Elieser Bassin was a Russian

Russians

The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....

-Jewish convert to Christianity, and an author and proponent of British Israelism

British Israelism

British Israelism is the belief that people of Western European descent, particularly those in Great Britain, are the direct lineal descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The concept often includes the belief that the British Royal Family is directly descended from the line of King David...

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Life

Born in 1840 to a wealthy Russian Jewish family in Mogilev

Mogilev

Mogilev is a city in eastern Belarus, about 76 km from the border with Russia's Smolensk Oblast and 105 km from the border with Russia's Bryansk Oblast. It has more than 367,788 inhabitants...

 (present day Belarus

Belarus

Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

) Elieser later converted to Christianity in 1869 and became a missionary and member of the "London Jewish Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews". He later moved and settled in Britain and through the literature of Edward Hine

Edward Hine

Edward Hine was an influential proponent of British Israelism in the 1870s and 1880s, drawing on the earlier work of Richard Brothers and John Wilson . Hine went as far as to conclude that "It is an utter impossibility for England ever to be defeated...

 became a proponent of British Israelism. In 1885 Bassin was appointed as the first director of the "Scottish Home Mission to the Jews" in Edinburgh, a position he held until his death in 1898.

British Israelism

Elieser is credited as the first Jewish convert to British Israelism

British Israelism

British Israelism is the belief that people of Western European descent, particularly those in Great Britain, are the direct lineal descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The concept often includes the belief that the British Royal Family is directly descended from the line of King David...

. In 1884 he delivered a lecture entitled "God's Dealings With His Chosen People Israel" to a crowd of British Israelites in Portobello, Edinburgh

Portobello, Edinburgh

Portobello is a beach resort located three miles to the east of the city centre of Edinburgh, along the coast of the Firth of Forth, in Scotland. It is now a suburb of Edinburgh, with a promenade fronting on to the wide sand beach....

. In his book British and Jewish Fraternity Eleiser equated Britain with the Israelite tribe of Ephraim

Ephraim

Ephraim ; was, according to the Book of Genesis, the second son of Joseph and Asenath. Asenath was an Egyptian woman whom Pharaoh gave to Joseph as wife, and the daughter of Potipherah, a priest of On. Ephraim was born in Egypt before the arrival of the children of Israel from Canaan...

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Works

The modern Hebrew, and the Hebrew Christian (1882)

British and Jewish Fraternity (1884)

Lost Ten Tribes: Anglo-Israel by a Jew (1884)

A finger-post to the way of salvation. An exposition from the Bible and Rabbinical books (1887)

The Passover, as celebrated now by the Jews, compared with that celebrated by Christ and His disciples (1889)