I find the timing of the
letter -- October 1830 -- to be important and meaningful. An excerpt from the
handout follows:
Rabbi Israel believed that the Ten Tribes held certain keys to the redemption and restoration of Judah, the holy lands and the temple. He wrote that there would be a certain order that would occur in that redemption, and felt that anything taken out of order would corrupt the whole process. In other words, in his mind, Jerusalem would not be rebuilt until after the gathering and unification of the tribes began, and proper judges, counselors, or those who were “ordained” by authority were called to lead them.
Most interesting to the LDS scholar, would be Rabbi Israel’s
reliance on a teaching by Maimonides that the “renewal of ordination was a
necessary precondition to the Messiah’s advent,” and that this ordination would
“establish an authorized court of ordained sages” or judges. Maimonides wrote:
“And this [renewal of ordination] will no doubt be when the Creator, may He be
blessed, prepares the hearts of men and increases their merit and their desire
for God, may He be blessed, and for the Torah, and augments their wisdom before
the coming of the Messiah” (Sha’arei
Zedeq le-Zera Yizhaq, p. 14a, as quoted by Arie Morgenstern, Hastening Redemption: Messianism and
the Resettlement of the Land of Israel, pp. 100-101).
Is it a coincidence that the Jerusalem rabbis were looking for a
group of men who properly held the priesthood — in the very year that the
Melchizedek priesthood was restored?
Maimonides taught
that as the Jews did not have this proper ordination, the Ten Tribes must have
a leader amongst them who possessed the ordination, or authority, and could
thereby ordain others to sit in the councils of judges (Sha’arei Zedeq le-Zera Yizhaq,
p. 40a). Arie Morgenstern explains that “this was the first time in the history
of Jewish messianism that there was an effort to assign the Ten Tribes a
central role in the redemptive process through renewal of ordination. The Ten
Tribes had always been taken into account, particularly during times of
messianic awakening, but only insofar as it was believed that they would be
discovered at the end of days and might bring their military prowess to bear
against the enemies of the Jews. Never before had they been seen as those who
would renew ordination” Hastening
Redemption: Messianism and the Resettlement of the Land of Israel,
p. 102).