Definitely worth a viewing.

Simcha Jacobovici, a brilliant, sandpapery, pushy film documentarist, went out in the late 1980's to find the Lost Tribes of Israel. He was the man to do it: he was instrumental in reducing the number of the Lost from ten to nine, by documenting the "plight" of Beta Israel, the Ethiopian Jews. Thanks to Jacobovici, the entirety of the Tribe was taken to Israel.

Here, Jacobovici takes us deftly and expertly from one location to another, a real-life Indiana Jones, questing not for artifacts... but real people. We find him interviewing Taliban organizers back in the day when no one knew who they were. In this film they claim they are of Jewish descent. We find Jacobovici chasing around Afghanistan, looking at Buddhist stone tablets written in Aramaic. We see him chatting with all manner of people, all over the world, who somehow know they are, not Jews, but Israelites.

We see people we never knew existed, and we thrill to the narrative of their voyages of self-discovery. They are Jews, and there is even an Indiana Jones-like rabbi, Eliyahu Avichail, right out there with Jacobovici, assisting these lost tribes to return to Judaism. Several of the groups, originally filmed in their home countries such as Burma and India, are later filmed living happily in Israel.

The only annoying tendency is Jacobovici's excessive presence and narration-- jobs he can easily give to others. It is also distracting to move from his adventures to ridiculously sloppy cuts of various lectures he is giving on the subject in different places. (In one such shot, Eli Wiesel is in the audience listening intently to Jacobovici talk about Jewish prophecy.)

Anyone interested in Jewish culture, prophecy, anthropology or just plain fun documentaries: GET THIS.

Simcha Jacobovici takes us on a fascinating journey along the most treacherous road on the planet to uncover remnants of Jewish tribes that many historians, both Jewish and non-Jewish, had thought have completely assimilated into their surrounding cultures. The Northern Kingdom of Israel had been destroyed by the Assyrians ca. 722 BCE and the people from those tribes were dispersed throughout Asia; i.e., the tribes settled along the Silk Road from what is now the Afghanistan and Pakistan border to the eastern border between India and Burma. The exile of these tribes is captured on Assyrian stone reliefs. What Jacobovici discovers is astonishing. I was fascinated that the physical features of these widely dispersed people is identical to the features of the population among whom they dwell, whether they be Indian, Arab, Chinese (or in the case of the Ethiopian Jews, apparently descended from the tribe of Dan, African). Jacobovici's first stop is in Manipur, India. He meets with Indians who claim descent from the tribe of Menasseh and who are persecuted by their neighbors. The Menasseh, however, greatly admire the Israelis, and have acquired a sense of pride and a willingness to actively fight their enemies in self-defense. Many have undergone conversion and are now Orthodox Jews. Some of them have made Aliyah to Israel. Jacobovici then travels back along the Silk Road and meets with descendants of the tribes of Issachar and Naphthali who still observe ancient Jewish practices in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. Continuing his journey further to the most dangerous region, he learns that the Pathan (or Pashtun) Muslim tribes that live along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border are outwardly strict and zealous Muslims (the treatment of Muslim men toward their women is very disturbing) but still observe many Jewish rituals, such as wearing tallesim (prayer shawls) and lighting oil lamps (not Shabbat candles) before sundown on Fridays. Moses is a revered figure among them. He finds Pathan sub-tribes with names such as "Rubeni", "Gadi", "Simoni" and "Ephremi". Returning to India and the city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), he discovers remnants of the tribe of Zevulun. The only tribe Jacobovici cannot locate is Asher. The question Jacobovici raises is whether all of these dispersed peoples will return to the land of Israel at some point and thus usher in the Messianic age, in accordance with statements of various Jewish prophets. According to Biblical prophecy, the Messiah is supposed to be an offshoot from the seed of King David. I wouldn't worry about it. The Talmud says that if a man is planting a tree and someone comes up to him and announces, "The Messiah is here!", the man should just continue planting the tree. So to all who have read my review, just keep your day job. :-)

Not a basketful of unsupported and outrageous claims, but Biblically based assertions that the orator acknowledges may not be the only explanation. A person can follow along in the Old Testament and cross-reference with secular history documents, to see that there are spine-tingling correlations here, especially with regard to members of the lost tribes returning to Israel as foretold in prophecy as a prelude to end-time events. Are all the assertions correct? Maybe, maybe not. But this video is worth your time and research if you are a student of Biblical prophecy. May YHWH bless you.

Anyone interested in ancient Hebrew history from Palestine through Iran to Central Asia should see this documentary. The director has travelled widely to collect footage of evidence of ancient Jewish presence in places like western China, Uzbekistan, Tunisia, and Afghanistan (where he and his crew probably risked bullets to do the investigation and interviews). Using his Jewish heritage, he explains with a combination of cultural knowledge, filmed texts on rocks, interviews with tribal elders, and an entertaining enthusiasm how each of the communities he identified might have originated from the ten lost Israelite tribes.

It was the most informative DVD I have ever seen. I would like to see more material by Simcha Jacobovici. He really researched and has answered the question that many Judeo Christian wanted an answer for .

I believe this Documentary is Brilliantly Prophetic. Simcha Jacobovici has truly been called and set apart to research this complicated "Quest for the lost tribes."

It will peak your interest and challenge your intellect. Make sure you set aside some time to watch the video more than once in order to fully grasp and understand the entirety of the message.

Perhaps, I think those who would appreciate the documentary most are biblical scholars specializing in the end times and the restoration of the lost tribes to Israel. For those of us who do not fit in that category it can be difficult to follow at times.

If you are interested in the future of Israel and that of the Jewish people; you will find this DVD `very' interesting. Both Jew (Simcha Jacobovici; the director is Jewish) and Christian can see the evidence of `possible' prophecy being fulfilled in our lifetime; that is `if' what Mr. Jacobovici says is true. Even the state of Israel believes that some of the lost tribes (the most famous of that being Dan - found in of all places Uganda) having already come back; Also Manasseh came back in 2007 (being found in of all places (northeast India).
Jacobovici travels to many remote areas to search for missing links to the 10 Lost Tribes - if nothing else this is a good travel log film. As for me (I'm an evangelical Christian) I think Mr. Jacobovici's hypothesis is fairly solid although not as of yet proven. To bad that Mr. Jacobovici lent his name to the "Tomb of Jesus" debacle - which at best is a theory with even less evidence to back it up than the "Quest for the ten lost tribes."

This film is one of my all time favorite biblical, lost tribe, trying to make sence out of ancient history films. The only regret I had after watching it was that it wasn't a seven episode series like the John Romer classic series Testament. I don't subscribe to everything that Jacobovici states but he does introduce his viewers to posibilities, and he is highly entertaining in an Indiana Jones like way. Its good clean speculation, adventure, and inclusion in an other wise sometimes nasty, boring, and exclusionary world.