Many Jewish communities in the Diaspora have maintained traditions concerning the ancient origins of their settlement in the places of their exile. A surprising number also have accounts from the Second Temple era admitting that, when Ezra the Scribe asked them to return to Zion, they refused and didn’t heed his call.
Yemen
More than a hundred year ago, the Jewish traveler Yaakov Sapir visited Yemen and wrote about the Jews of that country. “According to a tradition preserved among them, their ancestors came to Yemen forty two years before the destruction of the First Temple,” he writes in his book Even Sapir (vol. 1 1866, p/99) Then they heard Jeremiah’s prophecy that whoever will leave the city of Jerusalem would be saved, they gathered,75000 of them, soldiers of the nobles of Judah who feared G-d, as well as Levites and priests and left the Land of Israel. They journeyed for eleven days in the desert until they reached Yemen. The land abounded in fruit and they decided to settle there, establishing their own kingdom. They returned to G-d with all their hearts and grew powerful and rich.
When Ezra went up to the Land of Israel he sent letters to the Jews of many countries urging them to join him. At that time, he also sent a letter to the Jews of Yemen, but they would not listen. He then traveled to Yemen and appealed to them in person but they refused to come with him, asserting that this was not yet the final redemption. The Jews would again be driven into exile….
According to Yemenite tradition, Ezra became outraged and excommunicated the Jews of Yemen. They in turn, cursed him, saying that he would not be buried in the Land of Israel. The curses of both came true. From then on the Jews of Yemen knew no peace…. Ezra was buried outside the Land of Israel.
This account is corroborated in the writings of Rabbi Shlomo Adeni, author of Melekhet Shlmo, a commentary on the Mishna, who lived in the Land of Israel in the second half of the sixteenth and in the first decades of the seventeenth century, according to the Christian calendar. He was a native of Yemen.
In the introduction to his commentary, Adeni writes of having been told by his family that their ancestors were of the ten tribes of Israel and had gone into exile with the. He was also told that they belonged to the group which Ezra had appealed to, to return to the Land of Israel. But they had refused to do so. Ezra Cursed them that they should therefore suffer from want
Ifran in Morocco
Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Toledano writes in his history of the Jews of Morocco (Ner HaMa’arav, 1911, p. 5) that according to a tradition prevalent among the Jews of the town of Ifran, their forefathers were of the ten tribes and had been exiled with them. In Ifran they established a kingdom of their own which ruled over the entire area. The first king was called Avrhaham Efrati of the tribe of Ephraim. All the succeeding rulers were of his offspring and were also called Efrati.
“When Ezra the Scribe called upon them to go up to Jerusalem, they didn’t want to listen to him. Because of this their power deteriorated and they were defeated by their enemies, causing them immense suffering. The enemies also forced the royal family to change its name to Afariat.”
Toledo
Don Yitzhak Abarbanel relates toward the end of his commentary on Melachim, that after the destruction of the First Temple members of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Simon as well as Levites and Priests, settled in various parts of Spain. They did not return to the Land of Israel during the Second Temple era, claiming that this was not yet the final redemption. There were no prophets in Israel. The ark of the Covenant was not in the Temple. Other holy thing were also missing….
Moshe Makir states in his Seder Hayom (in his comments on Emes Veyatziv) that Ezra sent for the Jews of Toledo, “but they did not want to go up to the Land of Israel.’ They said that the Temple would again be destroyed and the Jews would again be exiled. “Why should we suffer twice? We prefer to remain in our place, serving G-d there.
In order to convince Ezra that they were not evildoers nor were they lacking faith in Hashem, they composed and sent him the prayer Emes Veyatziv.
Worms
Of Worms, too it was said that Jews settled there in ancient times. Yusfa Shamash says in his book Maase Nissim that in the times of Ezra the Jews of Jerusalem sent to the Jews of Worms, asking “Why don’t you journey to the Temple three times a year, as commanded in the Torah?”
They replied that they had established for themselves a new Jerusalem on the banks of the Rhine and were not interested in the Second Temple, because the glory of G-d was not revealed there in its full splendor.
Micha Joseph Berdiczewsky, in his anthology of Jewish legends, and in his wake Dr. Michael Mink in his study of Ezra the Scribe (Annual of the Jewish Literary Society of Frankfurt, German, vol. 22) have collected some of the Ezra Traditions relating to the above mentioned communities.
Djerba
A community which consisted solely of Kohanim existed in Djerba, an island off the Tunisian coast. According to their tradition, their ancestors emigrated to Africa after the destruction of the First Temple, and from there came to the island. Nahum Slouschz, in his Hebrew book on the Kohanim of Djerba (Jerusalem, 1924, p.28) relates:
In the beginning of the era of the Second Temple, Ezra the Scribe, who traveled widely trying to gather the dispersed Jews, especially priests and Levites of proven pedigree, came to the island of Djerba to call upon the Kohanim to return to Jerusalem.
They refused, because they did not believe that the building of the Second Temple was indeed ordained by G-d.
Ezra cursed them and their children: they would not serve as priests in the Temple and no Levite would come to the island to be of service to them. The Kohanim, in turn, pronounced a curse against Ezra; he would not return to the Holy Land and would not be buried there.
According to the traditions of the Jews of Djerba, all the curses came true: Ezra did not have the privilege of being buried in the Land of Israel; the Kohanim of Djerba did not return to Jerusalem during the entire era of the Second Temple and no Levite ever came to live on the island. There is a tradition among the islanders that a Levite settling in Djerba would survive no more than a year.
Slouschz comments that similar chronicles regarding Ezra exist also among the Jews of Yemen and Kurdistan. The Yemenite tradition is mentioned above. Regarding the Jews of Kurdistan, such an account does not seem to appear in their literature, but must have been found elsewhere by this historian. (In his English book, Travels in North Africa [1927, page 258] however, Slouschz compares the traditions of the Djerba Jews to those of the Yemenites.)
Slouschz also states: “Curious to the fact that till this day is is impossible for a Levite to live among the Jews of Djerba. No shaliach from Jerusalem who is a Levite would dare to disembark at Djerba; and never would the community of Djerba dare to receive one in their midst.”
Some years ago a booklet entitled Sefer Djerba Yehudit by Boaz Hadad, a Jew from Djerba, was published in Israel. The following account of the Ezra tradition is given there (p. 18): There are no Levites on the island. According to tradition no Levites are allowed to live there more than twelve months. A Levite who stays longer endangers his life.
It is told that when Ezra came to Jerusalem he didn’t find enough Levites for service in the Temple among the new olim. He turned to the Levites of Djerba to come to Jerusalem. They refused saying that the Temple would be destroyed and the Jews would again be exiled. Why should they go up to Jerusalem, when in the end they would again be exiled? Ezra tried to convince that that if the Jews kept G-d’s commandments, the Beit HaMikdash would not be destroyed. However the Levites of Djerba persisted in their refusal. Thereupon Ezra cursed them: No Levite would survive for more than a year on the island.” All Levites who resided there died during that year.
Since then, until this very day, the curse rests upon the Levites of Djerba and no Levite dares to stay longer than a year. In 1912 a new Zionist printing press was established on the island. There were no people in Djerba who could work the new presses. Mr. Yosef ben Natanel HaLevi, a printer from Tunis, was brought to the island. However, he took care never to stay more than a year. He would stop work from time to time and leave Djerba.
Corfu
A century ago, Rabbi Gershon Henoch Lainer, the Rabbi of Radzin visited the island of Corfu. He was told by local Jews that Jews had settled on the island during the era of the Second Temple. There were also some families who said their ancestors had come in the time of the First Temple. Rabbi Lainer related all this in an announcement which he issued with regard to the Corfu Esrogim. (The notice was published in recent years by the present Radziner Rebbe, Rabbi Mordechai Joseph Lainer of Boro Park, New Yok, his his edition of Sod Yesharim on Torah, New York, 1971, p. 356.)
Writing in HaMaggid (Sept. 24, 1891) a Corfu Jew, who signed himself “Halevi’ wrote about the Jews of the island. We read there the following: According to an ancient tradition of the Jews of Corfu, our co-religionists made their homes here at the time of the destruction of the First Temple.
When Ezra the Scribe, called them to return to their homeland they refused, saying that they had all they wanted in the place where they now live….
The Jewish Press