The People of Israel and their Survival

But the full nation of Israel is the twelve tribes of Israel. Not Judah and Benjamin. So what is special about that?

The division into tribes is just arbitrary (according to the father). Our DNA is almost certainly made up of all the tribes. So there were Jews whose descendants did not survive (those who belonged to the ten tribes at that time). So what? It's just like saying that the "German tribe" was wiped out in the Holocaust and therefore the Jewish people are currently not in full formation and therefore did not really survive.

I didn't understand.. Could you explain yourself better? Are you actually saying that we are all a product of the twelve tribes? After all, the Bible explicitly tells us that they were exiled to the land of Assyria.

Jacob had 12 sons. After that, if you were born to a father from tribe x, you are automatically assigned to that tribe (even if your mother and father's mother and all your grandmothers are from another tribe). So there were many cases of someone with DNA from the other siblings, but technically belonging to another tribe. A few hundred years later, all those who technically belong to the ten tribes were exiled (they are not really more "Issacharites" than him, because of the mixing). It's just like if 90% of the people of Israel died today. It's just less Jews, it's not that the people of Israel are not in full composition now

The tribe of Benjamin, the tribe of Judah (from which David and his family came), and the tribe of Levi survived. That is the essence of the matter! And a warm greeting to Rabbi Michi!

With greetings, Benjamin David Levi

Sh”l, you keep raising the bar on Benjamin David Levi. 🙂

A”h, not entirely accurate. The tribes did not mix at first because there is a prohibition on converting land. Beyond that, there is no question of evolution here but a historical question. Therefore, the survival in question is not the survival of the gene but the survival of the people or the group.

Ariel, start looking from the middle of the First Temple at the last 2500 years of history of the people of the Kingdom of Judah. During this period, there is a process of rare survival. There were all kinds of things in the Kingdom of Israel, but what does it matter. Even during the time of Adam, half of humanity killed the other half (Cain and Abel). After all, the Kingdom of Judah demonstrates a rare phenomenon.

I think that since they demanded (answer to:) “This is what the ’God commanded to build Zelophehad” – this would not be the custom except in this generation, until the ten tribes were exiled, enough time had passed for them to mix (when they declared the prohibition of marriage with Benjamin they were already used to the fact that the rest were getting married).

If in the Holocaust (and in general in the last 1000 years) entire communities disappeared, does that mean that the people of Israel did not really survive? No. The main thing is that the people of Israel as a people survived.
The evolutionary argument comes only to negate the claim that the division into tribes is something different from the division into communities in later times. Neither of them is really critical to the people surviving as a people. It is of no importance that the tribe of Reuben does not exist – the Jews there were just like us

I'm really not sure. First, not that much time passed until the exile of the ten tribes. Second, in those generations (even after the permission to marry into another tribe) there were estates that were divided among the tribes, and as is known in those times people lived in the place where they were born and raised and married those they knew. Therefore, I assume that the mixing was not as dramatic as you described.
But as mentioned, none of this is important to the question.

There is a midrash that claims that the Lord of the world is the Lord of the tribes, because their seed will not perish from the world. For this purpose, one male line that has survived to this day is sufficient (and it is worth reading Nadav Schnerb's article on male lines).

The dispute over whether the tribes will return or not in the Sanhedrin can be explained as concerning the self-identification of each and every Jew according to the tribe from which he comes.

All of this, of course, has nothing to do with the very survival of the people of Israel, which, at least according to the Gemara, survived solely because of the fear of the Creator that is upon the nations. This Gemara has a special meaning in the intention of the first blessing in the eighteenth in the interpretation of the word terrible of “the great God, the hero and the terrible”.