Halkin is an understatedly brilliant journalist familiar to readers of Commentary magazine, an American living in Israel, a secular Jew. He traveled to a part of India sandwiched between Bangladesh and Burma and there found an ethnic group comprising the Kuki, Chin, and Mizo peoples of the Indian states of Manipur and Mizoram. The Kuki-Chin-Mizo people think they are a lost tribe, specifically the tribe of Manasseh, whom they call Manmasi or Manasa. Halkin is “107 percent” sure that mixed in among the Kuki-Chin-Mizo are the remnants of another ethnic group, called the mi lui or “old people,” whose clans were indeed descended from long-ago-deported members of the tribe of Manasseh. With quiet humor and artful plotting, Halkin tells how he came to this view. Across the Sabbath River is a book of investigative journalism, full of quirky characters and extremely cool lore, as enjoyable to read as a novel.
Halkin gives a vivid portrait of this gentle people, once fierce headhunters and warriors.
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