title: The Thirteenth Gate: Travels Among the Lost Tribes of Israel
author:  Tudor Parfitt 
description: Parfitt, author of Operation Moses ( LJ 10/15/85), here writes a combined travel book and history of Jewish communities in Asia and Africa. With "the lost tribes of Israel" as theme, he explores such groups as the Makuya and the Beit Shalom in Japan, the Lemba in South Africa and Zimbabwe, and the Falashas in Ethiopia; analyzes the ethnic differences between the Baghdadi Jews and the Bene Israel of Bombay; and lays bare the conditions of the Jewish communities of Syria and Singapore. Some material, especially that about the Lemba and Japanese Judaic-like groups, is not easily accessible elsewhere. For large Judaic and religious collections. Maurice S. Tuchman, Hebrew Coll. Lib., Brookline, Mass.<br />Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  Well of Shiuan
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  PROLOGUE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Whoever first built the Gates that led from time to time and space to space
  surely gained from them no good thing.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The qhal found the first Gate in the strange ruins of Silen on a dead world of
  their own sun. They used the pattern, built other Gates, spanned worlds,
  spanned stars, spanned time itself.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Therein they fell into the trap, and ensnared others—for qhal experimented in
  time, experimented in worlds, gathered beings and beasts from the whole of
  Gate-spanned space. They built civilizations, leaped ahead to see their
  progress, while their subjects, denied access to the Gates, inched through the
  centuries at real-time.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  At the end of time gathered those who had been through all ages, experienced
  all things, lived most desperately. There were ominous ripplings in reality
  itself, backtime violated, accelerating disturbance. Some qhal felt it coming;
  some went mad, recalli