Several groups of people have claimed lineal descent from the Israelites (or Hebrews), an ancient Semitic-speaking people who inhabited Canaan during the Iron Age. The phenomenon has become especially prevalent since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. The country's Law of Return, which defines Jewishness for the purpose of aliyah, prompted many individuals to claim Israelite ancestry with the expectation that it would make them eligible for Israeli citizenship. The abundance of these claims has led to the rise of the question of "who is a Jew?" in order to determine the legitimacy of one's Jewish identity. Some of these claims have been recognized, while other claims are still under review, and others have been outright rejected.
There were numerous events in Jewish history that forced the Jewish people into exile from the Land of Israel, compelling them to disperse throughout many of the world's regions. The most significant of these events are recorded in the Hebrew Bible, but have been attested by extra-biblical evidence as well. The most notorious exilic occurrences were: the fall of the Kingdom of Israel to the Neo-Assyrian Empire in ; the fall of the Kingdom of Judah to the Neo-Babylonian Empire in ; the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE; and the Bar Kokhba revolt in the 130s CE. A number of these communities of the Jewish diaspora came into existence (sometimes voluntarily) as a result of Israelites and Jews emigrating before the onslaught of invading armies; because of forced deportations; or because of enslavement, including the Assyrian captivity and the Babylonian captivity. Some Jewish families or even some whole Jewish communities were forced to relocate on a near-consistent basis because of anti-Jewish persecution, while many were wiped out entirely. Although some form of contact had been maintained between most of the mainstream Jewish diaspora communities over the millennia, contact had been lost with some of them, and as a result, they came to be regarded as lost by mainstream Jewry.
As a result of the isolation of some Jewish communities, their practices and observances have diverged in some respects. The claims made by individuals and groups to Israelite heritage are rooted in different factors, including race, ethnicity, and religion. Some claim this affiliation on the basis of affinity with the Jewish people, while other groups claim this affiliation independent of this affinity, such as those who base their claim on the legacy of the Ten Lost Tribes.
Modern-day consensus accepts that the Jewish people and the Samaritan people originate from the ancient Hebrew/Israelite civilization; the Jews are affiliated with Judah, whereas the Samaritans are affiliated with Israel. The Israelite religion, known as Yahwism, diverged into what is today known as Judaism and Samaritanism, both of which share an extremely close relationship as ethnic religions with an overlapping theology and tradition.
Claimed Israelite descent, with lineage proven, recognized as Jewish
Bukharan Jews
According to ancient texts, Israelites began traveling to Central Asia to work as traders during the reign of King David of Jerusalem as far back as the 10th century BCE. Bukharan Jews contain descendants from the Tribe of Naphtali and the Tribe of Issachar of the Ten Lost Tribes,Ehrlich, M. Avrum. Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture ABL-CIO, October 2008, , p. 84. who were exiled during the Assyrian captivity of Israel in the 7th century BCE."The history of Bukharan Jews", Bukharacity.com. Retrieved December 13, 2009. Isakharov (in different spellings) is a common surname.
The Bukharan Jews originally called themselves Bnei Israel, which relates specifically to the Israelites of Assyrian captivity. The term Bukharan was coined by European travelers who visited Central Asia around the 16th century. Since most of the Jewish community at the time lived under the Emirate of Bukhara, they came to be known as Bukharan Jews. The name by which the community called itself is "Bnei Isro'il" (Israelites of the Northern Kingdom of Israel). Their Muslim neighbors would call them Yahudi, which is misidentification, since it is specific to the southern Kingdom of Judah, but the Bnei Israel self-designation emphasizes their Israelite origins from the northern Kingdom of Israel.Historical Dictionary of Tajikistan
In 1793, Rabbi Yosef Maimon, a Sephardic Jew originally from Tetuan, Morocco and a missionary kabbalist in Safed, traveled to Bukhara to collect money and spread the Sephardic beliefs amongst the native Israelites of the regions. Prior to Maimon's arrival, the Jews of Bukhara followed the Persian religious tradition. Maimon aggressively advocated that the Israelites of Bukhara adopt Sephardic traditions. Many of the Israelites wanted to keep their ancient Israelite traditions and were opposed to this and the community split into two factions. The followers of the foreign Maimon clan eventually won the struggle against the native Israelites for religious authority, and Bukharan Israelites lost their Israelite traditions and were forced to adopt to Sephardi customs. Some people credit Maimon with causing a revival of Jewish practice among Bukharan Jews which they claim was in danger of dying out. There is evidence that there were Torah scholars present upon his arrival to Bukhara, but because they followed the Persian rite their practices were forcefully rejected as incorrect by Maimon.
Cochin Jews
Israelite traders came to Kerala, India, as early as 700 BCE and settled there. Cochin Jews, also called Malabar Jews, are the descendants of Israelites who settled in the South Indian port city of Cochin. They traditionally spoke Judæo-Malayalam, a form of the Malayalam tongue, native to the state of Kerala. Several rounds of immigration of the Jewish diaspora into Kerala led to a diversity among the Cochin Jews.
Some sources say that the earliest Jews were those who settled in the Malabar Coast during the reign of Solomon, and after the Kingdom of Israel split into two. They are sometimes referred to as the "black Jews". The Paradesi Jews, also called "White Jews", settled later, coming to India from Middle Eastern and European nations such as the Netherlands and Spain, and bringing with them the Ladino language. A notable settlement of Spanish and Portuguese Jews (Sephardim) starting in the 15th century was at Goa, but this settlement eventually disappeared. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Cochin received an influx of Jewish settlers from the Middle East, North Africa and Spain.
An old but not particularly reliable tradition says that Cochin Jews came en masse to Cranganore (an ancient port, near Cochin) after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. They had, in effect, their own principality for many centuries until a chieftainship dispute broke out between two brothers in the 15th century. The dispute led neighboring princes to dispossess them. In 1524, the Muslims, backed by the ruler of Calicut (today called Kozhikode), attacked the Jews of Cranganore on the pretext that they were tampering with the pepper trade. Most Jews fled to Cochin and went under the protection of the Hindu Raja there. He granted them a site for their own town that later acquired the name "Jew Town" (by which it is still known).
Unfortunately for the Cochin Jews, the Portuguese occupied Cochin during this same period and they indulged in persecution of the Jews until the Dutch displaced them in 1660. The Dutch Protestants were tolerant, and the Jews prospered. In 1795 Cochin passed into the British sphere of influence. In the 19th century, Cochin Jews lived in the towns of Cochin, Ernakulam, Aluva and Parur.
After India gained its independence in 1947 and Israel was established as a nation, most of the Cochin Jews made Aliyah and emigrated to Israel in the mid-1950s.Weil, Shalva. From Cochin to Israel, Jerusalem: Kumu Berina, 1984. (Hebrew)
Claimed Israelite descent, with lineage proven, not recognized as Jewish
Samaritans The Samaritans, once a comparatively large, but now a very small ethnic and religious group, consist of about 850 people who are currently living in Israel and Samaria. They regard themselves as the descendants of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, the sons of Joseph.
Several genetic studies on the Samaritan population have been conducted by using haplogroup comparisons as well as the results of wide-genome genetic studies. Of the 12 Samaritan males who were used in the analysis, 10 (83%) had Y chromosomes which belong to haplogroup J, which includes three of the four Samaritan families. The Joshua-Marhiv family belongs to Haplogroup J-M267 (formerly "J1"), while the Danafi and Tsedakah families belong to haplogroup J-M172 (formerly "J2"), and can be further distinguished by M67, the derived allele of which has been found in the Danafi family. The only Samaritan family not found in haplogroup J was the Cohen family (Tradition: Tribe of Levi), which was identified with the haplogroup E-M78 (formerly "E3b1a M78"). This article predated the change of the classification of haplogroup E3b1-M78 to E3b1a-M78 and the further subdivision of E3b1a-M78 into 6 subclades based on the research of Cruciani, et al.
The 2004 article on the genetic ancestry of the Samaritans by Shen et al. concluded from a sample comparing Samaritans to several Jewish populations, all currently living in Israel—representing the Beta Israel, Ashkenazi Jews, Iraqi Jews, Libyan Jews, Moroccan Jews, and Yemenite Jews, as well as Israeli Druze and Palestinians—that "the principal components analysis suggested a common ancestry of Samaritan and Jewish patrilineages. Most of the former may be traced back to a common ancestor in what is today identified as the paternally inherited Israelite high priesthood (Cohanim) with a common ancestor projected to the time of the Assyrian conquest of the kingdom of Israel."
Archaeologists Aharoni, et al., estimated that this "exile of peoples to and from Israel under the Assyrians" took place during ca. 734–712 BC.Yohanan Aharoni, Michael Avi-Yonah, Anson F. Rainey, Ze'ev Safrai, The Macmillan Bible Atlas, 3rd Edition, Macmillan Publishing: New York, 1993, p. 115. A posthumous publication of the work of Israeli archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni and Michael Avi-Yonah, in collaboration with Anson F. Rainey and Ze'ev Safrai. The authors speculated that when the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel, resulting in the exile of many of the Israelites, a subgroup of the Israelites that remained in the Land of Israel "married Assyrian and female exiles relocated from other conquered lands, which was a typical Assyrian policy to obliterate national identities." The study goes on to say that "Such a scenario could explain why Samaritan Y chromosome lineages cluster tightly with Jewish Y lineages, while their mitochondrial lineages are closest to Iraqi Jewish and Israeli Arab mtDNA sequences." Non-Jewish Iraqis were not sampled in this study; however, mitochondrial lineages of Jewish communities tend to correlate with their non-Jewish host populations, unlike paternal lineages which almost always correspond to Israelite lineages.