MICHAEL FREUND: Ezekiel is commanded by God to take two sticks. On one, he is to write "For Judah," and on the other "For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim." Then comes the crucial instruction: "Bring them together into one stick so that they become one in your hand" (37:17). Ezekiel's vision is not one of uniformity. The two sticks do not cease to be what they are. Judah remains Judah; Joseph remains Joseph. Unity does not erase difference – it sanctifies and elevates it by placing it within a larger shared destiny.
Ketriel Blad: In other words, in order for a total restoration to take place, the restored Ephraimites from among the nations will have to become Jewish, in the legal sense of the word, thus accepting the Jewish authorities and becoming obedient to Jewish halachah. In the prophecy of Ezekiel 37:19 the Hebrew text can be understood as HaShem giving Yehuda's stick the function of being over Ephraim's stick and this way both sticks will become one. This teaches us that the Ephraimite movement that comes from heaven cannot rise apart from the Jewish people without submission to the Jewish leaders' authority. This is not for all the gentiles.
Wong and her family were among the approximately 350 Vietnamese refugees – or “boat people” as they came to be known – who were taken in by Israel between 1977 and 1979. Thirty four years later, Nee Wong lives in Poriya, a rural community near Tiberias overlooking the Sea of Galilee, with her husband, Yom, also a Vietnamese refugee, and their three children. Yom owns and runs a Chinese restaurant in Haifa. Nee, who is fluent in English, Hebrew, Mandarin, Cantonese and Vietnamese, works as a tour guide leading groups of Chinese tourists, especially evangelical Christians from the U.S., Europe, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Wong and her husband gave their children traditional Chinese names: Tzivin, Tziman and Tziyan. All three incorporate the word “goal” or “determination” in their shared prefix, a link that can help future generations more easily trace genealogy. “But once my children entered school, they wanted to have Hebrew names like all the other kids, and I couldn’t deny them that. So today they are Shahar, Ortal and Zohar,” she shrugs. “But we’ve kept their Chinese names as middle names.”
Neil Asher Silberman, Israel Finkelstein, David Ussishkin, and Baruch Halpern: The Book of Joshua (12:21) specifically mentions the defeat of the king of Megiddo and the allotment of his territory to the tribe of Manasseh;
NETANYA MUNICIPALITY: thanks to the Lord for giving them {Netan~ya, lot. "gift of God"} the ability to continue the legacy of the 12 tribes who settled in the Land of Israel, and particularly of the half~tribe of Manasseh, which settled in the region.
Stephen Epstein: Some went down the Mekong River into Vietnam, the Philippines, Siam, Thailand and Malaysia, while some of the Israelites moved to Burma and west to India.
