Cheap Quest For The Lost Tribes (Video) (Simcha Jacobovici, Elliott Halpern) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Quest For The Lost Tribes

Thought provoking
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.

---

It all sounds great, until you check the fine print.
Unfortunately, I am burdened with the same kind of background (PhD in Ancient History, Hebrew, Archaeology) as the scholars Jacobovici includes in his film. Like them, I am not impressed. This film combines the obvious (the presence of old Jewish communities in the Middle East) with the fantastic (string together a few linguistic and cultural correlations and sell it like snake oil). Bold assertions often turn out to be stretched (e.g. the presence of Aramaic documents proves Hebrew provenance), while connecting the dots in the author's trail of evidence requires far more than simply faith. Something closer to credulity.
Much of the film is simply fascinating showmanship, with an apocalyptic end-times aura. Unfortunately, the naive viewer won't realise that a good bit is also old news, stuff that can be found in any history of Jewish life. But, whether old news or fanciful speculation, it is all presented in the same wide-eyed 'Wow, they never told you this, did they?' style that seems to characterise this showman cum director.
Sorry to be so negative, but Jacobovici seems part Gary, Indiana's Music Man and part kosher Elmer Gantry?

---

Worth seeing -- amazing if even half true!
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.