The River That Rests on Shabbat

In 724 BCE, the Assyrian army invaded the Northern Kingdom of Israel and carried away its inhabitants. The deportees were transported to Assyria, where they assimilated into the wider population and were never heard of again. They became known as the Ten Lost Tribes. And although the Hebrew prophets foretold their eventual return in the messianic future, the chances of them ever turning up again seem pretty slim.

But the idea of a lost nation which will one day return is a powerful one. It has spawned a vast collection of legends about the Lost Tribes; some of which may even contain an element of truth. It’s been suggested for example that groups like the Bene Menashe in India and Beta Israel in Ethiopia are descended from the Ten Tribes; I once lived next door to an Afghani Jew who was adamant that he was descended from the lost tribe of Issachar. One theory, about as bizarre as a theory can get, was put forward by at the beginning of the 19th century by a man known as Richard Brothers. He published a book with the catchy title: “Correct Account of the Invasion of England by the Saxons, Showing the English Nation to be Descendants of the Lost Ten Tribes.” Among the proofs he offered for his claim was that the word ‘British’ can read as two Hebrew words; Brit and Ish, meaning ‘Man of the Covenant.’

Some of the folklore around the Ten Lost Tribes is quite elaborate. Probably the best known is the story told by Eldad Ha-Dani (his name his means that he was a member of the tribe of Dan, one of the ten lost tribes). Eldad turned up in the North African city of Kairouan around the year 880, claiming to have come from a land somewhere near Ethiopia called Havilah. Havilah is described at the beginning of Genesis as the land from where gold comes from. According to Eldad, several of the lost tribes lived as nomads in Havilah. Close by was the land where the children of Moses lived. We don’t know anything about these children of Moses, nobody has ever met them, because their country is cut off from the rest of the world, by the impossibly mystical river Sambatyon, a river made not of water, but of sand and stones.

Eldad described the river Sambatyon as a kind of fortress, a terrifying torrent, impossible to cross because of the violence with which it hurled its rocks many feet into the air. Miraculously though, for all its fury, the river ground to a halt on Shabbat. At sunset on Friday, as Shabbat drew in, a cloud would descend over the river; it would cease its raging and calm would descend. But now there were other impediments to crossing the river. Not only did the cloud envelop and obscure the river, hiding it from view, but even if it could be found the river still could not be crossed, because it was Shabbat. And everyone knows that rivers are not to be crossed on Shabbat.

Eldad Ha-Dani was not the first person to speak of the Sambatyon river. His description was more elaborate and beguiling than any other, but he had based it on a tradition that was already known to the 1st century Jewish-Roman historian Josephus. Josephus claimed that when the Roman emperor-to-be Titus was leading the Jewish exiles from Jerusalem he came across a river that ran so strongly that it drained out all its water in one day and dried up. It took six more days for its springs to replenish the water the river then flowed again for a day, remained quiet for six, sprang into life again and so on. The Roman historian and traveller Pliny, who was slightly older than Josephus, also knew of the river, though in his account the river flowed for six days and rested on the seventh. Neither Pliny nor Josephus give the river the name Sambatyon.

The earliest mention of the name Sambatyon is in the Jerusalem Talmud (Sanhedrin 10,5), compiled in the 5th century CE. There we are told that some of the ten lost tribes were exiled to the far side of the River Sambatyon.  And in the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 65b), Turnus Rufus, a Roman whose identity is unclear but who was forever asking Rabbi Akiva challenging questions, asked him how he knew which of the seven days of the week was Shabbat. “The river Sambatyon is the proof,” replied Akiva. The day the river rested was undoubtedly Shabbat.

Eldad Ha-Dani’s description of the Sambatyon river, and his story of the mystical, inaccessible land that it bordered, encouraged others to set off and see it for themselves. In 1260, the Spanish-Italian kabbalist Abraham Abulafia set off to find the river. He was intrigued by the thought that Eldad Ha-Dani had crossed the Sambatyon and at the age of twenty Abulafia set off to replicate his feat. Sadly he did not succeed. He was forced to turn back after wandering into the middle of a battle between the Turkish Sultan and an army of invading Mongols.

Abulafia had heard about the Sambatyon through people recounting the tales of Eldad Ha-Dani. But he could equally have heard about it from Christian sources. In 1165 several copies of a letter addressed to the Byzantine emperor turned up in Europe. They described a fabulous Christian kingdom ruled over by a man of extreme wealth named Prester John. His kingdom was bounded by the river Sambatyon, the Lost Tribes of Israel lived on the other side. The fantastical attraction of the Sambatyon seems to have been as intriguing to medieval Christians as it was to Jews.

In 1523 a man arrived in Venice claiming to be the commander-in-chief of the army of the Ten Lost Tribes. His name was David Reuveni. He said he had crossed the River Sambatyon on his journey to Venice. It was nonsense of course. But Reuveni was a persuasive and charismatic story teller, people were transfixed by his tale. He managed to arrange an audience with the Pope where he proposed that they create a joint Jewish and Christian army to wrest control of Jerusalem from the Ottomans. The Pope took him seriously and gave him an introduction to the king of Portugal. Things started to go wrong for Reuveni in Portugal and nothing came of his proposal. Eventually he was arrested by the Inquisition and died in prison.

The Sambatyon legend has never really gone away. The 17th century Dutch rabbi Menasseh ben Israel claimed that when sand from the river was placed in a glass it continued to toss and shake for six days a week, even though it was no longer connected to the river. He said that his father had told him of an Arab in Lisbon who had an hour glass filled with Sambatyon sand; on Friday evenings when the sand in his glass stopped tossing he would tell the Jews that Shabbat had arrived and that they should close their shops.

It is said of the messianic pretender Shabbetai Tzvi that he did not die. Rather, he crossed the Sambatyon, where he married a daughter of Moses and now waits for world Jewry to call him back.  He may be waiting for quite some time.