להלכה: האם עשרת השבטים אכן עתידים לחזור?

00:00 Welcome back after our, uh, short break for, for Pesach. Welcome back to our shiur in Hilchot Sefer HaChinuch. This week, we'll discuss a question that many, many have and many discuss about the Aseret Yefatim. Are the Aseret Yefatim, or as we call it, the ten lost tribes, are they coming back or not? Now, there's lots of discussion. You could find many shiurim on them. Where did they go? Many theories. They have theories ranging from China, Japan, Yemen, or the Americas, all over the place. Um, and the Gemara discusses different places that they went to and, and so on, and that's not gonna be the focus of this shiur. This shiur we're gonna focus on, despite what everybody talks about, lahalacha, even though it might sound like a funny, funny term, like what does it-- what does halacha have to do with it? But as we'll, we'll, we'll discuss that as well. Are the Aseret Yefatim, are they coming back or not? So right away, we start off. There's a Mishnah, it's in, you can find in the Gemara, Sanhedrin, kuf yud alef beis, because we're gonna do the Gemara as well over there. So the Mishnah says, that the, the Aseret Yefatim, the ten, ten Yefatim are not gonna come back. I sent them away. I threw them away like to, to another land, like this day. And the Mishnah goes on, just like a day. Once the day is gone, it's gone. so, so too the Aseret Yefatim. Once they're gone, they're gone. They're

01:41 not coming back. You missed a day, you missed a day. You can't make it up. Tomorrow's a new day, but you can't make up today. This is Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Eleazar says, "No, it says like this day." just like today. Today becomes, it's light, it becomes dark, but then it's gonna come light again. just like it's dark now, it's gonna become light again, and therefore, Aseret Yefatim will come back. That's the day of Rabbi Eleazar. So far we have a machloket between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Eleazar. Then the Gemara brings a braisa, right next to the Mishnah, brings a braisa, on on. Uh, so it brings, they don't have a portion in the world to come. Um, that's, uh, as it says, I threw them to another land like this, to, to, to another land. Like it says, that you see, threw them away. They don't have Rabbi Akiva, as we mentioned from the Mishnah. Then it brings Rabbi Shimon ben Yuda, says in the name of Rabbi Shimon, that no, it really depends. if they're gonna act like they acted today, m- which is what caused them to go into Galus early, so then they won't come back. But if not, if they'll teshuva, then they will come back. That's, that's Rabbi Shimon ben Yuda's, uh, opinion, in the name of the Shiur. And then Rabbi says that no, they will come back to as it says, and so on, that they're, they're gonna come back. And then the Gemara finishes off, or Chana,

03:27 depending on which, uh, how you read it, which is a separate discussion. Rabbi Akiva left his Hasidus, his kindness, his pious, his-- Now, there's normally Rabbi Akiva is the one who looks at the, at the, uh, at-- in a good way on the Jewish people, on the Yidden. And over here, he seems to have, have left it. He's saying that they're, that they're, they're not coming back. If you look at it in a positive way, that they are coming back. So these are the three opinions we have in the Gemara and the Mishnah. One is Rabbi Akiva, that they're not coming back. Another one is Rabbi Eleazar, that they are coming back. And then we have Rabbi Shimon, that it depends. If they do teshuva, they're coming back. If they don't do teshuva, they're not coming back. Now, before we get to what's the halacha, who do we pasken like, uh, we first have to understand actually Rabbi Akiva's opinion, that he says that they're not coming back. 'Cause seemingly, we have clear Nevuas, this clear pesukim, um, that they are coming back. We have, we have, for example, uh, in, in, in Yechezkel, we say in Haftara, they're gonna take a-- right? They're gonna take eight-- Yosef, you know, gonna take one stick from, uh, that represents Yosef from the other Ephraim, and represents the Aseret Yefatim. Another one from Yehuda, I'm gonna put together, they're gonna be one, one etzechet, and so on when Mashiach comes. That's a meaning that all the Yidden,

04:55 all the Aseret Yefatim, all the twelve Yefatim are gonna be united as, as in, in one malchus under, under malach Mashiach. So how could Rabbi Akiva... Before we get into what the halacha is like, how could Rabbi Akiva even have an opinion that they're not coming back if we have clear Nevuas, and there's other Nevuas as well, that we're gonna have all the Yefatim there? So this is a question that many mefarshim ask. And the Ikrim, Rabbi Yosef Alba in the Ikrim, in Maimar Dalet, Perek Mem Beis. So he asks this question as well. Uh, how could it be is he machrish, uh, the whole Nevuah of Yechezkel that says that they're gonna come back? So he says that it's gonna-- this Nevuah, according to Rabbi Akiva, was meskayim by Yeshni. That when, when, when Cyrus commanded to build the, the, the Beis Hamikdash. Um, so, so we have, uh, that, that they, that they, that they, that under them, so there's, there's the Malchus Beis Hashmonai is the kingship, so to speak. Um, and they made one Malchus, and they, and they-- and we have that the, that the Aseret Yefatim were there, and all these Nevuas were meskayim In Bay Yeshaneh. That's what the Ikrim, how the Ikrim explains it. He doesn't know Rabbi too much, but he-- that's how he explains it. But on this, that, that, that the Ikrim explains that Rabbi Akiva, in other words, if you say that was in the sky in Bay Yeshaneh, he said, "Then we

06:26 don't have an issue. It was in sky in Bay Yeshaneh, and then, and then later on, Mashiach is gonna come. But this Nevuas was in sky in Bay Yeshaneh." But on this, uh, many mefarshim, I'll bring here from, from the Abarbanel in the Sefer Yeshus Mashiach, even Rishon in Perek Dalet, which he has a whole, uh, richus on this. And he says, "We can't, we can't, we can't, we can't follow what the, what the, what the Ikrim says and the Ikrim and those who he brings, that if to say that Rabbi Akiva holds that all the Nevuas were in the sky in Bay Yeshaneh through Zerubbabel. Because first of all, we don't, we don't find that they returned. Uh, we don't find anywhere that theaseret hashavatim returned them. Um, and fur-furth-furthermore, we find Rabbi Akiva himself, it says so in, in, in, on, in Eicha, in Eicha Rabosi, the Midrash, on, on, on the first pasuk it says, "Heisa kalmana" that your shva-- that, that, that here was kalmana, like a widow. So it says, Rabbi Akiva, Rabana. Rabbi Akiva says, "Almana" that was "almana ma'aseret hashavatim." But like almana mi Yehuda v'Binyamin. That it, that it, that it-- so if it-- he's saying it was a widow from aseret hashavatim, meaning that he, Rabbi Akiva says clearly that, that, that, that, that it, that it's, that, that, that, that, that they're not there. They're, they're the, the it's almana. It's, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's empty. The, the, the aseret hashavatim are not there.

07:51 So how could we-- so we can't say that Rabbi Akiva holds that they return them Bay Yeshaneh, but then we're, we're back to our question. So what is he hold? 'Cause it's, we have clear Nevuas that they're gonna come back. So therefore, he explains, um, that the truth is that, that we find, although we say that the aseret hashavatim were taken into Galus, but it's not true that to say that all the aseret hashavatim went into Galus. In other-- contrary to, to common misconception, it's not true that nowadays all Yidden are from Shevet Yehuda and Binyamin and maybe part, part of Levi. That, that's not, that's not really true. Um, we actually find that even though most of the aseret hashavatim were taken into Galus, uh, by Sanheriv, but many of them still s-s-didn't go, either didn't go or even while they were going, they sort of, you know, you're taking a whole big, uh, thousands of people into Galus, so there's people who escape or run away. You don't manage to take everybody. And he says, we actually find this in, in, in the Gemara. The Gemara, it's in, in Megillah, it's also in Erchin. So Megillah yud daled am ha'bez. So it says, we find... It says that Yoshiyahu was, ha'melech, was, was making renovations in the Beis Hamikdash, and they, they come across-- while he, he commissioned that they should do renovations in the Beis Hamikdash, and they come across a Sefer Torah there. And this was a Sefer Torah from the

09:36 times, from, from Moshe Rabbeinu. And they take the Sefer Torah, uh, and it's brought down that the, the Sefer Torah was hidden there, and the Chazal it was in the Kayitz Shakdachim, then they hid it there because when the, when many of the kings at that time weren't so big tzadikim. So it says one king hid it somewhere else. Be as it may be, they take the Sefer Torah, they open up the Sefer Torah, and when they open it up, they find it, it opens up to the Tekachah in Parshat Ki Savo. And everybody got very, very, very shaken. And it says, so he sends, Yoshiyahu sends for Chuldah haNavia to explain what it is. What, what's the story? What, what is, what is the meaning of this? That it, that it's opened to the, to the Tekachah. So the Gemara asks, "One second, why do you send for Chuldah Navia? You should send to Yirmiyahu." Yirmiyahu was the leading navi in those days. You don't s-- so you don't send to the, to Chuldah who's, who's not the leading navi, you send to Yirmiyahu. Now, the Gemara explains why, you know, it's not being pageiah and Yirmiyahu's covered, they were related, Chuldah and Yirmiyahu, and so on. But be as it may be, it still, why, why didn't they send to Yirmiyahu? So one of the answers the Gemara gives is that Yirmiyahu was be-- was busy, he was away. He was out of town. What was he doing? He was collecting the aseret

10:53 hashavatim. This doesn't mean... And, and as the mefarshim explain, Rashi and others, um, the Abarbanel also, the Abarbanel that I mentioned earlier goes varichus, it doesn't mean that he was-- he went to collect the aseret hashavatim in those places that they were exiled to, um, Neharay Yeshech and so on. That's not where Yirmiyahu went. Yirmiyahu went in, in the vicinity of Eretz Yisrael around, around there, because when, as we said before, when they were taking them to Galus, so many of them, you know, either, uh, either left or ran away or some were maybe living in other places. However, it happened, there were people from the other shevatim around, and he went to collect all of them, and then he brought them and they lived under Yoshiyahu ha'melech, and they joined the, the, the Yidden. So therefore, we have from all the aseret hashavatim now, they, they joined the Yidden and now in Galus also, we have people, there's people now amongst us that come from all of the shevatim, not just from the, from the two, two and a half shevatim. And therefore, Rabbi Akiva could say that aseret hashavatim, aseres hashavatim are-- in other words, the aseret hashavatim that were exiled, those aseret hashavatim are not returning. But he doesn't mean that there's no person from the aseret hashavatim. Ein echad ma'aseret hashavatim. That's not true. Just it means- The Aseres Hashvatim, what we refer to as the Aseres Hashvatim, that whole galus, that's not returning, but that there's individuals that they will

12:26 return. That they already returned. But the aser lavim, none of them are coming back. That's the day of Rabbi Akiva. So now having explained Rabbi Akiva's opinion on how the Nevuah of Yechezkel could still be mekuyem, in other words, when, when Mashiach comes, there'll be all these ashratim will be under, under one melech. So now we can get back to try to understand what's the halakha. As you said, it sounds a little funny to say halakha. And in fact, the, the, the Rambam on this Mishnah, it's in his Pirkei Ha Mishnayos on Sanhedrin, Perek Yud, Mishnah Gimel, actually says that I, I mention many times that when there's a chach- a machlakis betwe- by the-- between the chachamim that's doesn't have any practical, uh, significance, purpose, so then we don't, we don't pasken. So therefore, over here, about Aseres Hashvatim, if they're coming back or not, we don't pasken. There's no, there's no halakha. It's left in the air. We'll see what happens. But practically, there's no-- makes no difference to us right now, l'halakha, whether they're coming back or not. And therefore, the Rambam says in Pirkei Ha Mishnayos that we don't pasken. That's what the Rambam writes. However, interestingly, we find the Maharal in Netzach Yisrael, uh, in his Sefer Netzach Yisrael, Perek Lamed Dalet, very uncharacteristic of him in his sefer and klal in, in his sefarim, because he usually doesn't-- this is not what he deals with. Um, but he, he goes off after he discusses, he discusses Aseres Hashvatim, where

13:53 they went and, and so on. So he says, if you look over there in the Gemara that we brought earlier, it's, it's mokach over there in the Gemara that the halakha is that they are coming back, which is very interesting because he personally doesn't pasken halakhas in, in almost all of his sefarim. And also, what's interesting, the, the, the person who made the footnotes in the new version of Machon Yerushalayim's, uh, Netzach Yisrael of, of the-- all, all the sefarim of the Maharal, he actually points out he doesn't know. Why is it-- how do you say it's mokach in the Gemara? He says, "S'vach, how is it mokach in the Gemara?" But the truth is, um, we find that, uh, the Pach Ad Yitzchak, uh, the Pach Ad Yitzchak from, uh, Rabbi Yitzchak Lampronti, um, lived in, in, uh, lived in Italy, lived around the time of the Baal Shem Tov. He was born a little bit earlier, but he overlapped most of the time with the, of the Baal Shem Tov. Didn't think they had anything to do with each other, but that's when he lived. He, in Eretz Aseres Hashvatim, so he goes on and explains how we actually do see it's mokach from the Gemara that the halakha is that they are coming back. He explains it is true. First of all, there's-- regularly, there is a klal in halakha that if, if we have a machlakis between Rabbi Akiva and chaverai, meaning Rabbi Akiva and someone else, generally, the halakha follows

15:19 Rabbi Akiva. That's the general rule. However, he says, if-- in this Gemara, it's not a machlakis between Rabbi Akiva and chaverai. It's not Rabbi Akiva want betw- and one other person. It's Rabbi Akiva and other, many other people. We have Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi. So therefore, there, in that case, we don't have the klal that it's Rabbi Akiva, that the halakha follows Rabbi Akiva. The halakha follows the, the, the other ones. Furthermore, he says that we find Rabbi-- it says at the end of the Gemara, it says, "The Rabbi says that they are coming to Elam Chava." So he says that Rabbi, who is the one who, who's finalizing, redacting the Mishnah, it's as if Rabbi is saying the halakha is that they're coming back. And another thing we find in the Gemara, it says we see actually the Gemara says, "Rabbi Akiva ." In other words, Omar, Omar, Omar writes, says, "Rabbi Akiva ." In other words, that's as if the Gemara itself is saying, uh, something not positive about Rabbi Akiva's view, that Rabbi Akiva normally looks to a citizen, over here he left it, and it's a way of the Gemara saying that over here, even though maybe normally would be like Rabbi Akiva, so it's not-- the halakha is not, uh... So the halakha is not like him. And therefore, it would come out that, uh, according to, to, uh, the, the Maharal, according to Pach Ad Yitzchak, uh, I should say also according to

16:50 Abarbanel we mentioned earlier, although he doesn't use the word, uh, halakha, but he says that from the pesukim, it's mokach like that. And we see in many, many places that seemingly it goes out that the, the Aseres Hashvatim are coming back, meaning not that they will have people from all the Aseres Hashvatim, but that from wherever they are, they will return. That's Aseres Hashvatim. Of course, this all leads us to the question, because this is a short, this is a short shiur, but it leads us to the question of, so, so where are they? Um, and in fact, that's one of the focuses of the Maharal in his Sefer of the Netzach Yisrael, Perek Lamed Dalet that we mentioned, that he also discusses where are they and how come we don't find them. So first, interestingly, he says, you know, it's a question, where are they? But, you know, people say, "We, we, we explored everywhere." And he says, "It's not sure. We just discovered a new place, a new f- a new land, referring to America. So who knows? They could be, they could be, they could be, they could be anywhere. You know, there's-- maybe there's another new place that we'll find that they'll be there. That's what he says, first of all. But then he goes on and he says that the truth is that it's the gezera from Hashem that we don't know where they are, and that we are not gonna know where they are until Mashiach comes. And the

18:04 reason for this is, he says, because as long as we don't know where they are, there's still a, there's a, there's a pirut, uh, between the Yidden. If we know-- even just knowing where they are, that itself would be some sort of achdus between the Yidden, and meaning, and, and m- and, and Mashiach would come. And therefore, there's a gezera that there shouldn't be complete achdus between the Yidden- Until, until it's time for the Mashiach to come. And because of that gezera, we don't know where they are. And then, and then the Abarbanel go-- the, the Ba'al goes on explaining the deeper meaning behind the different places that the, the Ari HaKodesh and so on, what it means, the deeper meaning, but metaphorically what it means, where they are, that we don't-- they are not even in, in, in, in, in actuality, they're in potential, so on and so forth. He continues going on, explaining that, and you could, uh, look it up, uh, on your own. It's deserving a separate shiur explaining where the different theories about where they are. But Al Kapaneh, what he says is that it's true that halacha, they're coming back, but at the same time, it's a gezera that we won't know where they are until the times of Mashiach comes, then we'll know, and, and that will be the achdus between the Yidden. And, and, um, just to finish off, whenever, whenever I, I learned this, uh, this, this moral, it actually, in, in some ways it's sound--

19:22 it might sound disheartening, but on the other wa-hand, it's actually an amazing thing that the moral is saying, especially now we're in the days of, uh, Sefirah and so on, that we're supposed to add an ahavas Yisrael, that the moral is basically saying, even just knowing where they are, just being aware of them, that itself is a, a, a form of achdus Yisrael which will cause that the, that the, that, that, that the, that the geulah should come. So even now, you know, we always think, you know, you know, we, we're trying to do achdus, we're trying to have ahavas Yisrael, um, um, and, you know, sometimes, you know, sometimes you think of it as it's a, it's a challenge. But if you think about it, even, even just thinking about it, even just trying b'machshava has a ch-- uh, just, just the machshava of being together with other Yidden and trying to be b'achdus, that itself has a great potential to bring the geulah, b'kayaf to bring the geulah, may it be speedily in our days. I will just add that, um, if you wanna read more of this, there's always the, the, the, uh, the Maamar HaKodesh together with the shiur. There's also-- I had written a three-part article, it's on chabad.org, uh, about the, the saga of the Ten Lost Tribes, so most of what I said is there, including some, some of the note-- and some of the footnotes, and you could look it up there.