The Legend of The Red Jews

check also on our site, at Franks, One of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel?

'Red Jews' are a legendary Jewish nation believed during the European Middle Ages to be a threat to Christendom as they would invade Europe during the tribulations leading to the End of Times. That legend strictly appeared in Germany during the 13th-15th centuries as scholars consider the legend gathered three traditions. The Biblical reference to apocalypse's God and Magog, the story of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and a story of Alexander the Great who by the 3rd century A.D. enclosed a race of heathens behind a great wall in the Caucasus. In terms of those latter nations, Gog and Magog or the Ten Tribes were considered among those. Ottoman Turks and Muslims were even considered the Red Jews and evoked in Qur'an Sura al-Kahf (The Cave) 18:89. Some speculated that the legend of Red Jews was based on misremembered accounts of the Khazars, a Pontic Turkish people converted to Judaism, which existed between the 7th century and the 10th century A.D. Indeed, in his 9th-century Expositio in Matthaeum Evangelistam, a Christian author, Christian of Stavelot refered to the Khazars as Hunnic descendants of Gog and Magog, as well as having been enclosed by Alexander, but having since escaped. Khazars thus featured a link both to Alexander, and God and Magog. By the 10th century A.D., Karait Yaphet ben Ali quoted in his commentary in Arabic about Isaiah that exiled lived in the desert beyond the 'Shabbat River.' Red Jews were described in Arabic sources as having red hair, a trait which was associated with the Devil in medieval Germany. The color red also refered to Esau, himself linked to Edom (in Hebrew that means 'red') which had turned the personification of Jews as Christians turned as far as they were concerned, the people of the New Alliance, and the 'verus Israel.' With the Khazar hypothesis, Arab source stated that they had red hair and blue eyes, or red for Jews was rather positively connoted as associated to King David who according to the Bible was red-haired or red in complexion. The concept of Red Jews was eventually abandoned in Christendom by the late 16th century A.D. as it survived among Jews in eastern Europe as Red Jews turned for them faraway and powerful, independent and free, coreligionists of which they were lacking. That legend of the Red Jews is also linked with that of the 'Sambation river.' It's only by the coming of the End of Times that they will be able to cross as that will be the sign of it! For Christians, the Red Jews like Gog and Magog or barbarians tribes of the time of Alexander the Great were to be more armies to the Antechrist. At the opposite, in terms of Jewish legend Jews were to cross the Sambation like powerful warriors after Messiah came to free the Jews from slavery and avenge it of thousands of years of abuse and oppression. Jewish communities generally, long awaited new from the Lost Ten Tribes!

According to rabbins, that Sambation river was the one beyond which the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel were exiled by Assyrian king Shalmaneser V. That river had the particular attributes of raging, or even consisting entirely of stone, sand and flame six days a week, thus being impossible to cross. That flow ceased every Shabbat on the other hand (the day when Jews were not allowed to travel). Pliny the Elder, by the 1st century A.D. wrote that a river in Judaea dried up every Shabbat (NH xxxi.18) as Josephus that a 'Sabbatical River' was located between the northern Lebanon range and upper Syria, and reversing the assertion: it was dry for six days and running on Shabbat only. Ashkenazi Jews believed that the Ten Lost Tribe, they called 'die Roite Yiddelech,' (the 'Little Red Jews'), were confined behind the Sambation, which was impossible to cross. The legend might have originated with a river of sand and stones which, owing to a volcanic cause, might have been agitated. Its Hebrew name was 'Nehar ?ol' ('river of sand'), equivalent to the Arabic 'Wadi al-Raml.' This name was later misunderstood to signify 'the river of the week-days,' and thus gave rise to the legend of a periodic river which alternated between Saturday and the week-days, whence its name 'Sabbation' or 'Sambation' ('Sabbatic river'). A confusion established that way between the Sambation of the Ten tribes and the Sabbatic River of Josephus and Pliny. Other location for the river are numerous. Muslim merchants said that the river was located about fifty-days' walking distance when one journeys through the desert across the Arabic Peninsula from Aden, as Muslim writers also knew of the Sambation river. Rabbinical literature considered the Sambation or Sabbation was a river of Media, or the Gozan of the Bible (II Kings xvii. 6 and elsewhere), at about 30 days of march from Jerusalem. Ethiopia's prester John knew the river like located in his country -- or Kush, the other name of Ethiopia; South of Egypt in link to when Alexander the Great travelled in the area, western or eastern India, a place ten days from Ezekiel's grave, which is itself one day's journey from Bagdad. Or in the Caspian Sea area, or the Euphrates (that river was called so because the Israelites after settling near that river were able to observe the Sabbath), and even the Don river, current Russia which was termed 'Al-Sabt' in Arabic as the Byzantines also called Kiev 'Sambatas' which all meant 'resting place' and were commercial stations known and named like by the Khazars. At last, it might have identified with the Zab river in Adiabene, a region of northern Mesopotamia, where the Ten Tribes are supposed to have been transported. Xenophon called the Zab 'Sabatos,' which was subsequently altered to 'Sabbation' and 'Sambation'