African Zion: Studies in Black Judaism 1443838020, 9781443838023, 9781443838689

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African Zion: Studies in Black Judaism

African Zion: Studies in Black Judaism

Edited by

Edith Bruder and Tudor Parfitt

African Zion: Studies in Black Judaism, Edited by Edith Bruder and Tudor Parfitt This book first published 2012 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2012 by Edith Bruder and Tudor Parfitt and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-3802-0, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-3802-3

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Edith Bruder and Tudor Parfitt

Part One: Constructing Jewish or Hebrew/Israelite Identities in Africa Chapter One............................................................................................... 12 (De)Constructing Black Jews Tudor Parfitt Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 31 The Proto-History of Igbo Jewish Identity from the Colonial Period to the Biafra War, 1890-1970 Edith Bruder Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 65 Igbo Nationalism and Jewish Identities Johannes Harnischfeger Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 87 Israeli Foreign Policy towards the Igbo Daniel Lis Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 117 The House of Israel: Judaism in Ghana Janice R. Levi

Part Two: Diverse Histories, Common Themes Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 138 The Bayajidda Legend and Hausa History Dierk Lange

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Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 175 Lemba Traditions: An Indispensable Tool for Interpreting the Old Testament in Africa Magdel Le Roux Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 192 Slouschz and the Quest for Indigenous African Jews Emanuela Trevisan Semi Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 204 Longing for Jerusalem among the Beta Israel of Ethiopia Shalva Weil

Part Three: Negotiating Black Jewish Identities in the United States and India Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 220 A Colony in Babylon: Cooperation and Conflict between Black and White Jews in New York, 1930 to 1964 Jacob S. Dorman Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 234 Leading through Listening: Racial Tensions in 1968 New York Janice W. Fernheimer Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 263 Emigrationism, Afrocentrism, and Hebrew Israelites in the Promised Land John L. Jackson, Jr. Chapter Thirteen...................................................................................... 287 Kincaid, Diaspora and Colonial Studies Marla Brettschneider Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 302 Jewish Identity among the Bene Ephraim of India Yulia Egorova Bibliography............................................................................................ 325 Contributors............................................................................................. 358 Index........................................................................................................ 361

INTRODUCTION EDITH BRUDER AND TUDOR PARFITT

Over the last hundred years, in Africa and the United States, through a variety of religious encounters, some black African societies adopted—or perhaps rediscovered—a Judaic religious identity. African Zion grows out of an interest in these diversified encounters with Judaism, their common substrata and divergences, their exogenous or endogenous characteristics, the entry or re-entry of these people into the contemporary world as Jews and the necessity of reshaping the standard accounts of their collective experience. In various loci the bonds with Judaism of black Jews were often forged in the harshest circumstances and grew out of experiences of slavery, exile, colonial subjugation, political ethnic conflicts and apartheid. For the African peoples who identify as Jews and with other Jews, identification with biblical Israel assumes symbolical significance. The Bible that brought Africans the narrative of the Hebrews’ destiny and deliverance is central in the formation of their sacred world. All these movements partly rely on the narrative of the scriptures as a form of resistance to a feeling of oppression and on a common need to recover identity and history. The reading of the Old Testament, specifically the Psalms, Proverbs, and Prophets, influenced the formation of the cultural framework upon which black people began to construct a collective identity. African Americans’ identification with Judaism was informed by the social and political orientations of black people in the United States and was often embedded in response to discrimination. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the appropriation of Jewish history by African Americans followed the path of a search for origins that gave them back a history and allowed them to overthrow American racism’s hierarchy of values. The wider argument identifying the Hebrews of the Bible with a black nation came to be an important strand in pan-African American movements in their formative period. Marcus Garvey, J. A. Rogers and George G. M. James, among many others, considered themselves to be the only true physical descendants of ancient Israel, which claim had been recurrent for well over one hundred and fifty years.

2

Introduction

In Africa the construction of Judaic identities by missionaries and colonial civil servants formed an insistent part of the interface between indigenous peoples and colonialism. The Israelite paradigm formed an essential building block in the colonial attempt to comprehend African religious culture and African society. The last several decades have witnessed some surprising consequences of such colonial activity in the emergence of a significant and growing number of sub-Saharan African ethnic groups in Ghana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, South Africa and elsewhere, who trace their origins to Israelite antecedents or to the Lost Tribes of Israel.1 These groups may be viewed along with older Judaising groups such as the Lemba of southern Africa and the Abayudaya of Uganda as a new Judaic African fraternity increasingly linked by e-mails, Facebook and the like. Since the beginning of the twentieth century there have been links between Judaising groups in Africa and African American Jews in the United States—the so-called Israelites massacred at Bulhoek in South Africa in 1921 had had connections with William Crowdy, the American founder of the Judaising Church of God and Saints of Christ in Lawrence, Kansas.2 These links have grown vastly in importance and scale over the last few decades with the rise in internet communication, and other modern media so that there is now a world-wide virtual community of black Jews of different sorts, who follow events with the closest attention. What interests us in this volume is the way in which the religious identification of African American Jews and African black Jews—“real”, ideal or imaginary, has been represented, conceptualized and reconfigured over the last century or so. These essays grow out of a concern to understand Black encounters with Judaism, Jews and putative Hebrew/Israelite origins and are intended to illuminate their developments in the medley of race, ethnicity, and religion of the African and African American religious experience. They explore and review the major characteristics of the external and internal variables that shaped these group religious identities in Africa and the United States and reflect the geographical and historic mosaic of black Judaism, permeated as it is with different “meanings” both contemporary and historical. Another purpose of the book is to offer a more thorough understanding of the ways in which Africans in Africa and African Americans in the United States have interacted with mythological substrata of both Europeans’ and Africans’ ideas of Jews and Judaism in order to create a distinct Jewish identity. The recurrence of some narrative patterns, such as the myth of the Lost Tribes of Israel or the arrival of Jews in Egypt following Jeremiah after the destruction of the First Temple, represents a

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complex search for origins, involving multiple dimensions (ethnic, religious, spatial, historical, social, mythical, linguistic, and more recently genetic). In countering their experience of exclusion, the notion of being the chosen people and the identification with the biblical Jews took deep roots in the African American imagination. The reinterpretation of African religious phenomena through the Israelite paradigm has created a new interest in reinvented traditions, customs and shared histories. Between the 1920s and the 1930s, several African American Jewish synagogues were built in the cities of New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Chicago and gave rise to complex and multifaceted black Jewish religious communities. In many of these new black-Jewish religious groups, not only were the symbols and images of Judaism employed allegorically, but Jewish practices led to the construction of new identities by which blacks became Jews in different ways.3 The spread of myths connecting Africa with the Jews which arose primarily in the European and Middle Eastern imagination in the early Middle Ages and which can be clearly seen in the ninth century Sepher Eldad as well as in the later Prester John legends became an axiomatic feature of medieval thinking about Africa. Such myths were used and reused, exploited and reinvented by colonialism in many distinct loci in Africa, where they served missionary and colonial interests and impacted local sensibilities.4 Colonization during the nineteenth century can be seen as an intercultural exchange in which African and European subjectivities were negotiated and renegotiated. A new consciousness emerged among Africans who discussed, argued, and reconfigured their identities in new religious and political languages that modified their understanding of themselves.5 The essays in this volume illustrate the fluidity of cultural and religious categories as well as the shifting meanings of race and ethnicity in the historical experiences of black Jews. The Judaising process among some African societies follows the ideological bias of some African American movements, insofar as they perceive the theoretical basis for their Judaic status through the identification of Africans not with white Jews but with Ethiopians who themselves are seen as the true descendants of the Jews of the Bible. In fact it is the supposed blood link and Middle East historical origins which predominate over issues of belief or praxis. When identifying as Jews and with other Jews, African Americans and Africans deny the existence of distinctive categories in popular concepts of Jews and subvert the racist image of blacks. Their self-definition lies in their

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Introduction

collective historical and cultural experiences that have led them to assume a shared history with the Jewish people. Notions of difference embedded in the Judeo-Christian tradition were largely responsible for constructs of western race theory, which played a decisive role in shaping the development of racialized identities. Tudor Parfitt’s chapter looks at the development of the Hamitic Hypothesis throughout the nineteenth century and traces the way the arguments embedded in this racial manipulation played out with two African Judaising groups—the Beta Israel and the Lemba—but his argument could be applied to many more groups both in the United States and throughout Africa. There are now grounds for exploring the possibility that some of these phenomena were formed from specific historical contacts. Genetic population research has become interlaced with history, popular discourses, and myths and has thrown unexpected light on a number of issues of origin throughout the world. Some markers have helped to cast light on the Lemba tribe of Zimbabwe and South Africa and suggest that their traditions may indeed be founded on some historical reality and that there were ancient connections between the African interior and the Middle East.6 In Nigeria, it is the Igbo claim of Jewish “racial” origin which more than anything underlies their identity. Approximately thirty thousand Igbo people regard themselves—and are regarded by other Nigerians and Africans—as Jews. In delineating the proto-history of the Igbo, Edith Bruder’s chapter engages with broader narratives of Nigerian political and social history to contextualize the proto-history of the “Jews of Africa”, from the colonial period to the Biafra war (1890-1970). In the Nigeria State marked by post-colonialism upheavals, political ethnic conflicts and economic uncertainty, Bruder describes the motives and mechanics behind the identification to Judaism of the Igbo people in the course of the twentieth century. She examines how the making of Igbo Jewish affiliation is “symbolically constructed” and magnified as a “modern project” in an arena characterized by local ethnic competition for power, legitimacy, and prestige. During the Nigerian Civil War, 1967-70, when the Igbo fought for their own independent Republic of Biafra, the idea became popular that like Jews, they were surrounded by enemies and threatened by genocide. They lost the war, but thirty years later, when ethno-religious conflicts in Nigeria escalated again, secessionism among the Igbo revived, and with it the idea that their Jewish identity sets them apart from other African peoples. In his chapter Johannes Harnischfeger points out the way Igbo nationalists admire the Jews of modern Israel who have established, in a

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hostile political and economic environment, an affluent high-tech society. Even those Igbo who are not affiliated with Judaism and who maintain Christian belief and praxis tend to see themselves metaphorically as God’s chosen people, and thus akin to the ancient Hebrews and Biblical Jews. Although the popularity of the myth of a Hebrew, Israelite or Jewish origin of the Igbo can be documented amongst the Igbo Diaspora, perhaps as early as the nineteenth century the existence of modern Jews—as opposed to the Hebrews or Israelites mentioned in the Bible—remained largely unknown to the majority of Igbo until the establishment of the State of Israel. On the other hand the knowledge Jews had about the Igbo was scant. Apart from an early attempt in the nineteenth century, official connections between Jews and the Igbo started to materialize only in the 1950s. Daniel Lis has analysed the policy of the state of Israel towards the Igbo in order to see if Israeli responses to rumours about the Jewish identity of the Igbo have been factors in the construction of a Jewish identity and in the association of the Igbo with Israel. Like the Igbo of Nigeria, another group, in the southwestern corner of Ghana, the House of Israel of Sefwi Wiawso—drawing on the teachings of earlier black Jewish movements—think of themselves not as converts to Judaism, but as “reverts”, returning to what they always have been. Janice Levi’s chapter examines the peculiar status of their claim, beliefs and practices. For years, the scholarly consensus has been that African and African American traditions put forward to support claims of Israelite origins were utterly a-historical and were on occasion the result of different sorts of colonial misconceptions and manipulations. No doubt this is largely true. But there may be some exceptions. Using hitherto unexplored sources, in his chapter about the Bayajidda legend of Daura, Dierk Lange traces the immigration of the Hausa from the Near East via two different movements, a mass migration of people from Palestine and a lonely ride of the son of the king from Baghdad. He suggests that the mass movement refers to the flight of resettled deportees of the Assyrian Empire and that the lonely ride may be associated with the retreat of the Assyrian crown prince in consequence of the final Assyrian defeat. The Israelite form of the legend and its Assyrian reshaping are explained by the Assyrian exile of Israelites lasting from 722 to 605 BCE and by the presence of carriers of this tradition among the immigrants. Magdel Le Roux focuses her chapter on the Lemba in Southern Africa and provides interesting additional data in investigating the functioning of oral traditions in a pre-industrial society in respect of the relation between “facts” and “history.” Le Roux follows currently fashionable trends in

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Introduction

New Archaeology, History of Religion and Old and New Testament Studies—and, by so doing, tries to highlight a contemporary approach to an understanding of the Old Testament and early Israel. The quest to discover traces of ancient Judaic peoples in the African continent engaged a number of key individuals throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Emanuela Trevisan Semi’s chapter examines the quest for the “indigenous Jew” in North Africa. In circles influenced by the thinking of Israel Zangwill, the leader of the Territorialism movement, by colonialism and by current theories of race, the eclectic figure of Nahum Slouschz was of major importance. Slouschz, who was a Hebrew scholar, epigraphist, historian and archaeologist went on a series of missions and focused on proving both the existence of indigenous African Judaism and the Jewish ancestry of the Hellenes and Phoenicians. The black Jewish community par excellence and the one which exerted the greatest influence on both American and African Judaic expressions was the Beta Israel (also known as Falasha) community of Ethiopia. In her chapter Shalva Weil traces diachronically the yearning for Jerusalem among the Beta Israel. The Beta Israel who come predominantly from North-West Ethiopia live today in Israel. In Ethiopia, they practised a Torah-based Judaism, without observing the Oral Law. Significantly Beta Israel liturgy is replete with prayers of longing for Jerusalem. Through an analysis of the Segd festival dedicated to the theme of longing for Jerusalem, and Hebrew literature which is now emerging among young Ethiopian-Israelis, Weil examines the dissonance between heavenly and earthly Jerusalem. In their formative period, among the African American Jewish congregations, some referred to themselves as Israelites, others as Jews, Hebrews, Canaanites, Essenes, Judaites, Rechabites, Falashas and Abyssinians. In his chapter Jacob Dorman focuses on the beginnings of African American Jewish congregations in the United States and the numerous schisms among Rabbi Wentworth Arthur Matthew’s Black Jews in New York, as well as his unsuccessful attempts to gain recognition from white Jewish organizations between 1930 and 1964. Dorman examines the various rejections which in 1945 led members of Matthew’s congregation to form Kohol Beth B’nai Yisrael, which split again into two separate synagogues in 1954. The direction of such groups was to a large extent a function of the incomprehension of white American Jews who had the greatest difficulty accepting the historical narrative of American blacks drawn to Judaism and a Judaic past. Janice Fernheimer calls attention to an important New York-based non-profit organization, Hatzaad Harishon (The First Step) which was

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created in 1964 and lasted until 1972. Hatzaad Harishon included Jews of all colours and aimed to foster a new reality that would recognize the equality of black and white Jews. Fernheimer analyzes Hatzaad Harishon’s interactions between white Jews and black Jews which were marked by sensitivity to the shared diasporic experience of American Jews and African Americans of whatever faith. She concentrates on the period of heightened sensitivity to race inspired by New York’s turmoil over the Ocean Hill-Brownsville affair. Jewish engagement with the field of Diaspora Studies is a potentially rich site for multi-layered examinations of politics, the movement of peoples in history, and core issues of justice. Marla Brettschneider’s chapter offers a study of the internationally acclaimed Afro-Caribbean writer Jamaica Kincaid who has come to represent a quintessential Caribbean woman’s voice. She is also Jewish, though there is almost no mention of the basic fact of her Jewishness in the vast literature on Kincaid, nor is there any analysis of the meanings of Jewishness in her work. Brettschneider’s analysis of Kincaid’s work uses a Jewish lens to highlight and makes sense of distinct facets of power and resistance strategies for the colonized and those in Diaspora. Her theoretical approach shows how we might more fluidly make sense of emergent fields of study in order to place or replace the paradigm of Jewish identity as well as African and Jewish experiences globally in new ways. Yulia Egorova’s chapter provides a comparative perspective on African and African American Judaising movements by looking at the Bene Ephraim community of Madiga Dalits of Andhra Pradesh, India. Egorova demonstrates how discourses of social liberation developed in the community and from the late 1980s expressed themselves through a declared descent from the Lost Tribes of Israel. Their claims and development resonate with those of African and African American Hebraic groups and mirror rhetorical liberation strategies of other Dalit movements in India. She pays special attention to the specific practices developed by the Bene Ephraim on the ground and the differing types of engagement with the Jewish tradition they demonstrate. Be it in Africa or the United States, the great ethnic and cultural diversity of Africa has been rendered yet more complex by participation in Christian, Islamic and other religious expressions. As they did for other religions, African Americans and Africans understood and experienced the Jewish religion, on their own terms and with significant modifications from most normative models. John L. Jackson’s chapter delineates the emigration story of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, a group of African Americans who left the United States for West Africa—and then

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Introduction

“Northeast Africa” or the modern state of Israel—in the late 1960s. Jackson demonstrates that the African Hebrew Israelites represent a complicated kind of Afrocentrism, a Hebraicised version that that does (and does not) conform to certain canonized renditions of Afrocentric thinking. Contemporary and past black Jewish identity construction is situated at an interesting crossroads which represents a double legacy: that of Black American identifying with Judaism and Jewish texts, and the real or imaginary historical contacts of Jews and/or Judaism, in ancient times, with African peoples. The essays in this book converge in offering a network of theoretical suggestions about the profound roots of African Jewish identifications and the amazing diversity that is embodied in black Jewish life. African Americans and Africans have had so many explicit and implicit exchanges with Judaism over so long a historical period and in such a vast area that a complex web has been produced. To grapple with this complexity this volume employs a variety of methodological approaches from anthropology, phenomenology, history, archaeology, linguistics, genetics and religious and cultural studies. The structure of the book is divided into three sections; each one explores a different cluster of groups or traditions. The first section examines the construction and the development of Judaic identities among some African societies in Africa. The second section explores the common themes and diverse histories linking African Judaism to History, New Archeology and Old Testament exegesis. The negotiation of Jewish identities, in the United States, India and Israel, the relationships and the “crisis” within African American Jewish congregations are the subject of the third section. Even if the theoretical scope of African Zion is expansive, it was not possible to include all the areas of Africa—such as Rwanda-Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands—and the African Diaspora, such as the West Indies, and coastal regions of Central America which share a number of profound affinities with Judaism. These topics would fill an additional volume. In fact, this volume tries to assess out how we might more fluidly make sense of an already balkanized field of study in order to place black Jewish religious experiences globally in a discrete and satisfactory context. We hope that these considerations will stimulate future debate.

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Notes 1

On African Judaism see: Edith Bruder, The Black Jews of Africa, History, Identity, Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Tudor Parfitt, Black Jews in Africa and the Americas (New York: Harvard University Press, 2012); Tudor Parfitt The Lost Tribes of Israel (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2002); Tudor Parfitt and Emanuela Trevisan Semi, Judaising Movements: Studies in the Margins of Judaism (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002). 2 On the Bulhoek tragedy see Joan Millard, “The Bulhoek Tragedy,” Missonalia, http/:www/geocities.com/missonalia/bulhoek.htm (accessed March 26 2011). On Crowdy see Arthur H. Fauset, Black Gods of the Metropolis: Negro Religious Cults of the Urban North (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944), 31-40; Elly Wynia, The Church of God and Saints of Christ: The Rise of Black Jews (New York: Garland, 1994). 3 On African-American Jews see Yvonne Chireau and Nathaniel Deutsch ,eds. Black Zion. African American Religious Encounters with Judaism (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Howard M. Brotz, The Black Jews of Harlem (New York: Schocken Books, 1970); Ulysses Santamaria, ‘‘Le judaïsme dans la culture négro-américaine,’’ in Les Temps Modernes 444 (July 1983): 6364; Melville Herskowitz, The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1941); Graenum Berger, Black Jews in America: A Documentary with Commentary (New York: Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, 1978). 4 On Eldad the Danite and Prester John see Eliakim Carmoly, Relation d’Eldad le Danite, voyageur du IXè siècle (Paris: Dondé-Duprey, 1838); Elkan N. Adler, Jewish Travellers: A Treasury of Travelogues from Nine Centuries (London: Bloch Publishers, 1930); David Wasserstein,‘‘Eldad ha-Dani and Prester John’’ in Prester John, the Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes, ed. C. F. Beckingham and B. Hamilton (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), 213-236. Pierre-Gustave Brunet, ‘‘La légende du Prêtre Jean,’’ in Extrait des Actes de l’Académie des Sciences, Belles lettres et Arts de Bordeaux (Bordeaux: C. Lefebvre, 1877), 1-27. 5 David Chidester, Savage Systems, Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996); Jean, and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa. Vol.1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 6 Amanda B. Spurdle, and Trefor Jenkins. ‘‘The Origins of the Lemba, ‘Black Jews’ of Southern Africa: Evidence from p12F2 and Other Y-Chromosome Markers.’’ American Journal of Human Genetics 59 (1996): 1126-1133. Mark G.Thomas, T. Parfitt, D. A. Weiss, A. Skorecki, J. A. Wilson, M. Le Roux, N.Bradman, and D. Y. Goldstein. ‘‘Y Chromosomes Travelling South: The CohenModal Haplotype and the Origins of the Lemba—the ‘Black Jews of Southern Africa.’’’ American Journal of Human Genetics 66 (2000): 674-686.

PART ONE CONSTRUCTING JEWISH OR HEBREW/ISRAELITE IDENTITIES IN AFRICA

CHAPTER ONE (DE)CONSTRUCTING BLACK JEWS TUDOR PARFITT

Recent times have witnessed radical changes in the conception and configuration of Jews and Judaism, as powerful racialised constructions of past centuries have been absorbed by communities throughout the world and as the rigid divisions between religious traditions have begun to crumble. Inexorably, Judaism has developed into a global construct, which touches peoples in every corner of the globe, of every color, of every faith, of every ideology, and with the advances in the technology of communication, at a faster and faster rate. The construction or deconstruction of black Jews has a good deal to do with concepts of “race” and I must make a few observations about this problematic word. The word “race” was barely used before 1800, excessively used until the end of the Second World War and has now passed its sell-by-date. The reason for this is that in the sense it is almost always used, it is without signification. It does not signify anything in the natural world. Race is quite simply a figment of the imagination; biological differences are illusory, and belong not to the biological or physical sphere but to the realm of human culture and cultural subjectivity. The demolition of race started in academic circles at the beginning of the twentieth century with the anthropologist, Franz Boas and others and the last nail in its coffin was struck by modern genetics towards the end of the last century. Attitudes towards “race” are created and exist in the symbolic universes where human beings translate the utterly misleading facts of the physical difference of others into often-painful stereotypes and racial ideologies. In other words, like so much else, race is a social and religious construct. In the western world the social and religious factors, which shaped the articulation and expression of race, are to be found unsurprisingly in the dominant influence on the evolution of western culture—namely the scriptures of the Judeo-Christian tradition and particularly the Hebrew Bible. Until the mid-19th century the commonly accepted western view

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among even well educated people was that the various branches of mankind derived from a founder group consisting of the three sons of Noah and their wives, who thanks to Noah’s famous ark were saved from the flood, while the rest of mankind perished. Shem was the father of the Semitic peoples, Ham of Africa, and Japheth of Eurasia and at different times these names were also given to language groups. This was the practically uncontested narrative of human geography until the end of the Renaissance period, when one or two isolated heretics like Paracelsus and Giordano Bruno started to evolve taxonomies of humanity based not so much on interpretation of the scriptures as on physical characteristics. With the waning of Biblical authority during the period of the Enlightenment round the end of the eighteenth century, new racial theories unfettered but still influenced by the Biblical paradigm started to develop. For a while a connection between Ham and Africa was preserved as it was so politically and economically expedient. The Biblical curse of Ham’s son was seen as subjecting his descendants—black Africans—to eternal servitude. The frequency of the use of Ham in the great debates on slavery reached its apogée in about 1800 when slavery was at its numeric peak and started to wane once the slave trade was banned by the British in 1807 and slavery was finally done away with completely in the United States in 1865. With its demise slavery no longer needed to be justified by the Genesis account. As the exploration and subjugation of Africa continued and as European commercial and imperial interests changed and developed, and as attitudes towards slavery softened, so an explanation for the history, or non-history, origins and relative status of different African peoples became more urgently required.1 One new idea, which was a blend of nineteenth century racial theory and Biblical exegesis was called the Hamitic Hypothesis, which argued that superior peoples—that is people of a superior “racial” composition— in the African continent, were of non-African “Hamitic” origin and that they had conquered the “negro” population at some remote point in history. The Hamitic hypothesis was conventional academic wisdom from about 1800 until around 1965.2 The Hypothesis conscripted Biblical history and what was at that time becoming known of the history of ancient Egypt in such a way as to make what they called Caucasians—another term without signification— the legitimate heirs of these histories, neatly excluding “negro” Africans from this Eurocentric framework, while preparing the ground for the conferral of a ready-made history on certain other groups of favored Africans and others.

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Chapter One

A discourse now developed in which only the descendants of Ham’s youngest son Canaan was considered to be black at all; it was only his offspring which populated sub-Saharan Africa and who were cursed. “Hamites” now began to refer to a variety of lighter skinned peoples who included the ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians, Canaanites, Somalis, Ethiopians and Israelites. Whatever real civilizing progress Africans had made throughout history, it was argued, was due to these foreign, invading Hamites. Thus in a distortion which had some obvious value for invading western colonists, the high points of African history were presented as belonging exclusively to its historical invaders. A paradigm was established justifying western colonial intervention in the continent and establishing the majority of Africans (the non-Hamites) as inferior, debased and worthy of subjugation. The idea that the “negro”, either in the past or present, possessed any artistic or intellectual achievement was rejected. The Hamitic theory denied him forever the possibility of being in control of his own destiny. The paradigm was designed, in Homi Bhabha’s phrase, “to construe the colonised as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction.”3 A good deal of western investigation of the racial nature of “Hamitic” tribes was associated with establishing “sameness” between them and Europeans to bolster the theory and “difference” between Europeans and “negroes”. This was a way of proposing that these superior Africans had some kind of a link no matter how tenuous, with their colonial European masters and their sacred history, and indeed with the rest of mankind, while “negroid” Africans had no such links. J.C. Prichard (1786 - 1848) the British ethnologist summed it up thus: “Tribes having what is termed the Negro character in the most striking degree are the least civilized and are in the greatest degree remarkable for deformed countenances, projecting jaws, flat foreheads and for other Negro peculiarities and are the most savage and morally degraded. The converse of this remark is applicable to all the most civilized races. The Fulahs (and) Mandingos and others … have, nearly European countenances and a corresponding configuration of the head.”4

Edmund Dene Morel, (1873-1924) the British journalist, wrote ecstatically of the remarkable knowledge the Fula had of the Hebrew legends and of their wonderful racial characteristics: “the straight-nosed, straight-haired, relatively thin-lipped, wiry, copper or bronze complexioned Fulani male, with his well developed cranium, and

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refined extremities; and the Fulani woman, with her clear skin, her rounded breasts…”5

These “superior” peoples were often dubbed Israelites while perceived Jewish physical and other characteristics were systematically attributed to them. Elsewhere in the world from north east India to Australasia these mechanisms in a marginally different framework were systematically applied to those groups favored by colonists and missionaries who showed some cultural or religious—often imagined—similarity to the practices described in the Bible. In time these constructions were internalized and created a vast number of Judaising or Israelite communities throughout the world. In Africa there are a millions of Igbo and Tutsi as well as many others who passionately believe in their Israelite origins. The career of the Asantehene, Osei Agyeman Prempeh II, is instructive. When the Ashanti monarchy was restored by the British in 1935 the king commissioned a book. Doubts of various sorts had been voiced about his legitimacy and in order to put the record straight he decided to prove for once and for all his inalienable right to the Golden Stool of the Ashanti, by compiling a history of his people. His purpose was to demonstrate that the power of the Golden Stool dominated the natural order of things and that this was divinely ordained. The first chapter “The First Inhabitants of the Gold Coast” stressed the Israelite origins of the Ashanti aristocracy. In a letter to the committee which had supervised the compilation of the book, Osei Agyeman Prempeh II noted: “I know it truly to be the fact that in the ancient past Ashanti people lived by Jerusalem and removed little by little to live again to Egypt then to here... When I talked to you of it, it was said that it was the fact that it was our Noble Families of Ashanti who have travelled from far but the rest of the people were natives from here... This could be, for Nobility even up to the present day are a light colour (like red) even when most Ashantis are dark black (African-type).”

Overall, Osei Agyeman Prempeh II held to the idea of Israelite and Egyptian origins for the Ashanti and inserted this into his “History” because it clearly reinforced his view that the Ashanti elite was distinct from and superior to the people it ruled. Osei Agyeman Prempeh II wanted the traditional power structures restored so that its royal family might resume its former all-powerful role in controlling Ashanti affairs. The Hamitic hypothesis, linked in this case to Israelite history with all its religious implications proved irresistible to a Christian king keen to restore the traditional order. There could be no better way of legitimizing his rule

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Chapter One

and his right to rule than linking himself and the elite from which he sprang to the chief actors in the sagas of western sacred history.6 In this chapter I shall briefly describe the ways in which the Hamitic Hypothesis played out in the evolution of the Beta Israel or Ethiopian Jews and the Lemba of southern Africa. The problematic which this chapter addresses is: were the Beta Israel and the Lemba constructed out of European myths and racialist and colonial fantasies of the “other”, in the same way as north and south American native populations, the Igbo, Ashanti, Yoruba, Tutsi, Zulu, Masai, Maori, Karen tribes and many others, or are they “authentic” historical Jewish communities, who may be viewed as descending from some ancient Israelite, Hebrew or Jewish stock? A secondary question is: does it matter? Before proceeding, mention must be made of the work of Edward Said which speaks of the colonised “other” as the object of anthropology, trapped in a construct of subservience to colonial power by white Christian Europe. Said’s work and that of other post-colonial theorists has no doubt helped our better comprehension of the mechanisms of biological and cultural racism throughout the colonial project. However, Said has had little to say about the Jews—and even less to say about how Jews themselves in fact served universally as “objects”, which could reinforce biological and cultural stereotypes as well as providing useful models of essentialisation. Although the Jew is and has been, in every conceivable way, an archetypal “other” both in Europe and in parts of Asia and Africa he/she has not been the focus of the vast bulk of the work done on the “other” in the context of post colonialism. Said has argued that Jews, and by implication Zionists, are themselves involved in a neo-colonial enterprise and do not therefore qualify as a people oppressed by colonialism and do not belong to the problematic; it is also argued that Jews in addition are too central to a whole range of intellectual and cultural concerns both in Europe and the United States to be viewed as outsiders. What follows is an attempt to re-orient the discussion by describing the way in which Jews, as minorities, their religion and their language were constructed as imagined communities as an essential part of the colonial enterprise. For hundreds of years Ethiopia was the locus par excellence of the Israelites-in-Africa myth and until the nineteenth century attempts were still being made to locate the Lost Tribes of Israel in and around this mountainous African kingdom. The mediaeval world buzzed with strange rumors of the Lost Tribes and other strange Judaic peoples in the mountains of Ethiopia. Abraham Farissol (c.1451-c.1525) the great Sephardi polemicist and geographer who spent most of his life in Ferrara

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commented on accounts he had heard from “the black priests, who relate in detail the reality of many Jews among them (in Ethiopia).” Further information about Israelites in Ethiopia was provided by the seventeenth century Portuguese Jesuit missionary Balthazar Tellez (1595-1675) who wrote “there are still many of these Jews, whom they there call Falaxas. These still have Hebrew Bibles, and sing the Psalms very scurvily in their synagogues”. Tellez and Farissol both constructed the Beta Israel as Jews. Tellez claimed they had “no settled dwelling” and suggested (falsely) that they owned Hebrew texts and also spoke Hebrew “but with much corruption in the Words”. In reality, the Beta Israel community had no knowledge at all of Hebrew. There is no mention in any of the literature that they owned or held any Hebrew texts, of any description, but of course Jews elsewhere in the world had Hebrew texts, as Tellez knew, and knew Hebrew, and therefore in order to construct their Jewishness, Tellez made the Beta Israel Hebrew-speaking and singing and provided them with Hebrew books.7 For those travellers and missionaries who penetrated the kingdom, the construction of extraneous origins for some of Ethiopia’s peoples was a way of accounting for certain unexpected phenomena such as sophisticated building, complex social structures or Israelite like practices as was the case elsewhere in Africa and the world, along the lines of the Hamitic hypothesis. When the Scots traveller James Bruce (1730 -1794) who traveled in Ethiopia between 1769 and 1774 came across the Beta Israel they explained “that they came with Menelik from Jerusalem” so Bruce could note “that they perfectly agree with the Abyssinians in the story of the Queen of Saba”. From as early as the sixteenth century, however, Ethiopian non-Beta Israel sources began to suggest that the Beta Israel had come to Ethiopia after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in AD 70: this may reflect a Portuguese influence on local views of Beta Israel origins. By the time the Swiss Lutheran missionary Samuel Gobat (1799-1879) visited the Beta Israel in 1830 there was a mixed tradition: as he put it “they do not know of what tribe they are; nor have they any adequate idea as to the period when their ancestors settled in Abyssinia. Some say that it was with Menelik, the son of Solomon; others believe that they settled in Abyssinia after the destruction by the Romans”. Gobat, however, was adamant that he knew who they were and where they were from. He wrote, “It is generally maintained by themselves that they came over prior to the time of Solomon and Rehoboam; but notwithstanding the prevalence of this opinion, it is probable that the migration, properly so-called, did not

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Chapter One take place until after the destruction of Jerusalem. It is well known that the Jews swayed the scepter of dominion over Arabia, and a portion of Persia, for several ages previous to the appearance of Mohammed; but when that malignant star arose, they withered beneath its influence, and soon bowed to the Arabian yoke. But as Christian Ethiopia resisted... the Jews who resided within her borders, were screened from the powers of the destroyer, and succeeded in maintaining their political constitution; and it is affirmed that they have still preserved their religion without contamination...”

Their status as black Jews became institutionalized when perhaps at the suggestion of Joseph Wolff, the Jewish convert to Christianity, missionary and fervent seeker of the Lost Tribes, Gobat urged the London Society for the Promoting of Christianity amongst the Jews to take over the mission to the Beta Israel which it did in 1859.8 There was not exactly a stampede on the part of western Jews to go and greet their long-lost black brethren in Ethiopia. Filosseno Luzzato (1829 -1854) the erudite Italian Sephardi scholar was one of the first to take an interest when he read about them in Bruce’s Travels when he was a young lad. Subsequently he made contact with the Franco-Irish traveller and savant, Antoine d’Abbadie, who travelled in Ethiopia between 1837 and 1848, whose replies to Luzzato’s probing questions made their way into the European Jewish press including the Jewish Chronicle in London. Despite this, western Jews only started to show anything other than a superficial interest in them once it became known the Beta Israel were being targeted as Jews by the London Society. 9 The Beta Israel certainly did not perceive themselves as Jews (ayhud in the Ge’ez language). They thought of themselves as Israelites. In earlier periods ayhud had been one of several derogatory designations for the Beta Israel by Christians, but the term was equally used to describe pagans or Christian heretics. It was never used by the Beta Israel themselves. Joseph Halévy (1827- 1917) the Ottoman born Jewish-French Orientalist and traveller, most famous for his remarkable journeys in the Yemen, and the first western Jew to my knowledge, to contact the Beta Israel, did not realize this when, in 1867, he went to Ethiopia as an emissary of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. At his first encounter with the Beta Israel he whispered in Amharic “Are you Jews?” They looked a little embarrassed but didn’t respond. Then he asked: “Are you Israelites?” and, as he wrote, “A movement of assent mingled with astonishment, proved to me that I had struck the right chord”. Jacques Faitlovitch (1881-1955) did much to consolidate a construction of the Beta Israel as non-Ethiopian

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outsiders descended from a pre-Talmudic lost tribe of Israel which had found its way from ancient Israel to Ethiopia. This racial-religious construction was accompanied by another racial construction which was at odds with the Beta Israel’s account of themselves: the construction of the community as black. The color terms in Ethiopia include white for foreigners (ferenji), red (qey), black (t’equr) and light brown (t’eyem). The Beta Israel never considered themselves as the “racially inferior” t’equr but as qey or t’eyem. If you were t’equr the chances were that you were a slave. Faitlovitch described the Beta Israel both as Jews and black. “They have kept the flag of Judaism flying in their country” he wrote “and can proudly proclaim ‘We are black but comely’.”10 Thus from the nineteenth century Beta Israel were constructed as black Jews, who had come to Ethiopia at some time past from the land of Israel. They are still widely accepted as black Jews, of non-African origin and their “blackness” and foreignness have underpinned most discussions of the Beta Israel to this day. Once the Beta Israel rejected the appellations “Jew” and “black”, but now in Israel where they are universally known as “Ethiopian Jews”—and often as “black Jews”—they have accepted them. Following the usual logic of the Hamitic Hypothesis “Jewish” features were soon discerned among the Beta Israel. Henry Aaron Stern (18201885) a German Jewish convert to Christianity who worked as a missionary to the Beta Israel with the London Society observed of them: “there were some whose Jewish features no one could have mistaken who had ever seen the descendants of Abraham either in London or Berlin. Their complexion is a shade paler than that of the Abyssinians, and their eyes, although black and sparkling, are not so disproportionately large as those which characteristically mark the other occupants of the land”.11

In other words, not only did these people follow Jewish customs and the Jewish faith, they also looked like European, Ashkenazi Jews. A member of the Beta Israel community, who spent many years outside Ethiopia and who had internalized these constructions of Beta Israel appearance mentioned to a western researcher that the community could recognize one another by their faces and particularly by their Jewish noses. Some foreign observers, persuaded that the Beta Israel were Jews, thought that their skin color was temporary and that once they moved to the more temperate climate of the land of Israel it would revert to an appropriately Jewish off-white. 12 Attempts to discover phenotypical features specific to the Beta Israel continue until modern times. In a hostile pre-review of my book Operation

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Moses the president of the American Association for Ethiopian Jewry disputed my claim that the Beta Israel looked very much like other Ethiopians. He claimed that he had observed that “a different degree of blackness of skin characterizes the Falasha from other Ethiopian tribes... they are less African and more Mediterranean than the others—they have less frequency of African associated chromosomes”.13 In other words the same kind of process has been at work among the Beta Israel as pertained during the same period among many other constructed Jewish groups from Africa to Australia. We now know that the origins of the Beta Israel do not lie either in the Lost Tribe of Dan, as claimed by the Israeli Sephardi Chief Rabbi (or Rishon LeTzion) Ovadia Yosef, nor in the Jewish colony of Elephantine on the Nile, nor yet in wandering Karaites as some have claimed, but rather in the evolution of a kind of Judaic-looking faith in Ethiopia which grew out of Ethiopian Christianity. This scholarly de-construction carried out over the last three decades principally by Steve Kaplan, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, James Quirin at Fisk University and Kay Shelemay at Harvard and since about 1999 supported most unambiguously and emphatically by geneticists, has produced a radically different perspective on Beta Israel history “which denies their direct links to any ancient Jewish groups, dates their emergence as a separate people to the last five hundred years, and places their evolution firmly in the context of Ethiopian history and society”.14 This body of work, which inevitably has been seen as politically incorrect in Israel, given that the Beta Israel are now citizens of the Jewish State and, as poorly educated newcomers, have enough problems as it is, has shown that in fact there is no “blood” connection between the Beta Israel and Jews elsewhere. Yet a good deal of scholarly and publicistic writing continues to maintain, along the lines of the Hamitic Hypothesis (and despite a truly impressive lack of evidence) that the Beta Israel were blood relatives of mainstream Jews—that they were descended from Abraham and that their origins therefore were from outside the African continent. What can be said truthfully is that for half a millennium a kind of Israelitism was indeed practiced on Ethiopian soil by indigenous Africans, they suffered as a result and when they were rescued by Israel as a “faithful tribe” from stinking camps in Sudan during the Great Ethiopian Famine of 1984—an event I had the good fortune and privilege to witness—they were the first black people ever taken out of Africa not in chains. The historical experience of the southern African Lemba tribe has something in common with that of the Beta Israel. Since the beginning of

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the twentieth century many Lemba have claimed to be of Israelite origin, and many Europeans have made similar claims for them, although until now these claims have been denied by most South African Jews. The Lemba claim to have come from “Sena” which they placed across the sea, somewhere in the north is similar to Hamitic Hypothesis induced traditions found among very many African ethnic groups. 15 Much of the colonial, travel and early ethnographic literature on the Lemba proposes an extraneous origin. From the first weeks of colonial intervention the Lemba tribe were identified as Jews and defined in precisely the same way as so many other peoples had been before and since, and for reasons embedded in the world view of the Hamitic Hypothesis. Within months of the arrival of white settlement in Mashonaland an English colonist noted the similarity between Lemba customs and those of the Jews. These customs he wrote “together with their lighter skin and their Jewish appearance distinctly point to the ancient impress of Idumean Jews”. 16 Over the last few decades as prevailing attitudes about “race” and Africa have changed, the construction of the Lemba as a “Jewish” and non-African community, particularly given their claim to have been associated with the highly sophisticated monolithic building tradition of the Great Zimbabwe civilization—one of the glories of Black Africa situated more or less in the middle of present-day Zimbabwe—has taken on a politically incorrect character much in the same way as the contrary presentation of the Beta Israel as an African people has taken on a politically incorrect coloring in Israel. It is true that white racists and white supremacists until now find the tradition of an extraneous origin for the Lemba extremely useful: in 1967 George Robert Gayre (1907-1996) the notorious editor of the racist journal The Mankind Quarterly, wrote a book in which he posited the connection of the Lemba with what he took to be the very ancient culture of Great Zimbabwe. He argued that the Lemba had Jewish cultural and genetic traits and that their “Armenoid” genes must have been acquired from Judaized “Sabeans” who had settled in the area thousands of years before, introducing more sophisticated technologies and culture to the region. One objective of his work—along the lines of the Hamitic Hypothesis—was to show that the indigenous Shona people had never been capable of building in stone, of creating advanced social structures, as had obviously existed at Great Zimbabwe, or of governing themselves. However, there is no evidence that “Judaized Sabeans” or Jewish “Idumeans” or any other

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ancient Middle Eastern people settled in the area thousands of years before—and there is every evidence that Great Zimbabwe was actually built something less than a thousand years ago over a considerable number of centuries by local people. 17 The fact that the Lemba narrative has been contaminated with racist explanations of Africa has had a number of serious consequences. One is that few scholars have taken the issue of the Lemba participation in the Great Zimbabwe civilization seriously. This was pointed out in a review of my book Journey to the Vanished City. The idea that the Lemba were from the Middle East “simply did not fit in” wrote the reviewer “with the ‘Merrie Africa’ version of indigenous initiative and development that Africanists propagated in the heady days of African nationalism forty years ago. It looked too much like the racist paradigm of ‘primitive’ earthlings living in ignorance until ‘civilized’ aliens brought enlightenment. But the profession of African history is now much more self-confident, with the basic outlines of indigenous initiative and development well established. We should therefore positively welcome scholarship that seeks historical connections outside Africa, especially in Asia…”18

In many respects the modern identity of the Lemba seems to have been constructed by outside observers following the usual paradigm of the Hamitic Hypothesis. The Lemba are physically similar to their African neighbors in South Africa and Zimbabwe and (to me at any rate indistinguishable). Members of the tribe display a wide degree of color variation as do many other neighboring peoples but in general they are termed black and their appearance if one can generalize, is similar to that of other local groups. This did not prevent the travellers who ventured into Lemba areas in the past, and who thought of the Lemba as Jews or Semites, expressing the conviction as others did with respect to the Beta Israel, that the Lemba had phenotypical traits which confirmed their racial origin. One traveller described a Lemba group whose “noses are straight, and not flattened out at the base like those of the true African. Their lips, too, though broader than those of the European, are quite Caucasian when compared with the blubber excrescences carried about by the ordinary Zulu or Basuto. It was easy to believe that they were descended from some scattered remnant of the great Hebrew race.” Karl Peters—the founder of German East Africa—and later on hero of Adolf Hitler, writing of Lemba in the 1890s noted: “How absolutely Jewish is the type of this people!” He wrote “they have faces cut exactly like those of ancient Jews who live around Aden. Also the way they wear their hair, the curls behind the ears, and the beard drawn out

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in single curls, gives them the appearance of Aden—or of Polish—Jews of the good old type”.19

There is little possibility that Karl Peters really came across Lemba in the nineteenth century wearing the side locks (peot) worn by orthodox Ashkenazi or Yemenite Jews. Did he imagine it? Did the various aspects of Lemba life so perfectly conform with what he knew of Jews as to project upon his memory the one most obvious point of physical difference between Adeni Muslims and Jews, or between the Ostjuden of the time and Germans—the sidecurls? A.A. Jaques noted in 1931 that the whites of the northern Transvaal claimed to be able to distinguish a Lemba from his features and Jacques agreed that “many Lemba have straight noses, rather fine features and an intelligent expression which distinguish them from the ordinary run of natives… One of my informants, old Mosheh, even had what might be termed a typical Jewish nose, a rare occurrence in any real Bantu”. Some of the early ethnographic works on the Lemba include profile photographs of Lemba to establish that they did indeed have “Jewish” noses. Being awarded a Jewish nose and Jewish features had its disadvantages. As Howard Jacobson points out in Kalooki Nights, in the general European perception “big nose bad: small nose good”.20 Constructed with big Jewish noses the Lemba were also deemed to have other Jewish qualities, some good, some bad. On the one hand as possessors of a superior blood (Jewish was considered better than black), European “look” and Caucasian features they were regularly put in a higher and more favored category than other tribes and were considered to be more trustworthy, more loyal, more hard-working and more intelligent than others. The general racial classification in apartheid South Africa was a tripartite system of black, white and colored. The Lemba were never considered officially as “colored” but they derived certain benefits in much the same way as did colored people, from not being altogether black. It should also be stressed that by being constructed as Jews they were being inserted into a highly ambiguous racial category. European Jews may not have been black but they were racially much less desirable than Nordics or Anglo-Saxons, and Jewish immigration was not encouraged on these racial grounds. Indeed as Oren Stier has shown European Jews in South Africa were not considered by white South Africans to be white at all.21 Whites in the region of what used to be called the Transvaal in South Africa would often comment on the Lembas’ money grubbing, on their sharp business skills, on their reluctance to spend unnecessarily, on their

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success, on the unusual number of Lemba who became university teachers, doctors and lawyers, viewed by them as “Jewish” professions. Some of these ideas were internalized by the Lemba themselves. In a South African compilation of “vernacular accounts” M.M. Motenda, a Lemba, observed: “The Lemba in respect of their faces and noses are well known to have been very handsome people, their noses were exactly like those of Europeans”. The Lemba were constructed as Jews and were therefore expected to have a “look” which corresponded to a Jewish stereotype. During recent fieldwork I discovered, amazingly, that in one Zimbabwe village the majority of Lemba respondents maintained that their “Jewish” nose was one of the most important things about them, one of the most important things indeed in their lives.22 No matter that outsiders usually commented on their paler skin like the Beta Israel they were always unequivocally tagged as “black Jews”. But this color designation certainly sits uneasily with the Lembas’ own view of themselves. If you ask a Lemba villager the question “who is black round here?” he will point at some Shona village far away over the hills and mutter “Ah man those Shona people up there—they are black”. However they always referred to themselves as Varungu vakabva Sena, “the white men who came from Sena” and frequently make fulsome allusion to the remarkable and very attractive lightness of their own skin. My own engagement with the Lemba, resulted in a book the first edition of which connected the Lemba with the east coast of Africa. There were no written records which indicated to me anything about their ultimate origins beyond the eastern coast of the African continent. The trail, as far as I was able to determine it, stopped at the Indian Ocean. There was similarly not very much to suggest that they were of specifically Jewish origin, although there was a good deal to suggest that the religion they had practiced prior to the colonization of their areas had much in common with the religion of the ancient Israelites. Indeed their religion insofar as it was possible to reconstruct it was not entirely dissimilar to the religion of the Beta Israel prior to their Judaisation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and it was not dissimilar either to the various constructions of Israelite type pre-colonial religions throughout Africa and other parts of the world. Many aspects of their tribal practice suggested an appreciation of the concept of separation, of things, animals, people which indeed may be taken as a fundamentally Jewish religious principle. They observed a number of seemingly Semitic practices from endogamy to food taboos, a refusal to eat with other groups, a refusal to eat pork or animals which had not been ritually slaughtered, circumcision

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which they may have introduced to southern Africa, menstrual seclusion and so on. In 1996 a new and unexpected tool of research came into play, genetics. In 1996 a South African geneticist was inspired to interrogate Lemba claims that they were of Middle Eastern origin. For the first time in a thousand years of constructions of Middle Eastern and Jewish identity in Africa, it was possible to put the question of distant historical origins to an objective test. The results of the research were that fifty per cent of the Lemba Y chromosomes tested were Semitic in origin, forty per cent were “Negroid” and the ancestry of the remainder could not be resolved. The following years witnessed the publication of another genetic study, to which I contributed, based on a number of Jewish groups world-wide, which would prove to be extremely useful. This study showed that a specific haplotype—which was called the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH) was common among the hereditary Jewish priestly caste, the Cohanim, who, according to the Bible and Jewish tradition, are patrilineal descendants of the founder of the priestly clan, Aaron, the brother of Moses. The CMH is found in members of the Jewish priesthood (fifty six per cent in Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, forty five percent in Ashkenazi Jews and between three and five per cent in general Jewish non-priestly families). We inferred from this that the CMH was probably a constituent of ancestral Jewish populations and calculated that the marker arose one hundred and six generations ago at about the time of Moses, according to the Biblical account. By the time the first genetic work appeared I had independently formed the conclusion that there may have been a connection between the Lemba and a deserted town called Sena at the eastern end of the Wadi Hadhramaut in south Yemen which I had come across in strange circumstances when I was researching a book on the Jews of the Yemen. I had the idea of comparing DNA collected from Yemen and Lemba DNA. The paper analysed six populations including Lemba, Bantu, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews and discovered that one Lemba clan—the priestly Buba clan—to our surprise, carried the CMH at a high frequency. 23 The genetic evidence now seemed to suggest a precise connection not only between the Lemba and southern Arabia, which, given the close historic ties between the east coast of Africa and South Arabia, was not altogether surprising, but more specifically with ancient Jewish populations. Once again the genetic findings seemed to be consistent not only with the oral tradition of the Lemba but also, more problematically,

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with the way in which the Lemba had been “constructed” by outsiders along the lines of the Hamitic Hypothesis. In the case of the Lemba DNA had confirmed the construction whereas in the case of the Beta Israel they had de-constructed the construction. Two years ago I was co-author of a genome-wide study of Jewish populations published in Nature which emphatically demonstrated that all Jews—with the exception of the Beta Israel, Bene Israel and Yemenites originated in the Levant—which is to say the eastern Mediterranean. As a result of what is published in the media of these and other studies it is now widely believed that the Lemba are of Jewish origin and that so to proclaim has a scientific basis. Even though no official Jewish religious or Israeli authority has yet determined that any specific DNA could affect the question of who is or who is not a Jew, a number of groups and many individuals throughout the world and particularly in the United States, have taken the genetic research on the Lemba as an indication that they are indeed Jewish and should be admitted as a matter of urgency into the family of Israel. To them the DNA results appeared as a vindication of the efforts made by the Lemba to have themselves recognized by other Jews as Jews: the results have been taken as a weapon against what such groups perceive to be racist and exclusive attitudes in Israel and among Jewry in general. Lemba informants now insist that they have the same blood as Jews. This fact confirms for them what they had always said: that they were phenotypically different from their non-Lemba neighbors. The world-wide, massive interest in these findings has led to the Lemba case being included in countless biology textbooks throughout the world. Indeed as Nadia Abu el-Hajj has observed in a discussion of the Lemba case, genetic results are now considered “evidentiary ground” by many people, and it could well be that in the future such results may be included in Israel’s criteria for immigration purposes, which might lead to general recognition of groups like the Lemba by Jews. Elizabeth Povinelli has suggested that the “politics of recognition” presuppose an archive. It has been argued that the genetic historical archive “may prove to be (or in Derrida’s articulation, may prove to have been) essential to the ‘hope’ of self-described or constructed lost tribes to be recognized by the mainstream of the Jewish world and by the Israeli state as (potential) Jews”. Many people see the “archive” as monumental, definitive and unquestionable. Although the deconstruction of my title was only in part a nod in the direction of Derrida there is a sense in which his famous formulation “there is nothing outside the text” (“il n’y a pas de horstexte”) may well be applied to the genetic text in the sense that for many

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people DNA evidence is the only evidence that counts—context is irrelevant. DNA is the real deal.24 In the case of the Lemba, geneticists and those who reported their activities almost invented or constructed the Lemba as a Jewish community for outsiders. The problematic of identity centres on the question posed to oneself: “who am I fundamentally and where do I belong?” and to the “other” “Who are you fundamentally and where do you belong?” For decades anthropology has participated in a crossdisciplinary debate which has led towards the deconstruction of “racial” as well as sexual and ethnic identity as stable subjects of scholarly investigation. But outside the academy, constructions of essentialist identities still prevail. Genetic “evidence” is now being hailed as a means of “proving” that identity, one’s own and that of others is natural, inborn and unchangeable, indeed “biological”. Identity appears for many people to be reified through genomics. And here as we return to our starting point we must recall that in much the same way as, in the nineteenth century, race science was considered smart, modern, scientific and an universal panacea and that forearm length, ear size, head lice, facial angle, cranium size or phrenological cavities provided the answers to the human past and human destiny, so at the end of the twentieth century genetics was considered to be an all embracing panacea—potentially to have the answer for everything from homosexuality to cancer. The Lemba with their bodily inscribed genetic history, which ties them with the Levant and arguably with the priests who once served in the Jerusalem Temple now serve as a model for many aspiring Jewish groups throughout the world. News travels fast in the twenty first century. I have been invited by a number of aspiring Jewish groups from the Bedul tribe of Petra who claim descent from the Jews of Medina described in the Quran, to the Zakhor group in Timbuktoo who descend from Jews who once dominated the Saharan trade, to groups in Guinea who may descend from Sephardi Jews exiled to west African San Tomé in the sixteenth century, to the Gogodala of the Fly Estuary in PNG, to the so-called Bene Ephraim dalits or untouchables of Andhra Pradesh and the Shinlung groups of Manipur and Mizoram in India, to collect their DNA in an attempt to help them prove, as they believe have done the Lemba, with what is viewed as the most unassailable scientific proof of all, that they are truly Jews.

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Notes 1

D. M. Goldenberg The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009) 176; B. Braude, “The sons of Noah and the construction of ethnic and geographical identities in the mediaeval and early modern periods” in The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, LIV, 1 January 1997; D. Whitford, The Curse of Ham in the Early Modern Era: The Bible and the Justifications for Slavery (London: St Andrews Studies in Reformation History Ashgate Publishing 2009). 2 E. R. Sanders, “The Hamitic Hypothesis; Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective” The Journal of African History, 10, 4 (1969), 521-532. 3 Homi K. Bhabha, “The Other Question” Screen 24, 6 (November-December 1983), 23. 4 J.S. Prichard, Researches into the Natural History of Mankind (London, 1836) ii 97. 5 E.D. Morel, Affairs of West Africa (Michigan: University of Michigan Library, 1902)149, 151-2. 6 T. McCaskie, “Asante Origins, Egypt, and the Near East: an idea and its history” in D.R.Peterson, and G. Macola (eds.) Recasting the Past: history writing and political work in modern Africa. (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2009) (New African Histories Series) 125-148; P. S. Zachernuk “Of Origins and Colonial Order: Southern Nigerian Historians and the “Hamitic Hypothesis c. 1870-1970”, The Journal of African History, 35, 3 (1994), 428. 7 Farissol Orhot Olam ch.25 quoted in J. Schorsch, Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, , 2009) 124; D.Kessler, The Falashas: A Short History of the Ethiopian Jews (London: Frank Cass1996) 84; A. H. M. Jones, E. Monroe History of Abyssinia, (London: Kessinger Publishing, 2003) 88 ; B. Tellez The travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia (London: J. Knapton, 1710) 39. 8 S. Gobat, Journal of a Three years Residence in Abyssinia (New York: M.W. Dodd, 1850) 33,467. 9 D. Summerfield From Falashas to Ethiopian Jews: the external influences for change c.1860-1960 (London: Routledge, 2003) 7-17. 10 Summerfield, From Falashas to Ethiopian Jews, 7-17, 44; H.Salamon, “Blackness in Transition: Decoding Racial Constructs through Stories of Ethiopian Jews” Journal of Folklore Research, 40, 1, January-April 2003, 7; S. Kaplan, “The Invention of Ethiopian Jews : Three Models” in Cahiers d'études africaines 132, (1993), 649; E. Trevisan Semi, Jacques Faitlovitch and the Jews of Ethiopia, (London:Vallentine Mitchell, 2007). 11 Summerfield, From Falashas to Ethiopian Jews,152. 12 Steven Kaplan, “Can the Ethiopian Change His Skin? The Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews) and Racial Discourse” African Affairs 98, 393 (Oct., 1999) 546. 13 In fact the genetic structure of the Beta Israel confirms quite conclusively that they are of African origin. D. Behar, B. Yunusbayev, M. Metspalu, E. Metspalu, S. Rosset, Saharon; J. Parik, S. Rootsi, G. Chaubey, T. Parfitt et al (2010). “The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people”. Nature 466 (7303) 2010: 238-42;

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M.F. Hammer; A.J. Redd: E.T. Wood: M.R. Bonner; H. Jarjanazi et al “Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, June 6, 2000 97, 12, 6769-6774. Finally, it is perhaps worth making the point that by and large “negative” genetic results do not seem to have much impact. Results about the Beta Israel have been reported in the press but have not created any response. Upon the Ethiopian Jews themselves the reports made no discernible impact (private communications from Dr Shalva Weil, Hebrew University 28:11:2011). 14 Kaplan, “The Invention of Ethiopian Jews”, 654. 15 On the Lemba see H. von Sicard, Ngoma Lungundu:Eine Afrikanische Bundeslade, (Upsala: Studia Ethnographica Upsaliensa, Almquist & Wiksells Boktrycker,1952); A.A. Jaques, “Notes on the Lemba tribe of the Northern Transvaal” in Anthropos,26,1831, 247; L.C. Thompson, “The Ba-Lemba of Southern Rhodesia” in NADA,19,1942, 77; N.J.Van Warmelo, The Copper Miners of and the Early History of the Zoutpansberg (Pretoria: Department of Native Affair,1940); N.J.Van Warmelo, “Zur Sprache und Herkunft der Lemba” in Hamburger Beitrage zur Afrika Kunde, 5 (1966) 273-83; T. Baines The Gold Regions of South Eastern Africa (London: Edward Stanford, 1877); H. Stayt, “Notes on the BaLemba (an Arabic-Bantu tribe living among the BaVenda and other Bantu tribes in the northern Transvaal and Rhodesia” in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 61 (1931) 231-239; H.A. Junod, “The Balemba of the Soutpansberg” in Folklore,19,1908,277; K.Mufuka, K. Muzvidzwa, J. Nemerai Dzimbahwe:Life and Politics in the Golden Age (Harare: Harare Publishing House, 1983) 22; D.C. Chiciga, “A preliminary study of the Lemba in Rhodesia”, (unpublished History Seminar Paper, University of Rhodesia, 1972); P.S. Garlake, Great Zimbabwe (London: Thames and Hudson,1973); R.N. Hall, Great Zimbabwe, (London: Methuen and Co., 1905)101; C. Peters, The Eldorado of the Ancients (New York: Dutton,1902) 127; K. Mauch, The journals of Carl Mauch; his travels in the Transvaal and Rhodesia, 1869-1872 ed. E.E. Burke (Salisbury: National Archives of Rhodesia, 1969) 4, 189-190; H. W. A. Sommerlatte, Gold und Ruinen in Zimbabwe. Aus Tagebüchern und Briefen des Schwaben Karl Mauch (1837-1875 (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Fachzeitschriften Verlag, 1987). 16 See R.N.Hall, Great Zimbabwe, Mashonaland, Rhodesia: an account of two years' examination work in 1902-4 on behalf of the government of Rhodesia (London: Methuen,1905)101. 17 R. Gayre, “The Lembas and Vendas of Vendaland”, The Mankind Quarterly VIII, 1967, 3-15; R. Gayre, “Some further notes on the Lembas”, The Mankind Quarterly XI, 1970, 58-60; R. Gayre The origin of the Zimbabwean Civilization (Salisbury, Rhodesia: Galaxie Press, 1972) 18 N.P. review article PULA Journal of African Studies 1 11 no.2 (1997) 1991-2. 19 C.Peters, The Eldorado of the Ancients (New York: Dutton, 1902) 127; Tudor Parfitt and Y. Egorova, Genetics, Mass Media, and Identity: A Case Study of the Genetic Research on the Lemba and Bene Israel (London: Routledge 2005), 55.

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A.A. Jaques, “Notes on the Lemba Tribe of the Northern Transvaal”, Anthropos, 26 (1931), 245. H. Stayt, “Notes on the BaLemba (an Arabic-Bantu tribe living among the BaVenda and other Bantu tribes in the northern Transvaal and Rhodesia” in Journal of the Royal Anthropogical Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 61 (1931) 231-239 and plate XXI. See also H.A. Stayt, The Bavenda, (London: Oxford University Press, 1930); T. Parfitt, Journey to the Vanished City (London: Phoenix 1997) 265. 21 Stier Oren Baruch, “South Africa’s Jewish Complex”, Jewish Social Studies 10, no. 3 (spring/summer 2004). 22 Parfitt and Egorova Genetics, Mass Media, and Identity; O. B. Stier, “South Africa’s Jewish Complex”; M. Shain, The roots of antisemitism in South Africa (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1994). 99,119; M. KayeKantrowitz The colors of Jews: racial politics and radical diasporism (Bloomington IN:Indiana University Press, 2007) 19. 23 A. Spurdle and T. Jenkins, “The Origin of the Lemba ‘Black Jews’ of Southern Africa; evidence from p12F2 and other Y-Chromosome Markers” in American Journal of Human Genetics 1996, 59:1126-1133; K. Skorecki, S. Selig, S. Blazer, R. Bradman, N.Bradman, P.J. Waburton, M. Ismajlowicz, M.F. Hammer M.F, “Y chromosomes of Jewish priests” Nature (1997) 385 (6611): 32; M.G. Thomas, K. Skorecki, H. Ben-Ami, T. Parfitt , N.Bradman, D.B. Goldstein , “Origins of Old Testament priests” Nature (1998) 394 (6689); M.G. Thomas, T. Parfitt, and D.A. Weiss, K. and Skorecki, J.F. Wilson, M. Le Roux, N. Bradman and D. Goldstein, “Y Chromosomes Travelling South: The Cohen Modal Hapolotype and the Origins of the Lemba—the “Black Jews of Southern Africa”, The American Journal of Human Genetics, 66 (2) (2000) 674-686. 24 N. Abu El-Haj “ ‘Jews - Lost and Found’ : Genetic History and the Evidentiary Terrain of Recognition” in M. Hirsch Rites of Return: Diaspora Poetics and the Politics of Memory (New York: Columbia University Press 2011) 40, 41; H. Soodyall, B. Morar and T. Jenkins, “The Human Genome as Archive: Some Illustrations from the South” in Refiguring the Archive ed. C. Hamilton ( Cape Town: David Philip Publishers, 2002).

CHAPTER TWO THE PROTO-HISTORY OF IGBO JEWISH IDENTITY FROM THE COLONIAL PERIOD TO THE BIAFRA WAR, 1890-1970 EDITH BRUDER

In the course of the twentieth century, several self-proclaimed Jewish communities emerged across Nigeria, and their growth is significant. Members of these Jewish communities mostly come from the Igbo group—the third-largest ethnic group in the country—who live in the southeastern region of Nigeria—with perhaps 30,000 of them practicing a form of Judaism.1 Several religions coexist in Nigeria, which accentuate regional and ethnic distinctions. Islam predominates in the North, among the Hausa and Fulani, and Protestantism and local syncretistic Christianity are most evident in the Yoruba areas in the West, while Catholicism is prevalent in the Igbo and closely related areas. Today, three categories of Igbo claim to have a link to Judaism: the Hebrewists, who consider themselves as “pre-Talmudic” Jews on the basis of the alleged Hebraic traditions of their forefathers; the members of the various recent Jewish congregations, who have been striving toward Jewish recognition for some years; and, finally, the somewhat different Sabbatherians, who number more than two million and who practice a kind of Judaism while also reading the New Testament.2 Part of the intellectual background to this twenty-first-century discourse is an age-old fascination with the Lost Tribes of Israel. Over several decades, the Igbo have developed versions of their tribal history that place it as part of the Jewish Diaspora and, following the earliest historical hypotheses on the arrival of Jews in Africa, claim that their ancestors came from Israel via the old African trade routes. A widespread belief among the Igbo is that, prior to the arrival of British missionaries, they practiced a form of Judaism. The Igbo compare their traditional customs—burial rites, circumcision on the eighth day,

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ritual slaughter of animals, exclusiveness, marriage customs, and agricultural practices—with those of ancient Israelites. From a questionnaire I sent in 2005 to the Gihon community in Abuja concerning the oral tradition of the families members of this community, it appears, outside a palpable thirst for Jewish studies and life, that almost all of the respondents are convinced of their Jewish heritage and consider that they grew up with the idea of their Jewish origin, even if they formerly practiced Christianity.3 Overall, the questionnaire showed that the majority of the community members consider that the traditional Igbo religion, which existed before the arrival of Christianity, was ‘‘like Judaism,’’ and they explain their reconnection to Judaism as akin to a revelation. As concerns their expectations with respect to their Jewish affiliation, almost all the respondents expressed Jewish aspirations, such as the ‘‘return to Torah,’’ the desire to visit Jerusalem, and the desire to reclaim a heritage that has been denied them for so long. Overall, they all yearn to belong to the wider Jewish world. It must be said that the exodus and the recognition of the Ethiopian Jews, identified as the Lost Tribe of Dan in the 1980s and 1990s, have led to an interest in the development of similar Lost Tribes identities in other parts of Africa.4 These forms of identification and the quest to identify the Jewish origin of the Igbo have been going on since Olaudah Equiano, a freed educated Igbo slave who was transported to England, published his autobiography in 1789, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the African.5 Because of several apparent similarities between Igbo and Jewish tradition, Equiano—considered an icon by the Igbo—suggested connections between the Lost Tribes of Israel and his own “Eboe” people. Likewise, James Africanus Horton, in his book West African Countries and Peoples (1868), argued that Igbo religion showed clearly that they were one of the Lost Tribes.6 Through the last century the continued belief in the Lost Tribes’ ancestry of the Igbo showed no sign of abating. Voluminous recent academic literature by Igbo scholars attempts to prove their Lost Tribes ancestry. In his work Ibos: Hebrew Exiles from Israel (1999), Professor Alaezi, a renowned historian, wrote “An estimated number of 400,000 Hebrews arrived in the apparent safe territory of Nigeria in about 686 BC.” He explains the most cogent reason for this settlement during this time period: “Nigeria was safer in terms of freedom of religious practice … the Hebrews … more than any other things wanted a safe place for their practice of Judaism, monotheism, worshipping … the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as the only God.”7 Making copious references to the Bible, another Nigerian academic, Professor Ik Ogbukagu, in The Igbo and the Riddles of Their

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Jewish Origins (2001), listed forty-five traits common to Igbo and ancient Jews. Giving many linguistic examples, he asserted that “most of the Igbo and Efik/Ibibio words took their root from Aramaic/Hebrew words.”8 Recent Western hypotheses supported by Dierk Lange, a professor of African history at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, suggest that in earliest times, the Canaanite society was most likely established in west Africa through the agency of Phoenician officials and traders from North Africa. In Ancient Kingdoms of West Africa: Africa-Centred and CanaaniteIsraelite Perspective (2004), Lange tries to explain that the historical traditions of the Central Sudan contain clear evidence of CanaaniteIsraelite influences. Supported by written records, oral traditions, and cultdramatic performances, he suggests the existence of early trans-Saharan contacts reaching back to the pre-Roman period.9 Who are the Igbo Jews? They are part of millions of Igbo who play an important role in Nigerian and international trade and commerce. The Igbo—a highly educated group—are also strongly represented in the Nigerian civil service and educational system. From the early colonial period (1890s) millions of them left the overpopulated Igbo-speaking region of southern Nigeria and moved to urban areas throughout the country, as well as elsewhere in Africa.10 One should not expect to encounter the majority of Igbo practicing Judaism in the recently created synagogues mushrooming between Abuja and Port Harcourt. Most belong to various Christian churches and know relatively little about Judaism, but their knowledge of Judaism and religious practices and ceremonies has been improving over the years through contacts and exchanges with Western Jewry. This is happening at a time of rapid change in politics, culture, technology, and communications. As noted by James Beckford, globalization facilitates transcultural transformation by the ‘‘recombination of fragments of experiences’’ from various traditions.11 From the 1990s, a constant stream of communication through e-mail and the internet, as a means of publicizing their beliefs and activities, allowed Igbo communities claiming a Jewish identity to be identified by Western Jewry, forcibly reactivating the broader question of the paradigm of Jewish identity.12 Every congregation represents a way of connecting with Judaism, partly due to interactions with various trends of mainstream Jewry. At the end of June 2005, with the support of the American Jewish World Service and the prominent American-based organization Kulanu, an American rabbi from Illinois, Rabbi Brant Rosen, visited the Igbo for an entire month. A large number of the Igbo, including Sabbatherians, informed by word of mouth of the rabbi’s arrival, came from far away to attend his lectures and to hear his comments on the Bible and his teachings on the

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Torah. The rabbi led or participated in the services of Sabbath in the synagogues of Abuja and also worked with the Igbo who had begun teshuvah (repentance/return). The visit of Rabbi Rosen, which was considered a historic event among the Igbo, reinforced their Jewish identity and constituted the turning point toward their own sense of belonging to the worldwide Jewish community. Approximately 10,000 people expressed interest in a Halachic conversion following his visit.13 From the turn of the twenty-first century, Igbo Jews underwent major transformation by creating new practicing religious communities. Yvonne Chireau noted, with respect to the emergence of new African American Jewish communities in the beginning of the twentieth century: ‘‘In many of these new black-Jewish religious groups, not only were the symbols and images of Judaism employed allegorically, but Jewish practices led to the construction of new identities by which blacks literally became Jews.”14 Some of the larger and significant communities include the Gihon Hebrew Centre, founded in September 2004 in Abuja, which could be described as somewhat orthodox, and the Tikvah Israel Congregation (Abuja), led by Sar Habbabuk, which could be described as conservative. In both synagogues, the communities pray in Hebrew with some addition of Igbo language. Since 2003, proselyte organizations, such as Kulanu and American and Israeli visitors, have donated Torahs, books, and prayer items to the Gihon Hebrew Centre, which now has its own synagogue and library and has created an academy where the Hebrew language and basic Judaism are studied.15 The Igbo Jewish Community Synagogue in Ogidi, Anambra State, started observing Sabbath in 1986 but, as mentioned by Liz-ben Nnoduka Agha, national coordinator of Igbo Jewish community synagogues, until 2006 the community “didn’t know that there were differences between Judaism and Christianity.”16 In 2006, when Rabbi Hi Ben Daniel, an Igbo living and trained in Israel, came back to the Anambra State, “he explained the difference between Christianity and Judaism.”17 Then, the community started to carefully observe all the formalities and prayers of the Jewish services and customs. In the year 2009, Rabbi Nissan Kadosh, from Israel, and Rabbi Hi Ben Daniel brought the community a Sefardic Sefer Torah. Since then the Igbo Jewish Community has trained members of many synagogues, which were named Beth Knesset by Rabbi Nissan Kadosh. Until then, the synagogues were independent; however, in 2008, at Amawire (Owerri Imo State), fifteen synagogues agreed to take a common name, the Union of Nigerian Synagogues, whose leader is Proquda Ephraim S. Uba. Even if the various rabbinates don’t recognize Igbo as an integral component of the world’s Jewish community, Igbo Judaism appears as a truly African religious

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movement whose direct predecessors were the Black Jews in Chicago, Detroit, and Harlem in the 1920s.18 Synagogues in Nigeria in 2012.19

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In January 2006, the Institute for Jewish and Community Research and Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, San Francisco, sponsored a trip to Nigeria. They were represented by individuals involved in the recently formed American-based Pan African Jewish Alliance (PAJA), such as Rabbi Capers Funnye. The purpose of this trip was to visit the leaders of the various Igbo communities who claimed to be of Jewish descent and to ascertain their interest in joining PAJA. The aim of the alliance was to establish a permanent forum in which black Jews could share their experiences and foster a sense of common identity ‘‘to bring together people of African descent who believe in Torah and its mandates and/or who are culturally affiliated to Judaism.”20 In this chapter, I will briefly describe the motives and mechanics behind the creation of highly polarised Jewish communities in Nigeria from the colonial period until the traumatic experience of the Biafra War, when identification to Judaism took the dimension of a mass movement. The structure of the chapter is in equal measures chronological and thematic. It engages with broader narratives of Nigerian political and social history to contextualise the proto-history of the “Jews of Africa.” I will identify the key factors that shaped the Igbo identity in the course of the twentieth century, looking at how they interacted symbolically and materially in an arena of local ethnic competition for power, legitimacy, and prestige. The interactions of the Igbo with colonialism and mission Christianity, their cultural and political ethnicity, and the political crises in Nigeria are all inextricably intertwined—and all contribute to the construction of the Igbo Jewish religious identity. I will pay special attention to the significant influence of the African American Jewish movements and the support of the proselyte Jewish organizations, which operated as external catalysts beginning in the 1940s. In conclusion, I will suggest that the various claims and engagements with a Jewish ancestry, adopted over the course of almost a century by the Igbo, found their undeniable confirmation in the oppressive conditions of the Biafra War. Following Anthony P. Cohen’s concept of communities, I will take a constructivist approach—considering that the making of Igbo Jewish affiliation is “symbolically constructed” and directly linked to the historical consciousness of the local communities.21 Thus I will consider that the evolution of the Igbo identity toward Judaism is not an “invention of tradition,” to borrow a term from Hobsbawn and Ranger, but the symbolic reconstruction of traditional components combined with current needs and interests in new modern patterns.22 In order to help understand the genesis of the identification of the Jewish faith by Igbo individuals and

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communities, it is essential to provide a brief overview of the colonial context along with the adoption of Christianity.

From Igbo ethnogenesis to Hebrew ethnogenesis Nowadays, the Igbo people are regarded—and regard themselves—as a people with a common culture and a shared history going back centuries. In fact, as a cultural and socio-political area with a common ethnic consciousness and administrative boundaries, Igboland and the emergence of Igbo identity are a creation of the twentieth century. In pre-colonial times, people of the area lived in autonomous villages and considered their neighbors as strangers. They had no consciousness to belong to or to create a united Igbo community or a centralised political authority beyond the level of village. Igbo society was defined by a cultural diversity and even the term “Igbo” (with its variants “Ibo,” “Eboe,” or “Heebo”) has not been used as an ethnic self-description but seems to have emerged mainly as an expression outside Igboland symbolizing “emigrant.”23 It became popular only by the course of the colonial period among linguists and missionaries who provided it with an ethnic content. Van den Bersselaar demonstrated how the missionaries who worked on the understanding of Igbo tradition worked also on the Igbo identity emergence in the context of the local sociopolitical framework.24 Many ideas as to what constitutes “traditional” Igbo culture (omenala) are the result of the impact of mission Christianity and their interactions with Igbo internalization from the 1900s. What was defined as a homogeneous Igbo social and cultural entity was in fact a fundamentally decentralised model with a considerable amount of internal diversities in term of social, political, and economic stratification.25 Certain communities, such as Nri and Arochukwu, considered as local elite groups in regards to their internal structures, were able to constitute central spheres of influence but did not consistently dominate others. They were at the centre of translocal connections and networking and provided the others with trading opportunities or political framework without establishing power relationships. European notions contributed to the transformation of these existing political units into ethnic groups.26 In a context of intra-ethnic differences and their management, by demarcating administrative artificial boundaries, the colonial state not only contributed to shape Igbo ethnic identity territorially but also provided the framework of a simplistic image of the eastern region as the land of the Igbo.

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Over the years, among the Igbo communities, the different local debates on Igbo culture—fed by the European’s perception of Igboness— contributed to the drawing of the boundary around the Igbo area, by exaggerating the differences between Igbo and non-Igbo. Indeed Igbo people have directly and indirectly interacted with colonial influences in the shaping of their culture and identity.27 A new consciousness—which modified their understanding of themselves—emerged among Igbo who discussed, argued, and reconfigured their identities in new religious and political languages. The historian C. N. Ubah, when he collected oral sources during the 1970s, observed: “… tradition of origins appears to be a very recent invention. Early last year a wealthy businessman became the chief of Umulolo and has shown a great deal of interest in matters of local history and culture. One result is that a kind of king-maker council now exists and regards itself as the most authoritative body to impart any information on local history and culture.”28

The awareness of a shared culture grew progressively in the urban centres, and it was only in the 1950s that the inhabitants of rural Igbo villages began to consider themselves as being Igbo. This diverse material and emotional background widely contributed to feeding the various trends of Igbo nationalism and ethnic politic that emerged from the 1940s.29 Christianity’s penetration of Igboland was a major success, though somewhat unevenly distributed geographically.30 The strategic use of education as an advantage in dealing with the colonial state played a major role in this process. According to colonial census figures, the number of Christians rose considerably in the 1950s—from 11 percent in 1921 to 64 percent in Owerri Province and from 6 percent in 1921 to 26 percent in Onitsha province—and has continued to increase since then.31 Intense competition between the major missions accelerated the process. The major players, the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS), the Roman Catholic Holy Ghost Fathers, both established at Onitsha, and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland Mission, located in Calabar and in the eastern fringe of the Igbo-speaking area at Unawana on the Cross River, operated from the 1860s to the 1890s and agreed to divide southern Nigeria into three separates zones of activity. The Roman Catholics did not participate in this agreement and remained active throughout the region.32 From its beginning, Christian missionary activity engaged in symbolic power contests with the ancient gods and idolatrous practices and

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institutions of the Igbo communities. Shrines and oracles played a public role of reference in communities’ identity and were regarded as particularly powerful in religious, health, judicial, and political matters. Some of the oracles, like the Ibinukpabi oracle in Arochukwu, was consulted by communities from large parts of southeastern Nigeria and transcended the boundaries of communities and even ethnic groups.33 When occupying Igboland in the first decade of the twentieth century, the British troops destroyed the Ibinukpabi oracle, not only because they perceived the Aro as the main movers behind the ongoing slave trade but also because the colonial officers tended to attribute all kinds of political difficulties that they encountered to Aro influence.34 Between 1914 and 1930, in various CMS council meetings, it was also acted against the okonko secret society and the ͕z͕ title system, the major institutions of power and prestige in pre-colonial Igboland communities.35 British missionaries considered that to be a member of these societies was incompatible with being a Christian because of the pagan rituals of titletaking and initiations ceremonies—which could only have manifold repercussions on the level of groups and individual identities. Besides the major Christian players, from the colonial period to the 1950s, a multitude of churches and missionary associations proliferated, combining elements inherited from the African traditions and Protestant religion. It must be said that many of the religious protest movements, which came into being after the beginning of the twentieth-century, were the direct product of contacts with the United States and encouragement of African American sects. A number of African independent syncretistic churches, such as the United Native African Church (in the 1890s), the Garrick Braide movement (about 1910), the Aladura (in the 1920s), the Zionists (in the 1900s), the Evangelicals, the Pentecostals, and the Sabbatherians, were active on a smaller scale.36 Prior to the search for political autonomy, these religious innovations attempted to restore their members’ autonomy in their social and cultural life and constituted “the prehistory of modern nationalism.”37 In a context of independent Christian communities, one can say that Igbo people often experimented with numerous varieties of Christian beliefs during their lifetimes, frequently changing their religious involvement. Of particular note is that from this period of time the various versions of the Christian faith have given way to a pattern of opposition between different competing religions, each creating a community of its own. Igbo Judaism grew out of the larger religious traditions of separatist movements, in the midst of this hybridism and variety of allegiances.

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The creation of new administrative units during the colonial period— considerably larger than the internal concepts of community identity and belonging that had been locally relevant up to this time—profoundly changed the existing structures of interrelationships and the cultural and economic geography of Igboland. 38 For example, some of the Britishappointed “Warrant Chiefs” combined the role of government position with supernatural powers—which often resulted in a good deal of despotism and predation. As noticed by Carolyn A. Brown: “Thus many Ogaranyan became ‘chiefs’ finding in the embrace of colonialism the power which their people refused to concede to them before the conquest.”39 Language standardization and the search for an alleged “Igbopure” dialect was also part of the colonial process. Although European observers have been convinced of the existence of a pure Igbo language, pre-colonial Igbo did not speak a unified form of Igbo but rather a number of dialects and languages. Before 1900, most missionary societies formed the opinion that the “Isuama Igbo,” in the Owerri area, were the “proper” Igbo. The first Bible ever published in the Igbo language (1857), appeared to be unintelligible in other areas.40 Between 1870 and 1905, local African catechists prepared different sets of Igbo translations of the Bible in at least several dialects: in the enigmatic Isuama dialect, in Onitsha dialect (both Protestant and Catholic translations), in Bonny Igbo dialect, in Unwana Igbo, in Union Igbo, and in Onitsha Adapted Union Igbo.41 In the 1930s and 1940s, the attempts of Union Igbo suffered from a lack of interest among the Igbo themselves, who appropriated English language as the language of modernity and education.42 With regard to the encounter between Igbo and Judaism, one must consider the recurring theme of the Hamitic hypothesis supported by a large majority of nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonial missionaries and anthropologists.43 From western to southern Africa, whatever the natives’ religions were, they were interpreted by Europeans according to similarities with ancient Hebrew traditions and became the object of the most contradictory European fantasies. The customs, religions, and cultures of the Igbo and Ashanti from Nigeria, Masaï from Kenya and northern Tanzania, Batutsi from Rwanda-Burundi, Peuls from the Senegal and Niger basins, as well as those of the Zulu, Hottentots, and Xhosa from South Africa, were compared to those of the Jews.44 From the beginning of the twentieth century onward, a colonial discourse about Igbo religion developed as soon as government anthropologists and officers, such as P. Amaury Talbot (1926), C. K. Meek (1937), Daryll Forde and G. I Jones (1950) surveyed the newly occupied territories in order to identify the customary practices of their inhabitants. The synthesis of their works

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characterised local features of some societies as generalization on a whole community by assuming that they were “a branch of the Hebrews.” The most influential works, Among the Ibos of Nigeria (1921) and Niger Ibos (1938), were written by G. T. Basden, an Anglican missionary who served in the area for more than thirty-five years. Basden’s writings institutionalised knowledge about Igbo culture and were accepted by many Igbo as the main documents defining the essence of their ethnic group.45 Basden noticed that “There are certain customs which rather point to Levitic influence at a more or less remote period. This is suggested in the underlying ideas concerning sacrifice and in the practice of circumcision. The language also bears several interesting parallels with the Hebrew idiom.”46 He also argued that: “the affinity between Native Law and the Mosaic System is remarkable” and asserted that among the Igbo a distinct recognition existed of a Supreme Being (Chukwu), and of his enemy, the Devil (Ekwensu). This view of Igbo as descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel gained prominence among Igbo clergy, who communicated the insight in church, and was soon appropriated by the Igbo. Various hypotheses of Igbo origins and migration patterns have been discussed by local historians such as J. N. Oriji, A. E. Afigbo, and E. Isichei, who tried to identify broader trends of migration and expansion when giving historical interpretations of Igbo oral traditions.47 Legends of origins—even if they differ widely throughout the Igbo area—play a fundamental role in the self-definition of Igbo societies and villages. The Aro region in the extreme east and the Nri region in the northwest of the Igbo area are mentioned in traditions as the cradles where Igbo culture can be found. Different oral historical narratives that recount the symbolic position of the clan and the authority of the Eze Nri seem to have been reconceptualised from the pre-colonial period with the support of some condensed events and historiography from the Bible.48 These traditions legitimate a widespread pre-colonial political, economical, and symbolical power ascribed to Nri, the Nri origin myths forming a foundational charter of the Igbo-speaking people of this area.49 Various versions of Igbo traditions claim that the Nri descend from Eri, a man sent from the sky by the great God (Chukwu). When Eri arrived on earth, “He sat on an ant-hill as the land was a morass or water-logged … When Eri complained, Chukwu sent a blacksmith… to dry up the land. After the blacksmith had finished his assignment, Eri rewarded him with ͕f͕ which conferred on him special claims to the smithing profession.”50 In the mythology of the Nri, the blacksmith who made the ground dry then became the ancestor of the Awka Igbo people, who have since that time specialised in blacksmithing.51 The lengthy components of the story of the exile of the

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Ten Tribes are found in the different narrations of this myth in west Africa, but invariably they establish the fact that the clan founder was a stranger from afar, probably of white origin coming from the East.52 From the first visits of missionaries in Igbo hinterland at the turn of the nineteenth century, the principle of a pre-colonial Nri religious and political preeminence started to impact Igbo identity. Government officers, such as A. G. Leonard (1906), Northcote Thomas (1913), P. Amaury Talbot (1926), and M. D. W Jeffreys (1930), contributed to the idealization of the Nri’s prestige and sanctity by widely applying the Hamitic theory to Igboland.53 Such theories had remarkable implications, not only for the development of Igbo historiography but even for more popular and political discourses and practices in Igbo society today. By the 1980s, the main work of the anthropologist and ethnographer M. A. Onwuejeogwu —Nri Kingdom and Hegemony: An Outline of Igbo Civilisation (1980)— focused on the recovery of Nri as a centre of pre-colonial Igbo civilisation and was powerfully influential for the interpretation of pre-colonial Igbo history and culture.54 Based on oral traditions collected in Agukwu-Nri, Onwuejeogwu established a genealogy of Nri lineages from the tenth century and linked them up to the Igbo-Ukwu findings, setting up the model of a local elite and its hegemony on other localities. Even if some points of his arguments invite controversy, his theories were widely accepted by a large majority of Igbo historians and entered their works.55 Among them, A. E. Afigbo, the most prominent historian of Igbo historiography, supported Onwuejeogwu’s theories and included them in his own syntheses of pre-colonial Igbo history.56 In describing the pre-Eri period as a history of early migrations and linking the introduction of yams and the invention of metalworking technology to the Nri, Onwuejeogwu brought a corner stone to the mythology of an external ancestry with a religious system based on an unique God (Chukwu), claiming that “It is only at Nri that an ‘elaborate’ mythology of Chukwu is developed.”57 The Nri superiority and influence has been much supported by archaeological findings conducted in the 1960s by the British archaeologist Thurstan Shaw on the ancient site of Igbo-Ukwu (Great Igbo)—only a few kilometers away from Agukwu-Nri. These excavations revealed that, by about the ninth or tenth century A.D., a high civilisation existed in the area that produced refined bronze works—decorated bowls, facial and pectoral masks, and praying sticks—and may have had a kinship institution as well as an elaborate social organization.58 These findings—which represent one of the earliest examples of bronze casting in sub-Saharan Africa—were an archaeological event per se and also suggested a thousand-year-old-

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tradition of technological and cultural development of the Anambra area, opening as well the path for other speculation. The analysis of the origins of beads and metal used in these items is indicative of long distance trade connections between Igbo communities and areas further up the River Niger, extending to Gao in Mali and beyond.59 The excavations at IgboUkwu have revealed that before the ninth century the Aro community, “... claiming outside origins for practices and technologies,” had connections with the outside world lying to the north of the Sahara desert, the lower Nile Valley, and with Europe.60 If we take into account sources showing that Jewish traders and caravanners did indeed crisscross the Sahara, one can imagine how a repertoire of religious ideas about African Jews might become part of an alternative tribal history among the Igbo.61 For what has been said in the preceding paragraphs, it has become clear that Igbo identity was defined by divergent cultures, dialects, interests, and aspirations. Given the extent and the diversity of people involved by the term Igbo and the decentralised character of Igbo society, the loss of their own religious traditions and spiritual heritage contributed to an uncertain self-image among Igbo people. At this early stage of Igbo ethnogenesis, the cultural elements of the Old Testament spread by Christian missionaries influenced the formation of the cultural framework upon which Igbo people could search for a shared history and perspectives. Identification with the mythical fate of the Hebrew people was enticing for the non-centralised Igbo societies and cultures, which did not own a common history or a common language. The appropriation of Hebrew history and the creation of a larger community by Igbo people, ostensibly out of numerous local ones, led them on a search for origins that gave them back a common past and allowed them to overthrow colonial racism’s hierarchy of values. As for the Black Jews movements, which emerged in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth century, identification with the biblical nation of Israel assumed “allegorical and metaphorical” significance.”62 The colonised Igbo believed themselves to be the oppressed Hebrews of the Bible and projected their own lives into the narratives of Israel’s formative history. Alaezi summarised: “The history of the Ibos of Nigeria can be said to be a replica of that of the Jews in the Middle East. The earlier narratives regarding the cultural similarities between the Nigerian Hebrews (Ibos) and the world Hebrews show that the events of their lives as Jews or Hebrews in exile in Nigeria were also predicted by God and recorded in the Bible… The Hebrews (Ibos) in Nigeria also witness to the truth of God’s curses on the Jews: persecution and hatred …; victim of genocide; victim of slavery…” 63

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Western writings, intertwined with oral traditions, put in position the methodological foundations for how the pre-colonial history of the Igbo was going to be perceived and written: a prominent group coming from elsewhere who penetrates Igboland and spreads its culture. In emphasizing the role of a unique God (Chukwu)—described in terms that are essentially Christian—and speculating about outside origins and practices, it helped to establish external influences and interactions on regional history. In a cumulative effect, this concept provided the picture of an Igbo civilisation unity, offering a prestigious past and emphasizing the notion of a “great civilisation” able to compete with the other influent Nigerian ethnic blocks: Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani. As recently noted by the historian Philip Zachernuk, Nigerian authors of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century have re-worked European ideas.64 They identified themselves not as victims of Hamitic invasions but as the degenerate heirs of classical civilisations, particularly as a result of migrations from Egypt, to establish their potential to create a modern society. They developed distinctive Hamitic hypotheses within the constraints set by changing European and African-American ideas about west African origins and adapted them to the evolving character of Nigerian nationalism. By the 1940s, when the new Igbo educated elite formed the foundation for an Igbo cultural nationalism, as well as for Igbo ethnic politics, the cumulative effect of Nri legends of origins and biblical condensations synthesised within colonial Christian discourses. In reverberating with the Lost Tribe myth, the Hamitic hypothesis, re-visited by Nigerian nationalists, was incorporated to create Nigeria's proto-national culture in a viable new synthesis. In the heightened identity politics of the 1950s, local historians adopted Hamites ancestors to compete for historical primacy among Nigerian communities. As noted by Zachernuk: “The Nigerian Hamitic Hypothesis had a complex career, promoting elite ambitions, Christian identities, Nigerian nationalism and communal rivalries.”65 Jewish myths and identifications incorporated these complexities and found their way in the middle of the ongoing process of reconstruction of tradition and the creation of a modern society.

Jewish Crystallization Despite its prominence as a supply source for the transatlantic slave trade, the Igbo area has been characterised by a high population density since the pre-colonial period. Overpopulation, poverty, and poor soil made Igboland and the Eastern Province in general the area of critical economic realities. The history of the Igbo region has been characterised as a

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continuing migration away from the Igbo heartland. Igbo workers migrated to other areas to work as farm laborers or as servants and unskilled workers. By the 1920s, as a consequence of the lack of opportunity in their homeland, migration on a broader level set in. Igbo immigrants steadily drifted to all the centres of colonial urbanization within the eastern region (Enugu and Port Harcourt) and especially to the fast-growing cities of Lagos and Kano. The transformation of economy and society and the division of labor during the colonial period led to the emergence of a hierarchy of ethnic identities, all culturally marked and politically salient.66 Census data from 1952-1953 recorded 310,000 Igbo living outside Nigeria, 169,000 of them in northern Nigeria and nearly 32,000 in Lagos. Igbo formed about 40 to 50 percent of the population in major cities outside Igboland.67 In fact, most of the Igbo immigrants gravitated to the northern urban centres where skilled employment could be obtained or small-scale business established.68 From the 1940s onwards, numerous dimensions in urban life supported an Igbo immigrant’s consciousness of belonging to a larger ethnic community. In many cities ethnic quarters had emerged—with ethnic-centred culture and practices—sometimes institutionalised by the British as the Sabon Gari system (Hausa language: strangers’ quarters). Beginning with the arrival of the southern railway workers in 1913, the colonial government in Kano created settlements separating non-Muslim Africans from Muslims (most of them Hausa) and in Zaria and Sokoto as well. By the 1950s, Sabon Gari had become predominantly Igbo, second were the Yorubas, followed by other southern groups.69 The recognition of the existence of the Igbo ethnic group took place in the urban centres in the day-to-day interactions between different groups. The groups were polarised by the increase in competitions and stereotypes. Stereotypes claimed that Igbo were clannish, ambitious, and competitive and intended to dominate Nigeria. Igbo were also considered as money-minded and deceitful, valuing material wealth over all other things. Many Yoruba regarded the Igbo as cannibals, primitive, and dirty. Paradoxically, their adoption of many Western ways of living was equally criticised.70 These opinions about the Igbo were sometimes accepted as true by colonial administrators and provided the basis for distinguishing the behaviour of the typical Igbo from those of the typical Yoruba or Hausa. It is interesting that the stereotypes about the Igbo were exactly those used against the Jews from the Middle Ages in Western society, stigmatizing their unhygienic nature, the so-called foetor judaicus and distinctive personality traits.71 How did the urban Igbo react to being stereotyped in this way? The way others looked at them helped the Igbo to come together as a group

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and realize that they were Igbo. Many Igbo turned negative stereotypes into positive characteristics, claiming, for example, that their obstinacy and ambitiousness explained why they were more successful than other Nigerians. In fact Igbo, at the moment they self-essentialised Igboness and acquired ethnic consciousness, integrated strongly connoted Jewish characteristics as constitutive of their ethnic identity and difference. The fact that many Igbo were traders and that Igbo lived scattered in diasporas all over Nigeria and west Africa, successfully organizing ethnic networks thereby resembling the Jewish Diaspora experience, were undoubtedly crucial to Igbo identification with the Jews and how they were perceived by others groups. The wide dispersion of Igbo clerks, artisans, and traders throughout Nigeria and west Africa has resulted not only in a tension between Igbo immigrants and the non-Igbo populations among whom they live, but it has fostered among the Igbo an intra-Nigeria (or intra-Africa) diasporic consciousness. They shared the sentiment that “The Ibos are the most scattered groups all over Nigeria. Living as strangers or non-indigenes, the most prosperous stranger elements whenever they are as a stranger group, the most dynamic and fearless stranger group and the most positive contributors in terms of the development of the area of their residence whether as indigenes or nonindigenes. Conversely, when the words of the curses of God on the Hebrews are repeated, one may think that they are specifically directed to the Ibos of Nigeria ‘I will scatter you among the nations.’” 72

The existence of this sentiment, the spatial distance between those “at home” and socially and geographically mobile modern elite, forged a new dimension of their community. In an urban-based political context, Igbo started to perceive their local history and culture as foundations of a community identity and their dispersion as playing an important role in development organizations, religious networks, cultural dynamism, and political institutions. Subsequent steps towards Igbo self-identification with the Jews, coinciding with the emergence of Igbo ethnic politics and nationalism, cannot be understood without considering briefly the general political and social history of the period. The relevance of Igbo’s history is that it shows the extent to which culture, politics, identity, and religion are interrelated, on both the intellectual and organizational levels, in the development of Igbo identity and nationalism. During the 1930s, educated Igbo living in Lagos and other urban centres throughout Nigeria started self-help associations and founded village and town unions. This was the beginning of a pan-Igbo movement, the main purpose of which was to advance the

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Igbo peoples, common goods, and communal aspirations coming together for the general development in villages as well as in the Igbo diaspora.73 In 1943, the general secretary of the Ibo Union (Lagos) launched a campaign to federate all Ibo unions throughout Nigeria. The following year, the Igbo Federal Union was inaugurated with headquarters in Lagos. In 1948 it changed its name to the Ibo State Union.74 Founded in a period of intense inter-ethnic competition, the Ibo State Union was a political body claiming to federate all Igbo organizations into a single union representing the Igbo interests. It also organised festivals designed to value a pan-Igbo identity and culture. The establishment of the Society for Promoting Igbo Language and Culture (SPILC), founded in 1949 by Frederick Chidozie Ogbalu, served also as a cultural symbol of Igbo identity.75 The society showed a strong awareness of language as the connecting element of the Igbo people and considered the villages as the location of proper Igbo culture. Following the Western academic approach, Ogbalu decided to spread Igbo consciousness through education, books, prizes, and museums, initiating a “cultural nationalism.” Igbo Federal Union and SPLIC both developed during the late 1940s in the context of debates about the development of Nigerian party politics, as well as the problems of prospects of life in the colonial multi-ethnic state. Ogbalu’s initiative participated in a more general tendency to produce inexpensive booklets, collectively known as the Onitsha Market Literature. The high level of literacy contributed to the influence of local historical writings in Igboland, and southern Nigeria, in general.76 Igbo authors—most of them being amateurs who wrote in English—were encouraged to write books and pamphlets on subjects related to local Igbo history and culture.77 Many of these texts, which emerged in the context of Christian missionary work, tended to enhance “ethnic unity” and to stress what made Igbo different from the other groups. In this context, Igbo historical writings, which emerged in the publications of the Onitsha Market Literature, became a major dimension of the creation and strengthening of the Igbo Jewish identity process.78 Claims to Hebrew and Egyptian origins of the Aro had been made in the 1920s in the pamphlets by Stephen Nwanagoro and K. E Ijomanta, while Emmanuel Ughulu asserted the Jewish origin of the small tribe of Esan.79 Hebrew origins of the Igbo were also claimed in a booklet written by Akwaelumo Ike, The Origins of the Ibos, first published in 1950, which was reprinted several times. Considering that Igbo’s Hebrew origins have declined since its greatness, Ike asserts that Igbo, being culturally superior, are expected to lead the other groups in Nigeria and to teach the world the knowledge of God as they have done in ancient times.80

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From the booklet of Ike published in 1950, a body of literature encompassing legends of origins, foundation myths, migrations, religious rites, exile, and relocation of the Igbo-Jews in west Africa was treated with intensity by authors of local histories. From this time, a myriad of publications re-defining and re-constructing the history of local Igbo societies emerged, most frequently as an attempt to unite older and more recent concepts of community on a Hebrew model. Following the reconstruction after the Civil War, local histories began to be written and published in a larger number by the mid-1970s. These works expressively stressed the differences between the cultural specificity of the Igbo community, in contrast with its neighbors, thus making the community peculiar and unique.81 In the context of Nigerian competition between the three ethnic power blocs, claims of Hebrew origins mingled with the Nri supremacy representation pervaded local debates on history and culture and were used to demonstrate that Igbo people were superior to other Nigerian groups. As it will be explained below, the fear of “Igbo domination” rooted in the alleged Hebrew origins of the Igbo became a leitmotif in the emergence of the rivalry between Igbo and Yoruba and exerted a powerful influence in the development of Nigerian ethnic conflicts. In 1934, the return from the United States of Nnamdi Azikiwe (19041996), the hero of Nigerian nationalism, played a major role in economic and political changes. After having studied in the United States, Azikiwe became the vanguard of the protest against colonial rule and an influent politician. During his stay in the United States—“Zik” as he was popularly called—had been strongly influenced with American patterns of protest behaviour: “Negro Renaissance” and “Black Nationalism.”82 In 1937, he began to publish a newspaper, the West African Pilot, centering his journal on attacks against the colonial government’s policies.83 To the outside world, “Zikism” and African nationalism soon appeared to be synonymous. After the Youth Movement split in 1941, Azikiwe founded in 1944 the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), a federation of trade unions, professional associations, and local unions from all over Nigeria.84 The NCNC became the dominant force in Nigerian nationalist politics for the rest of the 1940s, mobilising through Azikiwe’s newspaper, a national resistance against the British government. Paving the way to Nigerian independence, the NCNC conducted opposition campaigns and forced the government into constitutional compromises, drawing support from all parts of the country including much of Yorubaland. During much of the 1940s, Azikiwe successfully combined the role of a hero of

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Nigerian nationalism with that of an Igbo ethnic hero, becoming the symbol of achievement and emancipation of the Igbo people. From the early 1930s, the Igbo had driven for rapid educational development at a far greater rate than in any other area of Nigeria. Christian missions had been welcome to set up schools in Igboland, village improvement unions sponsored scholarships, and Igbo students were widely represented in most Nigerian secondary schools. Thenceforward tens of thousands of them were clerks in government services and in business firms. But since the mid-1970s they had been at the periphery of Nigerian politics and much dissatisfied with their political conditions and professional status.85 At the same time, Azikiwe embodied Igbo and their aspirations, an Igbo-Yoruba ethnic divide and political competition between the two groups emerged. Ethnic tension rose especially in Lagos politics, when the Yoruba organization Egbe Omo Oduduwa was formally established in 1946 in Nigeria. Some years later, in 1951, the creation of the Action Group, a Yoruba-based party ruled by Obafemi Awolowo, started establishing a major rivalry with Azikiwe’s NCNC. The explicit goal of the Action Group was to win the upcoming regional election in the western region. Likewise, a cultural organization in the North was changed into a political party, the Northern Peoples’ Congress (NPC), with the same motive.86 At the same time, the NCNC gained the reputation of being an Igbo ethnic party rather than a national party, even though it kept important political support in western Nigeria through the late 1950s and had strong alliances in the North. The transformation of the Ibo Federal Union into the Ibo State Union in 1948, some months after the foundation of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa, had an obviously political character. The federation of all Igbo organizations into a single union representing “the Igbo interest” in Nigerian politics reinforced the tensions in the middle of a period of intense ethnic competition. Harneit-Sievers noticed that “At the same, time, Nigerians from other groups frequently perceived the union as forming the very core of Igbo ‘tribalism’: as an organization playing politics, not openly, but successfully organizing ethnic networks (supposed to involve much nepotism and mafia-like structures in the civil service and parastatal corporations) designed to secure ‘Igbo domination.’”87

Igbo ethnic identity became naturally politicised during these years, Hebrew-Jewish affiliation being a symbolic focus of Igboness and often forming part of the foundation for cultural and political nationalism. During the colonial period, the country was organised by regions by the colonial government, each centred on one of the three major ethnic

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groups the British identified: Yoruba people in the western region, Igbo in the eastern region, and Hausa in the North. The close association of each region with one of the colony’s largest ethnic groups indeed reinforced cultural differences and ethnic tensions and exerted a powerful influence on the political development of Nigeria. The new regional parties, notably the Action Group, rallied their support not only around the denunciation of the British rule and the claim for independence but also to a greater extent around the fear of domination by the East and its major ethnic group, the Igbo. A telling example of this is the accusation made by businessman Chief Justin E. Okon from Calabar that there was “a strong movement among the Ibos, directed from their own mainland, to dominate and take possession of important things in our areas.”88 In the 1951 regional elections, the Action Group won in the West, the NPC won in the North, and the NCNC won in the East, each region including minority sizable groups. The Nigerian geopolitical system had been created, consisting of three regions, each of them dominated by one majority ethnic group. A system representative of ethnic interest developed in which party leaderships erected networks through the allocation of jobs, government contracts, and commercial or honorific advantages. In each region, the government was accused of discrimination against the minority groups. The NPC developed a series of policies known as “Northernization” to protect the north from administrative and economic domination from southerners. Igbo migrants in the North felt particularly threatened by the North Regional Government, which aimed to get more northerners in influential administrative positions.89 The northern regional government therefore set out to “… northernize the Northern Region Public Service as soon as possible, ensure for northerners a responsible proportion of posts in all statutory corporations, to ensure the number of northerners in commercial, industrial, banking and trading concerns in the region.”90 The discrimination of one ethnic group against the other was not confined to politicians; it was also reported extensively in local newspapers, with particular focus on accusations of Igbo domination of Nigeria. The consequences of this political discourse in ethnic terms, through the Northernization Policy, or through the introduction of a quota system of positions in the Nigerian army and the administrative service, provided the background for the discrimination against Igbo immigrants in the urban centres.91 From the colonial period discussed in the previous paragraph, the process by which nineteenth-century missionaries and colonial observers defined the Jewish-Hebrew Igbo identity, mingled with the elements of local traditions referring to an eastern origin, had been incorporated into

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the general Igbo culture. The development of Nigerian party politics, which to a great extent occupied itself with frontal oppositions, accusations of discrimination of one tribe against the other, and especially accusations of Igbo domination of Nigeria, provided a new major dimension for the development of Jewish stigmas. Even before the economic cooperation that existed between the Igbo and Israel prior to the Biafra War, in a context where the idea of a Hebrew origin was implicitly present, the representation of the Igbo being the “Jews of Africa” had been used by Igbo politicians such as Azikiwe.92 When Azikiwe addressed the third meeting of the Igbo State Assembly in December 1950, he compared the position of the Igbo of Africa to the Jews of the world, claiming that the Igbo as a group were being repressed.93 After a critical decade of increasing pressure from nationalist political movements in the major cities of Nigeria and the Gold Coast, British colonial policy inaugurated the strategy of planned decolonization after World War II. The policy toward self-government put in place by the Colonial Office was shaped progressively to give Nigerian elite groups political access to institutions at the local level, before accessing high levels of federal responsibility. The difficulty to contain the political dynamics of nationalism anticipated the transfer of power and the achievement of self-government by 1948 on the path of independence.94 The violent opposition between the three ethnic power blocs led to intense political conflicts soon after independence, to the military coups of 1966 and, finally, to the Civil War (1967-1970). From the 1940s, the strong influence of Azikiwe, Mbonu Ojike, Ozuomba Mbadiwe and Nwafor Orizu, who were among the first university-educated Igbo to popularize the benefits of American education, led an important number of Igbo students to study in the United States.95 Analysis of the ethnic origins of Nigerians who have studied in the United States from the 1930s through 1955 reveals a striking predominance of Igbo.96 Certain features of African American consciousness could only have a profound impact on Igbo students. The anti-imperialist tradition, the reject of racial discrimination, and the dynamism of political, social, and economic behaviour were highly contagious for the growth of Nigerian nationalist and religious movements.97 The nationalist positions of the most important thinkers and activists of the Afrocentrist movements, who emerged in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century, were consistent with an understanding of Judaism as a religion with a special appeal to people of African descent. Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912), who was of Igbo origin, William Edward B. Du Bois (18681963), Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) and some others compared Jewish and

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black aspirations for nationhood, referring to their parallel struggles, and proclaimed that “all Africans were Hebrews.”98 It is known that Blyden’s ideas were being actively discussed in western-educated circles in Lagos, in the Lagos Mutual Improvement Society, as early as 1883 and that his venue in 1889 had substantial indirect effects.99 In Nigeria, a Lagos branch of Garvey’s movement, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), was organised in 1920, and it can be said that Nigerian nationalism has been cast in the spirit, if not in the exact words, of Garvey. The leaders of the association included Patriarch J. G Campbell, head of one of the Christian separatist sects; John Payne Jackson, the editor of the popular Lagos Weekly Record; and Ernst Ikoli, the dean of Nigerian journalists, who became one of the founders of the Nigerian Youth Movement.100 The association made little headway, but the ideas propagated by Garvey made a deep impression on some Nigerians and its long-term effects were significant on militant racial consciousness. At the time Igbo students arrived in the universities of the United States, the identification of African Americans with the Hebrews of the Bible was taken for granted among emerging black Jewish religious communities. These multifaceted communities combined elements inherited from the African traditions, Protestant religion, and Ethiopianism. As Landing points out, “The terminology is as varied as their numbers, some referring to themselves as Israelites, others as Jews, Hebrews, Canaanites, Essenes, Judaites, Rechabites, Falashas and Abyssinians. Although the terminology differs, all such groups perceive themselves as lineal descendants of the Hebrew Patriarchs.’’101

This phenomenon was accelerated by the presence of Jacques Faitlovitch in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s and the bringing of documentation about a black Jewish Diaspora in Ethiopia, the so-called Falasha.102 Between the 1920s and the 1930s, several self-proclaimed African American Jewish synagogues were built in the cities of New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Chicago. A new definition of people of African descent as ‘‘Hebrews of Ethiopian descent’’ was proposed by Rabbi Wentworth A. Matthew—the leader of one of the first African American Jews congregation, the Commandment Keepers—who considered American blacks to be African Hebrews, torn from their origins and religion by slavery, who had lost the knowledge of their ancestral heritage.103 The proximity with the white Jews in the ghettos and the exposure of Igbo students to the eclectic trends of an activist black Judaism could only have a considerable effect on the Igbo people, whose

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ground had already been prepared. This phenomenon was widely supported by the creation of proselyte associations. In the United States and in Israel, the Lost Tribes Committees, led by such influential individuals as Yitzhak ben Zvi, the founding president of the State of Israel, or Nahoum Slouschz, a pioneering Zionist, strengthened the tendency toward a universal Judaism.104 Although from different Zionist backgrounds, these organised proselyte movements legitimised the return of those ‘‘lost’’ to Judaism that ‘‘they considered to be, with different nuances, an open religion, one which made no distinction between peoples and skin colour, rather than an ‘ethnic religion,’ the expression of a single people.’’105 A missionary movement of this type, named the Mosaic Law for One World, formed in New York in 1944 by David Horowitz; Eliezer Schindler succeeded in propagating a universalistic message among the black Jewish communities of Harlem and other areas.106 Founded in 1964 in New York City, Hatzaad Harishon (Hebrew meaning: “the first step”) was a national organization of multi-racial Jews that provided, throughout the United States and Africa, religious and cultural knowledge to youth and adult black Israelites who were not raised with a Jewish education. According to Mordecai Joseph and Yaakov Gladstone, the leaders of the organization, "Hatzaad Harishon is the only community organization which concerns itself with the needs and problems of black Jews. It serves black Jewish communities and individuals in New York; Hammonton, N.J.; Philadelphia; Boston; Chicago; Venice, California; Lagos, Nigeria; Cambridge, England; Kingston, Jamaica; and Israel."107 The first contacts between the Igbo and Hatzaad Harishon started in the 1970s when the Biafra War ended. The Hatzaad Harishon archives reveal the various postmail exchanges between the New York City organization and some Igbo Jews leaders in the southeastern state of Nigeria. In 1971, Pnina Eboreime and Leah Poinset, the co-directors of the International Communications Committee of Hatzaad Harishon, corresponded with a certain Umorem E. Umorem, the Igbo Jewish leader and founder of the Judea Movement in Abak (Akwa Ibom State)—sometimes addressed as Rabbi or President Umorem. They sent the new community paperback copies of books on basic Judaism, mentioning Jewish holidays and festivals as well as books supporting the Hebrew heritage of African people. They also included pictures of a black Jewish synagogue in New Jersey named Congregation Beth Jacob, which was founded by a certain Rabbi Lester Herrings, and introductory explanations about religious Jewish services and ceremonies. They also sent drawings of Jewish symbols: a Menorah, the Ark where the Holy Scriptures are kept, the Podium for reading the Torah, and the Shield of David.108 In November 1971, James Benjamin, the Hatzaad Harishon

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executive director, in a letter to Umorem, announced the visit in Nigeria of Rabbi Yirmeyahu Yisrael, an African American who graduated from the Ethiopian Rabbinical College, a private rabbinic institution founded by Rabbi Matthew in 1925. In 1945, Rabbi Yisrael founded his own African American congregation, Kohol Beth B’nai Yisroel, in Harlem.109 It is interesting to note that Rabbi Yisrael visited various African communities claiming a Jewish ancestry. He visited Ghana before arriving in Nigeria and was on his way to South Africa to visit the Black Philadelphia Orthodox Synagogue of Soweto, founded in the 1960s by Vayisile Joshua Msitshana.110 Following the first exchanges with Hatzaad Harishon, the Judea movement took the name of Congregation Beth Jacob and started following the Jewish laws. Several orphanages were set up in 1970 in the region to welcome the Igbo children whose parents had been killed during the war. Dorothy Jacobs, Executive Secretary of the Congregation Beth Jacob in Abak, mentions in her correspondence with Hatzaad Harishon that the orphans are raised in the Jewish faith “because they will lead the Judaism to the end of the world” and that, with President Umorem, they “opened a new Prayer Family in East Central State.” She also sent a picture mentioning “one of the gods we burnt last week with Leader Umorem” in order to stress that they were conscious that Igbo land should eradicate idols and idolatry that compromised their integration to the Jewish religion and tradition.111 The ideology of Black American Judaism in its various forms has offered emergent Igbo communities a set of powerful symbols concerning issues of biblical interpretations regarding the genuine identity of people of African descent. In conjunction with the existence and the recognition of the Falasha, the universalistic message of the proselyte organizations legitimised the claim of Jewish identities of Igbo—and more generally of other Judaizing groups in Africa. In giving them the opportunity to envision and enact their new reality, the social functions of the diverse proselyte organizations contributed to the strengthening of Jewish belonging among groups of already receptive people.

The Biafra War: The climax of Igbo Jewish identity In the year following Nigerian independence in October 1960, competition between the three regional administrative structures—the northern, western, and eastern regions—each controlled by an ethnic majority including many minority groups, led to aggressive ethnic politics and to the Civil War.112 The military coup of 15 January 1966 ended the

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growing resentment and the political crisis of the first Republic fragmented by ethnic-regional cleavages and conflicts. The first measures taken by the Igbo General J. T. Aguiyi-Ironsi, leader of the coup, who surrounded himself with a predominance of Igbo advisers and officers, were widely perceived as an attempt to establish an Igbo take-over in the state apparatus.113 When he promulgated a decree reversing the Northernization Policy in May 1966, Igbo power and ascendance appeared as a threat for northern politics. The first riots exploded against the Igbo in the North, Igbo and other southerners living in the North fell victim to the attacks. A counter coup on 29 July, led by General Yakubu Gowon, reestablished northern political control, adopting repressive political economic measures with respect to Igboland resources. The manipulation of ethnicity to engender violence in the service of political goals reached new heights during September and October of 1966. The spreading of false rumors describing aggression against northerners was a powerful tool in moving northern citizens to violence. Violence erupted against the Igbo and other migrants from the East, this time in massive ethnic massacres in which several thousand people were killed in the northern cities.114 In many cases survival itself depended on an Igbo’s ability to escape being categorised as an Igbo or to run away. This led to a mass flow of nearly two million Igbo refugees from other parts of Nigeria to the Igbo area in the southeast.115 In July 1967 the Lagos government sent in federal troops to repress the secession. The military action against the Igbo soon turned into a Civil War that lasted for two and one-half years and killed more than one million people.116 The thirty-month Biafran War was a traumatic experience and the climax of the history of Igbo Jewish identity. From the beginning of the crisis in 1966, local and regional authorities and police did not make serious attempts to protect Igbo against anti-Igbo organised violence. As noted by Douglas Anthony, “… where authorities did intervene on behalf of Igbos, it was generally not to protect their positions in the North or their right to remain there, but most often to escort them out of the region.”117 The mass massacres committed by the Nigerian soldiers from 1966, the refusal of Gowon's government to stop the air raids on Igbo civilians targets, the stories of the atrocities witnessed by the survivors, and the strategy of starving Biafrans to submission led to a fundamentally increased feeling of insecurity and rejection as a group perceived in ethnic and religious terms. In the months between the exodus of October 1966 and the first shots of the Civil War, hostile pamphlets circulated in Kano and other northern cities. The official or quasi-official propaganda produced in the North manipulated anti-Igbo sentiment by hardening

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preexisting stereotypes. In 1970, when the war ended, the Nigerian Finance Commissioner forced the Igbo who had money in banks to accept twenty Nigerian pounds in lieu of whatever amounts they had.118 The contradictions of the Abandoned Properties Edict of 1973, which often enacted the seizure of Igbo’s land properties by non-Igbo Nigerians, were likened to Nazi confiscation of Jews’ possessions. The exploitation of Igbo property greatly benefited the local people during and after the war, and the reclamation of property became a difficult exercise for the Igbo at the mercy of local authorities.119 During and after the war, African and Western journalists throughout the United States, Europe and Africa— largely sensitised by the propaganda efforts of General Emeka Ojukwu, the Biafran leader and the military governor of the Eastern region—used references to genocide and holy war to arouse international consciousness. This awareness helped emphasize the widespread sentiment among the Igbo that they were part of the Jewish people. Igbo dispositions and selfrepresentation towards Judaism impacted their experiences during and after the war with the conviction to live mythic moments “ ... from time immemorial, the history of the Jews or Hebrews has always repeated itself in Nigeria among the Ibos, particularly in the area of punishment through pogroms or war or destruction of property by other gentile tribes…”120 From the colonial interpretations of Igbo omenala to the Biafra War, the different aspects of Igbo identity have been forged into a narrative of ethnic belonging to Judaism, as a phenomenon of co-creation of new realities. As a narrative continually re-edited and re-interpreted, this construction of belonging had been adopted by many Igbo who have come to regard it as an obvious and primordial aspect of their identity. In the Nigeria State marked by post-colonialism upheavals, political ethnic conflicts, and economic uncertainty, the adoption of Jewish identities has been magnified as a coherent prospect and indicates various attempts by Igbo to seek change at a cosmic, social, and supraindividual level through the restoration of a real or imagined past religious order. By finding in a Lost Tribes’ identity an important source for sustaining moral and political power, Igbo Judaism holds out the prospect of globalization based on a combination of liberal individualism and personal discipline—the key concerns of the “modern project” and the very ingredients of modernity, according to Peter Wagner.121

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Notes 1

Concerning the two possible spellings of the word: Igbo is the term used by the members of this ethnic group themselves, whereas Ibo, the anglicised spelling, is commonly used by Europeans and by Africans in their relationships with this group. I shall therefore use the term Igbo and the spelling used by the authors in all other cases. 2 Daniel Lis, “Igbo Jews—Religious Shift: From Igbo Sabbatharians to Igbo Converts to Judaism in Israel,” Chilufim 11 (2011): 99-124. 3 The questionnaire contained sixty-seven questions to thirty members. In processing the results of the questionnaires, I treated them as narratives and applied a qualitative discourse analytical approach. 4 Edith Bruder, The Blacks Jews of Africa: History, Identity, Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 5 Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the African (2 vols., London, 1789; reprinted 1969), 5. 6 James Africanus Horton, West African Countries and Peoples (1868; reprinted Edinburgh, 1969), 167-171. 7 O. Alaezi, Ibos: Hebrew Exiles from Israel; Amazing Facts and Revelations (Aba, Nigeria: Onzy Publications, 1999), 27, 32-36, 113-114, quotation 32. 8 Ik N. T. Ogbukagu, The Igbo and the Riddles of Their Jewish Origins (Enugu: Chobikate Nigeria Company, 2001), 39-89, quotation 25. 9 Dierk Lange, Ancient Kingdoms of West Africa: Africa-Centred and CanaaniteIsraelite Perspective (Dettelbach, Germany: Röll, 2004). 10 Nowadays, Igboland—the densely settled Ibo-speaking area of southern Nigeria, with about 15 million inhabitants by the year 2000—extends through five of Nigeria’s thirty-six states (plus some areas in neighboring states). 11 James Beckford, ‘‘Religious Movements and Globalization,’’ in Global Social Movements, ed. Robin Cohen and Shirin Rai (London: Athelone Press, 2000), 170; Irving Hexham and Karla Poewe, New Religions as Global Culture (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997). 12 For an overview of the theories on the central role of the media in shaping the social cognition of the public at large, see, e.g., Arthur A. Berger, ed., Media USA: Process and Effect (New York: Longman, 1991); Jennings Bryant and Dolf Zillman, eds., Perspectives on Media Effects (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1986). 13 Joanne Palmer, ‘‘How a Nice Jewish Boy Became a Chief Rabbi in Nigeria,’’ www/usjc.org/Becoming _Jewish6982.html (accessed 25 April 2007). 14 Yvonne Chireau, “Black Culture and Black Zion,” in Yvonne Chireau and Nathaniel Deutsch, eds., Black Zion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 21. 15 Remi Ilona, ‘‘Ibo Greetings,’’ Kulanu Newsletter 10, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 4. 16 Liz-ben Nnoduka Agha, email, June 2011. 17 Ibid. 18 Bruder, Black Jews, 73-87. 19 As mentioned earlier, many Igbo claiming Jewish identity and practicing one form or another of Judaism don’t necessarily practice Shabbat rituals or Jewish

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festivals at the synagogue. My research was made possible thanks to the invaluable assistance of Liz-ben Nnoduka Agha and the kind cooperation of the members of the community. 20 Bernard J. Wolfson, ‘‘Africa, American Jews: Dispelling Myths, Bridging the Divide,’’ in Black Zion: African American Encounters with Judaism, 1790-1930, ed. Yvonne Chireau and Nathaniel Deutsch (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 34. 21 Anthony P. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community (London: Routledge, 1993). 22 Eric J. Hobsbawm, and Terence O. Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 23 Alaezi, Ibos: Hebrew Exiles, 101; Richard N. Henderson, The King in Every Man: Evolutionary Trends in Onitsha Igbo Society and Culture (Nigeria: Onitsha Publications, 2000), 40-41. Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 1969), 188, 192-194, 245, 260. 24 Dimitri van den Bersselaar, “In Search of Igbo Identity: Language, Culture and Politics in Nigeria, 1900-1966” (Ph.D. diss., University of Leiden, 1998). http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/~dvdb/0_Contents.pdf. 38-71; Axel Harneit-Sievers, Constructions of Belonging: Igbo Communities and the Nigerian State in the Twentieth Century (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006), 61. 25 Harneit-Sievers, Constructions, 38, 43-44, 92, 93; A. E. Afigbo, 1981 Ahiajoku Lecture (Owerri, Nigeria: 1981). 26 Harneit-Sievers, Constructions, 84, 86, 89; Bersselaar, “Igbo Identity,” 39-42 ; Jean-Loup Amselle, “Ethnies et espaces: pour une anthropologie topologique,” in Au cœur de l’ethnie : Ethnies, Tribalisme et Etat en Afrique, ed. Jean-L. Amselle and Elikia M’Bokolo (Paris: La découverte, 1985), 39. 27 Regarding the issue of intercultural exchanges, in which African and European subjectivities were negotiated and renegotiated during the colonization, see John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Ethnography and Historical Imagination (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992). 28 C. N. Ubah, Igboland in Transition, 1900-1950: A Case Study of Otanchara and Otanzu Communities. Special Project (Institute of African Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, mimeographed [ca. 1978]), 3-4, in Bersselaar, “Igbo Identity,” 40. 29 Audrey C. Smock, Ibo Politics: The Role of Ethnic Unions in Eastern Nigeria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 163; Bersselaar, “Igbo Identity,” 173-197. 30 Different approaches have been put forward to interpret the remarkable success of conversion to Christianity in Igboland during the twentieth century. See Caroline Ifeka-Moller, “White Power: Socio-Structural Factors in Conversion to Christianity, Eastern Nigeria, 1921-1966,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 8, no. 1 (1974): 55-72; Robin Horton, “African conversion,” Africa 41, no. 2 (1971): 85-108; Robin Horton, “On the Rationality of Conversion,” Africa 45, nos. 3 and 4 (1975): 220-235, 373-399; Cyril C. Okorocha, The Meaning of Religious

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Conversion in Africa: The Case of the Igbo of Nigeria (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 1987). 31 Harneit-Sievers, Constructions, 93. 32 Ogbu U. Kalu, “The Battle of Gods: Christianization of Cross River Igboland, 1903-1950,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 10, no.1 (1979): 1-18; E. A. Ayandele, The Missionary Impact on Modern Nigeria, 1842-1914: A Political and Social Analysis (London: Longman, 1966). 33 A. E. Afigbo, Ropes of Sand: Studies in Igbo History and Culture (Nsukka, Nigeria, 1981), 263-266; Felix K. Ekechi, “The British Assault on Ogbunorie Oracle in Eastern Nigeria,” Journal of African Studies 14, no. 2 (1987): 69-77. 34 J. U. J. Asiegbu, Nigeria and Its British Invaders, 1851-1920 (New York: NOK, 1984), 236-257; O. M. Ejidike and L. I. Izuakor. “Deity as an Instrument of Social Control: The Case of Haaba Agulu,” Nigerian Heritage 1 (1992): 20-26. 35 In the pre-colonial period, ͕z͕ titled holders (also called ndi nze) held high prestige and were initiated individually into a system of graded titles and formed male social groups similar to clubs. The ekpe or okonko is a secret society with grades and initiation rites joining together elite men. The society was connected to various rituals and its activities constituted an object of fear. See A. E. Afigbo, “Traditions of Igbo Origins: A Comment,” History in Africa 10 (1983): 15-17. On the discussions between Igbo clergy and European Anglican missionaries, see Ayandele, Missionary Impact, 176. 36 M. O. Eneasato, The Advent and Growth of Catholic Church in Enugu Diocese: A History Written to Mark the First Centinary [sic] of Catholicism in Nigeria, East of Niger (Onitsha, Nigeria: Jet, 1985). R. A. Ozigboh, Roman Catholicism in Southeastern Nigeria, 1885-1931: A Study in Colonial Evangelism (Onitsha, Nigeria: Etutkowu, 1988). 37 Georges Balandier, Sociologie actuelle de l’Afrique noire (Paris: PUF, 1955), 9. 38 J. C. Anene, Southern Nigeria in Transition, 1885-1906: Theory and Practice in a Colonial Protectorate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966); A. E. Afigbo, The Warrant Chiefs: Indirect Rule in Southeastern Nigeria, 1891-1929 (London: Longman, 1972; reprinted London 1979). 39 Ogaranyan are successful Igbo “big men.” See Carolyn A. Brown, “We Were All Slaves:” African Miners, Culture and Resistance at the Enugu Government Colliery (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003), 57; Afigbo, Warrant Chiefs, 315316. 40 Bersselaar,” Igbo Identity,” 102-145. 41 Ben Fulford, “An Igbo Esperanto: A History of the Union Ibo Bible, 19001950,” Journal of Religion in Africa 32, no. 4 (2002): 457-501. 42 Harneit-Sievers, Constructions, 115; Bersselaar, “Igbo Identity,” 136. 43 Basically, this theory argues that anything of value found in Africa was brought there by the Hamites, who were allegedly a branch of the Caucasian race. See Edith R. Sanders, ‘‘The Hamitic Hypothesis: Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective,’’ Journal of African History 10, no. 4 (1969): 521-532; J. G. St. Clair Drake, ‘‘Détruire le mythe hamitique, devoir des hommes cultivés,’’ Présence Africaine 24-25 (1959): 215-230.

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Bruder, Black Jews, 62-71; Tudor Parfitt, The Lost Tribes of Israel (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2000). 45 G. T. Basden, Among the Ibos of Nigeria (London, 1921; reprinted 1966); G. T. Basden, Niger Ibos (London, 1938; reprinted 1966). Among the Ibos was first published in 1921, it has since been reprinted both in the United Kingdom and in Nigeria, while a cheap paperback version produced in Onitsha was still available in 1996. 46 Basden, Among the Ibos, 31. 47 Afigbo, Ropes, 31-67; John, N. Oriji. Traditions of Igbo Origin: A Study of PreColonial Population Movements in Africa (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), 16-17, 83. 48 Biblical characters and themes did not wait for the nineteenth-century missionary movement to penetrate African traditions. They have been known for a much longer time, through Muslim intermediaries. See Roberto Tottoli, Biblical Prophets in the Qu’ran and Muslim Literature (Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 2002). 49 The term Nri in this localised meaning, refers to a town known as Agukwu-Nri. 50 ͕f͕ is a staff symbolizing lineage headship. Oriji, Traditions, 40-41; Afigbo, Ropes, 41-42. 51 Henderson, The King in Every Man, 61-63; Afigbo, Ropes, 37, 41. 52 Biblical references about the formation of the blacksmith caste are found in various West African traditions. The famous legend of Wagadu recorded by Charles Monteil, relating to the foundation of the ancient kingdom of Ghana tells that the founder of this kingdom was ‘‘the chief of blacksmiths, Dinga, descending from King Solomon.’’ See Charles Monteil, ‘‘La légende du Wagadu,’’ IFAN 23 (1953): 24-26. 53 A. G. Leonard, The Lower Niger and Its Tribes (London: MacMillan, 1906), 3439; Amaury P. Talbot, The Peoples of Southern Nigeria, vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), 21; Northcote W. Thomas Anthropological Report on the Igbo-Speaking Peoples of Nigeria, Part I: Law and Custom of the Awka Neighbourhood, Southern Nigeria (London: Harrison, 1913), 48-58; Jeffreys, M. D. W., Old Calabar and Notes on the Ibibio (H.W.T.I. Press, 1935). 54 M. A. Onwuejeogwu, Nri Kingdom and Hegemony: An Outline of Igbo Civilisation, A.D. 994 to Present. (Nri, Nigeria: Tabansi, 1980). 55 See, for example, David Northrup, Trades without Rulers: Pre-colonial Economic Development in South Eastern Nigeria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978); Dike Onwuka and Felicia Ekejiuba, The Aro of South-Eastern Nigeria, 1650-1980 (Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press, 1990). 56 Afigbo, Ropes, 187-282. 57 Onwuejeogwu, Nri Kingdom, 34. The concept of Chukwu has been much discussed: Was Chukwu a pre-Christian concept or had it been introduced by the missionaries? See Thomas, Anthropological Report, i, 26. 58 Thurstan Shaw, Unearthing Igbo-Ukwu (Ibadan, Nigeria: Oxford University Press, 1977). 59 Timothy Insoll and T. Shaw, “Gao and Igbo-Ukwu: Beads, Interregional Trade

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and Beyond,” African Archaeological Review 14, no. 1 (1997): 9-24. 60 Eli Bentor, “Aro Ikeji Festival: Toward a Historical Interpretation of a Masquerade Festival” (Ph.D. diss., School of Fine Arts, Indiana University, 1994), 51. 61 Michel Abitbol, “Juifs maghrébins et commerce transsaharien du VIII au XVè siècle,” Etudes 5-6 in Le Sol, la parole et l'écrit: 2000 ans d'histoire africaine (Paris: Bibliothèque d’Histoire d’Outre-mer, 1981 Raymond Mauny, “Le Judaïsme, Juifs et l’Afrique occidentale,” IFAN 3-4 (1949): 354-378. 62 Chireau, “Black Culture,” 7. 63 Alaezi, Ibos, 134. 64 P. S. Zachernuk, “Of Origins and Colonial Order: Southern Nigerian Historians and the ‘Hamitic Hypothesis,’ c. 1870-1970,” Journal of African History 35, no. 3 (1994): 427-456. 65 Ibid., 428. 66 Comaroff and Comaroff, Ethnography, 58-59. 67 Data from the 1952-1953 census cited and commented upon by James S. Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1958; reprinted 1971), 76-77; Harneit-Sievers, Constructions, 118. 68 Coleman, Nigeria, 332-333; Bersselaar,“Igbo Identity,” 216-221. 69 Douglas A. Anthony, Poison and Medicine: Ethnicity, Power and Violence in a Nigerian City, 1966 to 1986 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002), 37-38; John N. Paden, Religion and Political Culture in Kano (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 315-320. 70 Samson O. Amali, Ibos and Their Fellow Nigerians (Ibadan, Nigeria: 1967), 5, 11; Bersselaar, “Igbo Identity,” 208-211. 71 Bruder, Black Jews, 45-48; Sander L. Gilman, ‘‘The Jewish Nose: Are Jews White? or, The History of the Nose Job,’’ chap. 16 in The Other in Jewish Thought and History, ed. Laurence Silberstein and Robert L. Cohen (New York: New York University Press, 1994). 72 “How the Jewish Igbos migrated to Nigeria,” in Body and Soul 70, vol. 3, no. 3 (21 November 2003): 21. 73 Austin Ahanotu, “The Role of Ethnic Unions in the Development of Southern Nigeria, 1916-66,” in Studies in Southern Nigerian History, ed. Boniface I. Obichere (London, 1982), 156-158, 171. 74 Coleman, Nigeria, 339-341; Richard Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent African Nation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963. Reprint New York: NOK, 1983), 64-65. 75 Bersselaar, “Igbo Identity,” 243-260, 285-287. 76 Ibid., 225-232; Emenanjo E. Nolue, “The Ogbalu Factor in Igbo Literary History: An Overview,” in The Study of Igbo Culture: Essays in Honour of F. C. Ogbalu, ed. Rems Nna Umeasiegbu (Enugu, Nigeria: 1988). 77 Emmanuel Obiechina, Literature for the Masses: An Analytical Study of Popular Pamphleteering in Nigeria (Enugu, Nigeria: 1971), 5; Bersselaar, “Igbo Identity,” 225-226. 78 Peter Hogg and Ilse Sternberg, Market Literature from Nigeria: A Checklist

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(London: British Library, 1990), 195. 79 Kenneth O. Dike and Felicia Ekejuba, The Aro of South-Eastern Nigeria, 16501980 (Ibadan, Nigeria: 1990), 17; Zachernuk, ‘‘Origins,” 447. 80 Akwaelumo Ike, The Origins of the Ibos (Aba, Nigeria: Silent Prayer Home Press, 1950), 7-17. 81 Among recent publications, see Otigbuanyinya O. C. Onyesoh, Nri: The Cradle of Igbo Culture and Civilization (Nigeria: Tabansi Press, 2000); P. J. O. Nwadinigwe, Umu Nshi Royal Stool from 558 BC to Date: Igbo Second Movement after Exodus (Awka, Nigeria: Creation House, 2000) ; Uche P. Ikeanyibe, The Quest for the Origin of Igbo People (Lagos, Nigeria: Aikmay, 1999); Charles Ujah, The Origin of the Ibos, from Linguistic and Cultural Angle (Nigeria: Ezbon Communications, 2006); Remi Ilona, The Igbos: Jews in Africa? (Abuja, Nigeria: Mega Press, 2004, reedited 2005). 82 See Nmamdi Azikiwe, My Odyssey: An Autobiography (London: C. Hurst. 1970; Reprint, Ibadan: Spectrum, 1994). 83 Coleman, Nigeria, note 43, p. 221. 84 Coleman, Nigeria, 224-226; Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties, 53-54; Bersselaar, “Igbo Identity,” 90. 85 Harneit-Sievers, Constructions, 94-96. 86 Bersselaar, “Igbo Identity,” 93-96; Harneit-Sievers, Constructions, 120. 87 Harneit-Sievers, Constructions, 121. 88 Public Record Office, Kew, London, CO 957 21, Memorandum submitted by Chief Justin E. Okon of 60 Kpo Ene Street, Calabar, to the Minorities Commission [1957], in Bersselaar,“Igbo Identity,” 94. 89 Larry Diamond, Class, Ethnicity and Democracy in Nigeria: The Failure of the First Republic (London: Macmillan, 1988) 48; Sklar, “Nigerian Politics in Perspective.” 90 Nigerian Citizen 16.4.60 in Matthew Hassan Kukah, Religion, Politics and Power in Northern Nigeria (Ibadan, Nigeria: Spectrum, 1993), 18. 91 Public Record Office, Kew, London, CO 554 405, Official notice. “The Position of Non-Northerners in the Service of the Northern Regional Government” [1953] in Bersselaar, “Igbo Identity,” 94. 92 Regarding the relations between Israel and Nigeria, see Lis’s article in this volume. 93 Nmamdi Azikiwe, Zik: A Selection from the Speeches of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Governor-General of the Federation of Nigeria, Formerly President of the Nigerian State, Formerly Premier of the Eastern Region of Nigeria, ed. Phillip Harris (Cambridge, 1961), 250. 94 Robert D. Pearce, The Turning Point in Africa: British Colonial Policy, 19381948 (London: Franck Cass, 1982). On Nigeria’s decolonization process, see Sklar, “Nigerian Political Parties.” 95 See note 96 96 Between 1938 and 1948, 66 percent of the Nigerian students in the United States were Igbo. See Coleman, Nigeria, 246.

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Nwafor Orizu, Without Bitterness (New York: Creative Age Press, 1944); Kingsley Ozuamba Mbadiwe, British and Axis Aims in Africa (New York, 1942); Mbonu Ojike, My Africa (New York, 1946). 98 James H. Boykin, Black Jews: A Study in Minority Experience (Miami, FL: J. H. Boykin, 1996), 31; Edward W. Blyden, The Jewish Question (Liverpool, UK: Lionel Hart, 1898), 8. 99 Lynch, Hollis R., Edward Wilmot Blyden: Pan-Negro Patriot, 1832-1912 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 222. 100 Coleman, Nigeria, 191. 101 James Landing, ‘‘The Spatial Expression of Cultural Revitalization in Chicago,’’ Proceedings of the Association of American Geographers 6 (1974): 51; see also Ruth Landes, ‘‘Negro Jews in Harlem,’’ Jewish Journal of Sociology 9, no. 2 (1967): 180-181. 102 Emanuela Trevisan Semi, ‘‘Universalisme juif et prosélytisme. L’action de Jacques Faitlovitch, le ‘père’ des Beta Israel (Falashas),’’ Revue de l’Histoire des Religions 216, no. 2 (1999): 193-211 103 Howard M. Brotz, ‘‘The Negro Jewish Community and the Contemporary Race Crisis,’’ Jewish Social Studies 1 (1965): 16, excerpt from a conversation with Matthew or another member of the group; see also Albert Ehrman, ‘‘The Commandment Keepers: A Negro Jewish Cult in America Today,’’ Judaism 8, no. 3 (1959): 267-270. 104 See Emanuela Trevisan Semi’s overview on these various associations in ‘‘Conversion and Judaisation: The Lost Tribes Committees at the Birth of the Jewish State,’’ in Tudor Parfitt and Emanuela Trevisan Semi, Judaising Movements (London: Routledge Curzon, 2002), 53-64. 105 Ibid., 53. 106 Ibid., 56. 107 Letter from Hatzaad Harishon to Umorem E. Umorem, Nigeria (2 April 1971). Hatzaad Harishon Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; emphasis mine. 108 Letter from Hatzaad Harishon to Umorem E. Umorem, Nigeria (28 June 1971). Hatzaad Harishon Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. 109 Letter from J. H Benjamin to Umorem E. Umorem (3 November 1971). Hatzaad Harishon Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. 110 Letter from Rabbi Yirmeyahu Israel to J. H Benjamin (3 November 1971). Hatzaad Harishon Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. On Msitshana, see Alan M. Tigay, ‘‘Xhosa Rabbi,’’ Jewish Digest, February 1975, 71-75. 111 Letter from Dorothy Jacobs to J. H. Benjamin (May 1971). Hatzaad Harishon Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. 112 The Biafra War is developed in Harnischfeger’s article in this volume. Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, The Biafra War: Nigeria and the Aftermath (New York: Lewinston, 1990), 24-36. 113 Anthony, Poison and Medicine, 55-66; Ekwe-Ekwe, Biafra War, 57-60. 114 John St. Jorre, The Brother’s War: Biafra and Nigeria (Boston: Houghton

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Mifflin, 1972), 29-47. 115 Anthony, Poison and Medicine, 76. 116 For more developments on the Biafra war, see Harnischfeger’s article in this volume. 117 Ibid., 112. 118 Ejike Okpa, ‘‘20 Pounds to Igbos, Biafrans: Where’s the Rest?’’ www.usafricaonline.com/twentypounds.html (accessed 5 September 2011). 119 Anthony, Poison and Medicine, 147-115; Alaezi, Ibos, 45-46. 120 Alaezi, Ibos, 46. 121 According to Peter Wagner’s key concepts, a fundamental ambivalence of modernity is captured by the double notion of liberty and discipline, notably in the relations between individual liberty and political community. This social transformation, which can be called “organised modernity” or “neo-modernisaton,” strengthens ideas of liberty, plurality, and individual autonomy in a context of creation of new social identities. See Peter Wagner, A Sociology of Modernity: Liberty and Discipline (London: Routledge, 1994).

CHAPTER THREE IGBO NATIONALISM AND JEWISH IDENTITIES JOHANNES HARNISCHFEGER

Since the Biafra War, 1967-70, it has become common among the Igbo to believe that they and the Jews share basic historical experiences and that their traditional cultures bear “striking similarities.”1 Some Igbo politicians and intellectuals even argue that their ancestors were in fact Jews who migrated to present-day Nigeria in Biblical times. Comparing themselves with ancient and modern Jews is a means of reflecting the trauma of the civil war and defining the Igbo’s relationship towards other Nigerian people. Moreover, discovering similarities with the Jews is a way of affirming their Christian identity and of transforming Christianity into an ethnic religion, with the Igbo as God’s chosen people. In order to understand Igbo self-perceptions, I want to look, first, at the Biafra War and its legacy of distrust. Then I will explore different ways of constructing their Jewishness. What the Igbo identify with when they imagine themselves as Jews is a phantasmagoric object, pieced together from world news, biblical stories and local speculations. The following study discusses only a few aspects of these collective imaginings, mainly those which are relevant for today’s Igbo nationalism. Reflections on Jewish identity are not at the centre of nationalist discourses, but they have regained some importance since about the year 2000, when a new secessionist movement emerged.

Biafra In the mid-1990s, when I lived in Igboland, there was not much talk about Biafra, the break-away republic that had been defeated by the Nigerian army. Not one Igbo politician suggested that his or her people in the southeast of Nigeria should secede again and proclaim a second Biafra.2 The main concern was toppling the military regime which had ruled the country since 1984. Things changed with Nigeria’s return to

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democracy in 1999, when violence between different ethnic and religious groups “exploded”.3 Among the Igbo, a secessionist movement emerged, called MASSOB: Movement for the Actualisation of a Sovereign State of Biafra. It seeks a peaceful dissolution of Nigeria and has exhorted its members to campaign peacefully for a new Biafra. Despite this nonviolent stance, its leader Ralph Uwazuruike described the threat posed by enemies of the Igbo in a dramatic way: “The condition of the Igbo in Nigeria today is similar to the pathetic condition of the Jews during the World War II.”4 In this context he hinted at a “conspiracy reached between the Hausa and the Yoruba immediately after the war […] to exterminate the Igbos after 50 years. We are in the 30th year. In the next twenty years, according to their plan, Igbo would be annihilated.”5 Within two years of its foundation in November 1999, MASSOB became the most popular political organisation in Igboland. The enthusiasm for a new Biafra Republic is strange, given the fact that the first Biafra (1967-1970), has been associated with traumatic experiences. When the Igbo proclaimed an independent state, the federal government in Lagos declared war on the “rebels” in its Eastern Region. The 30-month civil war may have claimed the lives of about a million people, many of them civilians who were starved to death by a food blockade imposed by the Nigerian army.6 News of the humanitarian catastrophe led to a wave of protests in Europe and North America, with calls for a ceasefire and an arms embargo. But although public opinion was largely pro-Biafran, governments did not change their pro-Nigerian stance, leaving Biafra almost completely isolated. Western governments and the Soviet Union, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the Arab world, all sided with Nigeria. It looked as if Biafra were confronted with an “international conspiracy” that defied all religious and ideological antagonisms.7 The only open support came from the International Red Cross, Caritas, the World Council of Churches and the American Jewish Committee that flew in relief material, and from four African countries: Tanzania, Gabon, Cote d’Ivoire and Zambia, that accorded international recognition to Biafra. There was also some covert support: French government supplied weapons, though only belatedly and not in large enough quantities for the encircled Biafrans to repel the Nigerian army.8 Nigeria’s main backer, the British government, made it clear that it would not bow to public pressure. It did not stop or reduce its arms supplies, even when the Nigerian air force shot down a Red Cross plane that had defied the blockade to bring food into Biafra. General Yakubu Gowon, the head of Nigeria’s junta, was equally determined to see Biafra collapse. His regime refused to agree to a ceasefire, and ruled out any

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compromise: “This war must be fought to the finish.”9 Why did Biafra not surrender? Its troops were poorly armed and vastly outnumbered. By October 1968, fifteen months after the Nigerian invasion, all major cities had been lost and Biafra was reduced to a quarter of its original territory: a stretch of land less than two hundred km long and fifty to one hundred km wide, in its middle an airstrip where up to forty planes landed each night, loaded with arms and hunger aid.10 Biafra’s leader, General Odumegwu Ojukwu, had no chance of military victory. His only hope lay with the international community which had to be swayed by humanitarian considerations to intervene on behalf of the secessionists: “Our aim all along has been to delay the enemy until the world conscience can effectively be aroused against genocide.”11 Biafran propaganda, backed by a public relations firm in Geneva, tried to convince the world that the Igbo were fighting a desperate war of survival against a regime of mass murderers that would annihilate them if they surrendered.12 Towards the end of the war, though, Biafra’s news policy changed, as an official of its Directorate of Propaganda recalled: “Mere sentiment in our propaganda was getting nowhere … the threat of genocide was no longer credible and simply not true.”13 So it was suggested to “play down the starvation issue” and “portray Biafra as a viable state” that firmly defended its right of selfdetermination.14 Most Igbo fled when Nigerian troops invaded their towns and villages. They melted into the bush and kept in hiding for most of the war, or they followed the Biafran soldiers into the shrinking, starving, overcrowded enclave that remained cut off from all transport by road and by sea.15 Journalists who flew into Biafra observed an intense fear among its population: Igbo “believed with varying degrees of conviction that they were fighting for their lives. […] as the situation became more desperate so the determination to struggle on hardened.”16 Panic about the Nigerian invaders was not simply a result of Biafran propaganda. The Eastern Region was filled with more than a million refugees: the survivors of massacres in northern Nigeria who told horrific stories about the atrocities they had witnessed. Attacks on the Igbo had started there in May 1966, four months after a military coup which had brought an Igbo to power. Initially, the coup against the corrupt civilian regime had been greeted in most places with joy or cautious approval, but General Ironsi’s rule soon fuelled suspicions that the coup had been an Igbo take-over. In July, Northern soldiers staged a counter-coup and killed about 200 of their colleagues, most of them Igbo. Under the new military regime, led by Northern officers, hostilities against the Igbo diaspora continued and on September 29 violence exploded. Igbo and to a lesser extent other

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Easterners were hunted in all parts of the North, by both Muslims and Christians. Soldiers were often involved in the slaughter, instigating and leading the mobs, while the army leadership proved unable or unwilling to interfere.17 There are no reliable figures about the casualties. From May to October 1966, between 5000 and 10,000 may have died; perhaps many more.18 The prime aim of the attackers was obviously to drive away the Igbo, although other migrants from the East, such as Ijaw, Ibibio and Efik, were also targeted.19 About a million fled to the Eastern Region where they were taken in by relatives. The west of the country, with the capital Lagos, had remained relatively calm, but even here most Igbo did not dare to stay. After weeks or months of hesitation, about half a million fled eastwards across the Niger.20 It was only in the Eastern Region that they felt safe, because the July coup had not succeeded here. LieutenantColonel (later General) Ojukwu, the Igbo military governor, did not recognise the central government, though both sides held talks over a new constitution that would allow the Igbo to remain part of Nigeria. Members of the Eastern government argued that their citizens could not feel safe under a federal army that was controlled by Northern officers. Each Region therefore had to have its own army. The only way of keeping Nigeria together would be to restructure it as a loose confederation that gave its constituent units far-reaching autonomy. However, the military regime in Lagos refused to relinquish its monopoly on violence. In March 1967, it unilaterally decreed that the federal government would have the right to control the army and to impose a state of emergency on any of the four Regions. Lieutenant-Colonel Yakubu Gowon knew that these rules were unacceptable to the Igbo leaders, but he assumed that federal troops could easily break any resistance and bring the East back into line. Nobody anticipated a prolonged military confrontation, and when the antagonists found themselves locked in a bitter war with heavy losses, neither was ready to give in. As the hunger blockade demonstrated, General Gowon was determined to subdue the “rebels”, “whatever the cost in […] human lives.”21 However, there was no Nigerian policy to wipe out the Igbo population. When Biafran resistance collapsed in January 1970 and the “rebels” were disarmed, the violence subsided.22 In the following months, Igbo began moving back to the northern and western parts of the country where most of them could reclaim their property. Today there are probably millions of Igbo living in the North, as there are millions in the West, spread into the remotest villages. As traders, artisans and hotel owners they have often been more successful than the indigenous population, yet also more

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vulnerable to attacks. Since the 1980s, communal conflicts have increased in the North, and though many different groups are involved, Igbo have the impression that they are singled out for aggression: “anytime there is a problem in the north, they begin to kill the Igbo.”23 When riots erupted over the introduction of Sharia in 2000 and 2001, large convoys of refugees headed “back home” to the Southeast, but within weeks or months, most had returned.24 Igboland does not offer them sufficient economic opportunities, so they are forced to live among people they fear. Since pre-colonial times their homeland has been one of the most densely populated areas in Africa, with grave consequences: “Perhaps the most important factor conditioning Ibo history in the nineteenth century and in our own time is land hunger. […] the Ibo pressing against limited land resources had, of necessity, to seek other avenues of livelihood outside the tribal boundaries.”25 Today the land is eroded and does not yield enough food to sustain its inhabitants. Moreover, there is little industrial production to offer employment or generate revenue, so the population has survived, in part, through remittances sent by their kin in the diaspora.

Trapped in Nigeria Since the Igbo have no exit option, they have to pursue their interests within the arena of Nigerian politics. So far, however, all military and civilian regimes have made sure that Igbo politicians had little access to political decision-making. Their exclusion from power is the main reason why the Igbo diaspora has not been protected adequately by Nigeria’s police and army. In order to gain more influence over government policy, the Igbo have to forge alliances with members of other ethnic groups. However, the trauma of Biafra has made it difficult to develop relationships of trust. Today’s Igbo still remember that in their time of greatest need, they were abandoned, not only by the international community but also by their fellow Nigerians. When the conflict started in 1966, the Igbo saw the Muslims in the far North as their main adversaries and hoped for support from neighbouring peoples, who were largely Christian. However, the vast majority of non-Igbo Christians joined the Northerners in their fight against Biafra. For the beleaguered Igbo, this was a betrayal: Christian Yoruba, Tiv and Berom had abandoned the cause of Christianity by siding with the Muslim aggressors. Europeans who visited Igboland in those years found a widespread “self-consciousness of a Christian state facing a Muslim jihad.”26 Biafra’s leader, General Ojukwu, declared in 1968: “Biafra is a Christian Country, we believe in

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the ability of the Almighty God to come to the aid of the oppressed and give us victory as he gave to young David over Goliath.”27 The reference to David and Goliath placed the struggle for Igbo selfdetermination in the context of Biblical mythology, but it also pointed to contemporary events and indicated a strong tendency to identify with the modern Jewish nation. Just a week after Biafra had declared its independence, the Six-Day War broke out in the Middle East, and Israel defeated its Arab neighbours, whose armies were larger and better equipped. Igbo nationalists have interpreted the “liberation of Jerusalem” by Israeli soldiers in June 1967 as fulfilment of a divine promise.28 God’s chosen people, the ancient Hebrews, had been despised and persecuted, put under a foreign yoke and scattered among distant people. However, God had promised to raise their descendants above other nations. Among modern-day Jews, this prophecy seemed to have come true. Just a few years after they had almost been annihilated, the survivors of the holocaust mustered the strength to establish their own state. Igbo patriots marvel at the way Jewish settlers (or returnees) have turned an arid stretch of land into an intensely cultivated, prosperous country. And they are fascinated by the military might of Israel, which gives its citizens security in a hostile environment: The Jews who neglected political power and central leadership prior to 1945 have sworn that they will never be humiliated again. […] if a hostile nation humiliates a Jew, the government of Israel does not go to sleep. In fact the title of their national anthem is NEVER AGAIN, and the idea behind this is that it is unacceptable for any Jew to be insulted any where in the world again. It is a doctrine no Jew plays with. Every Israelite is a soldier. He knows the attitude of his hostile neighbours. He is ever prepared to defend himself.29

Although Israel is surrounded by a Muslim population that is far superior in numbers, its citizens do not have to bow. The Igbo, by contrast, are forced to swallow insults, particularly in the diaspora of the North. When attacked, they cannot retaliate because they are in a vulnerable position. While millions of Igbo are living in cities of the North, just a few Hausa-Fulani are residing in Igboland. If mutual killings escalated, Igbo would be the losers, like in 1966, when they were driven away. Other Nigerians are, of course, aware that the Igbo, who have invested massively in all parts of Nigeria, cannot afford returning to their “homeland”. Therefore, Biafra is often dismissed as an empty threat. Igbo have little bargaining power. They are the first to be attacked and driven away, when communal clashes erupt in the North, but they have always returned. As a

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Northern magazine put it: “You can kill them easier than send them home. […] they are essentially parasites. They only serve as middle men, buying from A to sell to B. ‘So if they all go home who will buy from whom?’”30 It was only once, in February 2000, after the Sharia riots in the Northern city of Kaduna, that some Igbo retaliated massively. When truckloads of corpses arrived in Igboland for burial, the main mosque in Aba went up in flames and hundreds of Hausa-Fulani were slaughtered in Igbo towns. The massacres were not a spontaneous outburst of violence, but had been carefully planned.31 Of course, no Igbo leader wanted to accept responsibility for the rage of the men in the street, but they advised their opponents in the North to take the three hundred deaths as a “warning signal.”32 Their belligerence was captured by a statement of Ojukwu, the former Biafra-leader: “there is nothing actually wrong with vengeance. It is the national policy of Israel you know, ours cannot be different. […] I am a Roman Catholic. Every time, you hear Muslims say we want jihad, we want jihad. When did Jihad start frightening Christians?”33

Jewish Links Many Igbo believe that they are “living in the midst of enemies”—a fate that they seem to share with the Jews.34 Moreover, they assume that Jews and Igbo have been hated for the same reasons: Both nations are more gifted than others, and its members have often been blessed by economic success. Due to their achievements in trade, academia and other professions, they have attracted much envy. Thus the “Igbophobia” of non-Igbo is rooted in an inferiority complex; it is “born out of the fear of the higher ingenuity, higher industry, higher wisdom and higher intellectual power of Ndigbo.”35 Jews and Igbo seem to be linked not only by historical experiences but also by shared traits of culture and personality. One way of explaining this congruence is to assume a single origin: “The Igbos and the Jews have the same ancestral lineage and that is why they have similar experience.”36 Such speculations are not just a matter of a few Igbo intellectuals. A recent study on Igbo village histories found that “the idea of a Middle Eastern origin of the Igbo pervades oral historical accounts.”37 This is, however, a new phenomenon. The Igbo only learnt about the Jews by reading the Bible and by sifting information from modern mass media. Their precolonial traditions contained no hint of a migration from Egypt, Israel or any other distant land.38 Until the early twentieth century, when the British conquered the area, Igbo-speakers were living in hundreds of autonomous village groups, without overarching political or religious

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authorities. They had no sense of belonging together, no common name, no national or ethnic history. This made it easy to adopt the Old Testament as a “sort of alternative ‘tribal’ history” and thus as a repertoire of metaphors, narratives and religious ideas that helped them to organise collective experiences.39 Identifying with a distant people that has played a prominent role in world history is a means of reflecting their place in the jumble of global forces. It helps them to discuss who they are and what they are striving for. When comparing their fate with that of ancient and modern Jews, it is not important whether they actually believe in a genealogical relationship. Assuming a Jewish identity is not so much a matter of personal conviction. It was common in pre-colonial times to construct genealogies in order to define social relationships and relationships between political units. The Igbo used to live in hundreds of “towns”, i.e. in federations of villages that had moved together in defence of their land. Villages that formed a “town” often claimed to be related by a common ancestor whose sons had founded the villages. Positing kinship ties was not a matter of belief. Genealogies were directed towards the future, not the past.40 They formulated a kind of social contract that bound independent groups together, creating a social reality that guided people’s behaviour. They acted as if they were brothers. Some participants of the 12th World Igbo Congress in Boston aptly explained this creation of permanent bonds. They approached representatives of the Jewish community in Boston and suggested “to forge a unique friendship” since they felt “a spiritual bond with the Jewish population”: “We want to join and walk together with the Jews. Whenever Israel suffers in any possible way, the Igbos feel it.”41 The question of whether the Igbo are genetically related to the ancient Hebrews has not received much attention. Only a few locally produced books collected evidence meant to prove the Jewish descent. They were written by Igbo intellectuals, though not professional historians. They relied, above all, on Bible verses to show that ancient Hebrews and precolonial Igbo observed the same customs, such as purity taboos, circumcision rites and first-fruit festivals. Common culture traits had already been listed in early accounts on the Igbo.42 However, the similarities did not exceed what has been observed among the Zulu and other African peoples. Igbo researchers who sought to trace their Jewish roots had to admit that the Mosaic culture which the Igbo had brought from the Holy Land had only survived in an “adulterated form.”43 When the Jewish migrants settled in their new African surrounding, they mixed with the local population and became black people. Their pure monotheistic religion “degenerated”; they worshipped “gods of wood and

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stone” and turned to witchcraft and “fetishism.”44 As a result, “God ceased to care for them,” and they plunged even deeper into ignorance and misery.45 Today, salvation seems only possible if they renounce those “idolatrous customs” which they acquired in the African diaspora and which are “completely at variance with the Jewish racial dignity, nobility and monotheism.”46 Breaking with the pagan past would allow them to rediscover their Jewish identity. But what would a “renaissance of Jewishness” look like?47 Only a small number of Igbo have converted to Judaism and are looking for recognition by Jewish communities in Israel and in the USA.48 The vast majority practise Christianity, whether they assume a bond of kinship with ancient Israel or not. Many have embraced Christianity in order to become modern people and acquire access to western education and lifestyles. They are not interested in religious observances that date back to Mosaic times. Those who feel an affinity to the Jews are more attracted by the achievements of modern Israel. In the imagination of the Igbo it is easy to be both Christian and Jew. A journal that serves as a discussion forum for Igbo secessionists published a “vision” of Biafra that fuses Christian and Jewish elements. This future Biafra, although an independent, sovereign state, will be firmly aligned to “the Commonwealth of Israel” and “committed to political as well as spiritual Zionism.” “The cities of Biafra will be named after Israeli cities, just as Australian cities are named after English cities.” The currency will be the “Biafran Shekel,” and the national flag will display the Star of David. Administratively, Biafra will be subdivided into twelve states, and “the legislature shall be a 120-member single chamber house to be known as the Biafran Knesset.”49 This commitment to Zionism, however, does not rule out a commitment to Christianity. The new Biafra, with its Knesset and Israeli flag, is at the same time a “Pure Christian state […]. Therefore all systems and other instruments of worship will not be allowed.” In order to advance the spread of Christianity, ten percent of the national revenue “will be devoted to zealous evangelization of the world.” However, this work of Christian mission will be supervised by a Jew because the “president of Israel automatically becomes the president of the Christian Democratic Republic of Biafra.”50 Identifying with the Jews is a means to affirm their Christian identity. The Igbo are so intensely Christian, clinging to their covenant with God, that they have become His chosen people, like the Jews. This idea was already present during the civil war when Biafran propaganda fostered a strong “identification of Biafra with Biblical Israel” and denounced its adversaries as “Gentiles.”51 Britain in particular was portrayed as a godless

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nation, sunk into “spiritually bankruptcy.”52 Her “refusal to take sides with justice—with Biafra—was evidence of her failure as a Christian nation.”53 For the beleaguered Biafrans, Christianity became an ethnic religion. They saw themselves as a chosen people, closer to God than those alleged Christians who made common cause with the “Islamists”. The God of the Old Testament was not only talking to them as individual Christians, he was addressing them as a nation with a divine mission. Thus their unique suffering could be interpreted as a sign of election. Today’s Igbo nationalists speak with pride about the religious enthusiasm of the Biafrans who were “butchered for Christ by hordes of fanatical Northern Nigerian Moslem Fundamentalists.”54 The idea that the Igbo are a scattered group of Israelites, destined to suffer but firm in their faith, has served to dissociate themselves from other Christians, not only in Nigeria but also in the west. While the Biafrans remained committed to Christianity, other socalled Christians sided with the “jihadists” and participated in genocide.

Rival Visions of Jewishness If the Igbo assume that they have their spiritual or biological roots outside Africa, then it seems better to dissolve the political association with the surrounding ethnic groups. The common state, which colonial rule imposed on them, is only a hindrance to Igbo development. With the “exodus” from Nigeria, the Igbo could establish their own successful state, as did the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust when they took possession of their Holy Land.55 Israel is not even half the size of Igboland and it is more densely populated, yet its seven million inhabitants have built one of the world’s most impressive high-tech economies. Igbo nationalists argue that they could achieve the same, if only they were freed from the retarding influence of their African surroundings: “Nothing good can ever come out of Nigeria. What you hear are power outages, shortage of water, armed robbery and other evils. We don’t want to be part of that evil. […] Biafra has all the resources—our scientists are scattered all over the world, they will come back. I tell you, in the first two years of Biafra, we shall be manufacturing nuclear weapons.”56 Nigeria has come to symbolise what is holding the Igbo back, while Biafra signifies the very opposite: all the achievements the Igbo could have made, if they had been allowed to develop on their own. Nationalist rhetoric gives an explanation for the failures of the past; it provides an answer to the disturbing question why millions of talented and industrious people cannot get out of their misery: “Left alone, the Igbo would soar to the stars. Nigeria has almost destroyed the Igbo dream.”57

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Assuming to be (like) Jews enhances separatist tendencies among the Igbo. However, the story of their Jewish origin can also be told in a way that would facilitate alliances with other Nigerians. Prof. Alaezi in his book Ibos: Hebrew Exiles from Israel rejects the assumption that only one group of Jews reached today’s Nigeria and that the Igbo stem from a single Jewish tribe.58 There must have been several waves of migration to West Africa involving various tribes. The first settlers may already have come with the Exodus from Egypt, when the Israelites fled Pharaonic oppression.59 Only a part of them probably followed Moses across the Red Sea into the Sinai desert; others headed southwards through Sudan and the Chad basin. Later waves of migration were triggered by the Assyrian persecution, the Babylonian captivity, and the destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70 under Roman rule.60 Since the groups of refugees came independently, they must have settled in various places: in today’s Igboland as in neighbouring areas. The names of some ethnic groups surrounding the Igbo still betray their Jewish origins: The Idoma, who are living immediately to the north, derive from the Biblical Edomites, while the Efik people of Calabar at the south coast stem from Caleb Arba, and the Igala from Igal.61 The paradigm of a “multi-tribal origin” of the Jewish immigrants makes it easier to embrace other Nigerians as fellow Jews.62 Although the Ijaw, Ibibio, Efik and Igbo form distinct nations, they share a common destiny as descendants of the twelve tribes that once formed Israel. Acknowledging this Biblical link would make it easier for the ethnic groups in the eastern region to form an alliance against the rest of Nigeria. Such an alliance has been advocated by many Igbo nationalists, moderates as well as radicals. MASSOB’s Director for Information appealed to the Igbo and to the ethnic minorities at the south coast to overcome the enmity which Nigeria’s “divide and rule” policy has created among them, and retrieve their former unity: “we’ve understood that we are the same, that it is the Hausa man and Yoruba man that are our enemies.”63 The model of the scattered tribes that lost contact but have to recover their Jewish origins is well suited to express these common aspirations: “The new Biafra is supposed to comprise [the] lost but recovered Jews who settle on the coasts of the Niger Delta and in the hinterlands of Eastern Nigeria.”64 If all these neighbouring groups could be incorporated, Biafra would be “the most powerful and prosperous state in Black Africa.”65 How would such a state be organised? Would it be a federation of autonomous Jewish nations, or would it be dominated by the Igbo, the most populous group in the region? The myth of a Jewish immigration to eastern Nigeria can be told in a way that would justify Igbo empire building. According to Alaezi,

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the Igbo have preserved their “Jewish racial dignity” to a larger extent than some of their neighbours: “not all Igalas are of Hebrew (Ibo) descent. Many also come from the stock of Oduduwa [the ancestor of the Yoruba, J.H.],” while the “people of Onitsha,” the commercial capital of Igboland, “are purely Hebrews or Heebos (Ibos) of Eri stock from the tribe of Gad.”66 A map that MASSOB distributed in 2000 showed the future Biafra Republic encompassing not only Igboland but a large part of the Niger Delta and other coastal regions which are populated by ethnic minorities. Representatives of these groups warned MASSOB not to include them in their secessionist project, as was the case in 1967, when all parts of the Eastern Region were forced to join Biafra. It is obvious that today’s Igbo secessionists, like their predecessors in the 1960s, want to annex the coastal region for geostrategic reasons. Biafra would need control of the oil fields and access to the sea, in order to be a viable state. Given these vital interests, MASSOB has not renounced its claim to “liberate” the whole eastern region including the minority areas. However, its leader assured non-Igbo that they have nothing to fear when living in a state with an Igbo majority: A born-again Biafra “will have no majority and minority tribes. We […] embrace ourselves as brothers and sisters […]. We are committed in this new Biafra project to carry everybody along, be he Ibibio, Ogoni, Ijaw, Igbo, Efik.”67 In his vision of a peaceful multi-ethnic federation, the MASSOB leader might have referred to the idea that the Igbo and their neighbours share a Jewish origin. But he did not. A panJewish alliance of ethnic groups in southeast Nigeria (the former Eastern Region) is not sight. People at the coast care less about a possible Jewish identity, and those who do may interpret it quite differently from the Igbo.68 The Jewish people with whom the Igbo identify are a phantasm. Drawing from Biblical stories, television news and history books, the Igbo are free to construct a Jewish alter ego that suits their nationalist aspirations. Their reconstruction of a Hebrew past indicates, in most cases, a rejection of their African heritage. However, the myth of their oriental origin can also be told in ways that create space for Pan-Africanist ideas and for a critique of white racism. Prof. Ogbukagu, who taught Geology at the University of Awka, sought to prove, by adducing Biblical evidence, that the original inhabitants of Israel were Africans. He identified them with the Essenes, claiming that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, King David, King Solomon, John the Baptist and Jesus Christ were members of the group.69 These black Jews, however, were despised, persecuted, and finally expelled by the white, Caucasian Jews.70 These whites were “not

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the real Jews,” not the descendants of Shem and Abraham but the offspring of Japhet.71 They had settled in Europe, from where they migrated to the Holy Land and became Jews by conversion. If the “original Jews” were expelled by the white Jews, then “the present Caucasian race occupying Israel” has no divine right to the land.72 Prof. Ogbukagu did not draw this conclusion. Like other Igbo nationalists, he did not criticise the Israeli government and its role in the Middle East, but another Nigerian author writing on black Jews did. Dr Abasika is an Ibibio from the coastal region, but his report on the Jewish origin of the Ibibio (and other West Africans) is in many respects similar to what we learned about the Igbo: “the Ibibio Tribe is one of the members of the Lost Tribes of Israel. […] super intelligence, hard work, prosperity and blessedness, are the most prominent traits inherited from their ancestors.”73 Their residence in ancient Israel ended, when they, and many other black Jews, were driven out by the whites, who had not been part of the original twelve tribes to whom God had given the land, but late-comers from Europe.74 Abasika deduced from this fact that Israel is “a black man’s land” and that “Caucasians have no business in this region.”75 The white Jews who occupied it half a century ago came to make it an outpost of US imperialism: “After the Second World War in 1945, the United States of America in conjunction with the United Nations forcefully created a territory out of Palestine and flew into that region millions of Caucasian Jews” with the aim “to maintain white supremacy.”76 For this purpose they attacked the indigenous population who had lived there in peace: “Today, bombs and gunfires rain all over Lebanon; men, women, both born and unborn children are killed everywhere […]. This act of genocide is sponsored by the United States of America.”77 What was done to the ancestors of the Ibibio two thousand years ago, when they were cast out from their home, is done to the Palestinians today. Both are Semites who (have) lived in the Holy Land since Abraham’s times and thus have a claim to the land. Moreover, both are classified as blacks: “Palestine is a Black Arab Nation. The Arabs are known as the Nilotic Negroes, […] direct descendants of Ishmael, the first son of Abraham, begotten from Hagar, an Egyptian Black woman. From this Biblical facts the Arabians, Iraqis and Iranians are Black/Coloured people belonging to a Black race.”78 As a Christian Jew, Dr Abasika extends a hand of friendship to his Muslim brothers: “Jesus Christ and Prophet Mohammed were relatives and cousins by blood lineage.”79 And Louis Farrakhan, the head of the Nation of Islam, is one of the “Black Leaders in Common Bond With Jesus Christ.”80 What unites all true adherents of the Abrahamic religions

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is their experience of oppression. The white Jews are not regarded as part of this camp; they are counted among the oppressors. Moreover, they are “hypocrites” who pose as the ancient owners of Israel, although they “know the facts of the matter.”81 Their illegitimate rule will come to an end, as is foretold in the Book of Revelation, where God condemned the blasphemy of those who “say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.”82 Their ruthlessness in driving out non-Caucasians came to light, when they murdered Jesus: “all the accusing fingers point to the Jews,” “the Jews killed Jesus Christ out of jealousy and hatred, not because of the offence he had committed but because of his black skin color.”83

Staging Global Conflicts in Nigeria Among Igbo nationalists, attitudes towards Israel and its government are normally friendly. When MASSOB invited foreign statesmen to attend the launching of its Biafra campaign, it sent an invitation letter to the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.84 As the most westernised people in Nigeria, the Igbo are often seen as representatives of American, European or Jewish interests. As such they have become targets of aggression, when other Nigerians expressed their anger of western politics.85 When the US army attacked Afghanistan and Iraq, Muslim militants in Kano marched into the Christian quarter of town, shouted anti-US slogans and burned the churches and stores of Christians, most of them Igbo.86 Another occasion for attacks on the Igbo diaspora has been the annual celebration of Al Quds Day (Jerusalem Day), instituted by the Iranian government as a worldwide day of protest against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Each year at the end of Ramadan, when Shiite militants take to the streets chanting anti-Israel slogans, Igbo traders in Kano or Zaria fear for their life. As members of a vast diaspora of traders and artisans that has suffered persecution in many parts of the North, they are cautious not to provoke their ‘hosts’. However, they are sometimes drawn into conflicts without the slightest provocation. When a Danish newspaper published caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, the Christian minority anticipated trouble and distanced itself from the event. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), speaking on behalf of all churches, was the first to denounce the “blasphemy” committed by Danish artists, but this did not assuage Muslim anger. In the city of Maiduguri, fifty six church buildings were razed and dozens of Christians were killed.87 The most violent reaction to a global event occurred in September 2001 after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York. News of 9/11 had

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a strong polarising effect, because many Nigerians interpreted it as part of a global confrontation between Muslims and Christians. As a religious event that involved worldwide communities, it could be replicated by actors in Nigeria, who identified with far-away people. When images of the attack spread in Jos, a city in the Middle Belt of Nigeria, between the Muslim North and the Christian South, people took to the streets and reenacted the clash, creating what an observer called “our version of the American 9/11.”88 According to the police, more than three thousand lives were lost in the course of the riot and its suppression by police and army units.89 The tension that erupted in Jos had its roots in local hostilities. The “indigenous” Birom and Anaguta had clashed with Hausa “settlers” over the control of land and the distribution of posts in the local government administration. Although the “indigenes” are largely Christians, while the Hausa are Muslims, the conflict between them had been perceived less in religious than in ethnic terms. Thus the Igbo diaspora had not been much affected. But things changed with 9/11, when Muslims took to the streets and celebrated the victory over the world power. Their demonstration turned violent when some of the protestors called for the introduction of Sharia and attacked the shops of Igbo traders and other Christians from the South who had not been involved in the dispute so far.90 News of the events in New York did not just trigger more violence; they structured the urban conflict in Jos in a new, more dangerous way. All parts of the population were drawn into the confrontation, and the city split in two religious halves. Districts in which Christians had driven out the Muslim inhabitants were given new names such as Jesus Zone, New Jerusalem or Promised Land, while Muslims renamed their quarters Jihad Zone, Saudi Arabia or Seat of [bin] Laden.91 This religious polarisation makes it difficult to reach a political compromise and agree on a formula to share administrative offices and other local resources. As long as Nigerians fight each other as Jews and Palestinians, Americans and Arabs, they will find it hard to settle their differences. They disempower themselves by becoming participants in a global drama whose course they cannot influence. As already said, members of the Igbo diaspora are reluctant to play their part in the clash of global forces, but they cannot prevent being treated as representatives of alien imperial powers, attracting hatred as a substitute for long-distance enemies who are out of reach. Identifying with a far-away people like the Jews who have survived in the face of extreme adversity is, among others, a means of organising collective memories that have revolved around the genocide of Biafra. It

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may help the Igbo to deal with the trauma of the past and to understand their unique situation in Nigeria. However, it may also lead them astray. Their assumption that they live “in the midst of enemies” alienates them from other Nigerians and hinders the formation of long-term alliances.92 This is something the Igbo can ill afford, because they are trapped in Nigeria and have no choice but to get along with its peoples.93 Nationalist discourses emphasise historic continuities and construct Igbo collective memory as a chain of violent events that runs through successive generations: “cyclical killings, pogroms, and genocide [have been] committed against the Igbo by Northern nation(s) for over half a century.”94 The traumas of the past are recalled to make sense of present conflicts, although the political constellations have changed. In the late 1960s, the Igbo stood almost alone against the rest of the federation, but with the resurgence of militant Islam in the 1980s, violence in north Nigeria has been also directed against other Christian minorities. Christian Igbo, Yoruba, Berom and Ibibio have a common interest in defending the secular elements of Nigeria’s constitution, although so far they have cooperated only sporadically. Another major change concerns the security forces. During the pogroms of 1966, police and army units played a leading role in the killing and ethnic cleansing of Igbo, but since the 1970s they have no longer participated in communal clashes but tried to suppress them. When ethno-religious riots broke out, Igbo often sought refuge in police stations and army barracks. In most cases, though, state authorities have failed to prosecute the attackers, so there is little hope that hostilities against the Igbo will end. Bouts of violence, which have claimed thousands of lives, keep memories of Biafra alive. Nationalist publications often refer to the atrocities committed by the Nigerian army. Recalling the horrors of the war is not meant to discourage fighters for a new Biafra but to harden their resolve. It reminds them that there can be no compromise with people who committed such horrendous crimes. The pogroms of 1966 and the starvation policy of the Nigerian government are interpreted as an attempt to wipe out the whole Igbo population. However, it is misleading to compare themselves to the survivors of the Nazi holocaust, as there is no evidence that the Gowon Regime intended to exterminate the Igbo.

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Notes 1

G. E. O. Ogum, foreword to The Igbo and the Riddles of their Jewish Origins, by N. T. Ogbukagu (Enugu: Chobikate Nigeria Company, 2001), IX. 2 While I was working at Nsukka University (1993, 1994–96), people did not talk about Jewish identities. 3 Ukoha Ukiwo, “Politics, Ethno-Religious Conflicts and Democratic Consolidation in Nigeria,” Journal of Modern African Studies 41/1 (2003): 115. 4 Ralph Uwazuruike, in The News [a magazine published in Lagos], January 7, 2002, “Nobody Can Stop Biafra,” 42. 5 The News, April 17, 2000, “I Will Bury Nigeria,” 16. 6 Estimates on the number of casualties vary considerably. The only way to obtain reliable figures would have been to take a sample of regions in southeast Nigeria and inquire about the number of victims. Harneit-Sievers found in his research area that about ten percent of the population had died as a consequence of the war. If figures in other regions were similar, then the assumption of about one million casualties would be realistic (Axel Harneit-Sievers, “Nigeria: Der Sezessionskrieg um Biafra. Keine Sieger, keine Besiegten – Eine afrikanische Erfolgsgeschichte?,” in Vergessene Kriege in Afrika, ed. Rolf Hofmeier (Göttingen: Lamuv, 1992), 285. 7 Odumegwu Ojukwu, in The Source [Lagos], June 2, 1997, “Why We Lost,” 8. 8 John de St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1972), 211, 214–218, 229; Suzanne Cronje, The World and Nigeria: The Diplomatic History of the Biafran War 1967–1970 (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1972), 323; Stanley Diamond, “Who Killed Biafra?,” Dialectical Anthropology 31 (2007): 343; John F. Stremlau, The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War 1967–1970 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 224–233; Francoise Ugochukwu, Torn Apart: The Nigerian Civil War and its Impact (London: Adonis & Abbey, 2010), 16–18. Support by Israel is discussed by Lis in this volume. 9 Obafemi Awolowo, Vice Chairman of Nigeria’s Federal Executive Council, in Cronje, The World and Nigeria, 115. 10 Harneit-Sievers, Nigeria, 281; St. Jorre, Nigerian Civil War, 272; Cronje, The World and Nigeria, 75. 11 Odumegwu Ojukwu, in a speech on September 25, 1968 (C. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Biafra: Selected Speeches of C. Odumegwu Ojukwu, General of the People’s Army. With Diaries of the Events [New York et al.: Harper & Row, 1981], 353). 12 Stremlau, International Politics, 109–117, 320–321, 328. 13 Uche Chukwumerije, in Stremlau, International Politics, 328. The term ‘genocide’ is not clearly defined, when Nigerians argue over the civil war. By conceding that “the threat of genocide was […] not true,” Chukwumerije meant: The Biafran propaganda misled its population when it claimed that the Nigerian government sought to annihilate the whole Igbo population. Nevertheless, the killings of Igbo from 1966 to 1970 can be called a ‘genocide’, following the definition adopted by the United Nations in 1948: “genocide means […] [d]eliberately inflicting on [a] group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole

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or in part.” (Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2). 14 Republic of Biafra, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Reviewing our Diplomatic Approach,” December 1968, in Stremlau, International Politics, 321. 15 St. Jorre, Nigerian Civil War, 150, 188–189, 255–257, 265, 268; Cronje, The World and Nigeria, 83, 88. 16 St. Jorre, Nigerian Civil War, 220, 222, 223, 291, 346, 380. 17 Douglas A. Anthony, Poison and Medicine: Ethnicity, Power, and Violence in a Nigerian City, 1966 to 1986 (Portsmouth: Heinemann/Oxford: James Currey/Cape Town: David Philip, 2002). 18 St. Jorre speaks of 10,000 victims, though he assumes that the most reliable estimates are between 6000 and 8000 (St. Jorre, Nigerian Civil War, 86). This accords with the figure of 10,000 victims given by Ojukwu in January 1967 during the negotiations at Aburi (Stremlau, International Politics, 38). It was only later that the Biafran side spoke of 30,000 or 100,000 dead. In a recent History of Nigeria Falola and Heaton put the figure at 80,000 to 100,000 (Toyin Falola and Matthew M. Heaton, A History of Nigeria [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008], 174). 19 Anthony, Poison and Medicine, 86, 106–108. 20 St. Jorre, Nigerian Civil War, 87, 98, 100, 102. 21 St. Jorre, Nigerian Civil War, 236. 22 Ibid., 404, 287. 23 M. C. K. Ajuluchuku, in: Newswatch [Lagos], April 10, 2000, “Why Confederation Is Good for Nigeria,” 14. 24 Johannes Harnischfeger, Democratization and Islamic Law: The Sharia Conflict in Nigeria (Frankfurt/New York: Campus, 2008). 25 K. Onwuka Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta 1830–1885: An Introduction to the Economic and Political History of Nigeria (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), 28. 26 A. F. Walls, “Religion and the Press in ‘the Enclave’ in the Nigerian Civil War,” in Christianity in Independent Africa, ed. Edward Fasholé-Luke et al. (Bloomington/London: Collings, 1978), 212. 27 Odumegwu Ojukwu, in Cyril C. Okorocha, The Meaning of Religious Conversion in Africa: The Case of the Igbo of Nigeria (Aldershot: Avebury, 1987), 117. 28 O. Alaezi, Ibos: Hebrew Exiles from Israel. Amazing Facts and Revelations (Aba: Onzy Publications, 1999), 16, 141. 29 Joe Igbokwe, Igbos: 25 Years after Biafra ([Lagos]: Advent Communications, 1995), 77–78. 30 Hotline [Kaduna], April 3, 2000, “Enough of the Blackmail,” 20. 31 Kate Meagher, “Hijacking Civil Society: The Inside Story of the Bakassi Boys Vigilante Group of South-eastern Nigeria,” Journal of Modern African Studies 45/1 (2007): 102. 32 The News, March 27, 2000, “We Are Battle Ready,” 16. 33 Newswatch, March 20, 2000, “Sharia Is a Sabotage,” 11.

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Ralph Uwazuruike, in The News, January 7, 2002, “Nobody Can Stop Biafra,” 42. 35 News Service [Enugu], February 2002, “Editorial,” 13; cf. The Voice of Igbo Israel, August 30, 2009, “What Are Responsible for Igbo and Jewish Higher Intelligence?,” http://igboisrael.blogspot.com. 36 Pilot [an Igbo periodical], Vol. 7, No. 14, 2004, “Biafrans: Origin and Ways of Life,” 3; Daniel Jordan Smith, A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), 206–207. The Pilot and other Igbo periodicals quoted here have been published in Lagos. Though written in English, they are addressed exclusively to an Igbo readership. When I collected copies in 2007, these publications had no site in the internet, so the articles quoted from these periodicals only exist in a printed form. However, most other articles have been accessible in the internet, in particular those from newspapers and weekly magazines with a Nigeria-wide circulation and a multi-ethnic readership, such as The Guardian, Newswatch, Tell, The News and Weekly Trust. 37 Axel Harneit-Sievers, Constructions of Belonging: Igbo Communities and the Nigerian State in the Twentieth Century (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2006), 22. 38 A. E. Afigbo, Ropes of Sand: Studies in Igbo History and Culture (Ibadan: University of Nigeria Press, 1981), 4; Victor C. Uchendu, The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), 2. The Igbo historian Adiele Afigbo, who started collecting oral histories in the 1960s, heard it mentioned “only once […] that an illiterate Igbo elder told the tradition” of an oriental origin (A. E. Afigbo, “Traditions of Igbo Origins: A Comment,” History in Africa 10 [1983]: 3). 39 Ruth Marshall, “Mediating the Global and Local in Nigerian Pentecostalism,” Journal of Religion in Africa 28/3 (1998): 291; cf. Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 40 Harneit-Sievers, Constructions of Belonging, 20–21, 30–31; Dimitri van den Bersselaar, In Search of Igbo Identity: Language, Culture and Politics in Nigeria, 1900 – 1966 (Rijksuniversiteit, Proefschrift, 1998). http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/~dvdb/0_Contents.pdf, 39. 41 The Jewish Advocate [Boston], September 13, 2006, “Igbos Seek Jewish Link,” http://www.ajcboston.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=mwL7KmNZLtH&b=2 000121&ct=3500569. 42 From the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, a number of texts speculated about the Jewish origins of the Igbo, but these texts were written by Europeans or by Igbo in the diaspora: in Sierra Leone, England, the United States and the Caribbean, where the idea of an Igbo people emerged. In the Igbo-speaking area of today’s Nigeria, people only began to see themselves as Igbo in colonial times, and they only learnt about Jews by reading the Bible. See Daniel Lis, Imagined Kinship? Nigerian Igbo in Israel and the Question of Belonging [Basel: Institute

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for Jewish Studies, University of Basel, 2011 (forthcoming)] and Bruder, in this volume. 43 Ik N. T. Ogbukagu, The Igbo and the Riddles of their Jewish Origins (Enugu: Chobikate Nigeria Company, 2001), 106, 39, 95. 44 Alaezi, Ibos, 37, 43, 44, 70, 105, 106. 45 Ogbukagu, The Igbo, 95. 46 Alaezi, Ibos, 7. 47 Body & Soul [an Igbo periodical], Vol. 3, No. 3, 2003, “Biafra on the Threshold of Rebirth,” 4. 48 Bruder estimates that as many as 30,000 Igbo practice some form of Judaism (Edith Bruder, The Black Jews of Africa: History, Religion, Identity [Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2008], 143; see Daniel Lis, “Igbo Jews: Religious Shift. From Igbo Sabbatharians to Igbo Converts to Judaism in Israel?,” Chilufim 11 (2011) [in print]). 49 Body & Soul, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2003, “The Vision/Mission State of the New Biafra,” 6. 50 Ibid. 51 Walls, Religion, 211, 213; Ogbu U. Kalu, The Embattled Gods: Christianization of Igboland, 1841–1991 (Lagos/London: Minaj Publishers, 1996), 267, 268. 52 Walls, Religion, 211, 213. 53 Okorocha, Religious Conversion, 117. 54 New Republic [an Igbo periodical], Vol. 4, No. 3, 2006, “An International Conference on the Endangered Igbo Nation and the Political Status of Biafra,” 7. 55 New Republic, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2006, “People’s Parliament,” 6. 56 Ralph Uwazuruike, in The News, April 17, 2000, “I Will Bury Nigeria,” 16. 57 Obi Nwakanma, in Smith, Corruption, 194. 58 Ezeala: The Great Debate, quoted in Body & Soul, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2003, “How the Jewish Igbo Migrated to Nigeria,” 20 and in Alaezi, Ibos, 30. 59 Body & Soul, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2003, “Biafra on the Threshold of Rebirth,” 4. 60 Body & Soul, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2003, “How the Jewish Igbo Migrated to Nigeria,” 19; Alaezi, Ibos, 26, 31–32. 61 Ibid., 22–24; Ogbukagu, The Igbo, 24–26. Ilona suggests that the waves of migrants, crossing the Sahara, consisted not only of Jews but also of ancient Greeks and other Mediterranean peoples. At least one of them were Canaanites, as their name Yoruba indicates: “Yerubbaal”ʊ“people of Baal” (Remy Ilona, Introduction to the Chronicles of Igbo-Israel [Abuja: Igbo Israel Publishing, (no date)], 28). 62 Alaezi, Ibos, 31. 63 Comrade Uchenna Madu, in National Star [an Igbo periodical], Vol. 2, No. 29, “FG Has Killed over 1000 MASSOB Members,” 6. 64 Body & Soul, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2003, “Biafra on the Threshold of Rebirth,” 4. 65 New Republic, Vol. 4, No. 8, 2006, “Keeping and Leading the Eastern Region to Slavery,” 11. 66 Alaezi, Ibos, 7, 97.

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Body & Soul, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2003, “Biafra: Our Reason, our Tactics,” 10; The News, April 17, 2000, “I Will Bury Nigeria,” 14. 68 More on MASSOB and on other, less radical forms of Igbo nationalism in Johannes Harnischfeger, Igbo Nationalism and Biafra (Köln: Afrikanistik online, 2011), http://afrikanistik-online.de/archiv/2011/3042. 69 Ogbukagu, The Igbo, 22, 23. 70 Ibid., 23. 71 Ibid., 13, 10–11, 91–92. 72 Ibid., 9, 13, 11, 91. 73 Etiese T. Mkpa Abasika, This Black Jesus: The Conspiracy and the World’s Best Kept Secret. Analysis and Evaluation of His Life from the Pyramid of Power to Human Freedom (Lagos: Newswatch Book, 1993), 2. 74 Ibid., 161, 162. 75 Ibid., 162, 171. This corresponds with ideas circulating among Nigerian Muslims: The “European Jewry” that came to Palestine have no ancient claim to the land because they “descended from the Khazar tribe in Russia,” not from Abraham (Weekly Trust [Kaduna], November 2, 2001, “Anatomy of Terrorism”). 76 Abasika, Black Jesus, 161, 167. 77 Ibid., 167. 78 Ibid., 162. 79 Ibid., 163. 80 Ibid., 28. 81 Ibid., 163, 166. 82 Ibid., 163, Revelation 2:9. 83 Abasika, Black Jesus, 182, 183, 10. 84 Weekly Hammer [an Igbo periodical], Vol. 1, No. 3, 2000, “Guests of Biafra Declaration,” 5. Other recipients of invitation letters were, allegedly, Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro and Charles Taylor. 85 Resentment against Igbo is sometimes expressed by anti-Jewish stereotypes. Yet such stereotypes have also been used to slur Muslims. A. O. Olubunmi, a Yoruba author, singled out the Fulani, who had been a driving force in the Islamisation of northern Nigeria. Although a minority of nomadic pastoralists, they had toppled the Hausa kingdoms and the Oyo Empire, and established themselves in the early nineteenth century as a ruling aristocracy over a large peasant population: “Fulanis are descended from Jews […]. Adolf Hitler full well understood the destructive power of the Jews. Jews are the universal destroyers of civilization. If no Fulani had ever set foot in Ancient Oyo, the Oyo Empire would still be going today. Yorubas would be ruling a fine slice of the West African subcontinent. It is because of their destructiveness Fulani were wanderers with no country of their own. All Fulanis do is go to a place, bleed it dry, then look for new places to wreck ʊlike a virus. That is why Jews were kicked out of EVERY civilized country from Ancient Rome to Nazi Germany” (A. O. Olubunmi, On Ijesa Racial Purity [(no place): 199 Publishing Palace, 2009], 29).

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86 According to Newswatch (October 29, 2001, “Harvest of Death,” 36) the “Osama bin Laden riots” in Kano, following the US attack on Afghanistan, claimed 200 lives. 87 Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) Borno State, Christianity in Crisis: Lesson from Borno State 18 Feb. 2006 ([no place] [2006]), 109; Africa Research Bulletin [Oxford], February 1–28, 2006, “Religious Violence,” 16549. 88 Cletus Tanimu Gotan, “The Social Context of Ethno-Religious Conflicts in Plateau State,” in Muslim/Christian Dialogue on Peace in Jos, ed. Dennis Ityavyar (Jos: International Centre for Gender and Social Research, 2004), 69. 89 Haz Iwendi, a police spokesman, in Tell [Lagos], October 1, 2001, “We Were Fair to Both Sides,” 64. Umar Habila Dadem Danfulani and Sati U. Fwatshak (“Briefing: The September 2001 Events in Jos, Nigeria,” African Affairs 101 [2002]: 243, 249) have adopted this figure, while a report by Human Rights Watch talks of “more than 1000” casualties (Human Rights Watch, Nigeria: Jos. A City Torn Apart, http://hrw.org/reports/2001/nigeria/nigeria1201.pdf, pages 2, 10 (also available at: http://.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3c272b4e7.html). 90 The Guardian [Lagos], September 13, 2001, “Jos Boils Again”; Danfulani and Fwatshak, Briefing, 251. 91 Tell, October 15, 2001, “To Their Tents,” 36. 92 Ralph Uwazuruike, in The News, January 7, 2002, “Nobody Can Stop Biafra,” 42. 93 Many nationalists who emphasise the enmity between the Igbo and other Nigerians are Igbo émigrés in America and Europe who would not bear the costs of civil war, in case Nigeria fell apart. As an Igbo paper put it: “the flame of a new Biafra is burning with a greater passion abroad” (Body & Soul, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2003, “Aftermath of Biafra Conference in USA,” 9). 94 Eastern Sunset [an Igbo periodical], Vol. 3, No. 10, 2001, “MASSOB: Uwazuruike Writes Obasanjo,” 4.

CHAPTER FOUR ISRAELI FOREIGN POLICY TOWARDS THE IGBO DANIEL LIS

The Israeli Factor in Igbo’s Jewish Identification Although the popularity of the myth of a Hebrew, Israelite or Jewish origin of the Igbo can be documented amongst the Igbo Diaspora in the 18th and 19th century, the existence of modern Jews—as opposed to the Hebrews or Israelites mentioned in the Bible—remained largely unknown for the majority of Igbo until the establishment of the state of Israel. On the other hand the knowledge Jews had about the Igbo was scant, which might be suggested by the fact that two important British Rabbis on the occasion of the first Niger Expedition of 1841 had shown some interest in the Igbo on the grounds that they might belong to the lost tribes of Israel. Further connections between Jews and the Igbo did not materialize over the following century.1 The particular relevance of myths suggesting a Jewish origin for the Igbo becomes apparent when it comes to relations between the Igbo and modern-day Israel. I begin this chapter with the assumption that Israeli responses to rumours about the Jewish identity of the Igbo have been a significant factor in the construction of a Jewish identity and in the association of the Igbo with Israel. In this chapter I shall take a close look at the policy of the state of Israel toward the Igbo.2

Nnamdi Azikiwe, Igbo Nationalism and its Rise to the Occasion Nnamdi Azikiwe, the late Pan-Africanist, Nigerian statesman and Igbo leader, credited with much of the close cooperation that took place in the 1960s between Israel, Nigeria and the Igbo-dominated Eastern Region, was born in 1904 in Nigeria’s North. In 1917 as a student in the Igbo town

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of Onitsha, Azikiwe came under the direct influence of the famous Welsh Anglican Rev. G. T. Basden, a long time missionary in the Igbo-speaking areas, who held the view that many of the Igbo’s customs were similar to those of the Israelites in the Bible.3 Azikiwe, studied abroad in 1925, an experience that shaped much of his Pan-Africanist thought. In his Renascent Africa, published in 1937, Azikiwe drew on the Bible when he wrote about a great African past—mentioning old alliances with the Jews of Israel and Judah.4 However, he expressed neither ideas about a Jewish origin of the Igbo nor particularly mentioned the Igbo in this book. This was not surprising as the Igbo nationalist movement in Nigeria saw its establishment only in the mid 1930s as opposed to the Jewish nationalist movement of Zionism, which by the 1930s had already been in existence as a major political force amongst Jews for some decades.5 With his return to Lagos, in Western Nigeria, from the US and Ghana in 1937, Azikiwe entered the Nigerian newspaper business and party politics. While Azikiwe started his political career in cosmopolitan Lagos as a Nigerian nationalist with a large political following among Igbo who had settled in Lagos from the Igbo-speaking areas and other Nigerians, from the 1940s on his involvement took on an increasingly ethnic undertone.6 The period of the 1940s and 1950s was marked by rising political antagonism between the three major political camps in Nigeria, which came to represent the elites of the dominant group in each of the three Nigerian regions. The Muslim Hausa dominated the Northern People’s Congress (NPC), rejecting Nigerian independence; the Yoruba dominated the Action Group (AC) of Western Nigeria, with its leader Chief Obafemi Awolowo; and the Igbo dominated the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) in the Eastern Region, with Azikiwe as its leader. The Yoruba started to claim that Lagos was a Yoruba city and not some de-tribalized Nigerian territory where Igbo politicians (notably Azikiwe) should feel free to compete for political power. As Azikiwe’s stand in Lagos became increasingly difficult, his powerbase shifted to the Igbo-dominated Eastern Region where he was deified and his name became a legend.7 His election as president of the Igbo State Union at Port Harcourt in 1948 and his subsequent speeches as a president of the Union further increased his stature as an Igbo leader.8 In one particular widely noted speech, he called attention to an increasingly violent anti-Igbo sentiment that Igbo migrants had encountered in Western and Northern Nigeria from the 1940s onward.9 It would appear that God has specially created the Ibo (Igbo) people to suffer persecution and be victimized because of their resolute will to live.

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Since suffering is the label of our tribe, we can afford to be sacrificed for the ultimate redemption of the children of Africa.10

Although Azikwe did not pronounce the word Jew in his speech, the analogy to the destiny of the Jews he suggested seems quite evident, given the profound effect that the establishment of Israel had on the Igbo— including Azikiwe.11 One year after Azikiwe’s speech in Aba, Azikiwe became more explicit in his call for association with Israel: They [the Igbo] are industrious and enterprising and have powers of adaptability due to their colonizing instinct, which has led them to migrate to almost every part of West Africa. Granting that in any nation there must exist some undesirable characters, why should the Ibo nation be marked down for wholesale victimization, if the above sterling virtues are inherent in some of them? Like the Jews of the world, the Ibo of Africa must rise to the occasion >…@.12

Igbo and non-Igbo alike noted this speech by Azikiwe, the latter viewing it as an example of Igbo arrogance and clannishness. As the prospects for an independent Nigeria rose along with a general policy of de-colonialization of the former European colonies in Africa, tensions between the political parties in Nigeria reached boiling point, climaxing in attacks against Igbo residents in North Nigeria’s city of Kano in 1953. Of the 21 people killed, the vast majority were Igbo.13 At the same time, tension between Yoruba and Igbo politicians in Lagos fanned the flames of existing friction between the two southern groups. Out of this tension grew the search for associates outside Nigeria. Given renewed discussions of a Jewish origin of the Igbo, and comparisons of Igbo culture and historical experience with the Jews an alliance with Israel seemed only natural.14

Early Israeli - Igbo Relations In 1953, Azikiwe, as a representative of his NCNC, came to sit in the Coordination Committee of the Anti-Colonial Bureau of the Asian Socialist Conference in Rangoon. Reuven Barkatt who represented Israel’s ruling Labour Party and who was director of the political department of the Israeli labour union Histadrut (a state-building institution in Israel’s early years), sat on the same committee.15 This contact became crucial with the ascendancy of Azikiwe in 1954 to the premiership of the Igbodominated Eastern Region and with Barkatt’s close friendship with Golda Meir, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1956-1966.16 Concerning Israeli

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foreign policy toward Africa, Meir felt that Israel not only shared the challenges posed by the need for rapid development with the emerging states of Black Africa, but that Jews and Africans also shared a memory of suffering, oppression, discrimination and slavery. 17 Meir saw herself in the footsteps of Theodore Herzl, who wrote in 1902: There is still one other question arising out of the disaster of the nations which remains unsolved to this day, and whose profound tragedy only a Jew can comprehend. This is the African question. Just call to mind all those terrible episodes of the slave trade, of human beings who, merely because they were black, were stolen like cattle, taken prisoner, captured and sold. Their children grew up in strange lands, the objects of contempt and hostility because their complexions were different. I am not ashamed to say, though I may expose myself to ridicule in saying so, that once I have witnessed the redemption of the Jews, my people, I wish also to assist in the redemption of the Africans.18

However, in the first years of Israel’s independence, Black Africa was not a top priority in Israel’s foreign policy. While Israel’s political elite sympathized with the anti-colonial struggles and the plight of Black Africans and the only independent Black African states—Liberia and Ethiopia—were relatively pro-Zionist, Israel focused more on powers that could help its short-term survival.19 The non-invitation of Israel to the Afro-Asian Bandung Conference in Indonesia in 1955 served as a warning sign for an even greater isolation that followed, after the Sinai Campaign in 1956 in which Israel, together with France and Britain, tried to prevent an Egyptian blockade of the Suez Canal. Meir remembered some years later: I used to look around me at the United Nations in 1957 and 1958 and think to myself: “We have no family here. No one shares our religion, our language or our past.” […] Still the world was not made up exclusively of Europeans and Asians. There were also the emerging nations of Africa, then on the verge of achieving independence, and to the black states-in-themaking there was a great deal that Israel could and wanted to give. Like them, we had shaken off foreign rule; like them, we had had to learn for ourselves how to reclaim the land, how to increase the yields of our crops, how to irrigate, how to raise poultry, how to live together and how to defend ourselves. […] We couldn’t offer Africa money or arms but, on the other hand, we were free of the taint of the colonial exploiters because all that we wanted from Africa was friendship.20

There was also a practical economic issue—as the Suez crisis had shown—as to which seaports Israel could use, as many were closed to it in

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the country’s immediate neighbourhood. As part of the new interest in Black Africa, Israel’s foreign ministry published a survey about the economic conditions in some West African countries in 1956. According to this publication, the only Israeli company that had an office in Nigeria was M. Dizengoff & Co, a trading and shipping company owned by Tel Aviv’s first mayor Meir Dizengoff, who had an office in Lagos.21 Israel soon began to court the friendship of African political leaders.22 Israel’s first ambassador in Ghana remembered: “During the winter of 1956-57 the Foreign Relations Department of the Histadrut received a telegram from four African trade unionists, who had attended the Asian trade union conference in Bandung, where Israel had been excluded because of Arab pressure. They asked Barkatt if they could have a look for themselves and be guests of the Histadrut.”23 In 1958, Golda Meir made her first trip to Africa, visiting Liberia, Senegal, Ghana the Ivory Coast and Nigeria. In Nigeria she first visited Azikiwe’s seat of the Eastern government in Enugu in the Igbo-speaking area and then travelled on to Ibadan, the government seat of Western Nigeria. The friendship that developed between Meir and Azikiwe henceforward had an ideological basis, symbolized in Azikiwe’s presenting Meir in 1963 with Edward W. Blyden’s book The Jewish Question as a gift.24 With her visit, Meir initiated the so-called honeymoon period of Israeli-African relations. Joel Peter notes that, during those years, nothing was too good or too much for Africa and one observer remarked, “Israel has gone Africa mad.”25 From having virtually no history of contact and relations with the African world some years earlier, Israel became rapidly transformed into a major actor on the continent.26 Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Côte d’Ivoire, Congo, Senegal, Ethiopia and a number of other countries came to have a close relationship with Israel. Israel trained African officers from an early stage and in some cases before these countries reached independence. During her post as a minister of foreign affairs (1956-1965), Meir made several visits to Africa and attended the independence celebrations of Nigeria in October 1960. Israel became very active in Africa in the economic and commercial sphere, establishing a number of joint commercial and industrial companies. These enterprises engaged primarily in construction, water resource development and shipping. They consisted of a combination of one of Israel’s numerous public or semi-public companies and a local African partner, with the host African government owning the majority of the shares in the company. The Israeli partners in these ventures were not private entrepreneurs but quasi-public corporations in which the Israeli government had an important voice. These joint

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economic ventures operated for a limited period of time; the Israeli company carried out training programs to prepare local personnel eventually to replace the Israeli staff.27 When Nigeria became independent, its first government was led by Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, a Northern Muslim of the NPD and with Azikiwe’s NCNC as a junior partner. The Yoruba AG led the opposition. Israel soon opened a consulate in Lagos with ambassador Hanan Yavor.28 Moshe Dayan headed the Israeli delegation for the independence celebrations. Azikiwe, who had received a representative function as a governor-general, enjoyed telling him that the joint Israel Nigeria Water Company had completed the water pipeline the night before. The completed pipeline had reached Nsukka, the location of the first university in Igboland.29 Similarly, the preliminary scheme of the layout for the university prepared by Al Mansfield, an associate professor at the Technion in Haifa, met Azikiwe’s approval. Azikiwe had long dreamed of such an institution and the project was considered a top priority in Eastern Nigeria. It was clearly his pet child.30 Speaking at an Independence Day reception at the Israeli embassy in Lagos in 1961, Azikiwe said he appreciated Israel’s assistance to Nigeria and hoped to see it further extended and strengthened.31 Azikiwe represented a driving force who deepened the relations with Israel on a federal level.32 However, he was by no means the only politician supporting the deepening of ties on a federal level. Southern Nigerian politicians in general and Igbo politicians in particular supported a strengthening of ties between the two countries. However, the Arab states and increasingly Muslim politicians from the North of Nigeria as well voiced their opposition to ties with Israel. Arab governments (especially Egypt) geared up their efforts to restrict Israel’s influence in Africa in the 1960s. These efforts also included military aid. This became well known in Israel which rationalized that if Israel did not respond to requests for aid in this sphere, then the Arab countries would do so instead.33 In 1960, the Nigerian federal parliament discussed Nigeria-Israeli cooperation, stressing Israel’s constructive contribution to Nigeria’s fiveyear development plan. One member suggested entrusting the training of the Nigerian air force to Israeli instructors. Members of the ruling NPCNCNC coalition, as well as some of the opposition, proposed that the government thank Israel for the loan of £3 million for economic development in 1960.34 In 1960, the Nigerian federal minister of finance, on a visit to Israel, discussed road building, construction of hotels and public buildings, irrigation and agricultural development plans, among other projects, with Israeli Minister of Finance Eshkol and other Israeli

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leaders. Israel would provide construction materials on credit.35 The northern NPC, which was part of the government, mainly opposed it. However, in July 1960, when Eshkol visited Lagos, two parties reached an agreement. Half of the loan was to be in goods. Reviewing his visit to West Africa, Eshkol thought that the Muslims of Northern Nigeria showed no essential hostility to Israel and mentioned that at the Pan-African Conference in Addis Ababa, the Nigerian delegation had resisted Arab pressure for an anti-Israel resolution.36 When the federal government of Nigeria entered into a loan agreement with Israel, the NPC led Northern Nigerian government disassociated itself on the grounds that Nigeria should not have recognized Israel, a tiny country subsidized by “voluntary contributions by American Jews”. Nigerian Prime Minister Balewa, also a Northern Muslim and from the same party, rebuked the Northern regional government, stating that Nigeria and Israel shared a friendship and would cooperate for their mutual development. Further, he affirmed that Nigeria would not become entangled in a quarrel between the Jews and the Arabs.37 Igbo inside the federal Nigerian government often rebuffed repeated efforts to curb Israeli-Nigerian relations. The Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Jaja Wachuku, an Igbo, who in his term from 1961 until 1965 developed warm diplomatic ties with Golda Meir, swiftly and angrily put down a protest by Arab emissaries against the visit of Golda Meir in October 1964. A communiqué from the Nigerian Foreign Ministry read: The Government of Nigeria … views with great concern and seriousness the subtle attempt made by some friendly countries to disturb the normal relations of friendship existing between Israel and Nigeria, and particularly regards the joint memorandum submitted over the signatures of the [Arab] embassies […] as constituting undue and unwarranted intervention in the internal affairs of Nigeria.38

Relations between the Igbo-dominated Eastern Region and Israel as a Jewish state, offer special interest here. We can see by following the development of relations between Israel and the Eastern government that those special relations—initiated by Azikiwe as a premier of the Eastern Region until 1959—continued to grow after Azikiwe’s return to Nigerian national politics. In the Eastern Region, Azikiwe’s successor as premier of the Eastern Region, Dr. Michael Ihenonukara Okpara, also an Igbo, showed even more enthusiasm toward relations with Israel. When, in 1960, the Israeli ambassador to Ghana paid a visit to the Eastern Region, he met Okpara and other leaders. Reportedly, Okpara expressed satisfaction at the results

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of the joint economic projects with Israel and new possibilities for cooperation opened up.39 At the beginning of April 1960, the government of the Eastern Region officially adopted a master plan drawn up by Yohanan Elon, an Israeli town-planning expert, for the development of Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s second largest port, as a new industrial centre. In a letter to the expert, Okpara expressed the hope that this move represented the beginning of many more business associations between Israel and the Eastern Region.40 Elon was not the only Israeli working in the Eastern Region. Some 20 other professionals—engineers and technicians of various kinds—at the same time had engaged in contract work for the semi-public Israeli companies Solel Boneh and Mekorot.41 Town planning, master plans for universities, tourist industry construction, some 160 kilometres of main road construction, agriculture and waterresource development all involved some of the areas where Israelis were invited to give their expertise.42 This resulted in a number of Israeli reports written on behalf of the Eastern Region government.43 The Eastern Region government also sought Israeli cooperation in the areas of education and science—a field which the Igbo famously appreciated. On a visit to Israel in 1960, the Eastern Region’s Minister of Education E. G. Okeke, toured institutions of higher learning, mainly to recruit teachers.44 Dr. S. E. Imoke, finance minister of the Eastern Region, attended the Rehovot Conference on Science in the Advancement of New States.45 Prime Minister Okpara arrived in Israel on June 14, 1961, for a week’s visit. Chief John Nwodo, minister of commerce and other senior officials of the Eastern Region accompanied him. On arrival, Okpara called attention to the warm feelings for Israel in the Eastern Region; both peoples had the same inherent quality of frankness, which had already promoted a spirit of confidence and mutual trust between them. He was received by President Ben Zvi, met with Prime Minister David Ben Gurion for talks on joint development programs and visited vocational training centres, the Weizmann Institute, the Jordan diversion project, and industrial enterprises. Okpara said that he would welcome Israel’s assistance in vocational training. At the end of his stay, at a press conference on June 21, he declared, in reply to a question about a recent Abdel Nasser communiqué attacking Israel as a bridgehead of imperialism: “If we thought Israel was a bridgehead of imperialism we would not have come here… I have seen no sign of imperialism here and the history of the Israeli people makes such an idea unthinkable.” Okpara’s visit seems to have resulted in a number of developments. Soon after his return to the Eastern Region, Igbo began arriving in Israel and turning up at various institutions for vocational training and institutions for higher learning. The

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Histadrut offered scholarships to members of the Nigerian Trade Union Federation to study at the Afro-Asian Institute. The Weitzman Institute in Rehovot and the Technion in Haifa offered scholarships specifically for East Nigerian post-graduate students. Some fifty Eastern Nigerian students studied at the Hebrew University at the time and at vocational and agricultural schools, like Mount Carmel International Training Centre in Haifa. The ORT (a Jewish non-profit organization) also became an important framework for a group of thirty six Igbo and other Nigerians who attended the school in Netanya. At a celebration at the ORT school in 1961 marking the first anniversary of Nigeria’s independence, one hundred Nigerians studying in Israel attended.46 Politically, Okpara’s foreign policy alignment with Israel became widely noted in Nigeria. When in October 1962, the leader of the NPC, premier of the Northern Region, and the religious leader of Nigerian Muslims, Ahmadu Bello, called on the federal government not to ratify a trade agreement with Israel, Okpara responded: “I myself am almost an Israelite. I love and admire Israel. I shall always go to Israel.”47 Like Azikiwe’s speeches on the choseness of the Igbo and of the analogy of their historical experience to the Jews, Okpara’s echoed widely throughout Nigeria and one sees it often contrasted to Bello’s comments on a visit to Jordan in 1965. Bello said: “Jordan is my second home…. To my mind, it [Israel] does not exist. And it will never exist… I don’t know what it is.”48 During Okpara’s tour of Israel in 1961, he assessed the viability of agricultural settlements in his region. His return with a team of Israeli experts marked the beginning of the farm settlement project in the region. The premier announced in a speech in 1961 the establishment of a number of settlements based on the Israeli model of the moshav (smallholders’ village), each to include four hundred young men and families with individual farms.49 The project’s objectives focused on the establishment of cooperatives as a means of increasing agricultural production and creating employment opportunities in rural communities to promote rural development. As a result, seven settlements were established in the Eastern region.50 The invitation of Israeli experts and expertise was not at all an obvious thing. Many countries were—and still are (officially)—nogo areas for Israelis. The strong sympathy of the Igbo (and generally of the people of the South) for Israel, in contrast to Nigeria’s predominant Muslim North, was well noted by Israelis in the Eastern Region and eased the relationship between them.51 Shmuel Giro, responsible for the establishment of Israeli communal settlements in the Lachish region in Israel, arrived in the Eastern Region in 1962 to organize the foundation of the communal settlements. He later noted:

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Chapter Four They >the Easterners@ view themselves as the Jews of Africa. >...@ There are amongst them those who view themselves as one of the lost tribes. Igbo, they say, comes from Hebrew. They support us very much.52

Israel’s President Ben Zvi, who had met Okpara on his visit to Israel in 1961 and who made a stopover visit to Nigeria on an African tour in 1962, revealed his enthusiasm about future relations with Africa.53 After his trip, he wrote to Golda Meir: In all the places that I have visited I found among all the presidents and amongst many of the ministers a lot of interest for Israel, not only on the governmental or on the economic plane, but also on a historical and cultural level. Surprisingly, it is among the Christian heads of states of the African republics, that I found a special interest in the Bible and the Jews as the people of the Bible. The interest for the Land of Israel, as the land promised >by God@ to Abraham, Yitzhak and Jacob, are one of the roots for their special support for the foundation of the state of Israel, >…@.54

Ben Zvi, long passionate about the lost tribes and an advocate for the Beta Israel in Ethiopia, mentioned in the letter that African leaders who had visited Israel in the past and those who would visit in the future wanted to know more about Israel’s (biblical) past and its present condition after the restoration of its independence after so many generations. He found some of the current Israeli representatives insufficiently prepared for that task and proposed that the Israeli representatives should have a good knowledge of the Bible and become more involved in organizing community activities for the Israeli expatriates and Jews living in Africa.55 Israel Ben Ze’ev (Wolfenson), who knew Ben Zvi from the Society for the Lost of Israel (agudah le-ma’an nidhei yisrael), had in 1956 become chairman of the Society for Converts in Israel and the World (agudah le-ma’an gere tzedek be-yisrael u-va-olam). Despite its primary function at the time—to give assistance to converts in the State of Israel— the association’s aims included a missionary agenda and aspired to a universalistic Judaism which would spread to gentiles. The Israeli government approved the organization.56 Ben Ze’ev saw great potential in Black Africa and its newly emerging states. Freeing themselves from the shackles of European colonialism and of Muslim and Christian missions— who had worked only for their own interests—Judaism would follow in the footsteps of the missionaries in a search to bring world peace. Now, after that the state of Israel has arrived to the tribes of Africa, it is our duty to spread our religion amongst them. We will not contend ourselves

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with agricultural and economic emissaries, whose main task is to advise and to educate [only] in worldly matters.57

He had no doubt about the Jewish identity of the Ethiopian Beta Israel and favoured their immigration to Israel. If a number of them would stay in Africa, they could spread Judaism to the Black continent. He specifically mentions that the spread of Judaism should be supported for the peoples of Nigeria and the Congo.58 While in Uganda, Israeli Ambassador Arye Oded had, with the support of President Ben Zvi and Ben Ze’ev, organized a shipment of Judaica to the small Judaizing community of Ugandan Abayudaya.59 We have no information whether Ben Ze’ev and the Society ever achieved such activities on the ground in Nigeria. With the death of President Ben Zvi in 1963, this particular aspect of diplomatic relations between Israel and African states seems to have lost some of its impetus.60

Israeli support for Biafra? Political developments in Nigeria and the outbreak of the war in Biafra soon led to an abrupt end of many Israeli projects in the Eastern Region. After pogroms in 1966 directed against the Igbo diaspora in the North of Nigeria, expectations ran high that an independent state in Eastern Nigeria would turn their fortunes. In August 1966, the Eastern Region government under General Ojukwu began to buy arms, and Francis Nwokedi, one of the leading Igbo diplomats, travelled to Israel to explain the Eastern Region’s case and appeal for assistance, especially military hardware.61 In December 1966, the Northern-based national daily, the New Nigerian, owned by the Northern regional government, alleged that Israel was providing military training and weapons to the Igbo. On May 30, 1967, the Eastern Region’s Military Governor Ojukwu declared the Igbo dominated Eastern Region, the independent state of Biafra. On the day after secession, Radio Biafra announced its recognition by Israel and four African states. Israel, though, denied recognizing Biafra and the international community—with very few exceptions—throughout the war showed much reluctance to recognize Biafra.62 Israel probably didn’t want to further its political isolation in light of events that enfolded during the very next days. On June 6, Israel launched a surprise attack on Sovietsupported Egypt and Syria. Although Israel did not officially recognize Biafra, Israel showed a strong tendency to view Biafra’s situation in light of its own struggles in the Middle East. With Egypt and the Soviet Union backing the federal Nigerian government, they shared a common enemy.

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For the Igbo and Biafra on the other hand, was their associating with Israel an expression of an ideology for group survival.63 As the war dragged on in Biafra, Jews in the Diaspora and in Israel viewed the war and the hunger blockade as a Holocaust against the Igbo. Jews in the United States expressed strong support for the suffering of the people in Biafra, with the American Jewish Committee taking the lead among Jewish organizations in relief and political efforts for Biafra.64 Bolaji Akinyemi, later Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, who would oppose Israel-Nigerian relations in the future, noted some of the many examples of Israeli popular and political support for Biafra in the Israeli press and parliament: On July 16th, 1968 The Jerusalem Post published a cartoon showing an Israeli putting a Biafran on his back while saying, “Yes, brother, we know just how you feel”. >…@ On July 18, 1968, >…@ Uri Avneri, a member of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), had made a motion accusing the colonialists in London and Communists in Moscow with arming Federal Nigeria against the “Israel of Africa”.65

Although the Nigerian government did not yet break diplomatic relations with Israel, the Nigerian federal government and the international press reported allegations that Israel supported Biafra with arms, and they maintained this throughout the war.66 The Knesset (Israeli Parliament) used strong pressure to compel the government to break diplomatic relations with Nigeria.67 Although Abba Eban, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, opposed breaking relations with Nigeria, he gave a speech on behalf of Biafra at the UN in 1968. Towards the end of armed confrontations in Biafra in 1970, when Eban replied in the Israeli parliament to a motion in favour of Biafra, he hinted in covert terms that Israel’s support for Biafra might have included more than just humanitarian relief.68 Furious reactions erupted in Nigeria, even from elements traditionally friendly to Israel, to break diplomatic relations and to expel any remaining Israelis from the country.69 The final rupture came in 1973, in the wake of the Yom-Kippur War, when Egypt succeeded in portraying itself as an African country and Israel as a colonialist aggressor. As a result, diplomatic relations with most Black African countries broke down.

From Breakdown to Resumption of Diplomatic Relations Even with no diplomatic relations, low-level relations with the Igbo did continue. Israel still had strong sympathies in Nigeria, especially in the

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Igbo Southeast, but also in the Southwest, and even some support in the Muslim dominated North. Several Israeli companies—sometimes relying on contacts from before the war—became active in Nigeria’s Southeast as early as 1980. This significant and much appreciated move came as the Nigerian government deprived the Southeast of much-needed government funds.70 In 1982, almost a third of the legislators in the Nigerian National Assembly tabled a draft motion urging the government to restore diplomatic relations with Israel immediately and called upon President Shagari to encourage other African states to take similar actions. This motion generated heated discussion and resulted in a counter-offensive, led by the director of the influential Nigerian Institute for International Affairs, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, to stem the growing pro-Israeli sentiment in the country.71 Israel’s first Lebanon War in 1982, in which it cooperated with the Christian Falange in Lebanon, silenced the subject for a while. Diplomatic relations with Israel again became an issue in Nigeria during the presidential election campaign in 1983. Azikiwe, who had returned from his London exile and had become engaged in the Nigerian People’s Party, supported the renewal, as did Abafemi Awolowo, the Yoruba politician and leader of the United Party of Nigeria. Only Shehu Shagari of the Northern National Party of Nigeria opposed it. Shagari used Israel’s cooperation with apartheid South Africa as an argument against the renewal of relations. With the controversial re-election of Shagari, no immediate changes in the country’s position towards Israel loomed in sight. In 1983, the military intervened again. With the dominant Northern and Muslim officers in the new military government under Muhammadu Buhari (1983-1985), and with the appointment of the highly Israel-critical Ibrahim Gambari as a foreign minister (1984-1985), no change in Nigeria’s attitude toward Israel was in sight. The year 1985 saw the installation of the new military government of Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993), and with its new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bolaji Akinyemi (1985-1987), Nigeria’s critical attitude towards Israel remained unchanged.72 In the mid-1980s, the discussion of Nigerian membership in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) became a heated issue for discussion, and Christian groups strongly opposed the move. Many Igbo and other Nigerian Christians saw the move as an intention to Islamize Nigeria. Some Igbo based their arguments on the importance of Christians’ association with Israel and working for the renewal of diplomatic relations on the Bible: “I (God), will bless those who bless you (Israel) and curse those who curse you (Genesis 12.3).”73 Nigeria finally joined the OIC in 1986, and generated interest-free loans from the Saudi Arabian government. Saudi Arabia funded the building of mosques,

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Muslim schools and scholarships to promote the Saudi Arabian Wahabiand Salafi puritan schools of Islam.74 At the same time, the Nigerian government started to subsidize Muslim pilgrimages to Islam’s holy sites in Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, Nigerian Christians—amongst them many Igbo—started to go on pilgrimage to Israel as early as 1976. Such pilgrimages became a phenomenon, carrying thousands of Nigerian Christian pilgrims to Israel even before the renewal of diplomatic relations.75 Some of those pilgrims—especially the Sabbatharians—firmly believed in the Jewish origin of the Igbo.76 Not all Igbo, however, just went for the sake of pilgrimage. Chima Edwards Onyeulo, born in 1951, arrived in Israel in 1988 with a tourist visa with the aim to settle in Israel as a Jew as part of his messianic mission to inform Israel about the Igbo and part of the divine plan to return Jews and the lost tribes to Israel. According to him, the Igbo were one of the lost tribes. In 1978, he left Nigeria for Italy, where he attended the services of the Jewish community in Milan. He caught the attention of Franco Levi, a member of the local Jewish community and a past activist for the cause of Ethiopian Jewry. Two years had passed since Operation Moses in 1984/1985 brought thousands of Black Ethiopian Jews to Israel following Israel’s Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef 1973 declaration that the Beta Israel were descendants of the lost tribe of Dan. Levi tried to help Onyeulo in getting an entry visa into Israel. In a letter to the Israeli consul in Italy he appealed to the enthusiasm that had been shown before by the Israeli public towards the immigration of Ethiopian Jewry to Israel: “I hope that, thanks to you, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs understands the importance of Chima’s visit to Eretz [Israel], in light of an eventual... other Operation Moses.”77 When Chima Onyuelo arrived in Israel in 1988, he was not the only Igbo there; a small Igbo community—probably a few dozen people—had lived in Tel Aviv since the mid-1970s, but Onyeulo became the first Igbo who decidedly pushed for the Jewish agenda. He thus became commonly known as “Rabbi Chima” among the Igbo in Israel.78 He made an effort to build an Igbo-Jewish community in Israel beginning in 1989, around the same time that such efforts were being made in Nigeria.79 The case of Onyeulo became significant for the future of Igbo-Israeli relations. Onyeulo was the first Igbo to go through all the relevant institutions in Israel that served as legal barriers against Igbo migrating to Israel as Jews under the law of return. Two months after Onyeulo arrived in Israel in 1988, he went to the Regional Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem to obtain certification as a Jew. That would have allowed him to receive immigrant status and Israeli citizenship.80 The rabbinical court decided to enquire at the Chief Rabbinate if such a Jewish

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tribe existed.81 On April 11, 1989, the Regional Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem received a letter from the Chief Rabbinate that stated that Onyeulo would have to convert.82 Although Onyeulo agreed to perform the rituals, he was not prepared to state that he was not a Jew before conversion.83 Since there was now knowledge about a Jewish Tribe in Nigeria, Rabbinical Judge Ya’akov Goldenberg viewed Onyeulo’s refusal as a halakhic problem.84 As Onyeulo’s case was stuck at the Rabbinate by the end of 1990, he tried to reach the Israeli Jewish public and create awareness of the Igbo. In 1991, with the immigration of another 10,000 Beta Israel or Ethiopian Jews to Israel in just two days, the issue of lost tribes became a hot topic on the public agenda. Apart from a romantic multi-culturalist enthusiasm for Jews in Africa and messianic expectations about a return of the lost tribes, the idea of a large group of African Jews also promised a convenient solution in the demographic struggle with the Palestinians as the following quote from an extensive article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz shows: “Here is a perfect solution, too perfect, for the demographic problem: To recognize the Jewish identity of the Igbo tribe. They are 11 million, they are persecuted; they have a sense for trade, the sciences and technology.”85 Also in that same year, Shalva Weil organized an exhibition, “Lost Tribes of Israel”, at the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv. The exhibition contained a testimony by Onyeulo on the Igbo in a video clip.86 But all the limelight did not help Onyeulo with the Chief Rabbinate or with the state authorities. Furthermore, his case went contrary to the government’s interest to renew relations with Nigeria. To have diplomatic relations with one of the largest countries in Africa, both in population and in area and rich in minerals and crude oil and as a buyer of Israeli products and a candidate for technology transfer and industrial cooperation, it was in Israel’s economic interest to re-establish diplomatic relations. Politically, the importance of Nigeria was even greater. Nigeria was connected to the Muslim world and a member of the OIC. Moreover, Babangida was acting president of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Around 1990 Nigerian foreign policy towards Israel began to change. The general assumption had it that Israel, through American Jewry, had a powerful influence on American foreign policy and sat in a position to promote investment in Nigeria. Therefore, the country deemed it important to amend ties with Israel. Babangida, in 1990, chose Ike Omar Nwachukwu for a second time as Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. Nwachukwu had already served as Nigeria’s foreign minister from 1987 to 1989; he again served from 1990 to 1993. Certainly the choice of Ike Omar Nwachukwu, son of an Igbo father and a Hausa mother and married

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to a Yoruba, created a change in atmosphere. Nwachukwu advocated for the renewal of relations with Israel. In 1989, during his first term, he had requested a meeting with Roni Duek, a prominent Israeli businessman active in Nigeria.87 Duek’s background in the country began when his father worked for Solel Boneh in Nigeria. Duek followed in his father’s footsteps and first managed one of the Israeli building firm’s operations in Nigeria, but soon started his own company. According to Duek, Nwachukwu wanted him to organize a trip to Israel to meet Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Arens.88 When Nwachukwu finally arrived in Israel to discuss the renewal of diplomatic relations in 1991, he told Israel’s new minister of foreign affairs David Levy: “We know, for instance that you have the command of financial institutions of the world through your kith and kin in several industrialized and highly developed economies and we believe also that your influence can bring some meaningful investment to support such development programs.”89 Nwachukwu, so it seems, had internalized the stereotype of Jews and business, a stereotype which, ironically, the Igbo shared in Nigeria.90 However, there can be little doubt that many Igbo hoped that such a contact would bring economic and political benefits through the imagined powerful connections that Jews and Israelis held in world affairs.91 The ceremony of renewal of diplomatic relations finally took place during Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs David Levy’s visit to Nigeria in 1992, in the presence of Nwachukwu and 25 Israeli executives already operating in Nigeria. Levy met with Babangida and received the president’s support in facilitating cancellation of resolutions passed against Israel in the OAU. The Christian population in general, but the Igbo in particular, saw the renewal as a positive step and as equalizing Nigeria’s membership in the Muslim OIC.92 For Western Jews and especially Israelis in Nigeria, the sympathy and belief in their capabilities must have been encouraging and inviting, as they made a more pronounced comeback in the 1990s—in the service of the state or as private entrepreneurs.

Israel’s Strategy in Nigeria Since the 1990s Diplomatic relations between Israel and African countries since the 1990s were less idealistic than they had been under Golda Meir in the 1950s and 1960s. Although Israel’s development aid continued to reach Igbo-speaking states through Mashav (Centre for International Cooperation), a department in Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Igbo and other Nigerians continued participating in Mashav’s training courses in Israel and in Nigeria,93 Israel’s policy in Africa became more dependent on

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short- and mid-term business interests of individual businessmen. Naomi Chazan, a long-time observer of Israel’s policy in Africa wrote: The absence of a clear Israeli strategy in Africa has meant that private individuals and concerns continue to mould the contours of Israeli-African ties today. Israeli firms still broker contacts with African authorities, finance visits of even very senior African leaders to Israel, and are instrumental in arranging profitable deals. They vie for contracts on the ground, sometimes associating with questionable partners and engaging in shady business practices. >…@ If, in the past, there was an overt struggle between the diplomats and African aficionados on the one hand and the defence establishment and private interests on the other, in this latest phase of Israeli-African relations this battle has been won by the latter.94

Solel Boneh for instance, once closely identified with Israel’s idealistic engagement in Africa, had turned from a trade union enterprise (Histadrut) into a completely privatized company, and, in 2006, won a tender for a $270 million road building project in Nigeria.95 Although the over 50 Israeli companies present in Nigeria were less involved in Nigeria’s controversial oil business—an area rife with corruption at the time—and more involved in the fields of agriculture, water management, IT and telecommunication and infrastructure projects, the deals of some private Israeli arm dealers caused damage to Israeli public interest and endangered Israel’s long-term interests in Nigeria.96 For those Igbo in Nigeria who sought to intensify their involvement in rabbinical Judaism and to draw closer to the Jewish world, the renewal of diplomatic relations with Israel signified a noteworthy step with divine dimensions. Several Igbo Zionists believed that Israel would welcome them, and the presence of an Israeli embassy from 1993 onwards meant they had a place where visas for Israel could be obtained.97 For Chima Onyeulo, however, things appeared differently. Shortly after Israel and Nigeria renewed diplomatic relations in 1992, Onyeulo turned towards government authorities, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs among them. Although a letter stated that the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yossi Beilin, was acquainted with the issue of “the Igbo and other Jewish tribes,” decisions concerning the right of return and citizenship, would only be made by the Rabbis and the Ministry of Interior.98 Although the Chief Rabbinate indeed had a say in the matter, Onyeulo’s battle at this time was mainly with the Population Registry in the Ministry of the Interior, which refused to register him as a Jew and for which Onyeulo turned to Israel’s High Court of Justice. In defence of its arguments against the recognition of the Igbo’s Jewish identity, the

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Ministry of Interior referred to an unnamed source in Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was apparently not aware about any such claim.99 Israel’s High Court finally rejected Onyeulo’s case against the Population Registry in the Ministry of Interior in 1994.100 The decision against the Igbo’s Jewish identity came down without a single expert having visited Nigeria—contrary to rumours of an official fact-finding mission under the government of Yitzhak Rabin (1992-1995).101 However there was a reason for the rumours. Onyeulo’s case had clearly aroused some interest among the Israeli public, as can be gathered through different newspaper articles of the Israeli and international press in the early 1990s.102 In 1995, Israeli filmmaker Aran Patinkin, together with an Israeli film crew, travelled to Nigeria to make a documentary about the Igbo, who, as we know, identified themselves as one of the lost tribes of Israel. Although far from being an official Israeli delegation the film crew received help from, the Israeli embassy in Nigeria. Along with Ambassador Gadi Golan, the embassy had helped in the crucial organizing and facilitating the necessary contacts and permits, a sign that the embassy knew of the Igbo’s claim and believed that the project was in the interest of the state of Israel.103 The production of the movie was, in any event, a social happening in itself. Throughout the making of the movie, masses of people accompanied the crew on their visit, and the local media reported it. The arrival of the film crew in 1995 left traces, years after the event. On July 13, 1996, Radio Nigeria Enugu reported from the traditional ruler of Agukwu-Nri: About two >sic@ years ago, the Israeli government sent delegates to our place, >Agukwu-@ Nri, to confirm the historical relationship between Igbo and Hebrew people. We took these Israeli officials around historical places in our town. They expressed surprise at what they observed, as obvious similarities between our customs and theirs. Later, they could not help but conclude that Nri and Igbo people in general are among the lost tribes of Israel.104

The visit of the Israeli film crew not only served to grant legitimacy to traditional rulers but also encouraged Igbo authors to venture into research about the (Jewish) origin of the Igbo themselves.105 The increasingly ardent quest to trace the (Jewish) origin of the Igbo was encouraged by the fact that since Onyeulo’s case, self-identification as Jewish was clearly not enough. A significant Jewish—or even better—Israeli authority now had to validate it. The Igbo no doubt realized the importance of the standpoint of the embassy on the Igbo-Jewish relationship.106

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American Jews, who were, as a general rule, more receptive to the Igbo story also recognized this. According to an article that dealt with the case of the Igbo appearing in the B’nai Brith Magazine: On an institutional level, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) takes the lead in assisting needy Jewish communities worldwide >…@. >…@ Moreover, >…@ the organization has an unofficial policy of assisting only Jewish communities that have official recognition from the State of Israel, the final arbiter of Jewish status for purposes of the Law of Return. Israel, in turn, has demonstrated its reluctance to accept newly emerging communities for various political and economic reasons. For example, Israel has declined to recognize the Igbo tribe, which has tried to secede from Nigeria on the grounds that it is an oppressed minority. Though officials at the JDC and at the Israeli Embassy in Washington did not comment for this article, as requested, >…@.107

Every so often, a copy of a book about the Jewish origin of the Igbo arrived at the embassy, and some ambassadors had apparently a collection of such books.108 On the other hand, Israeli ambassadors sometimes took a more active role in donations of Jewish literature or by meeting with Judaizing communities.109 In matters of an assumed Jewish origin of the Igbo, the Israeli ambassador in Abuja in 2006 clearly recognized it “as a force that helped both communities to better their relations by bringing a sense of solidarity and sympathy in cases of need.”110 Contrary to rumours however, it is doubtful that any ambassador officially confirmed the Igbo as a lost tribe of Israel. First of all, there was Israel’s High Court ruling, and, furthermore, diplomatic relations with Nigeria as the most populous Muslim country in Sub-Saharan Africa had very important economic and political repercussions. There was much at stake. Extremist Islamists in Nigeria had in the past and present repeatedly demanded a termination of relations with Israel. Faced with the revival of the Biafran Movement in 1999 and the unrest in Nigeria in 2000, the Israeli embassy saw itself forced into a position to deny allegations that the State of Israel had any involvement with these events.111 Any siding with the Igbo—in demands for more autonomy or independence—would recall old memories from the time of the Biafran War and endanger Israel’s relations with Nigeria as a whole.112 In 2004, an interview in the Nigerian and Igbo-dominated The Sun newspaper on the origin of the Igbo, read: He may not be a genealogist, but Noam Katz, Israeli Ambassador to Nigeria, strongly believes that there are some common cultures and customs that bond the Igbo with Israel. He also identified with the belief

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Chapter Four that Igbo are descendants of the Jews. Katz told Sunday Sun in Abuja: ‘I’m aware and sure that we have unique traditions, culture and strong bonds that link us to the Igbo people. It has been proved that these unique bonds are helping in creating ties between us. There are some traditions that the two peoples have in common. I was told by some Igbo friends about common cultures and customs that we have together, some linguistic connections between Hebrew and Igbo.’113

Nigerians who identified with Israel on an ethnic or religious basis proved the most faithful defenders of diplomatic relations with Israel, and the Igbo were recognized as Israel’s main constituency in Nigeria.114 Abia State Governor Oriji Uzor Kalu is a case in point. As a then popular politician, Kalu represented for many Igbo a new political hope; many rallied behind him in his bid for Nigerian presidency for the Progressive People’s Alliance in 2007.115 Kalu was quite outspoken about a Jewish identity of the Igbo and did not fail to mention it in conversations with other Igbo, the Israeli ambassador in Nigeria or American Jews.116 In a meeting with a Jewish activist for Jews in Africa, Kalu said that his ancestors were from Israel, that the Igbo people are Jews, and that he himself observes Jewish holidays. Once president of Nigeria, he would lead Nigeria as a Jew.117 With the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state, the myth of a Jewish origin of the Igbo took a more prominent place along with the wish of both Israelis and the Igbo to find allies, and finally led to the establishment of direct channels of communication in the 1950s and close Igbo-Israeli relations in the early 1960s. In the early years of Nigeria’s independence, Nigeria in general and the Igbo-dominated Eastern Region in particular became an important focus in Israel’s idealistic foreign policy. This was also the first time that the thousands of Igbo and Israelis had the opportunity to have a direct encounter with each other. The close co-operation that ensued between the two peoples brought the Igbo’s Jewish identifications more into the open. It appears, however, that Israel and the Jewish world was not fully aware of the extent of the Igbo’s Jewish identification. Nevertheless, prospects for even closer Igbo-Israeli cooperation, that would have included a Jewish mission, looked excellent. Later, events such as the war in Biafra dealt a serious blow to that development, although the trauma of the war strengthened the feelings of the Igbo that they shared the historical destiny of the Jews. Although the Igbo were without political power after the war, they certainly supported the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between

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Nigeria and Israel, based in part on their Jewish identification and as a counter balance act to Islamic Nigerian public policy.118 In the 1970s, the period of “grand ideologies” and idealistic foreign policy ended. Economic interests and Real Politik became more important. Politically, Nigeria became an important partner for Israel. No Israeli government wanted to be dragged into a second Biafra War. It is also clear that a massive wave of Igbo immigrants is something that only messianists or Zionists of the Greater-Land-of-Israel type would welcome these days in Israel.119 While the Igbo claim to a Jewish origin continues to challenge Israel’s migration regime, the rejection of the Igbo’s Jewish identity by Israeli authorities leaves many questions open ended as concerns the direction of Igbo Jewish identity construction. For the sake of future relations between Nigeria and Israel, Israeli governments would be well advised to see the Igbo identification with Israel and World Jewry as an opportunity to build bridges between the two peoples.

Notes 1

Daniel Lis, “‘Ethiopia Shall Soon Stretch Out Her Hands’: Ethiopian Jewry and Igbo Identity,” Journal of Jewish Culture and History 11 (3) (2009): 21-38. 2 I thank Benyamin Neuberger, Alfred Bodenheimer, Tom Timberg, Johannes Harnischfeger, Sergio Marcal and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on this article. 3 The personal involvement of Basden in Azikiwe’s education is mentioned by Azikiwe in his autobiography (Nnamdi Azikiwe, My Odyssey: An Autobiography (London: C. Hurst & Company, 1970), 29). Basden started to write about the Israelite influences he noticed amongst the Igbo as soon as 1912 (George T. Basden, “Notes on the Ibo Country and the Ibo People, Southern Nigeria,” Geographical Journal 39 (1912): 241-247). On Basden’s longtime influence on the Igbo see: Dmitri Van den Bersselaar, “Missionary Knowledge and the State in Colonial Nigeria: On How G.T. Basden Became An Expert,” History in Africa 33 (2006), 433-450. 4 Nnamdi Azikiwe, Renascent Africa (London: Cass, 1937, 1968), 162. 5 The first Igbo organizations in Nigeria were founded in 1934 in Port Harcourt and in Lagos in 1936. Earlier expressions of Igbo nationalism had sprung up in the Igbo Diaspora of Sierra Leone and elsewhere. Smock even holds that such a frame of reference only entered people’s consciousness to a stronger degree in the 1950s. Audrey C. Smock, Ibo Politics: The Role of Ethnic Unions in Eastern Nigeria (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971), 7. 6 Okwudiba Nnoli, Ethnic Politics in Nigeria (Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1978), 158.

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James S. Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 290. 8 He held the position until 1952. 9 I particularly refer here to the so-called anti-Igbo riots in Jos in 1945. See also my recently published paper on the relation of anti-Igbo sentiment and anti-Semitism. Daniel Lis, “Nigerian Igbos in Switzerland: The New ‘Old’ Jews?” African Renaissance 8 (2) (2011), 25-38. 10 Nnamdi Azikiwe, “Zik on the Ibo People: From a Presidential Address Delivered at the Ibo State Assembly held at Aba on Saturdary (June 25, 1949),” in A Selection from the Speeches of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nnamdi Azikiwe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 242. 11 On Azikiwe’s interest on Zionism see: Eliyahu Elat, introduction to the Hebrew edition The Death of a People by Jean-François Bonneville (text) and Gilles Caron (photography) (Tel Aviv: Otpaz, 1969 >Hebrew@), 10. The original French edition was published under the title La Mort Du Biafra (Paris: Solar Publications, 1968). For a personal account of the atmosphere in the Eastern Region surrounding the establishment of Israel see: Jerry Ekwulugo, introduction to Ibo Exodus: The Untold Story: Illuminating the Past of the Ibos to Brighten Their Future by Onwukwue Alaezi (Abia: Onzy Publications, 2002), 1-3. 12 Nnamdi Azikiwe, “Excerpts from a Presidential Address to the Third Ibo State Assembly at Enugu, December 15, 1950,” in A Selection from the Speeches of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nnamdi Azikiwe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1961), 249-250. 13 Douglas Anthony, Poison and Medicine: Ethnicity, Power and Violence in a Nigerian City, 1966 to 1986 (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2002), 44-45. 14 Akwaelumo Ike, The Origin of the Ibos (Aba: Silent Prayer Home Press, 1950). Courtesy of Johannes Harnischfeger. 15 Ba Swe, Chaiman, A.S.C. to Reuven Barkatt, Dir. Pol. Dept. Hist. (December 5, 1953) in The Role of the Israel Labour Movement in Establishing Relations with States in Africa and Asia: Documents 1948 - 1975 by Hanan S. Aynor, Shimon Avimor and Noam Kaminer (Tel Aviv: The Lavon Institute for Labour Research, 1989), Document IV 219A -1-5, 71. 16 Golda Meir, My Life (London: Futura Publications, 1976), 266-267. 17 Ibid., 266. 18 Theodore Herzl, Altneuland (Leipzig: Herman Seeman, 1902) in Meir, My Life, 266. 19 Benyamin Neuberger, Israel’s Relations with the Third World (1948-2008), Tel Aviv: The S. Daniel Center for International and Regional Studies, 2009), 16. 20 Meir, My Life, 263-264. 21 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia: The Economic Conditions and Dominant Trades (Jerusalem, 1956 >Hebrew@), 35. 22 Joel Peters, Israel and Africa: The Problematic Friendship (London: British Academic Press, 1992), 2. 23 Ehud Avriel, “Israel’s Beginning in Africa: 1956-1973,” in Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-

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1948 to the Present, eds. Itamar Rabinovitch and Jehuda Reinharz (Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2008), 200-204. 24 Edward W. Blyden, born in 1832, was a leading Pan-Africanist. From his childhood on St. Thomas and throughout his life, Blyden had a lot of sympathy for the Jews and Judaism. Because of the analogy of the Jewish and Black African historical experiences, he favoured a return of the Jews to the Holy Land, where he travelled in 1866 (Edward W. Blyden, From West Africa to Palestine, Freetown, 1873). Blyden’s support for the Zionist movement surfaced in his reply to the First Zionist Congress (held in Basel in 1897), when he wrote The Jewish Question in 1898 (Edward W. Blyden, The Jewish Question (Liverpool: Lionel Hart & Co, 1898). Azikiwe’s gift to Meir is mentioned by Mordechai Arbell, The Jewish Nation of the Caribbean: The Spanish-Portuguese Jewish Settlements in the Caribbean and the Guianas (Jerusalem: Gefen, 2002), 284. 25 Leopold Y. Laufer, Israel and the Developing Countries: New Approaches to Co-operation (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1967), 215 in Peters, Israel and Africa, 13. 26 Peters, Israel and Africa, 13. 27 Ibid., 3-11. 28 The Israel Oriental Society / The Reuven Shiloah Research Center, Middle East Record 1 (1960), 314-315. 29 Ibid., 314-315. 30 Azikiwe, A Selection from the Speeches, 299. 31 Haaretz, April 20, 1961, in Israeli Program for Scientific Translations, Middle East Record 2 (1961), 340 32 Olusola Ojo, “Nigeria and Israel,” The Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 8 (1) (1986), 79. 33 Zach Levey, “Israel’s Strategy in Africa, 1961-1967,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 36 (2004), 71-87. 34 Haaretz, June 22, 1961, in Israeli Program for Scientific Translations, Middle East Record 2 (1961), 340. 35 Davar; Haaretz, June 14, 1960, in The Israel Oriental Society / The Reuven Shiloah Research Center, Middle East Record 1 (1960), 314-315. 36 Jerusalem Post, August 1, 1960, ibid., 314-315. 37 West African Pilot, June 17, 1960, in Bolaji Akinyemi, “Religion and Foreign Affairs: Press Attitudes toward the Nigerian Civil War,” The Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 4 (3) (1980), 60. 38 Ojo, Nigeria and Israel, 82. 39 Jerusalem Post, February 2, 1960, in The Israel Oriental Society / The Reuven Shiloah Research Center, Middle East Record 1 (1960), 314-315. 40 Jerusalem Post, April 4, 1960, in ibid. 41 Jewish Observer, March 23, 1962. 42 Ojo, Nigeria and Israel, 76-101. 43 Michael Goldway, Report on Investigation of Vocation Education in Eastern Nigeria (Enugu: Govt. Printer, 1961); Mordechai Gilead, Report on Meterology in Nigeria, (Jerusalem: Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Department for International

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Cooperation, 1962); E. Balasha and Z. Jalon, Report on Surface Water Drainage in Owerri (Enugu: Eastern Nigeria Water Planning and Construction, 1961); E. Balasha and Z. Jalon, Report on Roads, Drainage and Sewerage in Port Harcourt (Enugu: Eastern Nigeria Water Planning and Construction Ltd., 1961); Shmuel Alon, Development of Cooperative in Eastern Nigeria, Report to the Eastern Nigerian Government (Jerusalem: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Department for International Cooperation, 1961); Dan Rom, “Asaba Division Water Supply Project” (PhD diss., Technion Haifa, 1965); Yehuda Karmon, “A Geography of Settlement in Eastern Nigeria,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 15 (2) (1966), Jerusalem: Magness Press. 44 Kol Israel, December 28, 1960; Haaretz, January 5, 1961; Davar, December 15, 21, 1961, in The Israel Oriental Society / The Reuven Shiloah Research Center, Middle East Record 1 (1960), 314-315. 45 Jerusalem Post, August 21, 1960 and August 29, 1960, in ibid., 314-315. 46 Israeli Program for Scientific Translations, Middle East Record 2 (1961), 340341. 47 West Africa, November 3, 1962, in Michael Chukwuma, “Nigerian Politics and the Role of Religion: An Analysis of the Role of Religion in Nigerian Politics at the Early Stages of National Integration” (PhD diss., Friedrich-WilhelmsUniversität, 1985), 353. As Chukwuma notes: “This Israel sentiment of M.I. Okpara must have been influenced by the suspected and unproved hereditary ties between the Igbo and Israel.” Chukwuma is quick to add that the statement was also supposed to serve as a snub against the Northern leader of the Muslims Ahmadu Bello’s Islamic zeal. 48 Daily Times, September 1, 1965, in Akinyemi,“Religion and Foreign Affairs,” 61. 49 Chima J. Korieh, “State Policy, Agricultural Transformation and Decline in Eastern Nigeria, 1960-1970,” in The Transformation of Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Toyin Falola, ed. Oyebade Oyebade (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2002), 223260. 50 Those projects however, never really had a chance to take off because of the soon outbreak of the Nigerian Civil war. Moshe Schwartz et al., Israeli Settlement Assistance to Zambia, Nigeria and Nepal (Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2002), 7-8. 51 Gorit Alexander, Kibbutz Hat in the Jungle (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1964 >Hebrew@), 66. 52 Shmuel Giron, interview in Biafran Holocaust by Yitzhak Peleg (Kibbutz Yesuor, 1968 >Hebrew, translation mine@), 42. 53 In Lagos, some 40 Israeli expatriate families had welcomed him at the airport. 54 Yitzhak Ben Zvi, letter to Golda Meir, August 29, 1962, in Yitzhak Ben Zvi: Second President of Israel, Selection of Documents From His Life (1884-1963), Dokument 182, ed. Haim Zuroff (Jerusalem: Israeli State Archives, 1998 >Hebrew, translation mine@), 522-523. 55 Ibid., 522-523. Yosef Carmel, Yitzhak Ben Zvi: From The Journal at The President House (Ramat Gan: Massada, 1967 >Hebrew@).

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56 Emanuela Trevisan Semi, “Conversion and Judaisation: The ‘Lost Tribes’ Committee at the Birth of the Jewish State,” in Judaising Movements: Studies in the Margins of Judaism, ed. Tudor Parfitt and Emanuela Trevisan Semi (London: Routledge Curzon, 2002), 57-58. 57 Ibid., 79. 58 Yisrael Ben Ze’ev, Conversion to Judaism: Present-Day Problems in the Light of History (Jerusalem: Kumah, 1961 >Hebrew, translation mine@), 78-80. 59 Arye Oded, Judaism in Africa: The Abajudaya of Uganda (Jerusalem: The Israel Africa Friendship Association, 2003 >Hebrew@), 103. 60 Oded came under attack in the Israeli press for pursuing missionary activities. Arye Oded, video interview with the author, Jerusalem, April 2, 2007. 61 John De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1972), 113. 62 Ibid., 132. Gabon, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, Zambia and Haiti were the only countries that recognized Biafra. 63 Adiele E. Afigbo, “Prolegomena to the Study of the Culture History of the IgboSpeaking Peoples of Nigeria,” in Igbo Language and Culture, eds. F. C. Ogbalu and E. N. Emenanjo (Ibadan: Oxford University Press, 1975), 31. 64 For an account of Israeli relief efforts see Barak, A., “The Full Story of the Biafran Air Rescue,” African Herald Express, Feburary 10, 2010, accessed, March 2, 2010, http://www.africanheraldexpress.com/?q=content/full-story-secret-biafraair-rescue-arnon-barak. 65 Akinyemi, “Religion and Foreign Affairs,” 74. 66 New Nigerian, June 24, 1967. 67 De St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War, 219; Akinyemi, “Religion and Foreign Affairs,” 56-81. 68 Abba Eban, reply by Foreign Minister Eban in the Knesset to a Motion for the Agenda, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, January 14, 1970, Abba Eban Archives, Truman Institute, Hebrew University. In a recently declassified document of the US State Department and in an interview with the former Director of the Laboratory Services in Biafra, Israel’s armed support is mentioned. Given these non-Israeli sources and a common enemy (Soviet Union and Egypt), it is therefore likely that Israel indeed sent arms to Biafra. Department of State E.O. 12958, West Africa: Arab Influence Grows, January 26, 1973, as amended May 4, 2006, Declassified PA/HO; Ikejiani O., interview with Cyril Ibe, March 6, 2005, Chinua Achebe Foundation, accessed on August 28, 2011, http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/j4/index.php?option=com_content&view=art icle&id=6966:-the-foundation-interview-series-1-dr-okechukwuikejiani&catid=45:achebe-foundation&Itemid=168. 69 Ojo, Nigeria and Israel, 84. 70 In 1981 Solel Boneh and the government of the Igbo state Anambra signed a $190 million contract for the construction of a number of projects including the building of three hotels, a flour mill, a cement factory, an aluminium factory and two waterworks. Peters, Israel and Africa, 95.

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71 E. C. Ebo, “Extracts from a Motion in the National Assembly: On the Renewal of Diplomatic Relations by Nigeria and Other African States: Round Table Discussion on the Re-establishment of Diplomatic Relations between Israel and Nigeria,” Nigerian Forum 2 (1982), 647-730, in Peters, Israel and Africa, 132. 72 Peters, Israel and Africa, 130-180. 73 C. Ukaegbu, Speech Presented at the Prayer and Fasting Meeting Organised by United Christian Front, Owerri, April 26, 1986, pamphlet, 20. Courtesy by Arye Oded. 74 Kirsten V. Walles, “Shari’a and Politics Since 1999, in Nigeria in the Twentieth Century, ed. Toyin Falola (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2002), 655- 657. 75 In 2010, as many as 28,000 Nigerian pilgrims planned to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Ron Friedman, “28,000 Nigerian Pilgrims May be denied Passage,” Jerusalem Post, October 14, 2010. 76 For more on the Igbo Sabbatharians see: Daniel Lis, “Igbo Jews - Religious Shift: From Igbo Sabbatharians in Nigeria to Igbo Converts to Judaism in Israel,” Chilufim 11 (2011), 99-124; Jerry O. Anyaegbu, “Sabbatharianism in Igboland, 1916-1990” (PhD diss, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, 1993). 77 Franco Levi, letter to Mazal Ofer, August 2, 1987 >Italian, translation mine@, Jerusalem: Amishav Archive. 78 Kevin N. Ojukwu, interview with the author, video recording, Tel Aviv, February 10, 2010; Cheche 1999, in Alaezi, Ibo Exodus Revealed, 100-101. 79 Yisrael Ben Yehuda, “My Divine Call into Judaism,” Kulanu 10 (1) (2003), 3. 80 Regional Rabbinical Court Jerusalem, protocol October 26, 1988, in Chima E. Onyeulo, The Truth About the Origin of the Igbo Tribe, unpublished collection of arguments (1994 >Hebrew@), Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Archive. 81 Yitzhak Aaron Ben-Shoshan, Deputy Secretary of the Regional Rabbinical Court Jerusalem, Decision Nr. 412/49 (October 26, 1988), in Onyeulo, The Truth. 82 Regional Rabbinical Court Tel Aviv, protocol (November 5, 1990), in Onyeulo, The Truth. I have no copy of the particular letter of the Chief Rabbinate to which the above protocol refers. 83 Regional Rabbinical Court Tel Aviv, protocol (September 9, 1990), in Onyeulo, The Truth. 84 Regional Rabbinical Court Tel Aviv, protocol (November 5, 1990), in Onyeulo, The Truth; see also Ya’acov Goldberg, “Things That Restrict Conversion,” Shurat Ha-din 3 (1993/1994 >Hebrew@), 165 -172. 85 Dvora Negbi, “A Jew From Biafra???,” Ha’aretz, 1991 >Hebrew edition@, Jerusalem: Amishav Archive. 86 Chima Onyeulo, video interview with Shalva Weil, 1991, Tel Aviv: Beth Hatefusoth Archive; see also Shalva Weil, Beyond the Sambatyon: The Myth of the Ten Lost Tribes, catalogue of the exhibition, Beth Hatefutsoth, Tel-Aviv, 1991, 78. 87 Other people mentioned in the renewal were on the Israeli side: Marc Attali, former head of African Division in Israel’s Foreign Ministry; Prof Meron Medzini, Hebrew University; Moshe Gilboa, Israeli diplomat; Tamar Golan, former Israeli

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ambassador to Angola; Naomi Chazan, former member of the Knesset; Nessim Gaon, Swiss-Jewish businessman; David Kimche, Israeli diplomat. 88 “Sabras in Nigeria,” Israel Business Today, March 26, 1992, accessed on August 28, 2011, http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-12456215.html. 89 The Guardian (Lagos), August 6, 1991, in Ambe-Uva Terhemba and Adegboyega M. Kasali, “The Impact of Domestic Factors on Foreign Policy: Nigerian/Israeli Relations,” Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations 6 (3 & 4) (2007), 53. 90 On Jewish stereotypes affecting the Igbo see: Daniel Lis, “Nigerian Igbos in Switzerland: The New “Old” Jews?,”African Renaissance 8 (2) (2011), 25-38. 91 In May 2000, the Nigerian-Israeli Chamber of Commerce was inaugurated. Chief Ben Obi, a long time confident of the Israeli embassy who served as a national security adviser and as a political adviser to the national economic adviser of the Obasanjo government, became its president (Chidi Uzor, “Nigeria: Israel to Assist Nigeria's Agric Development,” This Day, May 22, 2000). In 2006 the organisation had a membership of about 100 members (Yair Frommer, Deputy Head of the Israeli Mission in Abuja, in interview Nigeria-Israel Business and Cultural Relationship, May 5, 2008, accessed on August 28, 2011, http://mycompanion.ibgnigeria.com/2008/05/05/nigeriaisrael-business-and-cultural -relationship.aspx. 92 “Sabras in Nigeria.” 93 Mashav, the Center for International Cooperation, was established on the initiative of Golda Meir after her visit to Africa in 1958. In 2003, 108 Nigerians participated in Mashav courses in Nigeria and Israel. This number grew to 285 in 2007. Center for International Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mashav, Annual Report, Regional and Country Report (2007), accessed October 6, 2011, http://mashav.mfa.gov.il/mfm/web/main/document.asp?DocumentID=158501&Mi ssionID=16210. 94 Naomi Chazan, “Israel and Africa: Challenges for a New Era,” in Israel and Africa: Assessing the Past, Envisioning the Future, The Africa Institute, American Jewish Committee (Tel Aviv: The Harold Hartog School, Tel Aviv University, 2006), 11-12. 95 Since 1999 the company had been under control of Shari Arison, one of Israel’s richest people. Sharon Kedmi, “Shikun U’Binui Wins Major Road Contract in Nigeria,” Haaretz, October 11, 2006. 96 Home page of the Israeli embassy website in Nigeria, http://abuja.mfa.gov.il/. On a recent visit to Nigeria, Avigdor Lieberman, Israeli deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, met then-Nigerian Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan. Israeli-Nigerian cooperation was discussed in the areas of agriculture, technology, education and culture. In the Israeli press, Lieberman’s visit was not only applauded. The fact that a substantial part of the delegation was comprised of Israeli arms dealers was seen as harming Israel’s standing on the African continent (Yossi Melman, “Israeli Arms Dealers Join Lieberman’s Entourage to Africa,” Haaretz, August 6, 2009). In a more specific case, an Israeli businessman in Nigeria, who used to work for Solel Boneh in Nigeria, used his political contacts to

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facilitate the purchase of Israeli drones from a private Israeli company for the Nigerian Defence Ministry. The company won the large contract, without offical announcement of the tender (Yossi Melman, “Israeli Drones under African Skies,” Haaretz, March 30, 2006). 97 Petrusyl S. N. Madu, letter to Amishav, January 22, 1996, Jerusalem: Amishav Archive. Apparently, the Israeli embassy in Nigeria was getting 50 requests a month for Aliyah (Jewish immigrant visa) in 1999 (Malka Shabtay, personal communication to the author, November 11, 2009). The number of Igbo is hard to pinpoint, because there is no indication on ethnicity on Nigerian identity papers. The confirmation of the immigrants’ Jewishness is not the responsibility of the Israeli embassy, and Noam Katz remembered just one case around the end of 1997—a non-Igbo father and his son who had converted to Judaism and who were helped by the embassy in their emigration to Israel. In the last few years, part of a more restrictive policy toward (non-Jewish) immigrants in Israel was included in an agreement between the Nigerian and Israeli governments. As a result thousands of Nigerians were repatriated back into their country in the last decade. 98 Shlomo Gur, Deputy Foreign Minister’s Bureau, Jerusalem, letter to Chima Onyuelo, October 25, 1992, in Onyeulo, The Truth. 99 State Attorney to High Court of Justice September 29, 1993 and October 5, 1993, in 1850/93, Chima Edwards Onyeulo vs. Ministry of the Interior, 94 (4), 614, December 13, 1994, Jerusalem: High Court of Justice >Hebrew@. 100 Part of the rejection by the Israeli state can also be explained by the realization that the recognition of 20 to 30 million Igbo as Jews would pose insurmountable problems for the Israeli state in its relations with Nigeria and other countries. 101 The former Israeli ambassador to Nigeria, Noam Katz, who served in Nigeria as a diplomat since 1995, was not aware of any such research team (Noam Katz, video interview with the author, July 3, 2006 Abuja). Rabin was, however, aware of the matter both in his capacity as a prime minister and as a minister of religion. Eitan Haber, Prime Minister’s Bureau, letter to Chima Onyeulo, September 7, 1992, in Onyeulo, The Truth. 102 Peter Waldman, “Rabbi Avichail is Searching for 10 Lost Tribes of Israel,” The Wall Street Journal Europe, May 16, 1991; Haim Shapiro, “Nigerian Asks to be Recognized as an Immigrant,“ The Jerusalem Post, March 4, 1993; Shahori, Dalia “Nigerian to Israel’s High Court. Recognize me as Immigrant,” Haaretz, April 22, 1993 >Hebrew@; Shmuel Mittelman, “Members of the Igbo Tribe from Nigeria are not Jews”, Maariv, October 4, 1993 >Hebrew@, Jerusalem: Amishav Archive. 103 Aran Patinkin, e-mail to the author, May 17, 2010. Chief Ben Obi—an up-andcoming Igbo politician, who served as the production manager of the documentary, was contacted through the embassy. Ben Obi later became president of the Nigerian-Israeli Chamber of Commerce. Asked about his involvement in the Israeli documentation of the Igbos as a lost tribe of Israel in 1995, Ben Obi said: “Some Israelis came to Nigeria presumably in search of Jews in the Diaspora. >...@ I don’t know whether they were able to identify anybody, but any one who thinks he is an Israeli should go ahead and make his claim. Anyone is entitled to making that

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claim (Chidi Uzor, This Day, May 23, 2000). “It was also widely rumored that Israeli Ambassador Gadi Golan himself had visited and confirmed the historic relationship between the Igbo and the Jews (Aka Ikenga, March 7, 2007, accessed on August 28, http://ubalutum.blogspot.com/2007/03/agreement-by-israeli-govern ment-and.html). 104 “Agreement by Israeli Government and Nnri / Evidences & Igbo Religious Concept of Origin,” Aka Ikenga Blog, accessed on August 28, http://ubalutum.blogspot.com/2007/03/agreement-by-israeli-government-and.html, retrieved September 9, 2010. From the neighbouring town of Aguleri, which was in competition with Agukwu-Nri over the seniority of its Israelite ancestry, it was held: Sometime on October 29, 1995, a team of Israeli (Jewish) researchers stormed Aguleri after a visit to Agukwu-Nri on the previous day, and visited his Royal Majesty, Eze A. E. Chukwuemeka-Eri; Ezeora 34th, informing him that they have come in search of the lost tribes of Israel. >…@ They were received at Obugad Palace in Enugwu Aguleri by Eze-Eri and the entire Aguleri Communities. On the understanding and belief that the Igbo have been traced to the Lost Tribe of Israel through Aguleri, Hrm Eze A. E. Chukwuemeka Eri, Ezeora 34, Traditional ruler of Enugwu-Aguleri, was appointed leader of the Igbo-Israelites in West-Africa in May 1996, >…@. “Iduueri Kingdom,” accessed on August 28, 2011, http://iduuerikingdom.page.tl/ObuGad.htm. The site is most probably connected to A. E. Chukwuemeka-Eri, Ezeora 34th himself, as the “Palace secretary” is indicated for further inquiries. 105 For an example see: Nat Okafor-Ogbaji, interview with Adeze Ojukwu, June 6, 2004, accessed August 28, 2011, http://www.kwenu.com/publications/ojukwu/interview/okafor_ogbaji.htm. When I visited Agukwu-Nri in 2006 and had a meeting with Ozo title holders, my visit was interpreted by one elder as endangering this earlier recognition: “You are sending the clock back. We have now been recognized as one of the lost tribes of Israel.” Ozo Title holder meeting Agukwu-Nri, video recording by the author, Nigeria, 28 June, 2006. 106 Remy Ilona, The Igbos: Jews in Africa? Research Findings, Historical Links, Commentaries, Narratives (Abuja: Mega Press Ltd, 2004, 2nd edition), 4. 107 Bryan Schwartz, “Hidden in Plain Sight,” B’nai Brith Magazine (Winter 2005). 108 Noam Katz had apparently a collection of such books. Noam Katz, personal communication, July 3, 2006, Abuja. 109 Golan visited Judaizing communities like the Ibibio Community Bethel under the leadership of Nabi Umoh-Faithmann in Uyo, Akwa-Ibom State (Nabi Meleki Umoh-Faithmann, front cover in Ibibio Jews in Nigeria (Uyo: Menorah Publishing Comission, 1999). It seems that Golan’s successor at the Israeli embassy, Yitzhak Oren, went even further than his predecessor. Oren’s donation of Jewish books to the Adazi-Nnukwu Community Library in 1998 served at least one Igbo author as a motivation to do research about the (Jewish) origin of the Igbo (Ik N. T. Ogbukagu, The Igbo and the Riddles of their Jewish Origin (Enugu: Chobikate Nigeria Company Limited, 2001, VI). See also picture of Noam Katz with

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Melchizedek Ben Levi on a Nigerian Orthodox Sabbath Solidarity (NOSS) poster. Courtesy Capers Funnye, Chicago. 110 Katz, video interview. 111 Chidi Uzor, “Nigeria: We Are Not Supporting Biafra-Israel,” This Day, April 23, 2000. 112 Oded, video interview. 113 “I’m sure, Igbo are descendants of the Jews,” Sun News Publishing, March 28, 2004. The article was widely reviewed and the ambassador’s comments regularly quoted by Igbo who wrote on the Igbos’ Jewish identification (Ilona, The Igbos, 4). In an interview in 2006, the ambassador stopped short in confirming that he had made exactly those statements. He however mentioned that he was aware of the Igbo’s Jewish identification and that it would come up as an issue regularly in meetings. Whereas the ambassador identified with the historical experience of the Igbo, he viewed the spread of the Bible as probable source of Jewish identifications. Katz, video interview. 114 Ibid. 115 The Igbo, as one of the three largest groups in Nigeria, next to the Hausa and Yoruba, had since the start of the civil war not been able to hold the presidency in Nigeria. In part this was probably due to an unwillingness of other Nigerians to integrate them once again in the steering positions of the Nigerian state, on the other hand, the Igbo suffered from a crisis in leadership and disunity. 116 Champion, February 19, 2004, in Remy Ilona, post to Ibo-Benei-Yisrael Yahoo Group, February 20, 2004. 117 Schwartz, “Hidden in Plain Sight,” B’nai Brith Magazine. 118 Terhemba and Kasali, “The Impact”, Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations, 44-59. 119 Notably the organizations of Amishav and Shavei Israel and maybe to a lesser extend Kulanu. The latter have a more multi-culturalist view of Judaism. See also Daniel Lis, “The Journey of a Swiss-Israeli Anthropologist to Nigeria, “Kulanu 13 (2) (2006), 1, 5, 8.

CHAPTER FIVE THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL: JUDAISM IN GHANA JANICE R. LEVI

In the January 15, 2011, broadcast of the popular American television show Saturday Night Live, a skit was performed mimicking the extravagance of the MTV show My Super Sweet 16, where parents go way beyond the average family’s means to celebrate their child’s birthday.1 In this particular skit, a Jewish father throws an extravagant party for his son’s bar mitzvah and invites impersonators of popular contemporary artists to sing at the event. The performers sing humorous renditions of Taylor Swift, Jay Z, and Katy Perry’s chart-topping hits, inserting Jewish references into the lyrics. As the father introduces the final artist to perform, he sees that the performer’s last name is “Green,” a common Jewish name, and so he introduces the artist as “Cee Lo, oh Green, a member of the tribe.” However, when the black hip-hop artist Cee Lo Green emerges, and the father realizes that Green is black, he quickly retracts his statement by uttering “um, or not.” This retraction provokes laughter from the members of the audience—laughter that might indicate that they too are not prepared to imagine that Green could be a Jew.2 This instant disqualification was based on a physical attribute—skin tone— which trumped the assumption that Green could be a Jew based on his name. This skit captures a global perception that to be Jewish and to be black cannot be synonymous. Judaism, which is seemingly tethered to a notion of lineage and ethnicity, can be considered exclusive. Its exclusivity is referenced in the skit, which illustrates that the faith, indeed, seems to have both a name and a face. A person whose name and face do not reflect global perceptions is disqualified from being considered a Jew. However, this disqualification clashes with reality for certain sub-Saharan black African communities who claim Jewish identity. If to be Jewish and to be black seem

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contradictory how do African Jewries, such as the House of Israel in Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana, navigate their identity in the global Jewish realm? The House of Israel certainly relies, on issues of origin in order to formulate aspects of Jewish identity just as communities everywhere construct their identity based on their surroundings, interactions, and understandings of origin.3 This chapter focuses on Ghanaian Jewry in Sefwi Wiawso as a case study to demonstrate the distinctions to be drawn between rabbinical or “normative” Judaism, and biblical Judaism; one could argue the latter is the main form of Judaism being followed by the practitioners in Ghana, although there is some hybridization of the two forms of Judaism.4 In order to understand the “name” and “face” of Ghanaian Jewry in Sefwi Wiawso, it is necessary to explore the community’s understanding of its origins and practices.

The Jews of Sefwi Wiawso “Sh’ma Ysra’el Adonai eloheinu Adonai ehad,” recited the members of the Armah household during the Friday Shabbat services in Sefwi Wiawso in August 2010.5 Their litany is a clear indicator that this family and their community have been exposed to normative, or rabbinical, Judaism (in this case, the exposure was to international visitors who come to observe the Armahs’ atypical Jewish household).6 However, this exposure to international Judaism is relatively recent. The Jews of Sefwi Wiawso have not always been aware of Jews elsewhere and their particular practices. How, then, did this community, as a Jewish community, come into being? What are the current practitioners’ views of their heritage and its relations with Judaism worldwide? Finally, how does the community operate today, as a practicing Jewish community?

Origins of the Community In 1977, Aaron Ahotre Toakyirafa, a practitioner of the local indigenous religion in Sefwi Sui, Ghana, had a vision declaring that what he was practicing—his daily observances and religious lifestyle—was pleasing unto the Lord. It was also revealed to Aaron that the religious practice to which he adhered as a traditionalist was called “Judaism” and that he should share this message to see if others would like to join. Inspired by this epiphany, Aaron set out to preach this revelation to the people in the local area of the Western Region of Ghana. Travelling from town to town, he sought permission from the village chiefs to speak to the mainly Christian villagers. He explained that local practices that had existed in

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pre-colonial times—including eschewing work on Saturdays, and avoiding particular meats—were practices that pleased the one God. His message was not well-received because, in stressing the importance of the worship of only one God, he explained that Jesus Christ was not the Messiah, even suggesting that Christians were idolaters and polytheists. Aaron, who is acknowledged as the founder of the Jewish community in Sefwi Wiawso, persuaded some of his closest friends, along with a few others from nearby villages, to join him in professing Judaism shortly after his vision. At first, these newly converted Jews were not welcomed. They were often chased out of towns, beaten, and threatened with death. When eventually Ghana instituted religious tolerance and freedom-of-worship in the 1992 constitution, locals became more comfortable with the Jews’ presence.7 Today, they live in peace alongside their neighbours of various faiths.8 Over time, the community completed a synagogue and the congregation increased as families grew. As of 2010, approximately thirty families constituted Ghanaian Jewry in Sefwi Wiawso.9

Views of a Jewish Heritage in Sefwi Wiawso Although the relatively recent events surrounding the emergence of Judaism in Sefwi Wiawso are mostly agreed upon by the members of the House of Israel, the people of the community today hold complex views about their deeper origins and heritage as Jewish people. Understanding these views is crucial to understanding how this particular community operates and thinks of itself today. For some members of the community, a link to Jewish heritage in history is important. Aaron Ahotre Toakyirafa claimed, based on his vision, that this heritage existed in the Ghanaians’ pre-colonial practices. Some residents believe that the Sefwi people (their ethnic group) were originally Jewish, but that historically the group lost or perhaps never employed the term “Judaism” to describe their faith. Familiarity with the idea of a connection to Jewish heritage generations ago is more prevalent among Sefwi Wiawso’s few early converts—those who returned to the practices of the indigenous religion whose tenets Aaron claimed to preach. They believe that their Ghanaian Jewish ancestors originated in Israel (although those who believe this and who were interviewed by the author could not specify when the ancestors’ migration to Ghana took place). A few of these sources suggested their ancestors had come to Ghana via Ivory Coast, Mali, and Ethiopia. According to Joseph Armah:

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Chapter Five What I know is that my grandmother told me that the majority of the Sefwis come from Mali and a lot of them too come from Ivory Coast. And, you see, uh, is that when that, they came through the wars, they came through wars. At first, because of war they were separated and some of them come from Ivory Coast to this place and some of them too come from Mali to stay here.10

Other interviewees, such as Joseph Nipah, one of the original members of the House of Israel, were not certain of the origin of the more sacred roots of their community. Nipah, however, did state that his grandfather explained that their people were “strangers” in the land.11 Nipah’s statement suggests that his ancestors were not amongst the original peoples of Ghana and thus travelled from a foreign and perhaps distant land. What the Jews living in Sefwi Wiawso are collectively cognizant of is the amount of religious observances in which their ancestors participated, and how those ceremonies were discarded or lost over time. According to Joseph Armah, the cessation of some of the Hebraic practices performed by many of his ancestors took place when they were in the process of surviving war, separation, and their journey to Ghana: And you see at first, uh, when they were going all through all this loss, one chief, the older chiefs was called Nana Kwanim Tano in this place.12 And, after he died there, his nephew who succeeded him as the king…was a Roman Catholic.13 Yes, he was a Christian. So, when he became the chief, he said that this time…they are Christians. You see, it was said in their New Testament that if you are…the followers of Jesus Christ you can do whatever you like. So, at this time, you have to go to farm on Saturdays, they have to celebrate their funerals on Saturday; they have to do whatever they like on Saturdays. It’s not because of that paramount chief, these laws are still there but because he was a Christian he let them stop all these.14

Many of the Jews in Sefwi Wiawso explained that due to the chief’s conversion to Christianity, the entire village converted; it was common for villagers to adopt the religion of the incumbent chief and for former practices to stop.15 Kwame Yeboah Daaku, who gathered oral histories of the Sefwi people in the mid-twentieth century, explained that the word “Sefwi” in “Sefwi Wiawso” may come from the Twi phrase “Esa awie,” which translates to “War is over.” According to the history relayed by Joseph Armah, it was war that caused the Sefwis to enter the region in which they now reside; this translation of “Sefwi” may add validity to his explanation of how the community might have lost an earlier Jewish heritage.

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Heritage in the Daily Life of the Community How do these ideas concerning the Sefwi Wiawso community’s Hebraic heritage play out in the residents’ daily life as Jewish people? For some members of the Sefwi Wiawso community, this understanding of origin—that their ancestors came from a Judaic background—is so compelling that the idea of “converting” to Judaism is irrelevant. According to Samuel Mintah, one of the early members of the community who applied the term “Judaism” to what they practiced, the community did not “convert.” They had always been Jewish, he said, and just were not aware of it.16 As a result, the feeling of a “return,” not necessarily a “conversion,” is a crucial element for some of the people of Sefwi Wiawso in describing their decision to reject the faith they had been following and to profess Judaism instead.17 Many of the women in the community whose husbands espoused Judaism decided to follow their husband’s convictions after being convinced that they reflected a return to the practices of their ancestors.18 Similarly, Joseph Nipah stated, “My grandfathers, they are practicing, at that time they do not know it is Judaism, when I see it, then I joined.”19 This understanding of Judaism was a key component, he said, to his “conversion,” or return to the “way of his grandfathers.”20 This idea of a “return” is also supported by other Jews of colour outside of Ghana, especially in the United States, who are promoting the “adoption of a ‘return’ ceremony rather than a formal conversion” because they already self-identify as Jews and have been observing Jewish law.21 Although some practitioners in Sefwi Wiawso believe they are returning to the faith of their ancestors, others do characterize their decision to follow Judaism as a “conversion.” This is especially true for those who previously practiced Christianity rather than the indigenous religion. These Jews see their story as mirroring that of Ruth in the Bible who, after being widowed, opted to follow the God of her mother-in-law instead of returning home to her people and their faith.22 In this case, a profession to follow the one true God suffices as a conversion. While a profession of belief in Jesus Christ previously secured identity within the Christian faith, it seems to be the rejection of Christ and the profession of one God that makes concrete a relationship to and identity with Judaism in Sefwi Wiawso. There is no mention of the hatafat dam brit (ritual circumcision) or a mikvah (ritual bath for purification) being performed upon conversion.23 Rather, it is the profession of faith in one God and subsequent obedience to the Mosaic and biblical laws alone that seemingly make one a Jew in the community. Thus, once one’s external profession and interior devotion are made known, one is determined to be Jewish.

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Judaic Practices in Sefwi Wiawso Once a person in Sefwi Wiawso has professed faith in one God and obedience to Mosaic laws, how does life as a Jew play out on the ground in the community? In Sefwi Wiawso, as in Jewries worldwide, the practices or observances of Judaism symbolize one’s adherence to the faith. For the Jews of Sefwi Wiawso, though, many of the practices contain an element of nostalgia, linking them to their indigenous ancestors. Other practices—such as the uttering of the Shema in Hebrew during Shabbat—are adopted and learned functions that enable them to more closely identify with and relate to their global brethren. The Ghanaian Jewry’s active participation in and obedience to Jewish observances and laws uphold the practitioners’ Jewish identity and maintain their Jewishness. The practices of their ancestors—the very acts made known to them through oral histories, alone—validate their understanding of their origin and claim to Judaism. These indigenous practices are often the proof used in explaining their Jewishness, and although the believers’ understood heritage supports their claim, it is their commitment to the scriptural Jewish observances that cement it. Many of the indigenous practices, with an affinity to Judaism, were in place in Ghana prior to the introduction of Christianity or the use of the term “Judaism.” These practices were recorded in missionary and travel literature, in which the practices are identified as “Hebrewisms.”24 What qualifies as a “Hebrewism?”25 In Africa, the term seems to have been applied by scholars to anything that relates to or shares a resemblance to Jewish customs and heritage. The label does not necessarily indicate that people practicing such rituals or customs are of Hebraic origin. The most quoted scholar to have addressed “Hebrewisms” is Joseph J. Williams, who may have coined the term in the title of his book, Hebrewisms of West Africa: From Nile to Niger with the Jews. The Hebrewisms he discusses are cultural traditions that have a Jewish semblance, such as birth, marriage, and funeral rituals, along with menstrual seclusion and dietary restrictions.26 Pierre Bertrand Bouche, a missionary who travelled in what was the West African country of Dahomey in the nineteenth century, also noted customs such as circumcision rituals and female seclusion during menstruation, practices that he labelled as “usages judaïques.”27 According to the Jews of Sefwi Wiawso, many of their Hebraic traditions were forgotten due to the rise of Christianity. Notably, one of these practices was the reverence of Shabbat every Saturday, an observance that today is held in high regard in the community. Other

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traditions that were practiced by the Jews of the Old Testament were followed by this people historically and also were returned to after Aaron’s vision and the creation of the community. The most notable Jewish practices adhered to today in Sefwi Wiawso include purification laws and dietary practices, observance of the Sabbath, and profession of faith in one God.

Purification Laws and Dietary Practices Purification and dietary laws remain part of life for the Jews in Sefwi Wiawso, just as they were part of the daily life of their ancestors who practiced the indigenous religion. Williams’ observations throughout West Africa, specifically Ghana, in the early twentieth century indicate adherence to purification laws at that time. These observances included laws identifying those who were near a corpse and/or the deceased’s belongings as unclean for seven to nine days (an observance that Williams noted was no longer practiced by Jews).28 Today, remnants of an old, abandoned concrete building in Aboduam, a village near Sefwi Wiawso, are what are left to illustrate the place where menstrual seclusion, another purification law, was observed in years past.29 Today, purification laws are followed in Sefwi Wiawso by not only restricting menstruating women from entering the synagogue, but also by restricting from attendance those who have been around death, whether it be through proximity to a deceased person or animal.30 Furthermore, some people refrain from going to synagogue if they are sick, as they feel they are unclean based on purification laws. Dietary laws were also kept by the House of Israel’s ancestors, according to many of the Jews in Sefwi Wiawso. Today, there has been a return to following dietary laws. Many of the people in the community explain that maintaining kashrut helps them to assert their Jewish identity. Patrick Armah, son of Joseph Armah who stated he was “born Jewish,” expounded on the community’s knowledge of not only dietary restrictions but the way in which animals are to be slaughtered for festivities such as Passover. His explanation of how his community obtains the appropriate meat differs from how many of the international guests who visit the community obtain their own kosher meat at home.31 Every Passover, for the second night you have to slaughter a goat, which will be roasted because if you can remember when, the Bible says, that when the Israelites were from Egypt going, they were not having time to boil the meat, so they roasted. …For us here, after you do that Pesach will begin.32 We get a fresh goat, and the goat that is going to be used for the

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Chapter Five Pesach, it has to be kept one week without going out, so that it wouldn’t get time for mating and other things, so that we make sure that the goat is clean. So, we do the slaughtering our self, ritual slaughtering, which you have to cut the neck once to prevent any more suffering before it dies. And, so we do it our self and we roast it our self, like we set the fire, and roast the whole body and so we put it on the plate and we put it on the altar, and we have a Kiddush cup and honey, and pepper, and eggs, like which the eggs, like in the manner of our forefathers too which when they were in Egypt, from Egypt going. So, I think it is interest; it’s interesting, like it’s something traditional. Like the Matzot…we have the flour, and we mix it with water, as they were doing, as our forefathers were doing.33 We just mix it with water and we put it in fire…so we use that as our unleavened bread.34

Not only is Patrick aware of the dietary regulations and preparations of such foods, but he is also versed in the scripture that supports these laws and which is important in affirming his Jewish identity and the purity of his Jewishness. This purity is apparent to Patrick when he compares his community’s preparation of foods for Passover with that of American Jews. These international guests once explained to him that their preparation for Passover consisted of going to a “Jewish store” to obtain roasted meat and unleavened bread. Amused by the ease with which such items could be acquired in the United States, and proud of his hands-on approach, Patrick noted that he felt his way created a (more) explicit connection to the Jewish ancestors of Mosaic times.

Observance of the Sabbath and Faith in One God Although dietary restrictions and purity laws are important to the people of Sefwi Wiawso in demonstrating and maintaining their Judaism, paramount, perhaps, among all Judaic laws followed by most members of the faith community are the observance of Sabbath and the profession of one God. The current veneration for Shabbat every Saturday is not just a form of worship, but requires commitment to a genuine day of rest when travel, work, and any other forms of exertion are prohibited. This custom is perhaps the most recognizable Hebraic custom that appears in the indigenous practices recounted in the community’s oral history. Through it, the Jews of today’s community in Sefwi Wiawso are able to establish a linkage with an ancient form of Judaism, as their ancestors and forefathers also withheld from working on Saturdays. One woman in the community today said she knew that her ancestors had followed the practice of resting on Saturdays, and that this justified

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her decision to “return” to Judaism from Christianity. Her acknowledgment that her forefathers had practiced this rite, among others, made the transition to Judaism less alien to her family members who at first questioned her shift in faith. This woman emphasized that by converting, or returning, to Judaism, her lifestyle had changed: she used to do many things on Saturdays, but now she only rests and worships God on the holy day.35 Keeping this commandment can be difficult for many Jews in Sefwi Wiawso because it restricts them from participating in other activities on Saturdays. However, for the members of this community who proudly recount stories about giving up those activities in order to observe Shabbat, these stories serve as a token of their faithful obedience. Perhaps most dedicated to the law are Joseph Armah and Samuel Mintah. Both of whom were unable to attend their mother’s funeral because the services were held, like many funerals in Ghana, on Saturdays. Both Joseph and Samuel converted to Judaism after hearing the message from the community’s founder, Aaron, but most of their family members remained Christian. Joseph pleaded with his family to reschedule his mother’s funeral on a different day, but his family ultimately decided that the service should not be moved to accommodate one person. Thus, he was unable to attend.36 Resting on the Sabbath may be harkening back to the days of their allegedly Jewish ancestors, but the ushering in of the Sabbath and the use of the liturgy are clearly adopted practices from normative Judaism which came with the international guests who visit the community. The Friday evening service begins at sundown and is accompanied by Hebrew prayers mainly recited by the patriarch of the family.37 The Armah family surrounded a table adorned with Shabbat candles and a Kiddush cup donated by international visitors. Unable to acquire wine and challah bread, the Armah family used Coca-Cola and askyire paano, a local bread. The Havdalah service, which signals the end of Shabbat, was also held in the family’s home and began after three stars were visible in the sky. A local plant called “Queen of the Night” was used for the spice and CocaCola again for the wine. The familiarity with which the blessings were recited and observances conducted clearly indicated that every week the Sabbath celebration is observed and not just when international Jewish visitors are present.38 Saturday morning, the Jewish community in Sefwi Wiawso walked to the nearby synagogue for community worship and liturgy. A modest cement structure served as the synagogue and a centre aisle as the mechitzah (partition) to separate the men from the women. The liturgy was

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very much influenced by knowledge of normative Judaism introduced by international visitors. Congregants utilized donated prayer books, prayer shawls, and kippot. The service consisted of congregational readings, singing, and a message from the interim leader while one of the members of the community, Alex Armah, was being trained as a Rabbi in Uganda with the Abayudaya.39 The ceremonial observances during the Sabbath are clear indicators of normative Judaism whereas the Mosaic Law found in the scripture satisfies a desire to follow the holy text. However, resting on Saturday in a scriptural context and worshipping in a globally familiar context represents the House of Israel’s simultaneously normative and biblical approach to Judaism. Finally, the other dominant mitzvah that is adhered to by members of the Jews of Sefwi Wiawso is the profession of the existence of one God.40 This commandment is primarily what distinguishes the members of the Jewish faith from their Christian neighbours, because the Jews consider Jesus Christ to be a demi-god or even an idol.41 The profession of this mitzvah is visible as soon as one enters the guest room of the Armah home, which is used for visitors. There, hanging from the window, is a distinct, velvety maroon banner, appliquéd with the words “Only One God” in gold lettering. These commandments—requiring profession of one God and to keep the Sabbath day holy—were consistently reiterated by members of Sefwi Wiawso’s Jewish community when asked what it meant to be a Jew. In spite of what they believe about their ancestors’ possible Jewish roots, obeying the commandments and ordinances of God is integral to their faith. Upholding these laws, in their eyes, makes one Jewish. Ironically, their faithfulness in adhering to these laws is not enough to validate their identity as Jews in the eyes of some other practitioners of Judaism.

Challenges Facing the Jews of Sefwi Wiawso Today Although it might come as a surprise to the community in Sefwi Wiawso, a challenge many Jews in sub-Saharan Africa face today is acceptance from the global Jewish community. These practitioners are ostracized, like Cee Lo Green in the SNL skit, on the basis of two factors: their hazy heritage, or “name,” and their skin colour, or “face.” They lack a neatly organized or recorded linear family history to the Jews of the Old Testament, and their physical appearance does not reflect that of most Jews worldwide.

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Claiming a “Name” in Sefwi Wiawso While these two attributes may be generally important in Judaism worldwide, for the Jews of Sefwi Wiawso, to be Jewish is to want to be Jewish—a choice more than a birth-right. Many of the Jews in the community state that they were indeed “born” Jewish, because they were born into Jewish homes. Their parents served as the first outwardly proclaimed “Jews” in the region. But their identity is not understood overall as a distinct ethnicity. Members of the House of Israel will argue that they believe some people, the Sefwis, are Jewish based on their heritage, but that it is not this heritage that serves as the dominant defining characteristic of a Jewish person. Rather, one’s acceptance of a believed heritage paired with present-day observances makes one Jewish, not heritage alone. This is a response they maintain in the face of modern challenges or suggestions that they prove their identity, and “name,” through genetic testing or their family lineage. Not surprisingly, then, the Jews of Sefwi Wiawso place less importance on the weight of the idea of “name” in determining their Jewishness. This is evident in their perspectives on DNA testing for the sake of identifying heritage and their focus on the name of God itself. Jews in Sefwi Wiawso voice aversion to blood testing—a practice that has been used among some African groups to try to validate Jewish heritage genetically—in order to claim their identity. When the concept of DNA testing to prove their identity was discussed with the Jews living in Ghana, they were confused as the practice seemed nonsensical.42 Most were against it as they felt it pointless to certify their true identity as Jews, even if they were convinced their ancestors were indeed Jews who practiced the religion without knowing what it was called.43 According to those in the community, a test that identifies Jewish heritage by blood cannot detect the faithfulness of an individual to the religion. According to Patrick Armah, blood may be able to prove ancestry, but it does not prove Jewishness: To me, that testing of the blood which proves whether you are a Jew doesn’t actually matter because even if you test that person’s blood, and if you see that maybe that Enoch is a Jew…what’s in those tests when he travels, or… [when] what he has done in his lifetime does not go complimentary with the Jewish religion? Like if he, Enoch, doesn’t keep kosher, you wouldn’t know through the blood, so to me, the person can be a Jew through how he behaves, or through his lifestyle.44

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Patrick’s statement clearly identifies the importance of practice over ancestry. Albert Armah voiced similar opinions of DNA testing: To be identified as a Jew [is] just to keep yourself with the Torah, it’s all. But, if you being tapped or being have a DNA, I think it’s…not necessary. Yes, because the true worship is from your heart and to see yourself as a Jew that is where you practice the law and the cultures of Judaism. That qualifies you as a Jew. But if you don’t practice it, but if you are even tapped or having that DNA and you don’t follow the customs, you are not Jew.45

Thus, for Albert, even a blood test does not necessarily prove one is a Jew. It is only external conformance to the law and internal devotion “from your heart” that characterizes one as a Jew. This said, if using names is important to the outside world in identifying one as a Jew (as the Jewish father suggested in the SNL skit when reading the name “Green”), then the Ghanaian Jewry does attribute significance to the very name of God in Ghana’s dominant language, Twi. Joseph Nipah explained that the name of God in Twi is “Kwame.”46 Kwame is also, he said, the name given to male children born on Saturdays. For him, this parallel to a spiritual byname has great significance in proving that his ancestors were practicing Judaism, whether they formally categorized it as that or not. He also stated that the indication that Saturday has greater importance among the days of the week, as other day names are not used in reference to God, shows that Saturday was seen as holy for past generations. The meaning, he said, was simply lost with the onslaught of Christian and colonial influences.47 Thus, in this sense, the actual “name” of the God worshipped by the ancestors of the Sefwi people does give credence to their faith. “Name,” therefore, is significant to this community. But rather than the “name” possessed by the individual worshipper, it is the “name” worshipped by that individual that determines and marks Jewish heritage. Ironically, although the Jews in Sefwi Wiawso place little emphasis on their own name in proving their Jewishness, it is possible that some of them have surnames that may have transformed over time from more easily recognizable Jewish last names. For instance, in his work Les Juifs á Tombouctou, Ismael Diadié Haïdara affirms that the Cota, Kûhîn, and Abana families in Mali are descendants of Jews. Haïdara explains that the Jews adopted “pater familias” with new surnames: the Cota and Abana taking on Wâkorey and the Kûhîn adopting Arma.48 It is of interest to note that this adoption of “Arma” by the Kûhîn (Cohen), if Haïdara is correct, is very similar to the last name of “Armah” that is prevalent in Sefwi

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Wiawso. Furthermore, Haïdara believes the Cotas came to Timbuktu due to the Inquisition in Spain and the Cohens through Morocco as traders. The Cohens and Abanas converted to Islam, he writes, as they “had to choose between the sword and the Qur’an.”49 Haïdara’s narrative may provide a more concrete explanation of the migration and change of faith of certain peoples in Africa than the accounts provided by the Jews residing in Ghana. Possibly the similarity in surnames Arma and Armah is evidence of the migration from Mali that some Jews interviewed in Sefwi Wiawso discussed, although no mention of a former surname was articulated. It could be concluded that the Armah families once possessed one of the most commonly recognized Jewish surnames, and therefore their “name” may qualify them as Jewish after all. Nevertheless, to this family and their Jewish neighbours in Sefwi Wiawso, devoted faith, profession of one God, and observance of the laws serve as the true indicators of Jewishness, not a linkage to the past through one’s surname or DNA.

The “Face” of Judaism in Sefwi Wiawso In addition to questions about the validity of their “name,” Jews in Sefwi Wiawso, like other Jews in sub-Saharan Africa, encounter challenges today from foreign Jews who judge them to be less than Jewish based on issues of “race.” Online news articles and forums discussing the emergence of a new Jewish community in Senegal highlight these kinds of challenges. Anonymous respondents questioned the veracity of that community’s claims to Judaism, stating about the people there, “[T]hey don’t look Jewish.”50 One respondent noted, “Their claim to Judaism is no more valid than that of the Black Hebrews of Dimona, who also incorporate a few Jewish practices into a mishmash religion.” Not only is the issue of appearance brought up by these posts, but it is also evident that many Jews view African Jewries through a sceptical, critical lens for not only incorporating African cultural elements into their practices, but also for maintaining “Hebrewisms,” or laws observed during Mosaic times. Criticism against the latter represents a preference in mainstream Judaism for the practice of normative or rabbinical Judaism over biblical Judaism. The practice of biblical Judaism is apparently viewed as not substantial enough to prove one’s dedication to and profession of the faith.51 What, then, is the response of Jewish communities of colour, and particularly of the Jews of Sefwi Wiawso, to criticisms such as these? Do they associate a “face” to Judaism, themselves?

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Judaica as the “Face” of Judaism Objects of various designs—whether in the form of a cross, Star of David, or crescent—are often symbolic in showcasing a person’s religious convictions. Images and objects have powerful meanings that can immediately associate an individual to a known group. For the black Jews in Ghana, this is no exception. The “face” of Judaism for the Jews in Sefwi Wiawso is not determined by one’s skin tone, but rather is understood as a physical exterior brought about by donning Jewish items such as the kippot, tallit, or Star of David at times of prayer, during worship, or in daily life. These physical markers identify a fellow Jew. Through this medium, Jewish identity can be represented, understood, and asserted. Dress, in particular, as a key indicator of Judaism, is not taken lightly among the Sefwi Wiawso community. In the early days of the community, an outward expression of faith through apparel was a signal to the Jews’ non-Jewish counterparts of their adherence to a different religion. Standing out in the crowd was not an issue of merely appearing different than the mainly Christian population, but involved a risk of eliciting persecution, as many Jews were chased from towns, beaten, and mocked.52 Patrick Armah heard many accounts of this violence and mocking from his father, one of the original professed Jews in the community: For the olden days…if they see you going to church on Saturday with a kippot (sic) on your head or with a Jewish sign or anything that is considered Jewish religion, they would start laughing at you and they will be saying that “here is a man who don’t believe in Jesus Christ, this person doesn’t believe in Jesus Christ. He is a fool.”53

In the past, wearing Jewish symbols evoked hostility from non-Jews. Today in Sefwi Wiawso, wearing garments and objects identified with Judaism is a way in which one can proudly proclaim one’s spirituality and be recognized by others who belong to the Jewish faith. Moreover, members of the community also hope the wearing of these items will bring forth a connection to and recognition from their global brethren. As Patrick stated: If I see a particular person or someone wearing the kippot right now, I can rightly identify that this person is a Jew. Or, if I see someone, like a lady, with a chain on the neck with a Magen David sign on the chain, I can guess that this person must be a Jew.54 So in general, I can say that it helps in identification.55

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Thus, the “face” of Judaism in Sefwi Wiawso is a chosen appearance, not something that permanently marks you at birth like skin tone.

Textiles as a Fusion of Jewish and African Identity Textiles have taken on a new level of importance in Sefwi Wiawso as they can physically represent a fusion of identities. The House of Israel in Ghana are producing textiles that simultaneously appear both African and Jewish in design, perhaps unconsciously creating items of Judaica that reflect these two central facets of their identity. The tallit designed by this community is made of kente cloth, a recognizable pan-African material that is quintessentially Ghanaian, yet constructed as a Jewish prayer shawl. Additionally, challah covers are created incorporating vivid African prints as the main panel and a centre panel embroidered with the Hebrew letters shin, beit, and tav, which form the word “Shabbat” in Hebrew.56 The fusion of both African and Judaic aesthetic and symbols, through textiles and dress, is indicative of how the Sefwi Wiawso community, and many of today’s African Jews in general, are incorporating both cultures into their daily religious life. Victoria Rovine discusses the significance of textiles and dress in asserting identity, stating, “Clothing has long been an important medium for negotiating differences across cultural divides. Garments provide a means by which to absorb distant cultures into familiar frameworks, or to highlight cultural differences, often in order to reinforce cultural identity.”57 In Sefwi Wiawso, the fusion of both African and Jewish aesthetic elements and culture bridges the disparities between the two and provides a physical space where both cultures and identities can simultaneously be expressed. This hybridization is also occurring in the structure of the community’s faith, as their practice is informed by both the scriptural or Hebraic Judaism followed by their ancestors and the normative and rabbinical Judaism slowly being introduced by exposure to international Jewish visitors.

The Future of Judaism in Ghana As they try to insert themselves into the community of global Judaism, the Jews of Sefwi Wiawso and other West African communities may find difficulty in proving their heritage and identity to those mainstream practitioners of their faith. Not only do the people of Sefwi Wiawso not appear to be Jewish because they do not possess the expected “name” and “face” of Judaism, their narrative differs from that of Jews elsewhere because of colonialism and the conversion to Christianity in their history.

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However, the Jews of Sefwi Wiawso have a strong sense of continuity with the days of their ancestors through oral histories that validate their heritage and origin. The House of Israel has a clear understanding of what it is to be Jewish—an understanding that happens to contradict the commonly held notions of normative Judaism. These practitioners choose to be Jewish. Their identity draws on an understood Hebraic heritage but is not dependent on that. Rather, in asserting the monotheistic creed of belief in only one God and in keeping the commandments at the core of their faith, the Jews of Sefwi Wiawso are Jewish by name. Through the outward expression of their faith via the medium of Jewish objects, they project the face of Judaism. They believe that just as they can elect to associate with Judaism through internal and external manifestation, they can also disassociate with it as easily. As Joseph Armah explains, a commitment to the faith is not easy due to the plethora of laws one must follow. Some children who grow up in the faith choose to leave the religion at adulthood.58 It is impossible to determine what the future holds and whether this community will grow or decrease in numbers in the coming years. While most of the young men from this first generation of children “born” into the faith already show clear commitment to Judaism, the younger women express interest in following the religion their future husbands practice. The growing interest in this community on the part of the international Jewish community may increase and be the catalyst for more conversions or “returns” from fellow Sefwis who continue to practice Christianity. However, only time will tell if this community will grow as those who originally chose to profess Judaism, and the leaders of this community, pass away. It is unthinkable for many of the Jews living in Ghana that other communities of Jews would question their identity as they faithfully abide by the ordinances of their faith. The Jews of Sefwi Wiawso, though they want to belong to the wider and more universal community of Judaism, may resist joining the mainstream if it means accepting a more rabbinical understanding that contradicts their own biblical convictions of Judaism and Jewish identity. The discourse of “race” and Judaism has yet to fully impact this community as interaction with international visitors is accompanied with excitement and acceptance. However, the question of legitimacy based on skin colour is known to the House of Israel. Yet, Judaism in Ghana is defined by beliefs and practices, not skin colour or nationality. It is a choice open to all, not an exclusive membership. Joseph Armah explained, “One person cannot be a Jew. Not one country. Not white man. God created everybody.”59

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Notes 1

My Super Sweet 16, MTV Network. Saturday Night Live, “Jacob’s Bar Mitzvah,” NBC, Season 36 Episode 12, 15 January 2011. 3 Other Jewish communities have surfaced in West Africa, specifically in Nigeria as mentioned in Bruder’s, Harnischfeger’s and Lis’articles in this volume. There have also been recent additions to the West African Jewish demographic in Cape Verde, Gambia, Senegal, and Mali. 4 The Jews who are claiming a Jewish heritage follow the Mosaic Law and a more direct scriptural understanding rather than a rabbinical interpretation associated with mainstream and normative Judaism. 5 Research was conducted by author, August 2010 in Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana. All research methods were approved by the Indiana University-Bloomington Human Subjects Office. 6 The Armah’s typically house all international visitors and allow them to participate in their private family services, including Shabbat (Sabbath, Hebrew). Their recitation of the Shema prayer in Hebrew (trans. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is Our God, the Lord is one”) is the most basic and common prayer spoken by Jews and is the prayer of the monotheistic faith. 7 Ghana, Government of. The Constitution of the Republic of Ghana. Accra: 1992. Chapter 5, Section 21. 8 Joseph Armah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 25 August 2010. 9 Samuel Mintah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 24 August 2010. 10 Joseph Armah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 25 August 2010. 11 Joseph Nipah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 24 August 2010. 12 Nana (Chief, Twi). 13 K. Y. Daaku, Oral traditions of Sefwi, (Legon: Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, 1974), 15a. This Kwanim Tano is not the same as Daaku’s mention in the “Oral Traditions” but a chief from many generations ago that Daaku did not analyse in his history of the region. 14 Joseph Armah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 25 August 2010. 15 Joseph Nipah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 24 August 2010. 16 Samuel Mintah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 16 August 2010. 17 This “return” is perhaps best defined by Remy Ilona in his discussion of the Igbo of Nigeria when he speaks of the “lapsed Jew.” Ilona analyses the customs of the Igbo by identifying the close similarities to Hebraic customs. He recognizes that although most Igbos are “outside Judaism” presently, they mostly associate a past with the various labels of Judaism, and therefore, believe they are somehow still connected to the religion. Thus, Ilona determines that the Igbo population cannot be banished from the community of believers as they have never truly forgotten their heritage. See, Remy Ilona, The Igbos: Jews in Africa: With Reflections on the Civil War and Solutions to the Most Critical Igbo Problem: Research. (Abuja: Remy Ilona, 2007), 97-98. 18 Mary Brafi, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 24 August 2010. 2

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Joseph Nipah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 24 August 2010. Ibid. 21 Diane Tobin, Gary A. Tobin, and Scott Rubin, In Every Tongue: the Racial & Ethnic Diversity of the Jewish People, (San Francisco, CA: Institute for Jewish & Community Research, 2005), 127. Jewish law, here, could be viewed as both rabbinical and biblical. 22 Rabbi Ronald H. Isaacs, Becoming Jewish: A Handbook for Conversion, (New York: Rabbinical Assembly, 1993), 6. 23 Patrick Armah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 18 August 2010. All men are generally circumcised but Patrick explained that should someone convert to Judaism who is not circumcised, he would then have to undergo circumcision, regardless of age. However, this does not include a more rabbinical process including the hatafat dam brit (Hebrew), a symbolic circumcision for someone who has already been circumcised or a mikvah (Hebrew), a ritual bath used during conversion for spiritual purification. 24 See Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa: And of the Notable Things Therein Contained. vol. 94, trans. John Pory, (London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1896); E. D. Morel, Affairs of West Africa, (London: Cass., 1968); John Leighton Wilson, Western Africa, its History, Condition and Prospects, by Rev. J. Leighton Wilson, (London: S. Low, son and Co, 1856); 25 Joseph J. Williams, Hebrewisms of West Africa: From Nile to Niger with the Jews, (New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1930). 26 Ibid., 61-64, 100-03. 27 Pierre Bertrand Bouche, Sept ans en Afrique Occidentale: La Co‫ޛ‬te des Esclaves et le Dahomey, (Paris: E. Plon Nourrit, 1885), 268. Dahomey is the present day Republic of Benin. 28 Williams, Hebrewisms, 101-02. 29 Joseph Nipah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 19 August 2010. The structure was pointed out by Joseph Nipah while explaining customs observed in the olden days. 30 Patrick Armah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 18 August 2010. 31 The community keeps a registry, in the form of an old wide-ruled school notebook, of the guests who have passed through. At the time of my visit, there had been 115 visitors recorded, indicating they have received quite a bit of traffic over the years. 32 Pesach (Passover, Hebrew). 33 Matzot (unleavened bread, Hebrew pl.) served during Pesach. 34 Patrick Armah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 18 August 2010. 35 Interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 18 August 2010. Interviewee’s name withheld based on agreement of anonymity and confidentiality between interviewer and interviewee. 36 Joseph Armah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 25 August 2010. 37 A few of the young men informed a few international visitors have taught Hebrew during their stay. Although many prayers were recited by memory, the book Becoming Jewish was used for many of the longer, less recited, prayers. 20

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I was able to participate and observe the Friday Shabbat service and Havdalah service with the Armah family in August 2010. 39 Patrick Armah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 18 August 2010. 40 Mitzvah (Commandment or law, Hebrew). 41 Albert Armah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 22 August 2010. 42 During the interview I asked the following question to suss out the local opinion of DNA testing: “Some communities have recently volunteered for DNA testing in order to identify a genetic strand indicating a Jewish heritage. Do you feel this testing is necessary to prove one’s Jewish heritage or identity?” 43 Patrick Armah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 18 August 2010. 44 Ibid. 45 Albert Armah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 22 August 2010. 46 Williams. Hebrewisms, 75. Interestingly, Joseph J. Williams records that the name of God in Twi is often expressed as “Nyankopon Kwame” translated to be “The Lord of the Sabbath” with Kwame representing Saturday and Nyankopon a way to say God. 47 Joseph Nipah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 24 August 2010. 48 Ismael Diadié Haïdara, Les Juifs À Tombouctou: Recueil Des Sources Écrites Relatives Au Commerce Juif À Tombouctou Au XIXe Siècle, (Bamako: Editions Donniya, 1999), 22-44. The “Cota” is now written as Kati, Koti, or Cota. The “Kûhîn” is now known as Cohen. 49 Ibid., 29. My translation. 50 “Senegal-Jewish Community Offers 99 Sheep to Needy Muslims,” Vos Iz Neias, November 24, 2009, accessed March 17, 2011, http://www.vosizneias.com/43703/2009/11/24/senegal-jewish-community-offers99-sheep-to-needy-muslims. 51 The organizations Kulanu and Be’chol Lashon support Jewish diversity. See the role of Kulanu among the Bene Ephraim of India in Egorova’s article in this volume. http://www.kulanu.org and http://www.becholllashon.org. 52 Joseph Armah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 25 August 2010. 53 Patrick Armah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 18 August 2010. 54 Magen David (Star/Shield of David, Hebrew). 55 Ibid. 56 “Kulanu Boutique,” http://www.kulanyboutique.com/servlet/StoreFront. 57 Victoria L. Rovine, “Colonialism’s Clothing: Africa, France, and the Deployment of Fashion,” Design Issues 25, no. 3 (2009): 44. 58 Joseph Armah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 25 August 2010. 59 Joseph Armah, interview by author, Sefwi Wiawso, 25 August 2010.

PART TWO DIVERSE HISTORIES, COMMON THEMES

CHAPTER SIX THE BAYAJIDDA LEGEND AND HAUSA HISTORY DIERK LANGE

The Bayajidda legend is probably the most important single source for Hausa history. It deals with the founding of Daura, traditionally the oldest city of Hausaland, and by extension also with the establishment of other Hausa states by foreign immigrants. As such it is of great significance for the important topics of transcontinental relationships and state-building in African history. However, owing to its insufficient recognition as a diversified oral tradition transmitted within a very stable social and political context, its source value has perhaps not fully been recognized. In fact, historians have not yet analyzed the whole body of its divergent but complementary versions recounted in the dynastic milieu and among rural priest-chiefs. Nor have they taken account of the important festal reenactments which seem to guarantee the transmission of valid historical evidence without major changes over a considerable length of time.1 The legend describes the arrival of two different groups in Hausaland: the bulk of the people are said to have come from Canaan and the founding prince is believed to have fled from Baghdad. The Hausa legend claims that this hero, Bayajidda, married the Canaanite queen of Daura and that his descendants founded the different Hausa states. It is couched in terms of what may appear to be a biblical descent scheme, claiming as it does that the seven authentic Hausa originated from the sons of Bayajidda and his legitimate wife Magajiya (Sarah) and the seven inauthentic states originated from the sons of Bayajidda and his wife’s slave-maid Bagwariya (Hagar). To Biram (Abraham), the first son of Bayajidda, it attributes the role of having founded the eponymous small town of Biram at the western margins of Hausaland. It therefore appears that the biblical descent scheme may have been diverted from its original Israelite meaning by being given a new dimension, reflecting major historical developments in the Near East and in the Central Sudan.2

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Suspecting that oral traditions can easily be altered by manipulations, historians are reluctant to consider seriously the evidence for transcontinental migrations provided by the Bayajidda legend.3 They suggest that claims of Near Eastern origins reflect a desire to accredit noble—but fictive— origins to the Hausa and they argue that parallels with biblical data result from recent feedback from either Christian or Islamic sources.4 Ignoring the deep rooted and widespread nature of the legend in the political and festal organization of the city state of Daura and its diversified transmission, they tend to consider the legend merely as an oral account, drawn up for the sole purpose of self-aggrandizement. Such criticism would perhaps have carried more weight if the legend had only been transmitted by word of mouth, in a restricted milieu, and could thus have been easily modified from one generation to the other. But the denial of the legend’s value as an historical source ignores its setting within the context of a diversified and socially embedded narrative of origin, involving dynastic and non-dynastic keepers of traditions. Though apparently mainly based on the general critical approach towards oral sources, such scepticism reflects in fact the postcolonial agenda of nationalist historiography stressing local origins, local developments, and local achievements.5 The alternative with which we tentatively engage here and which is based on new field research highlights global connections and dynamics. The following analysis is based on the main messages of the legend—Near Eastern origins, secondary state foundation and the early rise of Hausa identity. Moreover, the present attempt at an historical re-evaluation of the Hausa legend is part of a general reconsideration of the role Near Eastern history may have played in Central Sudanic history.6 It involves four different aspects. First, the idea that the deep insertion of the legend and its messages into the social fabric of the city-state of Daura indicates the transmission of a complex oral-social tradition since the founding period; second, the expectation that the legend reflects real events, when it insists on an important exodus from the ancient Near East in consequence of a major historical upheaval; third, the assertion that the legend functioned from the beginning as a foundation charter for a mixed society comprising foreign conquerors and local people, the Hausa and the Azna; fourth, the possibility that Israelites played a leading role among the ancient Near Eastern state builders in Hausaland.

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Hausa and Azna versions of the Bayajidda legend The Bayajidda legend is a tradition of origin which is chiefly kept by people attached to the royal palace in Daura. On account of this royal setting it must be considered principally as a dynastic legend, dealing with the origin of the town and city-state of Daura and by extension the origin of the Seven Hausa (Hausa bakwai) and Seven Banza (Banza bakwai) states in Central Sudan.7 Though the main focus of the Bayajidda legend is Daura, traditionists of the Seven Hausa states in ,atsina, Gobir, Kano and Zaria mention its details at the beginning of their own state tradition.8 However, compared with the local dynastic traditions, it is only of marginal importance in these states. On account of the transmission of the legend in the Seven Hausa states—comprising in addition to Daura, ,atsina, Gobir, Kano, Zaria also Biram and Rano9—and its emphasis on these states, we may call the principal versions Hausa versions of the legend. Of these Hausa versions the palace version is obviously the most valid.10 By contrast, the Azna versions are transmitted by the Sarakunan Azna (pl. of Sarkin Azna “king of the Azna”), the chiefs of the indigenous Azna people in Hausaland, and they insist on the equally prestigious ascent of the “kings of the Azna”.11 In the Seven Banza states—Zamfara, Kebbi, Nupe, Gwari, Yauri, Yoruba and Kwararrafa (Jukun)12—the legend is generally unknown.13 The Hausa palace version of the Bayajidda legend refers to two different migrations from the Near East. The first was a movement en masse from Canaan and Palestine headed in the beginning by Najib/Nimrod, then by Abdul-Dar and finally by several successive queens. This first migration found its way—via Egypt and North Africa— through the Sahara to the Central Sudan, where under the guidance of Magajiya Daurama the newcomers established the city of Daura.14 The second migration began with the retreat of half of the army from Baghdad under the leadership of Bayajidda, the son of the king Abdullahi, and its move to Bornu. Having concluded an alliance with the king of Bornu, sealed by marriage to the king’s daughter Magira, and having lost his army by ceding it progressively to the king of Bornu, the prince finally had to flee from the country with his wife. After some time, his wife gave birth to their son Biram, who became the eponymous ancestor of the most eastern Hausa state, later called Gabas-ta-Biram, “the east of Biram”. Leaving his wife and son behind, the hero continued his flight and finally came with his horse to Daura where he met the old lady Ayana near the well, killed the snake, married the queen, Magajiya, and fathered a son with Bagwariya, the slave-maid of the queen, and later another son with the

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queen herself. In due course the son of the slave-maid, KarCagari or Karap-da-Gari, became the father of seven sons, the founders of the Seven Banza or “illegitimate” states, while the son of the queen, Bawo, became the father of six sons making up, together with Biram, the founders of the Seven Hausa or “legitimate” states.15 Two supplementary details from Hausa non-palace versions throw new light on the mythological background of the Bayajidda legend. The first concerns the formation of seven heaps after the killing of the snake by the side of the well at Daura. Informants in Gobir and MaraGi, including the dethroned descendants of the Hausa kings of Kano, claim that the hero cut the snake into pieces and piled them up in two or seven heaps.16 In Zamfara it is believed that the hero called Kalkalu killed the snake in Daura and cut it into twelve pieces.17 These details remind us of the Babylonian myth of creation which is thought to be close to the mythological matrix of the Ugaritic Baal Cycle and the biblical account of creation. Having slain the primordial monster Tiamat, the hero split open its body, different parts of which were used to create the various features of the world.18 The Babylonian myth of creation was recited, and according to many scholars, re-enacted during the Mesopotamian Akitu or New Year festival.19 Similarly, the Bayajidda legend is told and re-enacted during the Gani or pre-Islamic New Year festival of Daura.20 The seven or twelve heaps made from the body of the snake seem to correspond firstly to seven or twelve features of the newly created world and secondly to the seven or twelve tribes of the chosen people. The duplication of the tribes may have resulted from the two halves of the primordial monster (i.e. the creation of heaven and earth) and their subsequent subdivisions. The second detail concerns the name of the snake slayer. Most versions of the legend indicate that the snake was slain by Bayajidda, alternatively called Abuyazidu. However, the descendants of the former Hausa kings of Kano (today there are Fulani kings) claim that Bawo was the hero who slew the snake and subsequently married Magajiya and fathered with the slave-maid Bagwariya KarCagari, and with Magajiya the progenitors of the Seven Hausa states.21 One might have thought that this was an error of transmission but similarly the early nineteenth century Fulani scholars MuIammad Bello and ‘Abd al-Qdir b. al-MuTUaf consider Bawo as the ruler of the Hausa states, who had been appointed by the sultan of Bornu, and the Kano Chronicle describes him as the conqueror of Hausaland.22 Moreover, the hero of the Hausa legend is called Abawa Jidda in Gobir and ,atsina versions, a name possibly composed of Bawa/Baal and Ar. jidda(n) “much”.23 These elements suggest the possibility that an alternative and very ancient Hausa version of the Bayajidda legend may

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have had Bawo as the dragon slayer and as the sole progenitor of the Hausa states without any preceding ancestor and without any duplication of states.24 The Azna versions of the legend differ from the Hausa versions by attributing to Bagwariya’s son KarCagari the function of a Sarkin Azna “king of the Azna”, ruling over the Azna population, i.e. the autochthones of Hausaland. Though by extension sometimes also indicated by the palace version of the legend, this detail is particularly claimed by the Sarakunan Azna themselves. 25 It considers KarCagari first and foremost as the ancestor of the indigenous Azna population and ignores the existence of the Seven Banza states.26 Thus the Bayajidda legend not only distinguishes between two groups of states—the Seven Hausa and the Seven Banza—but also between two layers of society, the foreign Hausa descending from the immigrated queen, Magajiya, and the local Azna or Maguzawa descending from the indigenous slave-maid, Bagwariya. Living mainly in the central town (birni) of the city states as subjects of a king (sarki), the foreign Hausa constitute what has been called a dynastic society.27 The local Azna are by contrast mostly farmers organized in clans and living in the countryside.28 Another significant detail of the Azna versions concerns the animosity between Bawo and KarCagari, the sons of Magajiya and Bagwariya. While in the dominant Hausa versions this detail is only indicated by the naming of KarEa-gari “snatch the town” and Ba-wo “give (the town) back”, the Azna versions make the antagonism more explicit. 29 According to these versions, Magajiya waited until the two sons were grown up but then she ordered KarCagari, to give his horse to Bawo and she provided KarCagari with a whip so that he might protect his brother during a state ceremony by driving the Azna people away from him. KarCagari obeyed, got up from his seat, began to beat the people with his whip, while Bawo remained seated like a king.30 Moreover, Magajiya told her son not to allow KarCagari to sit down by his side (and thus to rule with him). When at the end of a festival the latter tried to take his seat, Bawo drew his sword and chased him away.31 In order to compensate him for the loss of power, Magajiya gave him the task of controlling the unruly Azna.32 Apparently this version stresses the antagonism between the invading Hausa represented by Bawo (and his sons) and the autochthonous KarCagarawa or Azna. It insinuates that having been subjected to foreign leadership, the Azna wanted to have an equal share in the right to rule but that this was denied them by force. Fragmented elements of a tradition closely related to the Bayajidda legend have been noted far beyond the city state of Daura. In the Bori

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pantheon of western Hausaland—where the historical figures of the Bayajidda legend are unknown—Magajiya and Bagwariya/Bagulma and their descendants, the Hausawa and the Gwarawa, occupy similar positions to the corresponding figures in the legend.33 In the abbreviated form of Gwari, lacking the article ha-/ba-,the name Ba-gwariya is used as an autonym by people living south of Hausaland who contrast with the Hausa (of Magajiya) and speak a Benue-Congo language instead of the Afroasiatic language of Hausa. Gulma/Bagulma, the second name of the slave-maid, designates in Songhay-Zarma the southern bank of the River Niger, the northern bank being called Hausa.34 Here again the people of the south refer to themselves as Gulma-nce, the “people of Gulma/Gurma” (i.e. Bagwariya).35 These elements echo the dichotomy of the Bayajidda legend concerning the Hausa states situated in the northern Sudan and the Banza states in the southern and western Central Sudan. Apparently we are faced here with very old classificatory concepts preserved in a rudimentary form by different West African people and suggesting an early process of diffusion. With respect to origins, the Hausa palace version of the Bayajidda legend clearly states that the mass of the immigrants departed from Canaan and Palestine and that only the dragon-slaying hero himself came from Baghdad. All the local Azna and also some Hausa versions ignore long-distance connections but according to a dynastic version from ,atsina a caravan led by Namoudou/Nimrod came from Birnin Kissera near Mecca and its members settled at Daura.36 According to a Zamfara chronicle, the snake of Daura was killed by Kalkalu, the son of Bawo, who descended from Pharao.37 Moreover, the people who came with Magajiya and settled in Hausaland are considered in some Hausa versions to have been Larabawa/Arabs.38 The royal drummers of Daura confirm Near Eastern provenance by the drum beat “Lamarudu Kan’an” or “Lamarudu, son of Kan’an”, which is sounded at the king’s installation and during festival processions behind the king.39 In conformity with the legend this claim refers to Bawo’s mother Magajiya whose ancestor was the Mesopotamian king Nimrod, locally known as Najib, and not to Bayajidda. Designating also the dynastic ancestor of the 0yP-Yoruba, Nimrod is a biblical name, which was given to a Mesopotamian ruler of Akkad and Assyria. The name suggests Israelite influence and refers perhaps to the composite figure of the Akkadian rulers of whom Sargon of Akkad (2334-2279) and his nephew Naram-Sin (2254-2218) were the most important.40 Though the change from a lighter to a darker skin colour was certainly the result of intermarriages, local informants are convinced that the white invaders expelled the black native population.41 Distinct

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geographical and genealogical evidence provided by what may be regarded as the most valid Hausa versions of the legend points apparently to two different ancient Near Eastern origins of the Hausa immigrants, Canaan and Mesopotamia.

The Bayajidda legend as a basically Israelite tradition of origin In order to determine the provenance and the age of the Bayajidda legend we first have to examine the available synchronisms. Mentioning the legend en passant, the relatively recent chronicles on Hausa history do not provide any details on its main features. The anonymous author of the Kano Chronicle obliquely refers to it with respect to a seventeenth-century king; the two early nineteenth-century Fulani scholars MuIammad Bello and ‘Abd al-Qdir write about it as a well-known historical account; and Heinrich Barth in the middle of the nineteenth century begins his historical overview of Hausaland with an abridged and disfigured version of it.42 None of these authors had any in-depth knowledge of the legend: they wrote in Kano, Sokoto and ,atsina and as far as we know they never visited and asked relevant questions in Daura, the only city in Hausaland where the Bayajidda legend is the sole state tradition. Nevertheless, the reflections of the legend in the few extant chronicles of Hausaland clearly show that the Muslim scholars considered the legend as an important and trustworthy source regarding Hausa origins. Subsequently colonial scholar-administrators brought to light more extensive and more authoritative versions of the legend, thus providing the basic outline of the story.43 Since then, new elements concerning the legend, its different versions and its social context have been discovered, but they have not yet influenced the ongoing debate concerning its historical value.44 Searching for an answer to the question of the legend’s provenance, we have to consider the similarity between the Hausa legend and the biblical Abraham-Sarah narrative. There are a number of parallels which may not be due to coincidence. In both cases a stranger marries a queen since Sarah in Hebrew means “princess”. Both depict an elderly legal wife who gives to her husband a young female slave for procreation, a slave-maid who becomes pregnant before her mistress and who delivers a male child.45 In both cases, the main ethnic groups of the regional world concerned are classified as descendants either of this female slave and her son, or of the legal wife of the hero and her son—on the one hand the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve tribes of the Ishmaelites, on the other the Seven Hausa and Seven Banza states.46 In each tradition performances of a

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sacred drama staged during the main annual festival re-enact the principal features of the legend, though in sub-Saharan Africa they are better preserved than in the Near East. In Daura, we find the killing of the dragon and the marriage of the hero with the queen, in Jerusalem, the blowing of the horn in commemoration of Isaac’s prevented sacrifice and in Mecca (where Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael are venerated, not Sarah), the stoning of Satan, the sacrifice of a ram (in replacement of Ishmael) and the running for water (in imitation of Hagar).47 In addition to the biblical text and other writings, these different types of re-enactments constitute important mnemotechnical devices to commemorate the Israelite AbrahamSarah-Hagar narrative and are indicative of the important role played by the legend in these societies as a central state tradition. The Bayajidda legend’s provenance may perhaps be deduced from its apparent connection with the Israelite Abraham-Sarah narrative. In particular it should be noted that the main figures of both legends have many similarities apart from their names: Bayajidda corresponds to Abraham, Magajiya to Sarah and Bagwariya to Hagar and in the second generation Bawo is paralleled by Isaac/Jacob and KarCagari by Ishmael. Descending from the two latter figures, the Hausa properly speaking take the position of the Israelites and the Banza/Azna that of the Ishmaelites.48 Apart from the superimposed figure of Bayajidda, which has taken the place of Biram/Abraham, we realize that Magajiya corresponds to the priestly title of Sarah and hence to the deity Asherah (qd\),49 Ba-gwariya is related to the name Ha-gar and the parallel Ba-gulma to Jlmt “virgin” an Ugaritic designation for the deity Anat and her priestess also used in Hebrew,50 Bawo is perhaps derived from Baal “lord” as witnessed by the parallel name Bawu na-turmi “Bawo on the mortar” in the king list of Gobir,51 and KarEa-gari “snatch the town” can on account of the name’s parallel position to Ishmael be considered as a characterization in Hausa of the predatory bedouin life-style of Ishmael.52 The name Hausa itself could conceivably be connected with the Hebrew ha-lashon “the language” (Ha. halshan) or possibly parallel to Yoruba/Jeroboam in the 0yP-Yoruba tradition—with the name of the last Israelite king Hoshea (732-722).53 In comparing the Bayajidda legend with the Abraham-Sarah narrative we note two major differences: the subordinate position of Biram/ Abraham and the number of seven instead of twelve states/tribes. Realizing that the hero Bayajidda originating from Baghdad became the legend’s new heroic figure, we observe that the Israelite figure of Biram/Abraham was relegated to the position of the eldest son of the hero. Anticipating later discussions concerning the history of Israelite-Assyrian relations, we may suspect that the superimposition of the Baghdadi hero

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on the great Israelite patriarch reflects something like the imposition of Assyrian tradition at the expense of a purely Israelite legend. With respect to the twelve Israelite and twelve Ishmaelite tribes it should be noted that this opposition is only referred to in the Priestly sections of Genesis (Gen 17:19-21). However in the blessing of Jacob, which is in the Jahwist section, his twelve sons—the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel—are specifically mentioned (Gen 49:3-27).54 Also attested by the Yoruba, the number of seven tribes may therefore derive from a different Israelite tribal tradition than that recorded by the biblical authors.55 On account of these loose parallels and the explicable differences, one is inevitably tempted to speculate. Is it possible that the Hausa legend is derived from a particular form of the Israelite descent scheme, diverging from the orthodox form because of biblically unattested Assyrian influences? Since feedback inputs must be excluded in view of these dissimilarities, the carriers of this state tradition appear to have been Israelites and other immigrants submitted for some time to Assyrian domination.

Preservation of historical memory: festal re-enactments of legendary events couched in myth In Daura the authenticity of the transmission of the Bayajidda legend from generation to generation is guaranteed by its re-enactment during the great annual festivals. Only well-versed informants from Daura know that the processions and other features of the three great Islamic festivals— sallar Gani, Naramar salla (‘ d al-fiWr) and babbar salla (‘ d al-kabr)— are based on pre-Islamic foundations. Each of the festivals, but more particularly the Gani festival (which was previously a New Year festival and which is now equal to the Islamic mawld al-nab), consists in the commemoration of the key-episodes of the legend, of which the main actors are quite aware. If, as suggested here, the legend is a desacralized myth, then its re-enactments were once rites of a sacred drama which would have been celebrated without major modifications for a long period of time.56 In view of the Bayajidda legend’s re-enactment as a cultic drama the main office holders of the Daura city state assume the roles of their legendary ancestors. Thus, Bayajidda is played by the king, Magajiya by the official queen mother bearing the name of her ancestral patroness as her title, Bagwariya by the second most important female title holder, Iya, and KarCagari by Magajin Bayamadi, the senior official magician and the main title holder of the Maguzawa or Azna of Daura.57 First and foremost

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such close correspondence between the legend and the most important office holders of Daura guarantees the faithful transmission of the main features of the legend for a longue durée. Moreover, it seems to indicate that both the legend and the state organization were introduced to Hausaland at the same period.

Map 1: Main stations of the Gani festival in Daura

Four episodes of the legend are re-enacted: the killing of the snake, the public rejoicing following the killing of the snake, the rewards for Galadima and ,aura as a result of their ascertainment of the death of the

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snake and the sacred marriage between the hero and Magajiya. The different elements of the cultic drama are detailed elsewhere.58 Their significance for the topic of this paper is that, apart from new Islamic overtones, the procession, which leads around the town and finally reenacts the hero’s entrance into the palace, has only one purpose: murna kashe sarki “rejoicing over the killing of (the snake) Sarki (king)”. It was the killing of the primordial snake which gave the hero the power to rule and which to this day bestows on the king, his present-day embodiment, the legitimacy to reign over the city-state of Daura.59 Furthermore, going back to the pre-legendary time of cultic drama, the greeting of the Magajiya was equivalent to a sacred marriage, celebrating the union between the priestly queen and the sacred king—as the incarnation of the heroic dragon-slayer—and resulting in the renewal of the latter’s deification.60 During the procession the historically most significant musical performance is the beating of two drums carried by a camel behind the king with special beats for “Lamarudu, Kan’an” in order to recall the ancestry of Bawo through his mother. The same drums are also beaten on the ground to announce the Naramar salla (the feast of breaking the fast) at the end of Ramadan. They are beaten twelve times with the “Lamarudu Ian Kan’an” beat in remembrance of the queen’s—and hence the king’s —origin at the inthronization ceremony where the king receives his turban.61 Little is known about the participation of the Maguzawa/Azna at the Gani festival. In the main procession they are represented by the “hunters” (mahalba) who walk on foot before their leader “chief of the archers” (Sarkin Baka) who rides on a horse. The people of Sarkin Baka are not far in front of the king, being separated from him only by the players of the kakaki trumpets, the spare horses led by grooms, the runners (zagage) and the female dakama singers.62 During the greeting of the Magajiya, the runners stay in the entrance porch, while the people of Sarkin Baka remain outside of the house just in front of it.63 Although the whereabouts of Magajin Bayamadi, the descendant of KarCagari, and his people are unknown, it may be supposed that as an usher to the king he is likewise stationed not far from Magajiya’s house but certainly not in it.64 Some of the Maguzawa therefore stay close to Magajiya’s house without being allowed to come near during the main scene of a cultic drama involving the king and the queen, which commemorates the marriage between the dragon-slayer and the queen of Daura.65 Since elsewhere the festive procession includes two visits, one to the Magajiya (or Sarauniya) and the other to the Inna/Iya, the putative sister and wife of the king, and since the

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Inna was mainly the priestess of the black or local spirits it may be suggested that the Maguzawa/Azna were more particularly attached to her.66 Although in Daura there was an Inna/Iya in earlier times, the main re-enactment of the difference between the Hausa and the Azna took place in front of Magajiya’s—not of Inna’s—house.67 There are good reasons to believe that in former times not only the king of Daura but all the seven Hausa kings visited the Magajiya and were present at the ritual of deification.68 The image of the Seven Hausa could then easily have been derived from the scene of the seven kings entering the house of the Magajiya.69 Hence it would appear that the earlier sacred marriage rite between the king and the chief priestess was the decisive scene which gave rise to the concept of the Seven Hausa: while the kings of the seven Hausa states on account of their geographical, cultural and linguistic closeness attended the annual celebration at Daura, the kings of the seven Banza states did not, but in former times they possibly greeted the Inna/Iya—together with the king—as the representative of Bagwariya.70 In any case, only the seven Hausa kings were allowed to come close to the sacred marriage rite assuring the deification of the king, restoring fertility and guaranteeing the preservation of the cosmic equilibrium.71 This association with Magajiya reinforced their Hausaness.72 During the same procession another easily overlooked act consists of the change of leadership of the cortege: while ,aura leads the people from the palace to the house of the Magajiya, Galadima takes over after the greeting ceremony.73 This shift of pre-eminence from the commander-inchief of the army to the Waziri is somehow linked to the legend: ,aura was the one who first ascertained that the snake was dead, while Galadima was not brave enough to come close to the well.74 During the prelegendary period more elaborate associated rituals may have given dramatic expression to the cultic power held by the two groups, the Hausa and the Azna in succession, during the New Year festival. The change apparently consisted in a temporary shift of power—like in IfF, but in reverse order—from the supporters of the dying and rising god (Hausa) to the supporters of the primordial deity (Azna).75 Other time-honoured memories are attached to special buildings. Among the latter is the zauren gani “hall of the Gani” in the palace where the kings of the Seven Hausa are said to have met during the Gani festival (now mawld). A staircase to the roof of the palace with a window allowing the great hall to be seen from behind is attributed to Magajiya for the purpose of supervising the council of state. The well behind the palace is known to have been the place where Bayajidda killed the snake. The beating of the dajinjin drums early every Friday morning is claimed to

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recall the time when Magajiya and her people went to the well to fetch water, while on the remaining days of the week the people had to suffer from lack of water. 76 From a historical perspective it is clear that the two different sections of society, the Hausa invaders and the local Azna, lived for a long time side by side in the new state. Apparently the state institutions introduced by the Hausa—and a few foreign Maguzawa/Azna—were so designed that the disparities between the local inhabitants and the foreign conquerors were progressively overcome. Although the integration of the two different populations was thus fostered, there was no complete assimilation due to the bicephalic nature of the power structure and its on-going re-enforcement by the sacred drama. Most likely the basic dualism of the power structure was an in-built characteristic of the type of ancient Near Eastern state with which the invaders were familiar and thus did not result from the submission of the local Azna population to the Hausa invaders. As such it could have been related to a mythological and cultic complex such as the Baal tradition reflected in the Ugaritic Baal cycle.77 An historical dimension was added to this by Israelite refugees in form of the Abraham-Sarah narrative, which in Hausaland appears to survive in the disguise of the Bayajidda legend.78 Obviously the re-enactment of such a combined oral and social tradition could ensure the transmission of valid historical information over a considerable length of time.

Historicizing the legend: migrations after the fall of the Assyrian Empire If historians of the Hausa states see in the Bayajidda legend a reflection of actual historical events, they have done so up to now under the premise of the medieval paradigm. Considering only events of Islamic history, they tend to relate the flight of Bayajidda to the Central Sudan to the defeat of the North African Kharijid rebel, Ab Yazd b. Kaydd, in the tenth century, whose people are supposed to have withdrawn to the region of Lake Chad after his death in 947 CE.79 According to other theories, the legend reflects connections with the Abbasid Caliph al-Mustakf b. Muktaf (944-946) or with the eleventh century Arabic hero Ab Zayd alHi1l.80 However, these identifications are unacceptable for several reasons. They only concentrate on the name and the figure of Bayajidda— also called Abuyazidu as we have seen—but neglect earlier movements of people emigrating en masse from Canaan, first supposedly under the leadership of Najib/Nimrod and later under that of successive queen-

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mothers. 81 Moreover, by assuming a foundation of the city-state of Daura during the Islamic period by refugees from North Africa, they disregard the features of sacred kingship apparent from the legend. Neglecting these aspects and more particularly the re-enactments of the hero’s victory over the dragon by the king and his sacred marriage with the queen-mother, they ignore important evidence for the connection between the legend and actual state-building some time during the pre-Islamic and even preChristian period. With respect to sub-Saharan Africa in ancient times, the most important events of Near Eastern history were the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its expansion to the Mediterranean coast towards the middle of the ninth century. Subsequent to the incorporation of the cities and kingdoms of Syria-Palestine into the western provinces of Assyria by Tiglath-pileser III (744-727), the ethnic composition of these countries was considerably altered by the application of the policy of mass deportations. In order to punish rebellions, liquidate rival powers and provide craftsmen and unskilled labourers to desolate regions, the Assyrians shifted communities of deportees over long distances. Involving the displacement of several hundred thousands of people from one end of the empire to the other, deportations were an important characteristic of Assyrian history. Thus, Babylonians, Elamites, Kassites, Amurrites and Urartians were deported to the west and Aramaeans, Phoenicians and Israelites to the east. Contrary to the impression conveyed by some biblical sources with respect to the Babylonian deportations (2 Kgs 24:1516; Ps 137:1), these uprooted people, comprising whole communities, were well treated and the preservation of their national identities was encouraged. Firmly integrated into the Assyrian state but confronted by the antagonism of the local people, whose land they occupied, the deportees and their descendants developed certain ties of loyalty towards their Assyrian overlords.82 The fall of Assyria was mainly a result of the growing opposition of Chaldean tribes of Babylonia to Assyrian rule. By 620 BC the movement of resistance had become so strong that Assyria had to devote all its available forces to cope with the situation in its economically most important province, southern Mesopotamia. Finally, the alliance between Babylonia and Media brought the deathblow for Assyria: Nineveh, the capital of the empire, was conquered and the last metropolitan Assyrian king, Sin-shar-ishkun, was killed in 612 BC. However, remnants of the Assyrian army retreated to the west towards Harran where Assur-uballiU II (612-609) was proclaimed as the very last Assyrian king. For three years he fought together with his Egyptian allies, who had meanwhile occupied

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the western provinces of Assyria, against the advancing Babylonian troops under Nabopolassar (626-605). Apparently the Assyrian forces were progressively weakened and after 609 the king and his army were no longer mentioned in the Babylonian Chronicle. When in 605 the Egyptian army was beaten by Babylonia in crushing defeats in the battles of Carchemish and Hamath between Harran and the Mediterranean Sea, the Assyrians had already disappeared from the historical records.83 Contemporary evidence of migrations to sub-Saharan Africa is rare and unsatisfactory. The biblical Book of Kings mentions predatory attacks by Chaldean (Babylonian) and Aramaean raiders on Juda at that time which might have been part of the general unrest among the deportee and local communities following the Assyrian collapse (2 Kgs 24:2-3). Indeed, subsequently to the Assyrian and Egyptian defeat and the ensuing disruption of public order, conflicts between locals and deportee communities over issues of land ownership and the desire to take vengeance against the Assyrian oppressors and their allies may have resulted in Syria-Palestine in migratory movements.84 Since the advance of Babylonian troops prevented the deportees from retreating to their ancestral countries of origin in the east, Egypt as an ally of Assyria certainly offered the most promising prospects of escape.85 Though the Egyptian sources are silent on all events concerning Assyria, even with respect to the earlier occupation by Assyrian troops, on the basis of Arabic and Central Sudanic evidence it may be supposed that large numbers of refugees crossed the country of their ally and headed for sub-Saharan African and especially the region of Lake Chad.86 The onomastic data transmitted by Central Sudanic king lists provide precious evidence of the connection between the fall of the Assyrian Empire and the departure of the state builders from the ancient Near East. In the most significant cases, the early sections of these lists end with royal names which indicate that the conquest of Assyria was the most important event which precipitated the retreat of the carriers of these traditions from the Near East to sub-Saharan Africa: in Kanem-Bornu, the names (8) Bulu/Nabopolassar (626-605) and (9) Arku/Assur-uballit II (612-609), in Kebbi the names (32) Maru-Tamau/Nabopolassar (626-605) and (33) Maru-Kanta/Assur-uballit II (612-609) and in 0yP the names (29) MajFogbe/Mushezib Marduk (692-689) and (30) AbiPdun/Nabopolassar (626-605). In Kanem-Bornu and Kebbi the records bear witness to the Babylonian conqueror Nabopolassar as the instigator of the flight of the Assyrian refugee king Assur-uballit II and in 0yP the tradition points to the liberation of the people by AbiPdun/Nabopolassar from oppression by Gaha, the Assyrian epoch ruler.87 In view of the conquest of Nineveh by

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the Babylonian and Median kings Nabopolassar and Cyaxares in 612 BCE, and the flight of Assur-uballit II to the west, there can hardly be any more appropriate evidence of the historical circumstances which resulted in the great trans-Saharan migration of the Central Sudanic state builders. A medieval source confirms the early foundation of the Hausa states by invaders from the Near East. The ninth-century Arab historian alYaqb mentions in his Ta’rrkh a great exodus from Babylon to the west and then to Egypt and beyond having led to the creation of states in West and East Africa. He refers specifically to a king of an ethnic subgroup (Vanf “species, class”) called al-+wG.n, that is Hausa.88 From al-Yaqb’s description it may be deduced that in his time, people called Hausa were already subject to the Zaghawa of Kanem.89 Apparently, similar accounts to the present-day Hausa legend—and perhaps even an earlier version of the Bayajidda legend itself—came to the knowledge of the historian by Arab traders. However, indicating Babylon as place of origin, instead of Baghdad in the Bayajidda legend they refer to an important migration in the pre-Christian era. If it is correct to suppose that Babylon has been substituted for the little-known Nineveh, its leadership may be assumed to have originated from Assyria. The downfall of Assyria and the subsequent dispersal of Assyrian deportee communities appear to have been more faithfully reflected in the Bayajidda legend.90 The early emigration from Canaan and Palestine, said to have been led first by Nimrod and finally by Magajiya Daurama, seems to correspond to a mass movement of deportees from Syria-Palestine of which the antecedents can be traced to Mesopotamia and other eastern provinces of the Assyrian empire. The later emigration from Mesopotamia led by Bayajidda, the son of the defeated king of Baghdad, can be likened to the retreat of the remnants of the Assyrian army from Nineveh to Harran under the last scion of the ruling family, Assur-uballit II.91 The strange way in which Bayajidda lost his troops by lending them group by group to the king of Bornu seems to echo the alliance between Assyria and Egypt, which progressively turned to the disadvantage of Assyria. Though in fact the Assyrian defence came to an end as a result of the Babylonian victories in the battles of Carchemish and Hamath in 605 BCE, the legend attributes the cause of the heroes’ final departure from the Near East to the king of Bornu/Egypt, while the conquest of Baghdad/Nineveh is ascribed to the queen Zidam. This discrepancy between the legend and the course of events in the Near East seems to reflect the favourable attitude of the Central Sudanic state builders towards the Babylonian conquerors of Assyria and their unwillingness to blame them for their up-rooting from the Near East.92

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From this interpretation of the legend three different conclusions can be drawn: the hero’s migration from Baghdad to Bornu corresponds to the withdrawal of Assur-uballiU II from Nineveh to Harran, his lending the troops to the king of Bornu echoes the Assyrian cooperation with Egypt in Syria-Palestine and his lonely flight to Daura on a horse mirrors his—or his last—followers’ retreat to the Central Sudan. Taking place more or less at the same time, the two migrations—that of Magajiya and that of Bayajidda—do not reflect the physical separation between two migratory movements but the difference between the rulers and the ruled, the few Assyrians and the numerous subject deportee communities of SyriaPalestine.93 In this line of thought, Bayajidda’s heroic dragon-killing and his marriage with the queen are best understood as mythological feats formerly re-enacted by the Assyrian king, which were transposed to Africa in an attempt to bestow historical legitimacy on the state founding which was in fact realized by former subject groups of Assyria.94 The refugees may have travelled on foot, in oxen-drawn chariots or they may have ridden on camels or horses. According to the Bayajidda legend and the Kebbi chronicle, the immigrants having passed Palestine turned west and then south crossing the Sahara, presumably using the Central Saharan route on which an early incipient trade is known to have been conducted by the Garamantes.95 Covering a distance of 4000 km, the migration across the densely populated Nile delta, where the Egyptian allies may have been helpful with the provision of foodstuff and the Saharan desert seems to have been accomplished within a few months on a route which in the Islamic period was constantly used by pilgrims with similar means of transport. Pack camels and riding horses, which had already been in use in the Assyrian army, seem to have played an important role during the trans-Saharan migration.96 In the Central Sudan the prospects of settlement were more favourable and the local people could be either subjected or driven out more easily than those of the countries north of the desert track.97 Comparable but more destructive migrations are those of the Arabs down the Nile valley in the fourteenth century CE and on a smaller scale those of the Awlad Sulayman in the nineteenth century from the shores of the Gulf of Sirte to Kanem.98

Hausa invaders and local Azna and the rise of the bicephalic states of Hausaland Anthropologists distinguish within the Hausa states—especially in Gobir but also elsewhere—between the urban dynastic society of the immigrant Hausa and the rural clanic society of the autochthonous Azna.99

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Historians tend to explain the rise of states concomitant with this differentiation as being the result of the process of Islamization in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. By attempting to create Islamic states, Muslim traders and clerics, the Wangara, are thought to have imposed the institution of kingship on pre-existing priest-chieftaincies.100 The result of these assumed state-building activities were polities known in the literature as “dual” or “contrapuntal paramountcies”, here called bicephalic states.101 However, this reconstruction is hardly acceptable because it overestimates the political and military capacities of Muslim traders, it ignores the features of sacred kingship still apparent in Hausa kingdoms—which cannot possibly have been introduced by Muslims—and it disregards the evidence of the narrative sources, in particular that of the Hausa and Azna versions of the Bayajidda legend.102 Indeed, for any historical consideration of the rise of states the present position of the secondary Azna kings within the different Hausa states and their traditions should be taken into account. Representing the rural peasants but also the urban blacksmiths, the Sarakunan Azna (“kings of the Azna”) are numerous in Kano and Zamfara where each of them is only recognized within a certain region or a community of the local people.103 In other kingdoms such as Daura, ,atsina and Gobir a single Sarkin Azna is the head of all the Azna in the state.104 These secondary kings mostly live outside the state capital in their own village, they often perform the main rituals for the benefit of the state and they sometimes assure the legitimacy of the king by keeping the state regalia. In other cases they function as the chief judge of their people and play a key role in the election of the king, but they always guarantee the support of their people for the ruling Hausa elite. In the pre-colonial period they furthermore played an important role by mobilizing the particularly combative Azna contingents and by providing religious support for military campaigns.105 The Azna versions of the Bayajidda legend explain the difference in status of the two kings of Daura, the Hausa and the Azna king, by descent either from the queen Magajiya or the slave-maid Bagwariya.106 The Hausa king is said to be the descendant of Magajiya, and as such he and his people should be considered according to the palace version of the legend as immigrants coming originally from Canaan and Palestine. Since Magajiya was a queen, her royal descendants—and by extension all the Hausa—have the status of immigrant nobles. By contrast, though descending from the first born of the hero, the Azna kings inherited the slave status of their ancestral mother, Bagwariya. As long as paternal descent was considered to be important, the lack of maternal nobility might have been compensated by paternal antecedence. But on account of

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Bayajidda’s/Assur-uballit’s fate as a refugee prince who had lost all his troops such compensation could hardly have been effective. Both versions of the legend describe Bagwariya as a slave who did not speak proper Hausa, giving her son the name Karap da Gari, because she could not correctly pronounce KarEagari.107 Her status as the slave-maid of Magajiya and her inability to speak correct Hausa suggest that she previously spoke a different language which might have been that of the original inhabitants of the country. A similar conclusion can be drawn from the contrast within the Bori pantheon between the Hausawa and the Gwarawa (or Boboniya, Bobayi) deities: while the former speak Hausa the latter do not.108 In modern times the name Hausa refers to an Afroasiatic language and the names Gwari/Gwarawa and Baibai are applied to BenueCongo-speakers south of Hausaland considered as barbarian.109 If these comparisons are correct, they imply that the Afroasiatic language of Hausa superseded one or several older local, most likely Benue-Congo languages by the time the Israelite-influenced Bayajidda legend was elaborated. The Azna versions of the legend highlight more particularly the rebellious attitude of the subjected Azna. Both versions claim that Bagwariya gave her son the name KarEagari “Town-seizer” or MunkarEigari “we have taken the town”, while Magajiya called her own son Bawo, a name mostly interpreted as meaning bawo gari “give the town back to me”.110 In the Azna versions the latent antagonism becomes fully apparent when KarCagari has to protect Bawo by using his whip against by-standers and when Bawo prevents his half-brother from sitting by his side by drawing his sword and chasing him away. On the basis of the programmatic names of the two sons and these narrative episodes it can be inferred that the Azna were supposed to envy the urban civilization of the Hausa, wanting to conquer and appropriate it, while the Hausa were thought of as striving to maintain exclusive authority over their cities and states. The Azna versions of the legend put the blame on Magajiya for the exclusion of the Azna from power. Magajiya is said to have commanded KarCagari to protect Bawo by driving the people away from him, and she is believed to have advised Bawo to prevent his half-brother from taking his seat on the throne. Though by his descent from Bayajidda, KarCagari himself is depicted as the representative of a foreign power, neither the rank of his father Bayajidda/Assur-uballit II and even less that of his mother Bagwariya/Anat were sufficiently respected to thwart the intentions of the Hausa patroness Magajiya/Asherah. Going one step further we may perhaps conclude that the invading Hausa imposed themselves as a ruling class over the indigenous Azna (and their foreign leadership) because of

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the detriment of the Assyrian immigrants who were unable to re-establish their political hegemony in sub-Saharan Africa.111 As a foundation charter of the invading Hausa, the Bayajidda legend is obviously biased in favour of the immigrants—it reflects the views of the foreign invaders of the country and belittles the contribution of the local inhabitants. Indeed, while the legend depicts the Hausa as legitimate and noble descendants of the queen Magajiya, it reduces the local Azna to the off-spring of the slave-maid Bagwariya, thus intimating an inferior social status and insinuating strangeness in their own country. Nevertheless, according to the Israelite scheme of descent it also represents the Azna as descendants of the first born son of the hero and hence stipulates close parentage with the Hausa and more particularly acknowledgement of the original ownership of the country. In fact, as we have seen, the festive requirement of the re-enactments of the myth of creation turned into a legend of origin contributed greatly to the integration of the local population into the state structures introduced by the Near Eastern immigrants. Such type of interactions would hardly have been conceivable without the early adoption of a foreign priestly leadership by the local inhabitants.

Seven Hausa and Seven Banza states: Israelite and Babylonian state founders According to the Bayajidda legend, the founders of the Seven Hausa states were seven ancestral figures: Biram/Abraham, the first son of the hero, and six sons of Bawo/Isaac, the hero’s second son. By contrast, the founders of the Seven Banza States situated south-west of the Seven Hausa states were all descendants of KarCagari/Ishmael, the hero’s first son. Some authors suggest that the dichotomy between two groups of states is based on language, the inhabitants of the Hausa states speaking the Afroasiatic language of Hausa and those of the Banza states a BenueCongo language.112 However, the Banza identity of Kebbi and Zamfara, two states with a Hausa-speaking population, can hardly be explained by the later spread of Hausa. Indeed, though the inhabitants of the remaining five Banza states speak Benue-Congo languages, their Banza status may likewise reflect the identity of the state founders rather than linguistic factors. Beginning with the Seven Hausa states, we note that the analysis of the king lists seems to offer a valid method for determining the ethnic identity of the state founders. Indeed, the king lists of all these states have in their first section a number of unfamiliar and seemingly foreign names which

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apparently do not designate successive African but ancient Near Eastern kings placed in a significant order. From the king lists of other Central Sudanic states such as Kanem, Kebbi and 0yP-Yoruba we know that in conformity with Mesopotamian list science the composers of the lists used ancient Near Eastern royal names as indicators of the ethnic origin of the different groups of immigrants.113 Though in most cases the systematic order of the names is not easy to perceive, they possibly allow a distinction between leading Israelite or Mesopotamian state-founding groups. encyclopaedia judaica114 Garun Gabas or Gabas-ta-Biram, the most eastern Hausa state situated 180 km northeast of Kano, has a king list comprising 40 names of which at least 28 belong to the founding period.115 The list begins with (1) Biram/Abraham and continues with (2) Bomi, a name which perhaps corresponds to that of B.m.h, designating the ninth century son of the eponymous ancestor of Sam’al/Bit Gabbar.116 The next name of the list is (3) Tomku which perhaps refers to the eponymous ancestor of the DAM.GÀR “son of GÀR (council of notables)”, the Assyrian chief agent of trade in foreign countries.117 After the unidentifiable (4) Maji the list has (5) Kurada and (6) Yarima, designating possibly the Kassite king Kurigalzu II (1332-1308) and to one of the eighteenth-century Yamhad kings Yarim-Lim I, II, III.118 Next there are (7) Kumari, (8) Dankwafan, (9) Jatau and (10) Amale followed by four kings who, on account of the 0yP and Yauri king lists, may tentatively be equated with IsraeliteAssyrian kings: (11) Mamadu with a great Israelite king like David or Solomon, (12) Dango parallel to 4ango in the 0yP list with the Israelite conqueror Shalmaneser III (858-824), (13) Yahaya with the Israelite king Jehu (841-814) and (14) 'an Asan (Ha. “son of Asan”) with Joash (805790), the son of Jehoahaz.119 These parallels seem to indicate that some significant royal names in the king list of Garun Gabas were indeed recorded from an Israelite perspective. In the king list of Daura the names of the 45 kings before the Fulani Jihad are preceded by the names of seventeen queens, of which the first eight are supposed to designate the female successors of Abdul-Dar, the son of Najib/Nimrod, established in Tsofon Birni near Daura and the next nine the first Magajiyas of Daura.120 These names are followed by those of (1) Bayajidda and (2) Bawo, referring according to the Bayajidda legend to the leader of a migration from Baghdad/Nineveh and his second son. As has been shown elsewhere, Bayajidda may correspond to the Assyrian refugee prince Assur-uballit II (612-609)—and even the name (A\\ur)— uballiW “Assur has given life” may have been transformed to Baya-jidda while Bawo is a composed figure comprising the Israelite patriarch Isaac

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and his son Jacob.121 Although none of the following forty-one royal names could yet be identified, it is perhaps possible to recognize in the subsequent (42) Hazo the Israelite king Ahaziah (852-1), in (43) Dango the Assyrian conqueror Shalmaneser III (858-834), in (44) Bawan Allah (Ha. “slave of Allah”) the Israelite king Jehu (841-814) and in (45) Kalifa/Khalifa (Ar. “successor”) one of Jehu’s successors such as Jeroboam II (790-750) or Hoshea (732-722). In spite of the great number of unidentified names, it appears that the kings at the beginning and the end of the Daura list are presented from an Israelite point of view.

Map 2: Central Sudanic states of the Hausa and Banza tradition

In the northern Hausa sate of Gobir we find remarkably well-preserved traditions of provenance which trace the origin of the Gobirawa to either Surukal or Gubur, both presumably situated in the Near East beyond Mecca.122 A more precise localization can be inferred from the dynastic traditions of Gobir. One group of traditions begins with (1) Madjiga and (2) Bartuatua, two kings who in conjunction with Surukal/Surikash in northwestern Iran can be tentatively identified with the seventh-century Scythian kings Madyas and Bartatua.123 Another set of traditions starts with figures of the Bayajidda legend and continues with (7) Gubir, the eponymous ancestor of Gobir, (8) Harbu and (9) Ubayu in whom we recognize the tenth and ninth-century Sam’alian kings (1) Gabbar, (3) Hayanu and (2) B.m.h.124 Sam’al or Bit Gabbar, the “house of Gabbar”,

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was an Aramaean kingdom situated 400 km north of Damascus.125 On the basis of the onomastic evidence summarized here it can be supposed that the leading state builders of Gobir were former deportees who claimed Scythian, Sam’alian and Israelite ancestry. Since the nomadic Scythians were never deported by the Assyrians, we may assume that Mannaean deportees had adopted Scythian ancestors on account of their protective role against the Assyrians. Though Israelites may have been prominent among the state builders of Gobir, the leading groups seem to have been Aramaeans from Sam’al and Mannaeans from northwestern Iran. Owing to the outstanding position of Gubir in the king list and to the adoption of his name for the designation of the state, the Aramaeans were presumably the most important ethnic group during the founding period. As noted by Abd al-Qadir, the Gobirawa had kings before the sons of Bawu.126 Apparently the names from the Israelite-influenced Bayajidda legend were superimposed on an older Aramaean tradition. On account of their Western Semite identity Aramaeans akin to the Israelites—joined by Israelites at a later stage—appear to have fashioned the identity of Gobir as a Hausa state. For the history of Kano we have the lengthy Kano Chronicle, supposedly begun in the sixteenth or seventeenth century but probably based on older written material.127 The Chronicle claims that the founding hero of Kano had two names Bagauda and Dad/David. In view of his second name, Dad/David, the hero can be identified as ha-Gauda “the man of Gath” and hence as the Israelite king David who stayed for some time in Gath.128 Bagauda is said to have come from Dirani/Dora (the main port of ancient Palestine), Barka/Cyrenaica and the city of Saul (Sheshem) and his approach to the city of Kano is described as if it corresponded to David’s conquest of Jerusalem.129 Yet, prior to (1) Bagauda/David there were only tribal chiefs living on the spot so that the settlement of foreign immigrants in the region appears to have inaugurated the emergence of complex society. In fact, as in other Central Sudanic records, ancient Near Eastern rulers were transposed to sub-Saharan Africa: (2) Warithi/Solomon came with some officials, (3) Gijinmasu/Moses began the building of the walls, (4) Nawata and Gawata or Gog and Magog continued them and (5) Yusa/Josua finished them. Among the succeeding rulers we recognize in (6) Naguji, the oppressor, Magog, in (7) Guguwa, the king gone blind, Gog, in (8) Shekarau, the tolerant king, the 27th Kassite king ShagaraktiShuriash (1245-1233), in (9) Tsamiya, the fighter against pagans, the 32nd Kassite king Adad-shuma-usur (1216-1187) and in (10) Uthmn, the usurper, the 19th legendary Assyrian king Samani.130

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These identifications suggest that Israelites played a significant role in the founding of the city state of Kano. In addition the names Gog and Magog seem to designate in biblical terms not hostile but friendly people from the north who contributed to the state-building.131 By contrast, the Kassite royal names are indicative of the presence of Babylonians among the early immigrant founders of Kano.132 If it is correct to identify (9) Tsamiya with the Kassite king Adad-shuma-usur and (10) Uthmn with the legendary Assyrian ruler (19) Samani, the murder of a KassiteBabylonian king could correspond to a dramatized representation of the Assyrian conquest of Babylonia. Though unfortunately his successor, (11) Yaji, cannot be identified, the supposition of a dynastic break at this level is to some extent supported by the fact that (10) Uthmn/Samani had ascendants but no descendants.133 More generally it should be noted that the validity of the Israelite interpretation of the early section of the Kano Chronicle is supported by the last titled king of Kano of the destitute Hausa dynasty who claimed to have been “the greatest Jew of the country and the oldest descendent of Lamurudu (Nimrod)”.134 Israelite influence is also apparent from the worship of the cukana/shekhinah “divine presence” (i.e. “Ark of the Covenant”) in Kano until the end of the eighteenth century when it was destroyed on the eve of the Fulani Jihad.135 The sixteenth century Imam Ibn Furtu of Bornu identified a similar object, the mune of Kanem destroyed in the thirteenth century, with the tabut/sakina of King Saul mentioned in the Koran. He deplored its demolition on account of its assumed identity with the Israelite Ark of the Covenant.136 With respect to the small Hausa state of Rano situated 40 km south of Kano we note that owing to the unavailability of any king list it is impossible to get an idea about the ethnic identity of its founders. In ,atsina the pre-Islamic section of the king list comprises eight names and begins with an Aramaean ancestral figure.137 Indeed, the name of the ancestor (1) Kumayo seems to correspond to the Jahwist form of Kemuël, a name designating Abraham’s nephew by Abraham’s uncle Nahor and the father of the eponymous ancestor Aram. Some authors suppose that Kemuël was not only an ancestral figure of the Aramaeans but the original ancestor himself of the Aramaeans, rather than the eponymous Aram.138 By the substitution of the ending –jahû/jo (“Yahweh”) to –ël (“El”), the ancestral name seems to have been purposely given a Jahwist and hence an Israelite form.139 For the subsequent names we note the following equivalences: (2) Ramba for Eber, the eponymous ancestor of the Hebrews, (3) Teryau for Terah, the father of Abraham, (4) Jernanata for an unknown figure, (5) Yanka 'ari (Ha. “hundred sacrifices”), also said to have been called Ibrhm, for Abraham,140 (6) Jida Yaki (Ar./Ha.

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“many wars”) or Sanau (Sem. “second”) 141 for Ishmael and Korau (from Ha. kore “expel”) for Isaac.142 According to the preceding identifications, the king list of ,atsina resembles the Dwn of Kanem-Bornu insofar as it begins with a list of Israelite patriarchs, although the ,atsina patriarchal list is far more truncated and transformed than that of Kanem:143 in an overture towards the Aramaeans it begins with Kumayo/Kemuël instead of (1) Adam, and continues with (14) Rumba/Eber, (19) Teriyau/Terah, (20) Ibrhm/Abraham, (21) Sanau/Ishmael and (22) Korau/Isaac.144 Though not exactly biblical, the subsequent killing (or expelling) of Sanau/Ishmael by Korau/Isaac is traditionally told by a story parallel to that of Samson and Delilah.145 This episode of the ,atsina tradition resembles closely Bawo’s rebuttal of KarCagari in the Bawo version of the Bayajidda legend and as such it is likewise related to the Israelite scheme of descent. It belittles the role of Sanau/Ishmael and emphasizes the preeminent position of Korau/Isaac, a figure who in biblical terms was the grandfather of the eponymous ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel. ,atsina tradition depicts Korau/Isaac as the ancestor of the Hausa or Larabawa/Arabs and his rival brother Sanau/Ishmael by contrast as the ancestor of the Azna or 'urbawa population of ,atsina. Called 'urbi in ,atsina, the king of the Azna, claims descent from Sanau. Since 'an Brahim (“son of Abraham”) is the title of the heir presumptive to the office of 'urbi, this title confirms the equivalence of Sanau with Ishmael, the elder son of Abraham.146 While the Larabawa/Hausa correspond to the Israelites, the 'urbawa/Azna are equivalent to the Ishmaelites. Korau’s killing of Sanau therefore seems to refer to the marginalization of the Ishmaelites by the Israelites and by extension to the submission of the Azna by the Hausa.147 With respect to Zaria/Zegzeg we note the possible identification of Gunguma, the first king on the list, with Gungunum (1932-1906), the fifth king of Larsa, a Babylonian city state east of Uruk. Gungunum was the greatest ruler of Larsa and his name may therefore have been held in esteem by Babylonians of that region until the time of their deportation by the Assyrians in the seventh century BCE.148 If this identification is correct it would mean that Zaria properly speaking was not a Hausa but a Banza state. Geographical proximity and numerical symmetry may explain that it was nevertheless counted among the Seven Hausa. The common ancestry of the Azna (in ,atsina the 'urbawa) and the Seven Banza states indicated by the Bayajidda legend makes the frequently suggested purely local origin of the Azna population of Hausaland doubtful. Though the bulk of the Azna were certainly of local extraction, their priestly leadership and the iron workers organized in

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special clans and controlled by the Azna kings appear to descend from ancient Near Eastern immigrants. Parallel to the Seven Hausa the Bayajidda legend mentions Seven Banza states, among whom for lack of space we consider here only Zamfara, Kebbi and Yoruba, omitting Nupe, Gwari, Yauri and Kwararrafa.149 As for Zamfara we note intensive borrowing from the Kebbi king list, but independence in respect of the first three names on the list. Unfortunately these three names are particularly difficult to identify. Taking into account the possibly Hebrew article –ha/-ba, the first name BaLuruLuru (1) may perhaps be related to Kurigalzu II (1332-1308), a name designating one of the late Kassite rulers of Babylonia. No identification can be suggested for (2) BaLara. However, (3) GimshiLi, a warlike king still remembered by drum-beating in front of the palace, may be identical with Gilgamesh, a Sumerian king of early dynastic Uruk commemorated by a famous epic.150 In view of these parallels and the borrowings from the Kebbi king list it may be suggested that the early kings of the Zamfara king list were Babylonians. The king list of Kebbi provides in its first section the names of fourteen ancient Near Eastern kings, four of whom were Kassites and one a ruler of Kish. It begins with the following names: (1) Burunburun I/Burnaburiash * (c. 1510), first Kassite king of Babylonia, (2) Arguji/ArgiZti I (785-760), fourth king of Urartu, (3) Tabari/Tabrimmon (c. 890), second ruler of Damascus and (4) Zartai/Sarduri I (840-830), first king of Urartu. Of the 33 ancient Near Eastern kings on the list only four were Western Semites and two of the latter - (18) Sulaymana/Solomon and (27) Bata-Musa/Moses were Israelites. The subsequent three sections of the list confirm its Mesopotamian origin.151 It therefore appears that the founders of the Banza state of Kebbi were led by Babylonian Kassites and that among them there were Urartians and Elamites in prominent positions. The evidence provided by the dynastic tradition of the 0yP-Yoruba is quite different from that of the two preceding Banza states. Though the tradition begins with two Mesopotamian figures, its second section offers an Israelite perspective on ancient Near Eastern history in the ninth and eighth centuries BCE. Its third and fourth section deal with a succession of Assyrian rulers with some inserted kings of Assyrian deported nations, while its fifth and sixth sections shift to an exclusively Babylonian perspective. Especially the final narratives concerned with the oppressive Vizier Gaha/Sin-shar-ishkun (623-612) and the legitimate king AbiPdun/ Nabopolassar (626-605) seem to adopt a Babylonian point of view.152 In spite of its Israelite outlook at the beginning, the dynastic tradition of the

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0yP-Yoruba should therefore be considered as a founding charter more concerned with Babylonian than with Israelite interests. From this brief review of Hausa and Banza dynastic traditions, it appears that Israelites were prominent among the founding groups of the Hausa states and Babylonians among the founding groups of the Banza states. Underlying the Bayajidda legend, the Israelite descent scheme seems to have been considerably modified in order to take account of the ethnic diversity characterizing the Central Sudanic state foundering groups. Among the founders of the Seven Hausa states we find apart from Israelites also Aramaeans. Among the founders of the Seven Banza states, we discover—instead of Ishmaelites from the eastern neighbourhood of Israel—most prominently Babylonians but also immigrants from the central and eastern Assyrian provinces. This enlargement of scale was certainly the result of the Assyrian expansion and the subsequent Assyrian policy of deportation. The absence of significant numbers of Assyrian kings in the Hausa as well as the Banza lists can mainly be explained by the refusal of the former victims of Assyrian oppression to tolerate the restoration of similarly oppressive states in West Africa. To conclude, it would be erroneous to consider the Bayajidda legend as a floating oral tradition reflecting medieval or early modern events.153 In the present paper it has been argued that such an opinion resulted from a superficial knowledge of the legend, which ignored its parallel transmission among the Hausa and Azna kings, its embedding in the social and festal fabric of the city-state of Daura and its nature as a myth-derived tradition of origin. It also does not consider the legend’s repercussion on the dynastic tradition of ,atsina, on the Bori mythology of Kebbi and on ethnic and geographical labels beyond Hausaland. In view of the legends deep embeddedness in the surviving sacred kingship pattern in Daura and its ancient ramifications in Hausaland and beyond all theories of an Islamic origin should be considered untenable.154 Rather, it appears that the legend grew out of a festive myth and functioned as a foundation charter from the beginning of the city-state of Daura and the adjacent Hausa states long before the rise of Islam in Hausaland. With respect to origins, the legend distinguishes between the bulk of the immigrants from Canaan and a prince from Baghdad who lost all his troops on the way to Daura. By correcting the interpretatio Arabica which was due to Islamic influences, we reach the conclusion that the bulk of the Hausa immigrants came originally from Syria-Palestine, and that their political leadership originated from the Assyrian capital of Nineveh but was devoid of all power. Moreover, from the Mesopotamian ancestral

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figure Nimrod, son of Canaan, of the Hausa immigrants it can be inferred that the Near Eastern invaders actually included great numbers of people from the central and south-eastern parts of the Assyrian Empire where Nimrod, i.e. Sargon of Akkad, was a celebrated figure. In view of the policy of mass deportations practised by the Assyrians, it is in fact quite plausible that people of Mesopotamian origin were also among the immigrants whom the legend traces back to a region corresponding to the Western provinces of Assyria. Though the legend indicates Syria-Palestine as the region of origin of the immigrants, its basic form betrays more precisely Israelite or rather proto-Israelite influences. Apart from the replacement of the Israelite patriarch Biram/Abraham by the Assyrian refugee prince Bayajidda/ Assur-uballit II, we note the latter’s marriage to Magajiya, corresponding to Sarah and Asherah, and his concubinage with Bagwariya, corresponding to Hagar and Anat. In conformity with the Israelite scheme of descent, the hero fathered with the slave-maid Bagwariya/Hagar a son called KarCagari/Ishmael who in turn fathered the founders of the seven illegitimate or Banza states. After the birth of the slave-maid’s son Bayajidda/Assur-uballit II had with his wife Magajiya/Sarah a son, Bawo/Isaac-Jacob, the future father of the founders of six Hausa states. The latter and Biram/Abraham, a son from a former marriage, were the founders of the Seven Hausa states. The strange naming of the various Israelite figures, the remaining cult-dramatic and priestly functions of the king, Magajiya and the Iya/Bagwariya, and the re-enactments of the Bayajidda legend during the surviving celebrations of a New Year festival can perhaps be explained by former influences of the priests and priestesses of Baal/Yahweh, Asherah and Anat on the shaping of the Israelite legendary figures.155 Following the Assyrian conquest of Israel in 722 BCE and the Assyrian exile, the deported Israelites apparently continued to preserve the institutional basis of these former ritual and mythological connections. Moreover, in the light of these developments, those versions of the legend which still have Bawo instead of Bayajidda as the central heroic figure can now be understood to have maintained their original Israelite form.156 Not yet affected by the Assyrian exile, they perpetuate the pre-canonical form of the tradition before it got its Assyrian shape, transferring from Bawo/Isaac-Jacob to Bayajidda/Assur-uballit II the role of the great progenitor of two types of states/tribes.157 Some evidence for the enlargement of the Israelite concept of pure Israelite and pure Ishmaelite tribes, in consequence of Assyrian deportations, can be adduced from the onomastic data contained in the king lists of the Hausa and Banza states. Both types of king list point to

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the ethnically mixed nature of the state founders, but while the king lists of the Seven Hausa states reveal the preeminent position of a number of Israelite kings, the lists of some Banza states disclose the outstanding position of Babylonian rulers. These results substantiate the evidence of the Bayajidda legend with respect to the Israelite identity of Biram/Abraham and of Bawo/Isaac-Jacob and his descendants, and they partially confirm the Ishmaelite identity of KarCagari and his descendants. In conjunction with the analysis of Hausa and Banza king lists, the Bayajidda legend can therefore be interpreted as a modified Israelite descent scheme pointing to considerable ethnic diversity among the immigrants to Hausaland resulting from Assyrian mass deportations and later dispersions from Syria-Palestine. According to the enlarged descent scheme of the Bayajidda legend, the migrants were subdivided into two great groups whose contraction from twelve to seven tribes/states (in each of the two groups) may have primarily resulted from the number of Israelite tribes deported by the Assyrians after the conquest of Samaria in 722 BCE. Instead of the Ten Lost Tribes traditionally supposed to have been exiled, the number of tribes was only seven according to the Hausa and the Yoruba traditions.158 On the other hand the contraction of the number of tribes from twelve to seven is counterbalanced by the inclusion of Aramaeans in the group of seven Israelite tribes/states, and of Mesopotamians in the group of seven Ishmaelite tribes/states. The legend therefore seems to reflect appropriately the considerable enlargement of scale in the primordial Israelite tribal tradition, brought about in response to the Assyrian policy of mass deportation which provided the demographic basis for imperial expansion.159 Instead of ethnic homogeneity, as implied by the Israelite model, the Assyrian-influenced Hausa model suggests the existence of ethnic heterogeneity, implying the emergence of diversified states instead of unified ethnic groups. Though metropolitan Assyria was conquered by Babylonian and Median troops in 612 BCE, the remaining Assyrians, assisted by their Egyptian allies, continued to fight against the invaders in the western provinces of their empire. After the lost battles of Carchemish and Hamath in 605, the public order maintained by the Egypto-Assyrian forces in Syria-Palestine broke down and the resettled deportee communities were exposed to the encroachments of their local enemies. Up-rooted by these assaults, tens of thousands—perhaps even hundreds of thousands—of men and women followed the fleeing Egyptian army to the Nile valley before continuing to sub-Saharan Africa. On account of their mixed composition, those settling in the region between Lake Chad and the Niger towards 600

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BCE traced their origin back not only to Canaan and Palestine but also to Baghdad/Nineveh. Although striving hard to avoid the restoration of any kind of Neo-Assyrian regime in the newly established Hausa and Banza states, they remembered their former Assyrian rulers and protectors by ascribing in their modified Israelite tradition of origin an important historical role to the refugee prince Bayajidda/Assur-uballit II. Moreover, on account of the composite nature of the king lists in both types of state, it may be suggested that the tribal connotation of the Israelite scheme of descent was replaced by the notion of complex society implied by the Hausa model. Supplementary information on the fate of the former local inhabitants of the country can be gleaned from the Azna versions of the Bayajidda legend. Though KarCagari/Ishmael is depicted as a son of the Assyrian refugee prince Bayajidda/Assur-ballit II, the status of his mother Bagwariya/Hagar as a non-Hausa speaking slave points to the primarily local identity of his descendants. From the Azna versions of the legend it appears that the autochthones did not submit without resistance to the foreign invaders. Benefitting from a foreign priestly leadership adopted early on, the Azna people successfully resisted not only their expulsion from the country but also their total submission to the invaders. Though not accepted by the Near Eastern invaders as fully equal partners, they were integrated into the new Hausa society together with the foreign craftsmen at an early stage of the state-building process. Through the intermediary of their “Azna kings”, they were even recognized as the original owners of the country, who, as compensation for the loss of their former independence, continued to play an important role in the new states as warriors and ritualists.160

Notes 1

Herbert R. Palmer, Sudanese Memoirs, 3 vols. (Lagos: Government Printer, 1928), III, 132-143; W. Hallam, “The Bayajidda legend in Hausa folklore,” Journal of African History 7 (1966), 47-60; Michael G. Smith, The Affairs of Daura (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 53-55; Dierk Lange, Ancient Kingdoms of West Africa (Dettelbach: Röll, 2004), 221-9, 289-296. 2 Dierk Lange, “Die Hausa-Traditionen in ihrer Abhängigkeit von Kanem-Borno und Nubien,” Anthropos 88 (1993), 55-60, 72-73; id., Kingdoms, 277-287. 3 Abdullahi Smith, “Some considerations to the formation of states in Hausaland,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 5 (1970), 329-346; John D. Fage, History of Africa, 2nd ed. (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 61-63. 4 David Henige, Oralhistoriography (London: Longman, 1982), 81-82; Fage, History, 64-65.

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Smith, “Considerations,” 335-7; Fage, History, 63. Recent publications by the author include research on the Assyrian factor in the history of Kanem-Bornu, the Hausa states and the 0yP-Yoruba: The Founding of Kanem by Assyrian Refugees ca. 600 BC: Documentary, Linguistic, and Archaeological Evidence (Boston: African Studies Centre, 2011, “An Assyrian successor state in West Africa: the ancestral kings of Kebbi as ancient Near Eastern rulers,” Anthropos 105 (2009), 359-382, “Origin of the Yoruba and the ‘Lost Tribes of Israel’,” Anthropos 106 (2011), 579-595. 7 Palmer, Memoirs, III, 132-4; Lange, Kingdoms, 231 (map); 289-296 (text). 8 Landeroin in Jean Tilho, Documents scientifiques de la mission Tilho (19061909) (Paris: Imprimérie Nationale, 1911), 456-8; Boubou Hama, Histoire du Gobir et de Sokoto, (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1967), 28; Dierk Lange interview of 'an Akali, Tsibiri, Field Notes (FN), Univ. of Bayreuth, 1995:30-31; Philippe David, Maradi: l’ancien état et l’ancienne ville, (Paris: IFAN, 1964), 9-16; Palmer, Memoirs, III, 98 n. 1 (Kano Chronicle); Eduard J. Arnett, “A Hausa chronicle,” Journal of the African Society 9 (1910), 161-5. 9 Heinrich Barth, Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa, 3 vols., (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1857), I, 471-2; Sidney J. Hogben and Anthony Kirk-Greene, The Emirates of Northern Nigeria (London: University Press, 1966), 82, 148-9. 10 Palmer, Memoirs, III, 132-4; Smith, Daura, 53-55; Lange, Kingdoms, 289-296. 11 Guy Nicolas, Dynamique sociale et appréhension du monde au sein d’une société hausa (Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie, 1975), 63-65, 381; Magajin Bayamadi FN 1997:16-17. 12 There are some variations in the Banza states (Barth, Travels, I, 472; Hogben/Kirk-Greene, Emirates, 149). 13 For an exception see the brief version in Kurt Krieger, Geschichte von Zamfara (Berlin: Reimer, 1959), 19. 14 In the available palace versions of the legend, a migration from Canaan and Palestine preceded the migration from Baghdad (Palmer, Memoirs, III, 132; Smith, Daura, 53; Lange, Kingdoms, 289). They indicate the ancestral name of Najib which the court historian Alhasan identifies with Nimrod (FN 1997:3), an identification confirmed by other Hausa traditions (see notably Coutumiers juridiques de l’Afrique Occidentale Française, vol. III (Paris : Larose, 1939), 268, and Lange, Kingdoms, 209). 15 Palmer, Memoirs, III, 132-4; Lange, Kingdoms, 289-295. 16 Nicolas, Dynamique, 63, 227; Tahida, son of Sarkin Kano Abu Bakr, interview Maradu/Niger 1995, f. 5, 6; David, Maradi, 11 (pieces beside the well); Sarkin Anna 'an Sadaka, interview 1995, f. 10; Lange, Kingdoms (“Dimension”, 164), 174. 17 Krieger, Geschichte, 19. 18 Enuma Elish, IV, 137-146; V, 1-59; Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford: University Press, 1989), 255-7. 6

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Henri Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1948), 313-333; Dalley, Myths, 231; John Day, God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea (Oxford: University Press, 1985), 1-18. 20 Dierk Lange, “Das kanaanäisch-israelitische Neujahrsfest bei den Hausa,” in Schnittpunkt Ugarit (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1999), eds. Manfred Kropp and Andreas Wagner, 112-149; id., Kingdoms, 221, 292. 21 David, Maradi, 10-14; Tahida, son of Sarkin Kano Abu Bakr, interv. 1995, f. 4. 22 Lange, Kingdoms, (“Evolution,” 196-8), 156-8; Palmer, Memoirs, III, 98 n. 1. 23 Walter Kühme, Das Königtum von Gobir (Hamburg: Kovac, 2003), 230; Lange, Kingdoms, (“Dimension,” 164), 174; 'an Akali FN 1995:31. Cf. the name JidaYaki in the king list of ,atsina (Palmer, Memoirs, III, 79, and see below p. 162). 24 In terms of the equivalence of Bawo with Isaac (and Jacob) as suggested below (pp. 145, 165), such a connection of the dragon-slaying with Bawo/Isaac makes it difficult to conceive of the original identity of KarCagari/Ishmael. 25 Lange, Kingdoms, 294-5. In fact, one of the palace versions of the legend calls the descendants of KarCagari Maguzawa (Lange, Kingdoms, 294 n. 320), but Daura informants consider them to be identical with the Azna/Anna (Alhasan FN 1995:48). 26 David, Maradi, 14-16; Nicolas, Dynamique, 63-65, 508-9. 27 Nicolas, Dynamique, 136-218. The Hausa terms birni, pl. birane, “walled town” and sarki, pl. sarakuna, “king” are cognate to Hebrew and Akkadian bîrnît “town” and \arr Ki\ “king of Kish” (Roy C. Abraham, Dictionary of the Hausa Language, 2nd ed. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1962), 104, 785; Lange, Founding, 19). 28 Nicolas, Dynamique, 66-135; Lange, “Successor state,” 377. 29 Palmer, Memoirs, III, 134; Lange, Kingdoms, 294. 30 Nicolas, Dynamique, 509; Magajin Bayamadi FN 1997:16. 31 Tahida, son of the Sarkin Kano, interv. 1995, f. 10. On the foreign nature of the Sarkin Azna see Nicolas, Dynamique, 509. 32 Nicolas, Dynamique, 63, 508-9; interv. Tahida, 1996, f. 10; Lange, Kingdoms, 294-5. 33 Lange, Kingdoms (“Dimension,” 184-5, 188-9), 188-9, 198-9. 34 The Hausa prefix ba- seems to be derived from the Hebrew article ha- (Lange, Kingdoms (“Dimension,” 197 n. 216), 207 n. 216). 35 Barth, Travels, I, 471; Lange, Kingdoms (“Dimension,” 194-5), 204-5. 36 Coutumiers juridiques, 267-8. 37 Krieger, Geschichte, 18-19. 38 Lange, Kingdoms, 291; Hogben/Kirk-Greene, Emirates, 157. 39 Gen 10:8-12 has Nimrod, son of Kush, but in Jewish legends he is more often designated as son of Canaan (Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. I (Philadelphia: Jew. Publ. Soc. of Am., 1925), 187, 190). 40 Gen 10:10-12; Peter Machinist, “Nimrod,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary (ABD), 6 vols., ed. David N. Freedman, IV, 1116 (New York: Doubleday, 1992); Lange, “Lost Tribes,” 583, 585. 41 Alhasan, Daura FN 1995:3; Lange, Kingdoms, 291.

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42 Palmer, Memoirs, III, 126; Lange, Kingdoms, 156-8; Herbert R. Palmer, “Western Sudan history: the Raudthat al-afkari,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 15 (1915-6), 264-5 (transl. of ‘Abd al-Qdir, RawGt al-afkr); Barth, Travels, 1, 471-2. 43 Arnett. “Hausa chronicle,” 161-5; Palmer/Walwyn, Memoirs, III, 132-4. 44 Smith, Daura, 53-55; Lange, “Neujahrsfest,” 112-149; id., Kingdoms, 289-295. 45 For parallels in the customs of the Fertile Crescent see John Bright, History of Israel, 4th ed. (Louisville: John Knox, 2000), 79-80. 46 Gen 25:12-16; 35:22-26; E. A. Knauf, “Ishmaelites,” ABD, III, 513-520. 47 M. Dijkstra, “Ishmael,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (DDD), ed. Karel van der Toorn et al., 847 (Leiden: Brill, 1995); Lange, Kingdoms, 221-4, 235, 361-4. 48 Lange, Kingdoms, 235-6. 49 Among the Hausa Magajiya is the major female Bori deity and the major priestess. Her name seems to be derived from Hebr.-Aram. maqdash - “sanctuary” (Lange, Königtum (“Dimension,” 184-6), 194-6; id., “Neujahrsfest,” 134-5). 50 Jes 7:14; Gregorio del Olmo Lete and Joaquin Sanmartin, A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 320-1. 51 Lange, Kingdoms (“Dimension,” 190-1), 200-1; 'an Akali FN 1995:30 (orally: Bawo na turmi). 52 Gen 16:12; Lange, Kingdoms, 294. The original Hausa – not Fulani – Magajin Bayamadi equalizes KarCagari with the Bori spirit Maye/water (Ango FN 1997: 20). 53 Abraham, Dictionary, 383 (Ar.: al-lisn); Lange, Kingdoms (“Dimension,” 199200), 209-210; id., “Lost Tribes,” 583. 54 Samuel Hooke, “Genesis,” in Peake’s Commentary on the Bible (London: Routledge, 1962), eds., Mathew Black and Harold H. Rowley, 143d. 55 See below pp. 151-3; L. I. Rabinowitz, “Ten Lost Tribes,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, XV (Jerusalem: Keter Publ., 1971), 1003-6; Lange, “Lost Tribes,” 582. 56 Lange, “Neujahrsfest,” 112-149; id., Kingdoms (“Dimension,” 166-173), 176183. 57 Smith, Daura, 57, 83, 123, 124; Lange, Kingdoms, 223-4. 58 Lange, Kingdoms (“Dimension,” 166-173), 176-183; id., “Neujahrsfest,” 112130; id., Kingdoms, 221-9. 59 Lange, Kingdoms, (“Dimension,” 167), 177; id., “Neujahrsfest,” 125-6. 60 Frankfort, Kingship, 295-9; Lange, “Neujahrsfest,” 167-8. 61 Hogben/Kirk-Greene, Emirates, 148; Shamaki FN 1995:91; Tambari FN 1996:7, 17-19. 62 Magajin Tambari FN 1996:32-33; 'an Gimba Maharba FN 1995:88. 63 'an Gimba Maharba FN 1995:88. 64 Smith, Daura, 57. 65 The relevant information concerning this movement was provided by 'an Gimba Maharba, 65 years, the senior brother of Sarkin Baka, the latter being the leader of the king’s bodyguard (Sarkin Yara FN 1995:87). He belongs to one of the

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five officials assigned by the king over the different Maguzawa communities (Smith, Daura, 70). 66 Malam Hassan and Shuaibu Na’ibi, A Chronicle of Abuja (Ibadan: University Press, 1952), 68; Nicolas, Dynamique, 336, 340, 341, 389. 67 Smith, Daura, 123-4; 'an Gimba Maharba FN 1995:88-89; Magajin Tambari FN 1996:32-33. 68 Their participation in the procession may be deduced from their presence during the Gani festival in the zauren Gani (Alhasan FN 1995:1). 69 It may be supposed that the six Hausa kings who attended at the Gani festival of Daura before the jihd greeted the Magajiya after the king of Daura and before the governors and of the Daura provinces. 70 Palmer mentions the king’s ceremonial visit to Iya’s house to receive “mother’s milk” (Memoirs, III, 145). 71 Frankfurt, Kingship, 330-1. 72 Alhasan, 'an Akali, Sarkin Fulani FN 1995:1, 40, 91. Although in the Hebrew Bible only residual elements of a sacred marriage are perceivable, the Israelite confederation of the twelve tribes may have been constituted on the basis of similar rites (Martin Noth, Geschichte Israels (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1956), 94-104). 73 'an Gimba Maharba FN 1995: 88. 74 Smith, Daura, 54; Hogben/Kirk-Greene, Emirates, 148. 75 Lange, Kingdoms, 347-351. 76 Alhasan FN 1995: 60, 79. 77 Mark S. Smith and Wayne T. Pitard, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, vol. II (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 10-22, 69-730; Lange, “Neujahrsfest,” 109-149. 78 Lange, Kingdoms (“Dimension,” 199), 209; id., “Neujahrsfest,” 113, 158. 79 Hallam, “Bayajidda”, 47-60; Fage, History, 63. 80 Hallam, “Bayajidda,” 55; Mervyn Hiskett, The Development of Islam in West Africa (London: Longman, 1984), 69. 81 Palmer, Memoirs, III, 133; Lange, Kingdoms, 290. 82 Bustenay Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1979), 33-135; Marc Van De Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 268. 83 Joan Oates, “The fall of Assyria (635-609 B.C.),” in The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. III, 2, 2nd ed., John Boardman et al., 162-193 (Cambridge: University Press, 1991); Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton: University Press, 1992), 451-5. 84 Noth, Geschichte, 248; Oded, Deportations, 46-54. 85 This is implied by the Bayajidda legend which insists on the lending of the hero’s troops to Bornu/Egypt (Palmer, Memoirs, III, 133; Lange, Kingdoms, 290). 86 Redford, Egypt, 359-364; Lange, “Successor state,” 369-380; id., Founding, 3234; id., “Lost Tribes,” 592-3. 87 Lange, Founding, 13-15; id., “Successor state,” 374-5; id., “Lost Tribes,” 589591.

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Joseph Marquart, Die Beninsammlung, (Leiden: Brill, 1913), 77; Dierk Lange, Le Dwn des sultans du Kanem-Bornu (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1977), 115. 89 Dierk Lange, “The early magistrates and kings of Kanem as descendants of Assyrian state-builders,” Anthropos 104 (2009), 5. 90 Lange, “Successor state,” 364, 375-9; id., Founding, 10, 23, 30, 34. 91 The same events are reflected in the king lists of Kebbi and of Bornu by two distinct royal names designating at the end of the respective ancient Near Eastern sections of the lists Nabopolassar and Assur-uballit II (Lange, “Successor state,” 379; id., Founding, 14). 92 Lange, Founding, 28; id., “Lost Tribes,” 591-3. 93 Said to have been women and to have ruled at Tsofon Birni the nine or sixteen figures preceding Magajiya Daurama (Palmer, Memoirs, III, 142; Lange, Kingdoms, 289) are certainly legendary projections on a nearby site. 94 Lange, “Early magistrates,” 369-373; id., “Lost Tribes,” 589-593. 95 Fage, History, 47; Lange, Kingdoms, 279-287. 96 D. O. Edzard, “Kamel,” in Reallexikon der Assyriologie (RLA), 12 vols., eds. Erich Ebeling et al., V, 331-2 (Berlin: Gruyter, 1932-2012) (not completed); M. Weszeli, “Pferd,” RLA, X, 473-7; Lange, Kingdoms, 291 (Bayajidda). 97 According to one version of the Bayajidda legend the migrants tried to conquer Tripoli (Palmer, Memoirs, III, 132), while according to the other they split in North Africa, the non-specified group presumably heading for the Maghrib (Lange, Kingdoms, 289). 98 Fage, History, 152-3; Gustav Nachtigal, Sahara und Sudan, 2 vols., (Berlin: Weidmann, 1881), II, 18-21. 99 Nicolas, Dynamique, 55-218; Smith, Daura, 32-33. 100 For the identification of the Wangara as descendants from Assyrian traders see Dierk Lange, “Abwanderung der assyrischen tamkaru nach Nubien, Darfur und ins Tschadseegebiet”, in Mélanges Michal Tymowski (Warsow: WUW, 2011), ed. B. Nowak et al., 201, 226. 101 Finn Fuglestad, “A reconsideration of Hausa history before the Jihad,” Journal of African History 19 (1978), 319-339; Lange, “Magistrates,” 11-12, 19. 102 On the pre-Islamic nature of the bicephalic state of early Kanem see Lange, “Magistrates,” 11-20. 103 Nicolas, Dynamique, 55-179; Paul Krusius, “Die Maguzawa,” Archiv für Anthropologie 14 (1915), 288-9, 297; Percy G. Harris, Sokoto Provincial Gazetteer, (Sokoto: cyclostyled, 1938), 149. 104 Fuglestad, “Reconsideration,” 327, 334, 337. 105 Nicolas, Dynamique, 56-57, 159, 362, 508; Smith, Daura, 33; ‘Abd al-Qdir, RawGt al-afkr, transl. In Herbert R. Palmer, “Western Sudan history: the Raudthat al-afkar,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 15 (1915-6), 262. 106 Lange, Kingdoms, 294-5. 107 Magajin Bayamadi FN 1997:16. Similarly Alhasan in Daura but without explanation (Lange, Kingdoms, 294). 108 Lange, Kingdoms, (“Dimension,” 184), 194. 109 Palmer/Abd al-Qdir, “History,” 262; Abraham, Dictionary, 53, 353.

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Palmer, Memoirs, III, 134; Smith, Daura, 55; Lange, Kingdoms, 294 n. 317. Lange, Founding, 31-38; id., “Lost Tribes,” 589-593. 112 Barth, Travels, I, 472; Hiskett, Development, 110. 113 Lange, Founding, 14; id., “Successor state,” 370; id., “Lost Tribes,” 588-9; W. G. Lambert, “Götterlisten”, RLA, III, 473-9; A. Cavigneaux, “Lexikalische Listen”, RLA, VI, 609-641. 114 Hama, Histoire, 28, 40; Lange, Kingdoms, (“Dimension”, 182-3), 192-3. 115 Palmer, Memoirs, III, 144. According to oral tradition, the kings of Garun Gabas claim descent from an Arab family (Hogben/Kirk-Greene, Emirates, 484). 116 Horst Klengel, Syria: 3000 to 300 B.C. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1992), 214; J. D. Hawkins, “Sam’al,” RLA, XI, 601. 117 Lange, “Abwanderung,” 200-1. 118 Van de Mieroop, History, 309; Klengel, Syria, 51-64. 119 Lange, “Lost Tribes,” 585-7; Gershon Galil, The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 147. 120 Palmer, Memoirs, III, 142-3; Smith, Daura, 56-57, 154-5. 121 Lange, Kingdoms, 236; id., “Successor state,” 279. 122 Nicole Échard, L’Expérience du passé (Niamey: IRSH, 1975), 47; Hama, Histoire, 33. 123 A. Fuchs, “Partatua”, RLA, X, 342-3; G. B. Lanfranchi, “Skythen”, RLA, XII, 581-2. 124 Hama, Histoire, 28; J. D. Hawkins, “Sam’al,” RLA, XI, 602-4. 125 J. D. Hawkins, “Sam’al,” RLA, XI, 602; Lange, “Successor state,” 372. 126 Palmer, “Sudan history”, 266. 127 Murray Last, “Historical metaphors in the Kano Chronicle,” History in Africa 7 (1980), 162-3; Lange, Kingdoms, 248-9. 128 1 Sam 21:11-16; 1 Sam 27:1-12; 2 Sam 6:10-11; Ps. 56:1; J. D. Seger, “Gath”, ABD, II, 909; Palmer, Memoirs, III, 99-100; Lange, Kingdoms (“Dimension,” 193), 203. 129 2 Sam 5:6-8; 1 Chr 11:4-7; D. Tarler and J. D. Cahill, “David, city of,” ABD, II, 52-53. 130 Palmer, Memoirs, III, 100-5; Lange, Kingdoms, 248-9. 131 M. G. Reddish, “Gog and Magog,” ABD, II, 1056. 132 John Brinkman, “Kassiten,” RLA, V, 464-473. 133 Palmer, Memoirs, III, 104-7. Michael Smith considers ‘Uthmn’s ascendency as doubtful (Government in Kano: 1350-1950 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), 115-6. 134 Lange, Kingdoms, (“Dimension,” 199), 206 (Monographie Lemoine, 1955); David, Maradi, 12 (Magajia was the daughter of the Jewish king Lamurudu who came from the east). 135 Palmer, Memoirs, III, 116,127; Last, “Metaphors,” 169. 136 Palmer, Memoirs, I, 70; Koran 2: 248; Lange, Dwn, 71-72; id., “The MuneSymbol as the Ark of the Covenant between Duguwa and Sefuwa,” Borno Museum Society Newsletter, 66-67 (2006), 15-24. 111

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The king list of ,atsina distinguishes between Korau and MuIammad Korau and it is of course only the latter to whom the introduction of Islam can be attributed (Palmer, Memoirs, III, 79-80). 138 W. T. Pitard, “Aram,” ABD, I, 338; R. I. Panitz, “Kemuel,” ABD, IV, 16. 139 Parallel to Mika-jahu – “who is Jahwe” (Judg 17:18) (M. Z. Brettler, “Micah,” ABD, IV, 806). 140 Palmer has “Yanka Dari (Ibrahim)” (Memoirs, III, 79). 141 Moise-Augustin Landeroin has “Jabdayaki (dit Sano)” (“Notice historique,” in Documents scientifiques de la mission Tilho (1906-1909), ed. Jean Tilho, 456 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1911). 142 Palmer, Memoirs, III, 79 n. 2. 143 Dierk Lange, “Biblical patriarchs from a pre-canonical source mentioned in the Dwn of Kanem-Bornu (Lake Chad region),” Zeitschrift für Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 121, 4 (2009), 588-598. 144 The order followed here is that of some king lists mentioned by Palmer, Memoirs, III, 79 n. 2. 145 Hogben/Kirk-Greene, Emirates, 157-8. 146 Palmer, Memoirs, III, 80 n. 1. 147 Hogben/Kirk-Greene, Emirates, 156-8; Lange, Kingdoms, 250. 148 Arnett, “Hausa chronicle,” 165-6; D. O. Edzard, “Gungunum,” RLA, III, 699700. 149 Barth, Travels, I, 472; Hogben/Kirk-Greene, Emirates, 149. 150 Krieger, Geschichte, 24-26; F. de Liagre Böhl, “Gilgamesh” RLA, III, 357372; Lange, Kingdoms, 252-3; id., “Successor state,” 375. 151 Lange, “Successor state,” 369-375. 152 Lange, “Lost Tribes,” 589-590. 153 Smith, “Considerations,” 335-346; Hiskett, Development, 69-77. 154 Hallam, “Bayajidda,” 55; Hiskett, Development, 69; Fuglestad, “Reconsideration,” 328-333. 155 M. Dijkstra, “Abraham,” “Ishmael,” “Jacob,” DDD, 6-10, 844-7; 862-5; B. Becking, “Sarah,” DDD, 1366; Lange, Kingdoms (“Dimension,” 184-193), 194203. 156 In view of a much shorter chronology, a similar evolution of the legend is suggested in Lange, Kingdoms (“Evolution”, 195-204), 155-164. 157 Since according to the Bawo version of the tradition there were only seven states founded by the six sons of Bawo and by KarCagari (Davis, Maradi, 14-16), this Israelite version may also have been subsequently modified. 158 L. I. Rabinowitz, “Lost Tribes,” 1003-6; Tudor Parfitt, The Lost Tribes of Israel (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2002), 3-8; Lange, “Lost Tribes,” 582. 159 Van de Mieroop, History, 232-3; Oded, Mass Deportations, 41-74. 160 This is a an expanded and modified version of a paper presented at the Hausa Workshop, UEA, Norwich, 11-12 July 2008, organized by Anne Haour.

CHAPTER SEVEN LEMBA TRADITIONS: AN INDISPENSABLE TOOL FOR INTERPRETING THE OLD TESTAMENT IN AFRICA MAGDEL LE ROUX

The Lemba in Southern Africa are a very specific group with unique traditions regarding their Israelite extraction.1My publications on the Lemba are based on findings from a period of extensive field research (since 1994) in different Lemba communities.2 This qualitative field research is innovative in so far as I attempt not only to indicate the points of convergence between Africa and the Old Testament customs—as surveyed in previous studies—but also to determine the extent to which the culture of the pre-monarchic (or proto-) Israelites is similar to African cultures, more specifically that of the Lemba. I compare the Lemba to premonarchic Israel (ca 1250-1000 BC) since (1) their communities function according to a segmented tribal system without a common leader; (2) this period is interesting for the study of oral cultures; and (3) they regard themselves as “children of Abraham.” Taking Lemba oral traditions seriously I engage in a comparative study between Lemba and protoIsraelite customs and beliefs, without verifying or falsifying Lemba claims to an Israelite origin. Their claims have been tested, in a number of ways, by other scholars3. These claims provide interesting additional data, which makes this group special and interesting for the study of oral cultures. The aim was to investigate the functioning of oral traditions in a preindustrial society in respect of the relation between “facts” and “history” —currently a highly fashionable trend in New Archaeology, History of Religion and Old and New Testament Studies—and, by doing so, to find a contemporary counterpart to an understanding of the Old Testament and early Israel. It is comparison in aid of cross-cultural interpretation, as is now forcefully stated in more recent studies in religion. It is through comparison that the strange and exotic become intelligible and describable,

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whether the comparison entails juxtaposing diverse phenomena or theoretical models with phenomena.4 This is particularly exemplified in the circle of religion scholars surrounding Jonathan Z. Smith and Burton L. Mack.5 It is with a view to interpreting the strange and exotic, especially when we deal with traditions from different cultures and different epochs from the past, that they have developed the fourfold strategy of (1) description (as comprehensive as possible), (2) comparison (with as widely divergent and different phenomena as possible), (3) redescription (revisiting our initial description in the light of our comparative work and the applied theoretical models) and (4) rectification of categories (that is, reconceptualising the phenomenon, but now not in terms derived from the so-called “insider” language).6 To pursue this kind of procedure is necessary for the scholar of religion since scholarship should not advocate the insider viewpoint and so remain captive to the ideology and rhetoric of the sources, but should rather serve interpretation, which essentially entails translating or traducing traditions into “languages” foreign to the insiders and with which they might not necessarily agree.7 Lincoln contends that “when one permits those whom one studies to define the terms in which they will be understood, suspends one’s interest in the temporal and contingent, or fails to distinguish between ‘truths’, ‘truth-claims’, and ‘regime of truth’ one has ceased to function as a historian or scholar. In that moment, a variety of roles are available: some perfectly respectable (amanuensis, collector, friend, and advocate), and some less appealing (cheerleader, voyeur or retailer of import goods). None, however, should be confused with scholarship.”8 The value of this kind of procedure—to show if not to prove the “biblicalness” of African culture—lies precisely in its undermining of the conventional pictures of biblical history and biblical religion.9 Once comparative models are introduced, we start to discover the complexity and rhetoricity of the myth making processes.10 In addition to the work of the circle of scholars, referred to above, in the field of Old Testament Studies or studies of religion of ancient Israel, one can also point to the groundbreaking work of Rainer Albertz, Norman Gottwald, Howard Eilberg-Schwartz and Susan Niditch.11 This investigation comprises some comparisons, but is different from previous studies in respect of a number of aspects: Although I used qualitative research (an inductive method), the greatest part of the application of the data is mediated by theory (thus it is deductive).12 The theoretical framework developed by Smart, a scholar in the field of comparative religion, was employed. 13

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The Lemba is a very specific African group with claims about Israelite origin (as indicated above). Their early departure from Israel could imply that their religion could contain remnants of a very ancient type of religion, which would prove to be of great value when these are juxtaposed with those of early Israel. Furthermore, this project searches for an understanding of the relevance of the Old Testament in Africa, and is therefore selective and not an exhaustive comparison between the Lemba and early Israel.14

Written Word, Archaeology and Oral World What we until recently have known about Old Testament customs and traditions comes exclusively from the Hebrew Bible, which contains only roughly contemporary literary data. Unfortunately, the textual evidence has many limitations: It is often much later than the events they purport to describe—partly due to their lateness, it presents an idealised or artificial scheme of religion written by and for the intelligentsia, who preserved, transmitted and finally edited it into its present form. Such a document may for example reveal very little about the actual religion of the masses and tell us very little about conditions during the pre-monarchic period (or Iron Age I).15 The Hebrew Bible, as a historical source for reconstructing early Israelite religion, is also limited seeing that much of it has most probably originated in priestly circles.16 Dever states that …not only is the resultant picture of Israelite religion and practices a somewhat artificial reconstruction, but it tends to distort and even to suppress dissident theological views and religious practices condemned as deviant [if the latter are mentioned at all]. In short the written sources tell us a great deal about what, in the opinion of the Yahwistic writers, the ancient Israelites ought to have believed and practiced, and very little about what they actually did. 17

Biblical Archaeology’s “greatest contribution to the study of protoIsraelite’s religion lies in its potential for looking at the other side of the coin, at popular religion and the views of the counter-culture.”18 Archaeology confirms that not everything that happened or how it happened, was written down. The task of archaeology is often to prove a point and not always, as it probably should have been, to explore material remains in order to determine the circumstances of ancient cultures and civilisations in a country where they have been varied and many. Archaeology seeks to illuminate ancient Israelite religious practice in its material and sociological setting.19 It supplies the “general cultural

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background against which Israelite religion can be realistically portrayed, in particular the larger context in ancient Canaanite religion and culture in the second and first millennia BC.”20 Due to archaeological discoveries in this century, we have begun to resurrect the long-lost world of Canaanite history and culture—especially the spectacular find of the library of 14th to 13th century BC cuneiform mythological texts from Ugarit. The systematic excavations of many Late Bronze Age sites in Israel, Jordan and Syria have contributed immensely to the understanding of the material culture of Canaan in the two or three centuries just preceding the emergence of the entity we call “Israel.”21 Furthermore, archaeology is further uniquely equipped to illuminate, to a certain extent, actual religious practices or popular piety, rather than simply the theological beliefs described in the texts (though admittedly some texts also deal with practice).22 The Biblical texts tend to supply an “official” version of Israelite religion, whereas archaeology more often than not complements this highly idealised and homogenised picture by illuminating the varieties of actual religious practices, whether mentioned in the Bible or not. Since the folk religion probably represents the majority opinion, it may be considered the true religion of early Israel—from a phenomenological perspective.23 However, neither the written text nor archaeological discoveries have provided us with sufficient information on certain Israelite practices and customs, such as the functioning of oral traditions, the role of the Ark of the Covenant, circumcision, the Sabbath and the New Moon ceremonies, dietary laws (such as the prohibition of mixing meat and milk), the use of the shofar, standing stones (massebot), and the role of the ancestors. A study of the functioning of oral traditions may provide a supplementary or perhaps an alternate view. The view that “history” requires the existence of written documents still exists in certain circles. Historians are inclined to attach considerable importance to written sources, while they tend to disregard the stories that are orally transmitted.24 It is clear that written sources are not the only shapers of people’s notion about the past. In some African communities oral traditions provide more information than any written sources. Vansina defines “oral traditions” as “verbal messages which are reported statements from the past beyond the present generation.”25 It could be “oral statements spoken, sung, or called out on musical instruments.”26 Substantial criticisms have been raised concerning the problems of chronology and limited time depth, variations in different versions of the same events, and the problem of feedback on the correlation between oral and written sources. 27

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However, no one who has worked extensively with oral materials will deny their value as historical sources.28 Oral history gives us some very distinctive kinds of expression—some personal and some culture-based. The people, in oral tradition, have passed on a very perceptive set of observations about important events and the relationship of those occurrences to their group.29 I will here seek to redress the balance by giving precedence to the contribution of oral traditions—conceived as a newer and independent, yet interrelated, discipline with unique explanatory potential—and by adopting a phenomenological or “functionalist” (and comparative) approach to the study of religion and practices, relying more on anthropological and sociological models than on theological method, and more on oral traditions (and material remains of the cult where available) than on ideology.30 Since it is no longer possible to put questions relating to the ancient practices and institutions to the people of those times, there are many uncertainties about certain practices and the teaching employed and passed on during certain religious rituals. Certain cultural groups in Africa with similar practices and institutions could serve as additional sources— “living sources” to help clarify certain aspects. This study discusses some of the remnants of a very ancient type of religion, which makes the Lemba particularly valuable to the historian of religion or comparative religion. It proves to be of great value when these are juxtaposed with those of premonarchic Israel.31 Only some of those salient concurrences will be mentioned here. Early missionaries first came to Africa with the message and later with the translation of the New Testament. Translations into numerous African languages of the bulkier and much older Old Testament followed, which was then perceived as the more important Testament of the two. Its relevance to their own life experience was found by grass roots readers in the passages of the Old Testament. “The twentieth century made the Old Testament an African book.”32 An increasing tendency to relate the texts of the Old Testament more systematically to the African religio-cultural and socio-cultural experience developed rapidly. The idea of the Africanisation of Old Testament Studies forms part of the more general search for the Africanisation of the humanities as a whole and is part of a process of rooting biblical studies in African soil. The basic question is as follows: What does it mean to interpret the Old Testament in Africa and to teach the Old Testament in Africa, and more specifically in Southern Africa?

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Therefore, in this article, the study of the Lemba is secondary to the point of any convergence that their culture might have with Old Testament customs and traditions, and to how this information can affect the interpretation of the Old Testament texts as well as the teaching of the Old Testament in Africa.

The Teaching of the Old Testament in Africa In Africa we are “daily confronted with a society that has lost its moral fibre, with unemployment, poverty and of course Aids.”33 Seemingly, endless problems have to be faced in the educational sector. “And yet, in exactly this scenario our graduates and future leaders should become messengers of hope and optimism, ethical leaders, who, having accepted the challenge of our time, are willing to shape the future and who will help the country and continent to get out of its moral bankruptcy.”34 Raidt35 emphasises that universities should not fall prey to the temptation of becoming “market driven market-driven knowledge factories” for a global “knowledge-driven economy”. They have a special task to promote the humanities in their curricula and apply social values in their teaching, in the ongoing formation of the staff and in their governing structures. “In a post-colonial Africa, the in-depth-study [sic] and promotion of the dignity of the human person therefore should take centre stage.” She states that the emphasis must be placed on the “social capital”, the formation of “ethically formed and motivated future leaders who have the capacity and commitment to build a better and more just society in Africa.”36 The question of research needs to receive special attention because, by their very calling, universities should be centres of research that produce “new knowledge” based on their intellectual tradition. Ideally, this research should be socially relevant, i.e. deal with issues of leadership, [intercultural contexts and conflicts], values-based education at all levels, inculturation and with problems such as corruption in all levels of government, poverty, crime, moral decay, diseases and HIV/AIDS, economic meltdown, and many other areas that have been posing a threat to the development of Africa.37 (my insertion)

The aim is to create an awareness of the relevance which that African traditional cultures might have for the understanding of certain institutions and practices in the Bible. In discovering parallels between the cultural worlds of the Bible and the contemporary cultures, the ideal is to accept

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one’s own culture and that of others in a new way and to see the need for cultural tolerance and sensitivity. I believe that African Jews in Africa can (among other groups) play a major role in this regard. These groups, with their values rooted in the Old Testament, have the capacity and commitment to be motivated future leaders who might participate in building a better, more just society in South Africa and the rest of Africa. The Lemba and their particular traditions of origin and identity, as well as their particular characteristics and practices, have opened numerous possibilities for further interdisciplinary teaching and research, and for the interpretation of the Old Testament. My comparison of the social and religious practices and rituals of early Israel with those of the Lemba has delivered noteworthy results.38

Interpreting the Old Testament in Africa One should seriously consider that the oral phase encapsulated in many sections of the Old Testament is much more important for the understanding of the character and essence of certain sections of the Old Testament than the later written phase. Oral traditions that were handed down were fluid and not supposed to be in “fixed” form. Literacy in the earlier Lemba communities and that of early Israel also has to be understood in the context of an orality-of-tradition culture.39 Lemba myths and traditions provide more information than any written sources. Their oral culture is constitutive of their world-view and selfunderstanding or identity. It incorporates the role of oral traditions, history and historiography. The Lemba see themselves as totally different from their neighbours, with whom they do not intermarry or dine. Yet, most of their rituals and practices are embedded in an African traditional religion and today draw heavily on Christian Lemba sources and in a limited way on modern Judaism. Only oral and ceremonial traditions preserve possible links with Judaism “proper”.40 It needs to be clarified that “[a]ncient Judaism” generally refers to those religious cultures that developed in the centuries following the return of Israelites (now Jews) from the Babylonian exile. “The forms of Israelite religion that emerged were fundamentally different from their predecessors and had important commonalities with the forms of Judaism that emerged only later”. This “distinction draws attention to the important fact that Judaism cannot be equated with the religion of the Old Testament.”41 The overall emphasis of most of the social laws among the Lemba (and other African cultures) and early Israel falls on the protection of family

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ties, and also on the protection of the individual, property, cleanliness (ritual and otherwise) and honesty, and on the protection of their exclusivity, which, to my mind, are important values which should be promoted. In Africa, the Lemba have their own particular “Judaic” oral laws, embedded in traditional African cultures, Christianity, Islam and other sources. It appears, however, that some of the Lemba’s legal and ethical codes closely resemble those in Exodus, Deuteronomy and, in particular, those in Leviticus, with many traces of influence from the life-world of the Old Testament. The Lemba do not know of any religious prescriptions outside the Pentateuch. Above all, the postexilic feasts and ceremonies have never been observed in Southern Africa, either by the Lemba or by their Christian neighbours. Observers from previous centuries similarly referred to these resemblances. If, at present, the Lemba have any remnants of these laws originating from Exodus, Leviticus or Deuteronomy, it would be impossible to determine this in a definite sense, but there are at least traces of a possible connection in the past. Obviously, the Lemba also possess codes that do not concur with those in early Israel. It became clear that most Lemba rank their specific cultural laws or principles above any of those of the churches to which they belong. Other teachings are mainly added to their existing cultural teaching or values. In most pre-technical societies, religion is not just a personal matter; it is inherent in daily life. Judaism does not merely adhere to Ten Commandments, but to a complex of more than six-hundred rules (from the Mishnah), which, according to the Jewish people, were imposed upon them by God. Religion involves a ritual dimension, for instance, the injunction to keep the Sabbath as a day of rest is also an injunction to perform certain practices and rituals on the Sabbath. Interestingly, the traditional Lemba regard the day of observation of the new moon as a day of rest, as Jews would consider the Sabbath. Most of the elements of the celebration of the new moon of early Israel (preTalmudic) are still present in the religion of the Lemba. The specific description of how the actual sighting of the new moon takes place in Lemba culture is unique and is a major contribution to the understanding of this Old Testament custom. The matter of the day of cessation, which is linked to the new moon by the Lemba’s observation of the new moon and a similar custom among the Babylonians and the Canaanites, offers interesting possibilities of interpretation to the idea of the Sabbath in the Old Testament.42 The observance of the full moon is called “sabbath”, derived from shabbatu, the Accadian word for full moon. In the Bible the word for Sabbath is often connected to the new moon (eg Amos 8:5; 2 Ki

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4:23; Ezek 46:1; Isa 66:23).43 The possibility that the Sabbath could have had the same content and significance as that acquired by the Sabbath later in history is improbable. The “sacred day” as described in Exodus 20:8 was most probably a day of cessation equivalent to the New Moon celebration. The similarity to the Babylonian name does point to an early connection, though. This investigation develops an original theory which could yield a greater understanding of the Sabbath, early lunar calendars and the system of the sighting of the new moon.44 Both myth and history explain how things got to be the way they are by telling some sort of story.45 Lincoln designates as myth that small class of stories possessing both credibility and authority.46 The term, mythistory, acknowledges the close kinship between myth and history and the manner in which the two interact to comprise “shared truths.”47 Myth and history underpin the Lemba worldview. “Shared truths that provide a sanction for common effort have obvious survival value”, without which no group can long preserve itself.48 From the ancient Near East to modern times, groups have based their cohesion upon shared truths: truths that differed from time to time and place to place, exhibiting a rich variety.49 According to the Biblical tradition Israelite tribes similarly remembered numerous myths with historical and religious significance. Within these narratives the Ark of the Covenant played a major role. Possibly, oral traditions increasingly obtained a more prominent place among the tribes of Israel. These could have been important in establishing their identity and the uniqueness of their God in the midst of the conglomeration of other nations also claiming the same land. Their traditions can therefore be described as a sacred factor of coherence with a political undertone. Parallels between orality in proto-Israelite and African religions can be drawn, specifically between the story of the ngoma lungundu (“the drum that thunders”) and that of the Ark of the Covenant. Lemba oral traditions contain significant information on the leading role their priestly family (the Buba; cohaniem) performed on their journey from the North into the Arabian Peninsula and eventually into Africa.50 As traders they made their way southwards into Africa, with the ngoma lungundu playing a very similar role to that of the Ark of the Covenant.51 In function especially it was very similar to the Biblical Ark, the famous lost Ark which has been sought without success throughout the ages. Both stories, that of the Ark of the Covenant and that of the ngoma lungundu, may be classified by some scholars as myth.52 The experiential dimension of religion is often conveyed by means of myths.53 Although the Lemba themselves never make the connection between the ngoma lungundu and the Ark of the Covenant (as far as I could

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determine), many scholars observe such parallels.54 In sub-Saharan Africa, at least in the interior, there are no written records and we depend on oral tradition. On the east coast of Africa, Arabs and other observers left some accounts of what they saw and heard of this extraordinary group of people and the role the ngoma played.55 The earliest direct reference to the presence of the Lemba and the ngoma on the east coast of Africa is made by the 12th century Arab geographer, al-Idrisi [circa 1150]56 who records that the Senzi (Zanji people)—possessors of the ngoma lungundu—were forced from their territory and down into the Sena area (at the Zambezi).57 These people of the magic drum, calling themselves the BaSenzi (probably the Venda), became closely associated with the Lemba in the same area.58 Von Sicard59, who spent his whole missionary career working among the Lemba people in Zimbabwe, was possibly the first scholar to draw definite parallels between the Ark and the ngoma lungundu, and those between the ngoma lungundu and the 6th to the 13th century Ethiopian Kebra Nagast (“Splendour of the Kings”).60 He arrives at the conclusion that the Lemba people literally carried the concept of the Ark of the Covenant and concomitant, related Semitic customs southwards into Africa. He describes their ngoma as “Eine Afrikanische Bundeslage” (ie an African Ark of the Covenant). He is convinced that the Lemba were strongly influenced by the numerous transmitted stories (and the Kebra Nagast) concerning the possible presence of the Ark in Ethiopia and that, as an elite, priestly group, they carried those concepts southwards by means of their ngoma lungundu. If the story of the ngoma lungundu can be linked to the 13th century Kebra Nagast narrative (as suggested by Von Sicard) it indicates that their tradition is at least 700 years old. If it is linked to the observance of al-Idrisi in 1150, the implication is that their tradition could be at least 900 years old. Parfitt takes this tradition even further back to the Arabian Peninsula.61 The reciprocity between orality and inscripturation of traditions yields valuable information regarding the possible development of traditions in the Old Testament. If some of their oral traditions are close to 1000 years old, this has serious implications for the late dating of the Old Testament.62 There is a trend among certain Old Testament scholars to assign a postExilic dating to all the literature or oral traditions that would still be contained in the literature.63 Scheffler states that the consequences are, therefore, that there is no “pre-exilic ancient Israel because it is only a product of the imagination, it is worthless for historiography and not even containing a historical kernel.”64 He contends that the trend in dating the Old Testament late is “a typically modern, western phenomenon.” He

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draws the attention to the existence of folklore or oral traditions among Africans and “the basic vocality of culture.”65 He supposes that it is perhaps owing to the “absence of vocality in western culture that ancient oral traditions mentioned in the Old Testament are denied or not reckoned with.” Oral cultures and the transmission of oral traditions from one generation to another, over many generations, are nothing strange in Africa. One of the Semitic rites that the Lemba practise with great conviction is circumcision. Many ethnographic accounts of Lemba life agree that they brought circumcision into Africa and spread it to the other peoples.66 It could be possible that somewhere in the past the Lemba received the practice of circumcision by means of Islamic influence. In a study of Islam in Africa, Price, however, contends that several observers particularly note the Semitic physical features of the Mwenye (Lemba) and that they conduct the “non-Bantu practice of male circumcision of infants.”67 He notes that they have neither significant Muslim practices nor interest in their beliefs, or in the beliefs of their fathers: a phenomenon particular to an African people. Junod mentions that “religiously speaking, the Balemba do not seem to have kept the slightest trace of faith in Allah [but that] they adore the spirits of the forefathers just as the other natives do” (my insertion). 68 Nevertheless, Nabarro maintains that the method associated with male circumcision used by the Lemba differs markedly from that of Islamic religion. The incision is small and possibly similar to the mode of circumcision during the pre-Talmudic period.69 To place the practice of circumcision in the Old Testament on an equal footing with the “primitive” custom in the Lemba (and other communities) might be perceived by some as trespassing on holy ground. However, this illuminates the significance of this ritual to both groups, offers thoughtprovoking questions about “Judaism” or “Judaising groups” and possibly provides new answers.70 Much more information concerning the ritual, the related teaching, its duration, when and where it took place and so on is known with regard to Lemba practice vis-à-vis that in the Old Testament. Of course, a certain amount of information is also available from Orthodox Judaism, but these customs are no longer the same as in the Old Testament, on account of inner-Jewish migration. On the basis of new evidence gained through field research it can now be shown how striking parallels between extant African cultures and written testimonies concerning Near Eastern societies can be detected. In sub-Saharan communities oral traditions provide more information than any other source.71 This study provides material for an African inculturation

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of biblical concepts and an Africanisation of Old Testament teaching and research. It attempts to reflect a multi-disciplinary relevance and significance in a wide field of scholarship. Although various religions have exerted an influence on their viewpoints and in spite of the fact that most Lemba belong to one or another Christian denomination, some of the social and religious practices and viewpoints of the Lemba resemble a syncretising, pluralistic preTalmudic Israelite religion embedded in African traditional religion.72 A new respect for the wisdom of traditional societies and religions is imperative, when one realises that some such societies might have endured many onslaughts and other adverse circumstances for thousands of years, whereas contemporary society might not even last for another century. Although I am very much aware of the distance in time between the two cultural groups (the ancient Near Eastern cultures and those of Africa), this investigation attempts to create awareness of certain parallels, thereby familiarising people with such phenomena. In this way it could assist different groups in Africa to appreciate their own cultures and those of others, gain some skills in dealing with intercultural contexts and conflicts, and build a better, more just society in Africa. Not everything in a specific culture is necessarily good or bad. This information could have a transformational function, in that it attempts to create willingness to build upon useful elements and abandon undesirable elements of a culture or system. The Bible is regarded as a valuable source of information on the successful handling of humankind’s experience of religiosity. This kind of study could also create awareness of the relevance African traditional cultures can have for the understanding of certain institutions and practices in the Old Testament.

Notes 1

A detailed discussion of the controversial origins of the people and the name “Lemba” is beyond the scope of this paper. It was a complex process occurring over many centuries that cannot be explained by simplistic views, such as the view that they either derived directly from one of the tribes of pre-monarchic Israel, or that they simply made some sort of religious shift along the way. In an attempt to provide maximum understanding, one has to draw from divergent sources—the oral traditions of the Lemba themselves, as well as from all possible sources such as anthropological, archaeological, ethnological and genetic sources See Magdel Le Roux, The Lemba. A Lost Tribe of Israel in Southern Africa? (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2003), 233. 2 This was done mainly in Sekhukhune land, the former Venda (in South Africa) and in the southern parts of Zimbabwe.

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Mark Thomas et al., “Y chromosomes travelling south: The Cohen Modal Haplotype and the origins of the Lemba—the ‘Black Jews of southern Africa’.” American Journal of Human Genetics, 66 (2), (2000): 674-686. 4 Gerhard van den Heever, Private communication, 2004. 5 Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining religion. From Jonestown to Babylon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Burton L. Mack, The Christian Myth. Origins, Logic, Legacy (London: Continuum, 2001). Compare, for example, how this is elevated to the status of theoretical underpinning of the study of religious phenomena in the work of Smith, the eminent Chicago scholar of religion and in general the circle of religion scholars surrounding Smith and Mark—mostly members of the North American Association for the Study of Religion; Van der Heever, private communication. 6 Smith, Imagining Religion; Mack, The Christian Faith. 7 Van den Heever, private communication. 8 Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparing Studies of Myth, Ritual and Classification (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 225227; see also Bruce Lincoln, “Theses on Method”, MTSR 8 (3), 1996, 225-227. 9 “… [i]t is ironic that interpreters of Israelite religion, suspicious of the comparative method, so enthusiastically took up the study of other ancient Near Eastern traditions. As subsequent reflection has shown, comparisons between religions in the same geographical area are fraught with the same kinds of theoretical problems as comparisons between religions in different geographical areas” in Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism. An Anthropology of Israelite Religion and Ancient Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 16 and Susan Niditch, Folklore and the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). 10 Smith, Imagining Religion, 66-89. 11 Rainer Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period. Vol. I (Kentucky: John Knox, 1994); Norman K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel 1250-1050 B.C.E. (London: SCM, 1980); Norman K. Gottwald, The Hebrew Bible a Socio-literary Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress), 1985; Eilberg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism; Niditch, Folklore and the Hebrew Bible; Susan Niditch, Oral World and Written word. Ancient Israelite Literature (Louisville: Westminister John Knox, 1996); Van den Heever, private communication. 12 It could also be qualitative, though. 13 Ninian Smart, The Religious Experience of Mankind (Collins: Glasgow, 1983), 22-27; Magdel Le Roux, “Lemba Religion. Ancient Judaism or Evolving Lemba Tradition?” Religion & Theology, 11 (3 & 4), (2004), 314. 14 The purpose is not to provide an intensive exegesis of certain Old Testament passages, neither is it to determine the historicity of certain narratives or customs. It rather is to determine what pre-monarchic Israel’s experience of certain customs and rituals was, as well as the role it played in their communities. 15 William G. Dever, “Archaeology Reconstructs the Lost Background of the Israelite Cult”, in Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Biblical Research 4,

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(1990): 119-186; Thomas L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People from the Written and Archaeological Sources. Studies in the history and culture of the ancient Near East (Leiden: Brill, 1992); Thomas L. Thompson, The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel (New York: Basic, 1999), 155, 158161; Susan Ackermann, Under Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in Sixthcentury Judah.Harvard Semitic Monographs 46, Atlanta, Scholars, (1992). 16 Dever, “Archaeology Reconstructs,” 122-124; Israel Finkelstein, & Neil A. Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts (New York: Free, 2001). 17 Dever, “Archaeology Reconstructs”, 124. 18 Ibid., 124; Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People from the Written and Archaeological Sources. 19 Dever, “Archaeology reconstructs”, 127. 20 Z. Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches (London: Continuum, 2001). 21 Dever, “Archaeology reconstructs,” 127; D. Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit, (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 22 Dever, “Archaeology reconstructs,” 127; Ackerman, Under Every Green Tree, 1992. 23 A detailed discussion of the evidence that, in a number of its features, the socalled Israelite religion scarcely differed from the fertility religions of greater Canaan does not fall within the parameters of this investigation. Dever, “Archaeology reconstructs,” 122-124; Karel van der Toorn, “Theology, Priests, and Worship in Canaan and Ancient Israel”, 2043-2058, in J. M. Sasson (ed), Civilizations of the Ancient Near East. Vol III (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1995). 24 Dierk Lange, Ancient Kingdoms of West Africa. Africa-centered and Canaanite Israelite perspectives. A Collection of Published and Unpublished Studies in English and French (Dettelbach: Röll Lange, 2004), 155. 25 Jan Vansina, Oral Traditions as History (London: James Currey, 1985), 27. 26 Oral traditions can also be seen as the handling down of folklore (beliefs, customs, rituals, stories and sayings of a community) from one generation to another by word of mouth. See Ferdinand E. Deist, A Concise Dictionary of Theological Terms with an English-Afrikaans and an Afrikaans-English List (Pretoria: Sigma, 1984), 63, 119. 27 James Quirin, “Oral traditions as historical sources in Ethiopia: The case of the Beta Israel (Falasha).” History in Africa. A Journal of Method 20, (1993): 297: “It is axiomatic that historians should use all available sources. African historiography has been on the cutting edge of methodological innovation for the last [few] decades, utilizing written sources, oral traditions, archaeology, linguistics … … and other techniques to bring respect and maturity to the field. But to use such a diverse methodology has brought controversy as well, particularly regarding oral tradition.” 28 David P. Henige, The Chronology of Oral Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), 191.

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29 “Oral history represents the feelings and values of the people accurately: what events are worth remembering and retelling?” Barre Toelken, The Dynamics of Folklore (Logan, Utah State University Press, 1996), 400-402. 30 Dever,“Archaeology reconstructs,” 119-186; B. W. Anderson, Rediscovering the Bible (New York, Association, 1951), 23-87. Wright, G E, God who Acts: Biblical Theology as Recital (London: SCM, 1952). 31 Le Roux, “Lemba Religion, 313-330. 32 Knut Holter (ed), Let my People Stay! Researching the Old Testament in Africa. Report from a Research Project on Africanization [sic] of Old Testament Studies (Nairobi: Acton, 2006), 2. 33 Edith H. Raidt, 2010. Unpublished Graduation Address at St John Vianney Seminary, 27 October 2010, Pretoria, based on a published article; L. Peter Kimilike, “The poor are not us! An exploration into the transforming possibilities of Old Testament and African proverbs on poverty.” OTE 19 (2), (2006): 418-428; See Madipoane J. Masenya, “Killed by Aids and buried by religion: African female bodies in crisis,” OTE 19 (2), (2006): 486-499. 34 Raidt, 1. 35 Ibid., 6. 36 Ibid., 7. 37 Ibid., 7. 38 It is clear that various religions exerted an influence on the proto-Israelites and that others exert an influence on the thought and religion of the Lemba, which is not addressed in this article. 39 Le Roux, The Lemba, 233. 40 I have investigated the historical and existential relationship of Lemba “Judaism” with “authentic” Judaism. There are many important questions to be asked, but these are not addressed here. 41 Eilberg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism, 4 and note 3. 42 Michael Grant, The History of Ancient Israel (Weidenfeld & Nicholson: London), 1984. 43 Magdel le Roux, “African Light on the New Moon Ceremony,” Old Testament Essays 18 (2), (2005): 281-295. 44 Ibid., 281-295. 45 William H. McNeil, Mythistory and other Essays (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1986), 1. 46 Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society, 24. 47 Ibid., 23-26; McNeil, Mythistory, 24-31. 48 McNeil, Mythistory, 7. 49 Ibid., 7. 50 Le Roux, Magdel. “The Bhuba. A Paternally Inherited Jewish Priesthood in Southern Africa?” Ekklesiastikos Pharos 92, N.S. 21 (2010): 286-304. 51 Le Roux, “Ngoma lungundu”, 113-117. In both cases it was carried and guarded by a ‘priestly caste’, it was not allowed to touch the ground, it was not supposed to be touched improperly, it was practically divine, anyone who looked at it would be blasted by its awesome power. Like the ngoma it was carried into battle as a

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weapon and a guarantor of victory. Sacred objects were included inside the drum and like the Ark, the ngoma showed them the direction to go and gave them the signal for where to camp and for breaking camp. If the magic drum or the Ark of the Covenant was lost, calamity would befall them. Until recently, both objects were reported as being lost. 52 By “myth” we normally understand stories in which the high figures of the great gods play the main role. See Hermann Gunkel, The Folklore in the Old Testament (Sheffield Press: Almond, 1987), 26. These are stories “which accompanied rituals, which were basically poetic descriptions of the workings of nature, a different way of thinking about the world, different from that of modern man [sic].” John W. Rogerson, The Supernatural in the Old Testament (Butterworth: Guildford, 1976), 9). 53 Ninian Smart, The World’s Religions: Old Traditions and Modern Transformations (University Press: Cambridge, 1989). 54 Harold Von Sicard, Ngoma lungundu. Eine africanische Bundeslage (Studia Ethnographica Upsaliensia V, Almquist & Wiksells Boktrycker, Uppsala, 1952). 55 Le Roux, The Lemba, 233; Tudor Parfitt, The Lost Ark of the Covenant: The Remarkable Quest for the legendary Ark (London: HarperCollins, 2008), 230. 56 As cited in Mullan, J E, The Arab Builders of Zimbabwe (Umtali, Rhodesia Mission, 1969), 73-76. 57 . H. A. Junod, Life of a South African Tribe (Macmillan: London, 1927); N. J. Van Warmelo, “A preliminary survey of the Bantu tribes of South Africa,” Ethnological Publications 5 (Pretoria: Government Printer, 1935), 122; J. B. De Vaal, “Die Vhalemba, die Semitiese Bantoes,” Suid-Afrika (Feb, 1947), 46; R. Gayre of Gayre, “The Lembas or Vendas of Vendaland,” Mankind Quarterly 8 (1967), 5; P. Davison, “Lobedu material culture,” Annals of the South African Museum 94 (3) 1984, 119. 58 Al-Idrisi further records that the inhabitants of al-Banyes worship a drum called Arrahim covered with skin on one side. He says it makes a terrible noise (when smitten) which can be heard about three miles away. As “l” and “r” are interchangeable in many African languages it is possible that what he actually heard was “Errahim”—a corruption of the word Elohim—the a Hebrew word for God , in Parfitt, The Lost Ark of the Covenant, 227. 59 Harold Von Sicard, Karangafolkets äldsta Missionshistoria.(Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans, 1943) ; also Von Sicard, Ngoma lungundu. 60 Le Roux, “Lemba Religion”, 313-330. 61 Parfitt, The Lost Ark. 62 Magdel Le Roux, “Ngoma lungundu: An African Ark of the Covenant,” Old Testament Essays 22, (2009): 102-125. 63 Davies 1992 and Carroll 1986, in Eben H. Scheffler, “Debating the late-dating of the Old Testament,” OTE 11 (3), (1998): 522-533. 64 Ibid., 523. 65 Ibid., 525. 66 Schlömann, The Rev., “Die Malepa in Transvaal,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie) 26, (1894): 64; H. A. Junod, “The

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Balemba of the Zoutpansberg (Transvaal),” Folk-lore 19, (1908): 284; A. A. Jaques, “Notes on the Lemba Tribe of the Northern Transvaal,” Anthropos 26 (1931): 247. 67 T. Price,” The Arabs of Zambezi,” The Muslim World 44 (1), (1954): 33. 68 Junod, The Balemba, 286. 69 Le Roux, The Lemba, 166-167. 70 Eilberg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism. 71 Le Roux, “Ancient Near Eastern Influence in Sub-Saharan Africa,” 1-20. 72 Le Roux, The Lemba. 72 Eilberg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism.

CHAPTER EIGHT SLOUSCHZ AND THE QUEST FOR INDIGENOUS AFRICAN JEWS EMANUELA TREVISAN SEMI

In this paper I shall examine the quest to find for the indigenous Jew in Africa as conceived at the beginning of the twentieth century in a few Jewish circles. These circles were influenced by the thinking of Israel Zangwill, the leader of Territorialism, the idea that a state for Jews must be created somewhere and not necessarily in Palestine, and in the more general context of colonialism and current theories of race. In particular I shall examine the work of Nahum Slouschz, an eclectic figure of Lithuanian Jewish origin raised in Odessa, a great centre of Jewish activity at the time. Slouschz was a Hebrew scholar, epigraphist, historian and archaeologist who went on a series of missions to North Africa with the aim of proving both the existence of autochthonous African Judaism and the Jewish ancestry of the Hellenes and Phoenicians. In particular, I wish to present a few observations on the theories that Slouschz gradually elaborated, starting with the missions carried out between 1906 and 1916 in North Africa, with the objective of emphasising both how the discourse on race at the end of the nineteenth century pervaded Jewish circles such as Zionist-Territorialists as well as how these discourses influenced the search for the indigenous Jew, typical of that period. At a time when the mythology of an Arian race was being constructed, with Indo-European as a common proto-language and with its noble origins and warlike spirit, in the writings of Slouschz we find the construction of a counter mythology concerning the Jewish race, as an ancient power dominating a vast African empire, provided with HebrewCanaanite as a proto-language spoken over the whole area, boasting a warlike spirit and also composed of Greek and Phoenician elements. This was an attempt, carried out at the beginning of the twentieth century, to demonstrate that the Jews too belonged to a race of noble origins, warlike

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and maritime and that they were indigenous to a wide area of Asia and Africa, sharing the same language or proto-language. It is in Jewish circles in Paris at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries that we find the seeds of new theories about and interests in Jews in other remote areas beyond Europe. A key figure was Joseph Halévy (1827-1927) who, as the first Jewish traveller to Ethiopia in the second half of the nineteenth century and as a teacher of Hebrew and Semitic languages in Paris, was considered a model for other young Jews. The latter were themselves interested in discovering the Jewish past and present on African soil, seeking traces of their “missing brothers,” the nidhe Israel, the lost tribes. Halévy, a hovev Zion, influenced the younger generation also in terms of the study of the Jewish language, a study that became charged with ideological and nationalistic significance. He was the first to use the direct method of teaching Hebrew, as he was convinced of the pre-eminence of the language question within the context of national renaissance. Moreover, Halévy’s teaching was not limited to academic learning but extended to a commitment to the Jewish cause, in this case the ideology of the education and “regeneration” of the Asian and African communities. Halévy was the mentor of Jacques Faitlovitch (1881-1955) and Nahoum Slouschz (1873-1966), both of whom hailed from Orthodox Jewish circles in Eastern Europe and finished up studying in Paris.1 The former, born in Lodz in 1881, had an interest in Ethiopian Jews while the latter, born in a small village near Vilnius in 1873, investigated the Jews of North Africa. In one respect, however, Halévy differed from his pupils in an important way, underscoring the gulf that was being created between the two periods. While Halévy, raised in Alliance circles, remained a typical representative of the Judaism of the second half of the nineteenth century, Faitlovich and Slouschz were figures belonging to the early twentieth, an age where the discourse of race had achieved prominence in Jewish circles. In the writings of Halévy we understand that he considered the Jews of Ethiopia as co-religionists who could be included in the Jewish world without necessarily belonging to the same “race.” However both Faitlovitch and Slouschz, were extremely attentive to issues of genealogy and race. It is as if it was by then necessary to demonstrate that the Jews of Ethiopia and of other African countries were not only Jews by religion but also by “race.” In actual fact, belonging to the same religion became almost irrelevant because what mattered was race. As an illustration of this, both pupils of Halévy wrote that the Jews of Ethiopia, at the time known as Falashas, were Jews by race. Faitlovitch wrote in unequivocal terms that they were “Jews by race” in that they

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descended from Jews who allegedly travelled south from Egypt (From the Elephantine Colony, 5th century BC ) while Slouschz, who had initially traced their origins as far back as the 9th century BC, in so much as they were descendants of the Judaic population taken as prisoners to Ethiopia by an unspecified Ethiopian king, later attributed to them a JudeoHimyaritic or Judeo-Hellenic origin. 2 However, Faitlovitch, in contrast to Slouschz, does not spend long over these issues—when he does touch on them it is to make a passing remark—as he is mainly concerned with plans to educate and culturally integrate this population in western Judaism. Slouschz, on the other hand, seems mostly driven by scientific and ideological intentions and shows himself to be interested in constructing an organic, comprehensive history of the origins of Judaism, in other words a history of the origins of an African proto-Judaism, autochthonous and having a warlike spirit. Slouschz based his construction of the history of Jews in Africa on onomastics, collected legends, Midrashic and Talmudic texts and on the inscriptions discovered during his missions to North Africa and Southern Morocco. From the expressions used and the interpretations provided during his first missions to North Africa, we see that Slouschz wished to “invent” a pan-Jewish past, a sort of Jewish empire linked both to the Phoenician and Hellenic worlds and which was supposed to stretch from North Africa to the interior of the African continent. His vision of the Jewish world was undoubtedly influenced by Romanticism, by Orientalism, as has been pointed out by Yaron Tzur, but also by the colonial spirit of the times, by discourses on race in a period of history deeply scored by anti-Semitism, by new nationalist Jewish turmoil and by Zionism which Slouschz had subscribed to from an early age and by Territorialism. 3 Yet who was Slouschz really? Slouschz was born in 1873 in a small town near Vilnius but grew up in Odessa. He died not far from Tel Aviv in 1966. He was the son of a rabbi who was a member of the central committee of the Hovevei Zion. A Zionist himself, he had visited Palestine at various times (in 1891 and 1896) on behalf of the Odessa Committee. He was an assistant at Ha-melitz and Sefirah and a Hebrew translator. While in Paris from 1909 to 1912, he was also an editor of the Revue du monde musulman. After studying classical French literature at the University of Geneva, he moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne: in 1899 Dreyfus had finally been exonerated and Paris was once again attracting Jews from the East. France could once again see itself as “the home of world progress” to use the expression used by Slouschz. 4 At the Sorbonne

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he later taught modern Hebrew and was among those who had always spoken Hebrew, having learned it from his father at a very early age. Slouschz became part of the Jewish Territorial Organization in 1907 and a member of the Zionist Federation of France.5 He was also a great friend of Max Nordau, and he moved closer to Zangwill’s position when he realized that a refuge for the Jews needed to be found quickly, as they were under the constant threat of pogroms. He agreed with Nordau’s idea that it was necessary to find a nachtasyl (“night shelter”) for the Jews.6 This was the start of his commitment to finding real ways to enable European Jews to settle in Tripolitania, at a time when a return to Palestine still seemed out of the question. During World War I, when the United States became increasingly important, Slouschz went to New York in order to put pressure on France to accept the Balfour declaration.7 Slouschz’s interest in Jewish-Phoenician history was due to the fact that he considered it the starting point of Jewish history. The Sorbonne lecturer felt that only knowledge of the past could provide the lifeblood for the new chapter in Jewish history that was opening up with Zionism. He saw that past as noble, warlike, mercantile and maritime, having developed along the shores of the Mediterranean but also penetrated into Africa’s interior. It was his interest in the future of the Jews that led him to travel to other countries in search of the Jewish past, intending “to retrace the steps of the lost brothers and the extent of the spread of the Hebrew language.”8 Slouschz thought he could rediscover the great Semitic empire on the shores of the Mediterranean whose language had been Hebrew or Aramaic, and that this knowledge would benefit the political cause of the time. His vision of the world was largely determined by a romantic panHebrew or pan-Canaanite idea. Slouschz may be considered forerunner of what was later to be known as the Canaanite movement, which was especially important in Hebrew literature.9 His influence on the revisionists, especially on Adaya Gurevitz (Adaya Gur-Horon), one of those mainly responsible for the invention of Canaanite theories, has been shown by Jacob Shavit, who has pointed out the ambiguity of Slouschz, especially regarding the relationships between the ancient Canaanites and the Jews. 10 Shavit, however, did not realize the importance that the place of Africa and not only that of the Mediterranean occupied in Slouschz’s thought. The future Israeli culture and society that Slouschz had in mind was not to be restricted to the borders of the new country but enlarged to the ancient Semite-Canaanite world, through the links and traces recovered. Slouschz envisaged the creation of “a Hebrew and Jewish cultural empire, spreading from the Middle East to North Africa and some European countries on the Mediterranean.”11 At a conference on Jewish and Canaanite culture held in

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Carthage in 1911, he maintained that there was no great difference between classical Hebrew and Canaanite and that the Biblical term “Canaanite language” was no more than a synonym for “Hebrew language.”12 This was the source of his fame as a pan-Hebraist or panCanaanite. It is within this pan-Hebrew and pan-Jewish school of thought that the search for the lost tribes (especially in northern Africa) acquired particular significance. The traces that those populations must have left behind, while moving through the regions of Asia and Africa, had to be found and the remnants of past Jewish culture recovered. Let us now consider more in detail the missions carried out by Slouschz at the beginning of the twentieth century and the discourse that was built up over the ten years covered by these missions. The first to Libya, Tunisia and Algeria took place in 1906, the second to Cyrenaica (Tripolitania) in 1908, organized on behalf of Zangwill’s Jewish Territorial organization, the third in 1910 to Carthage and the fourth to Morocco and the High Atlas in 1912-13, at the time of French colonization. In 1914, after giving lectures in Rabat, he went to live in Meknès where he stayed until the start of the World War I. It was in Tangiers in 1914 that he received a visit from Ze'ev Jabotinski, (18801940) the future leader of the Zionist revisionist movement. Jabotinski’s aim was to discuss with Slouschz the founding of a Jewish legion, an active regiment that would operate under the British army, right at the beginning of the World War I. In 1916 Slouschz was recalled to Morocco by Governor Lyautey to draw up a statute of Morocco’s Jewish Communities.13 Slouschz, consistent with his Zionist beliefs, emigrated to Eretz Yisrael in 1919. As soon as he returned from his first mission in 1906, Slouschz turned to the notion of eclectic Judaism as the feature which most characterized the areas he had visited and describes African Judaism as pre-Talmudic, proselytic, Mosaic (descending from Moses), explaining the silence of Jewish sources by the fact that since it was a matter of ancient tribes unconverted to Talmudic Judaism and thus non-Orthodox, Talmudic sources evidently omitted to speak of them.14 He claimed to have discovered traces of Judaism, with widely heterodox features, present throughout Africa. He refers to Jews who were allegedly Jewish through race but not through religion, as in the case of the Bahutzi nomad tribes which he had found between Gabès, Constantine and southern Morocco, whom he defines as “primitive Jews more by race than religion.”15 In a 1906 essay, Slouschz tells us that ancient Jewish colonies were present from the third century BC in Cyrenaica, the region which according to Zangwill could have become an autonomous state for the Jews, and that these people

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stood out for their warlike spirit.16 Following the destruction of the Romans, the Libyo-Phoenicians, the Cyrenaica Jews and the Jewish proselytes of the Punic and Berber areas, apparently amalgamated, gave rise to one people and new family relationships—“former enemies became allies and relatives.”17 Slouschz maintained that out of this amalgam and the subsequent migrations of these populations towards the south, two great tribes were born, the Auraba Berbers and the Djeraoua, professing an elementary Judaism.18 He provided us with an etymology of the term Djeraoua which is meant to explain their Jewish origins since he states that the word was made up of the Hebrew term ger (proselyte) with an Arab plural just like, in his opinion, the term Falasha.19 Slouschz devoted much space to this tribe because he believed that they were descended from the mythical princess, the Kahina who was unquestionably Jewish according to him. Hence he wrote: “The name El Cahena is certainly of Jewish or Phoenician origin…this woman foretold the future and everything she said would happen did in fact do so…it was clear that as a woman she could not perform the sacrificial ritual but she was still left with the opportunity to foretell the future.”20

Despite this legendary character remaining famous in Jewish oral history as the perpetrator of ferocious acts against the Jews, Slouschz had no doubt that we are dealing with a Jewish heroine. Subsequently the Jewish tribes of North-East Africa are supposed to have settled in the Atlas areas and ended up being assimilated into the Berbers and the inhabitants of Mauritania. 21 As for the Jews of Ethiopia, it is curious to note how he managed to work up his own theory of their origins without ever again mentioning the initial hypothesis (that they were prisoners taken to Ethiopia from Judea). In 1908 he wrote, and what is more, rather confusedly, that Hellenic Jewish tribes and others from Himyar (5th century AD) met and gave birth to two groups—one Hellenicised group which he thought settled in the Semien mountains of Ethiopia and the Himyaritic one, which amalgamated with Jewish refugees from Cyrenaica in the Atlas mountains, giving rise to the Djeraua.22 The Djeraua were supposed to be the advance guard of the penetration of Himyaritic Jews coming from Ethiopia.23 According to Slouschz’s reconstruction of events, there was a double displacement of Jewish Himyaritic tribes in the 5th century AD—one towards the Arabian Peninsula and Ethiopia, which gave birth to the Falashas, and a second towards the areas inhabited by the Berbers who, having mingled with the Phoenician Jews, gave birth to the Djeraua. What these speculations

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wished to show was the existence of a very powerful Judaism in Africa between the fifth and seventh centuries AD.24 This Judaism did not disappear with the advent of Islam because, he maintained, many Jews of Yemeni, Egyptian and Asian origin followed the Arab conquerors, occupying the cities of the North-African coast which had been abandoned by the Greeks and Romans.25 Slouschz thought the defeated Jews who had left North Africa after the Roman conquest had then returned armed, from Sudan and the Sahara, in the wake of the Arab conquerors.26 To imagine a belligerent, conquering Jewish presence at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Jews of Eastern Europe were experiencing pogroms and discrimination, might have provided some consolation. In addition it might foreshadow a road to deliverance at a time when the possibility of an independent State for the Jews was being raised, as well as showing the military potential of an ancient civilization and an African and Mediterranean power. These ideas were not left in the realm of the theoretical as Slouschz himself met Jabotinski, to study the potential for creating a Jewish militia at the beginning of the First World War. For Slouschz the Jews were the product of complex origins, as the following description of his hints at: “One after another, Carthage and Egypt, Cyrenaica and Libya, Roman Mediterranean and Judeo-Aramaic Syria, Arabia and Hymyaritic Ethiopia, all made their contribution to the ethnic and religious formation of this Jewish group. Even the Jewish-Berber group shares these origins; it is the result of multiple intersections between all the civilized and barbarous elements who contended Africa.”27

What he wished to demonstrate was the existence of an indigenous Jewish genealogy in Africa, coming both from Ethiopia and the Mediterranean, built over three millennia: “What we want to establish is the direct descent, lasting almost three millennia, which can be found among the three Jewish races on African soil, the persistence of these races coming both from Eritrea and the Mediterranean and their civilizing role in the northern countries, such as among the Berbers,…an amalgamated Jewish people which reached its peak with Cahena…it is the most autochthonous, the most African of all. ”28 Slouschz therefore succeeded in squaring the circle—not only did an absolutely indigenous, African population exist, a “native race” which could boast of all its rights to resettlement in African countries but also enjoyed noble origins since it descended from three Mediterranean races: the Jews, the Phoenicians and the Greeks! 29

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Browsing the pages of his writings, often bewildering for the vagueness of the arguments and the confusion of the references in which a legend collected in the field becomes the basis for a historical reconstruction, an etymology serves to support a genealogical descent (the Djeraua) or a term with vaguely Hebrew sounds like Kahina becomes sufficient proof to support the hypothesis that the princess may have Jewish origins, we are justified in believing that Slouschz thought even before undertaking his missions that a Jewish empire existed stretching from the Mediterranean to Africa. He tries to show that the Jewish presence is autochthonous in Africa, starting with Cyrenaica, the region that was of immediate interest for the Territorialists in 1908, who were urgently seeking a place of refuge with a small population that might substitute Palestine. According to Slouschz, the indigenous Jewish presence covered all the coastal areas of North Africa, the areas inhabited by the Berbers, the Sahara, Mauritania, the Sudan and Ethiopia. In making every effort to support this thesis, he was even willing to defend the presence of primitive forms of pre-Talmudic Judaism, a sort of proto-Judaism which would have made up the core of these regions. He believed populations of non-Jewish origin had joined this “primitive” Jewish religion. Slouschz showed no reluctance in including new populations in Jewish genealogies, even at the cost of making the former ever vaguer and more syncretic. What is interesting to note is that what has been mentioned up to now does not only reflect the different positions taken by the individual protagonists, ideologues and activists during the first decades of the twentieth century but belongs to a discourse developing among the followers of the Territorialism movement or, later, the Canaanite movement. In the speeches given by Israel Zangwill (1864-1926), the acknowledged Jewish English writer, linked to Herzl and the father of Territorialism, we find similar arguments in favor of the plan he wished to implement. Territorialism refused to consider the option of Palestine as the only possibility for an independent Jewish State and sought alternative territories, perhaps sparsely populated and economically sustainable, which might serve as a refuge for the masses of European Jews fleeing anti-Semitism. In a speech given in 1911, entitled “The Jewish Race” and published in a collection of his speeches, Zangwill maintained that “The Jews, though mainly a white people, are not devoid of a coloured fringe—black, brown or yellow. There are the Beni-Israel of India, the Falashas of Abyssinia, the disappearing Chinese colony of Kay Fung-Foo, the Judaeos of Loango, the black Jews of Cochin, the negro Jews of Fernando Po, Jamaica, Surinam, the Daggatuns and other warlike nomads

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Chapter Eight of the North African deserts, who remind us what the conquerors of the Philistines were like. If the Jews are in no metaphorical sense fathers of all these people, then all these peoples are brothers one of the other.” 30

In the mind of Zangwill, the confines of the Jewish race or people were very broad and could incorporate all the hybridisation and intermixing occurring over the centuries, including the ancient hybrids of vanished peoples; in this sense he did not espouse ideas of “pure race” although he was sensitive to the idea of filiation and descent. For him, it is not only with living races that the Jews have manifested their mutual affinity—he considers their brotherhood with the people that are dead, the Medes, the Babylonians, the Assyrians. In a speech made in 1907 on “A Land of Refuge,» when the possibilities of Cyrenaica and Morocco were still viable, Zangwill asked himself what other people could boast greater rights in North Africa than the Jews: “Leaving Egypt for the Egyptians, I ask what other people has so great an historic claim upon North Africa as the Jews ?”31 In that speech he maintained at one and the same time the importance of the civilising role of the Jews in North Africa and the regeneration which would stem from the Jews themselves. It was a version of the well-known Zionist slogan “build to be built” which here became “regenerate to be regenerated,” a slogan which also formed the basis for Faitlovich’s action in North Africa. According to Zangwill, the Jews “must not redeem and regenerate North Africa and leave themselves unregenerated and unredeemed.”32 In a speech given in 1908 while Slouschz was in Cyrenaica, only a few years before the Italian intervention in Libya, he had stated that “Only a few imperialistic hotheads at Rome could resent the peaceful penetration of Cyrenaica, or even Tripoli, by a distressed race possessing neither an inch of territory elsewhere nor a shred of military force.”33 At a time of colonial expansion and with a race to secure territory by western powers, Italy of course among them, Zangwill affirmed that a desperate people (a “distressed race”), quite devoid of land and armies, had a right to its own land. And it is interesting to recall that in 1943, Churchill and Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India, speculated about annexing and establishing Jewish settlements in Cyrenaica (and Eritrea) to decrease the number of Jewish population in Palestine, this in view of the fact that 1500 years before the Cyrenaica had been largely Jewish. 34 The presence of an indigenous Jewish population, “racially Jewish” albeit intermixed with other populations over the centuries, could have justified such a choice. Indeed the scientific research conducted by Nahoum Slouschz gave new lifeblood to political designs in the first decades of the twentieth century.

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In conclusion the construction of the indigenous Jew was able to serve ideological and political ends as well as answering the expectations of an age which recognised rights only to anyone showing they belonged to a noble race. In that sense Jewish genealogies, which included both Greeks and Phoenicians, appear to have been constructed by Slouschz to support a new discourse on the Jews as a noble, autochthonous, warlike race, established in Africa for millennia.

Notes 1

See Emanuela Trevisan Semi, Jacques Faitlovitch and the Jews of Ethiopia (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007). 2 Nahum Slouschz, “Les Falacha (tribu d’Abyssinie)” Revue du monde musulman 7 (1909) : 229. 3 Yaron Tsur, “Outside of Europe: Zionism in Morocco at the beginning and its development” in Zionism in its Territories, ed. Elon Gal (Jerusalem : Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2010), 244-245 ( Hebrew). 4 Genazim 109-46621 (Archive Bet-ha-sofer, Tel Aviv). 5 Genazim 109/46622/M (Archive Bet-ha-sofer, Tel Aviv). 6 On Territorialism and Nordau, see Leslie Stein, The Hope Fulfilled: the Rise of Modern Israel (Westport: Praeger pyblishers 2003), 75-83. 7 Ed. "Slouschz Nahum," Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter, 1972)1677; Ha-boqer, November 14, 1947 (Hebrew). 8 Genazim 109/46622/K (Archive Bet-ha-sofer, Tel Aviv). 9 On the Canaanite movement, see Jacov Shavit, The New Hebrew Nation: a Study in Israel, Heresy and Fantasy (London: Routledge, 1987). 10 Jacov Shavit, “Hebrews and Phoenicians: an Historical Image and its Usage,” Studies in Zionism 5 (1984): 157-180, 177. 11 Ha-Boker, November 14, 1947 (Hebrew). 12 Avraham Elmaliah, "To Professor Nahum Slouschz arrived at Manhood," Am sofer July (1953): 13 (Hebrew). 13 On the position of Slouschz as regards Lyautey, see Tsur, “Outside of Europe: Zionism in Morocco at the beginning and its development,” 236-246 (Hebrew). 14 He even managed to explain the success of the Karaites (Jews who rejected the Talmud) in these areas in the 9th and 10th centuries AD as the very result of these non-Talmudic features, Nahum Slousch (sic), Ơtudes sur l’Histoire des Juifs et du Judaïsme au Maroc, I (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1906), 45. 15 “ …plutôt Juifs primitifs de race que Juifs de religion”, see Nahum Slouschz, Un voyage d’études Juives en Afrique (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1909), 79. 16 Nahum Slouschz, Étude sur l’Histoire des juifs et du judaisme au Maroc (Paris : Ernest Leroux, 1906), 5. “…des guerres…auxquelles les Juifs, en tant que élément guerrier, durent prendre une part active.” 17 “… les anciens ennemis devinrent des alliés et des parents.” See Slouschz, Étude sur l’Histoire des juifs et du judaïsme au Maroc, 19.

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Slouschz, Étude sur l’Histoire des juifs et du judaïsme au Maroc, 45. Nahum Slouschz, “Hébraeo-Phéniciens et Judéo-Berbères”, Archives Marocaines v.14 (Paris : Ernest Leroux 1908), 366. 20 “Le nom El Cahena est d’origine juive ou phénicienne certaine… cette femme, prédisait l’avenir, et tout ce qu’elle annonça ne manqua jamais d’arriver. En effet le Cohen hébreu prédisait l’avenir …évidemment comme femme, elle ne pouvait pas accomplir le rituel des sacrifices, mais il lui restait toujours la faculté de prédire l’avenir.” See Slouschz,“Hébraeo-Phéniciens et Judéo-Berbères,” 402. 21 “…et elles finirent par s’assimiler aux indigènes maures et berbères, en leur apportant les premières notions de la civilisation et les éléments de la religion juive,” see Nahum Slouschz, Etude sur l’Histoire des juifs et du judaïsme au Maroc, 43. 22 Slouschz, “Hébraeo-Phéniciens et Judéo-Berbères,” 365, 429. “ (Ils) ont conservé plus pure leur ancienne autonomie hélleniste.” 23 Slouschz, “Hébraeo-Phéniciens et Judéo-Berbères,” 378. 24 “… entre le cinquième et le septième siècle, le judaïsme n’était pas tout puissant en Afrique ? ” Slouschz, “Hébraeo-Phéniciens et Judéo-Berbères,” 383. 25 Ibid., 399. 26 Ibid., 439. 27 “ L’une après l’autre, Carthage et l’Égypte, la Cyrénaïque et la Lybie, la Méditerranée romaine et la Syrie judéo-araméenne, l’Arabie et l’Ethiopie himyarite avaient apporté leur contributions à la constitution ethnique et religieuse de ce groupe juif. Aussi le Judéo-berbère tient-il de toutes ces origines à la fois : il est le résultat de multiples croisements entre tous les élements civilisés ou barbares qui se disputèrent l’Afrique… ” See Slouschz, “Hébraeo-Phéniciens et JudéoBerbères,” 449. 28 “C’est la filiation directe, presque trois fois millénaire, qu’on retrouve entre les trois races hébraïques sur le sol africain, c’est la persistance de ces races venant tant de l’Érythrée que de la Mediterranée ; c’est leur rôle civilisateur dans les pays septentrionaux, comme chez les Berbères, que nous prétendons établir. Cananéens, Hébréo-Pheniciens, Hébreux, Judéo-Araméens, Judéo-Ellenes, Judéo-Romains, Judaisants, Judéo-Berbères, Judéo-Arabes…cette population amalgamée, arrivée à son apogée avec la Cahena…est la plus autochtone, la plus africaine de toutes.” See Slouschz, “Hébraeo-Phéniciens et Judéo-Berbères,” 453-4. 29 The Berber Jews “possess all the characteristics of a native race.” See Nahum Slouschz, The Jews of North Africa, (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1944), 224. 30 Edith Ayrton, Zangwill, ed., Speeches Articles and Letters of Israel Zangwill (London: The Soncino Press, 1937). 31 “ In July 1903…I was asked by the late Dr. Herzl to summon a small Zionist Council to discuss the idea of acquiring Morocco for Jewish Colonisation. That land was much better than Sinai, he said, and it was a country in which the Powers—he prophetically declared—would sooner or later intervene.” Zangwill, ed., Speeches Articles and Letters of Israel Zangwill, 248, 249. 32 Ibid., 249. 19

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Ibid., 301. Saul Kelly, “Annexes au foyer national Juif en Palestine: Churchill, Roosevelt et la question des colonies de peuplement juives en Lybie et en Érythrée (19431944),” Maghreb-Machrek 204 (2010): 65-84. 34

CHAPTER NINE LONGING FOR JERUSALEM AMONG THE BETA ISRAEL OF ETHIOPIA SHALVA WEIL

“If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning”. (Psalms 137:5) (King James 2000 Bible)

Beta Israel liturgy is replete with prayers of longing for Jerusalem. Each year, the Beta Israel, the Jews of Ethiopia, celebrated the Segd festival 50 days after the Day of Atonement, in which they mourned their exile and prayed to Jerusalem. In this chapter, we shall trace diachronically the yearning for Jerusalem, mainly through texts. As opposed to articles and books on the Beta Israel which searched for the sources of these texts and their authenticity, and sought to analyse the oral and written traditions, as well as the substance and performance of the formal organization of the liturgy, here we shall deal with the texts as narratives, which are discussed at face value.1 In our own lifetimes, the Beta Israel fulfilled their dream of going to Jerusalem and emigrated to Israel. At the time of writing, Israel is celebrating 20 years since Operation Solomon (1991), when the Beta Israel turned the heavenly Jerusalem into a physical reality. However, literature emerging among young Ethiopian-Israelis expresses the dissonance between heavenly and earthly Jerusalem.

The Beta Israel The Beta Israel hail from North-West Ethiopia, from hundreds of villages scattered throughout the Simien region, Dembeya, Begemder province, Tigray, Lasta and Qwara.2 They spoke a Cushitic language, Agau, mixed with the two principal languages of the regions in which they resided: Amharic and Tigrinya. The Beta Israel were monotheistic and practiced a Torah-based Judaism, without observing the Oral Law, or knowing the Talmud, familiar to most other Jewish communities. They

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followed both the lunar and the solar calendar, and observed a complex cycle of fasts, as well as festivals, most prescribed in the Torah.3 They circumcised their boys on the eighth day or near to it, as did other Ethiopians, and refrained from work on the Sabbath. Some religious festivals known to other Jewish communities were not marked by the Beta Israel, such as Hanukkah or Purim (although they knew the Fast of Esther) but they, in their turn, celebrated certain days which were not marked by other Jews, such as the Segd festival expressing yearning for Jerusalem, marked fifty days after Yom Kippur. Their religious practices were influenced by Ethiopic Christians and many elements were held in common by both religions, such as praying to Jerusalem, the common liturgical language of Geez, and the longing for Israel and Zion. 4 The origins of the Ethiopian Jews, as they are known today, are shrouded in mystery. According to some Ethiopian traditions, many inhabitants of the Kingdom of Aksum were Jewish before the advent of Christianity in the third to fourth century. The survival of Hebraic traces in local Ethiopic Christianity is striking: the local population circumcises its male offspring near or on the eighth day after birth as we have seen; they do not eat pork; women observe purity laws; and so on. The popular Ethiopian belief, and indeed the most popular theory given by the Beta Israel themselves prior to their migration to Israel, was that they were descendants of the union of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba in the Kingdom of Israel. A theory which has gained great importance in Israel is that the Beta Israel are descendants of the tribe of Dan, one of the Ten Lost Tribes, which was exiled by the Assyrians in the eighth century BCE. In one of his halachic (Jewish legal) responsa, Rabbi David ben Zimra (Radbaz) (1573-1479) referred to a Jew in Ethiopia as a member of the tribe of Dan. Other theories are that the Beta Israel were immigrants from Nubia or southern Arabia, or even an offshoot of Yemenite Jewry, or that they were Children of Israel from Egypt, who had wandered south.5 Some contemporary academics posit that the Beta Israel emerged as an identifiable Jewish group known as “Falassi” or “Falasha” from the 14th century to the 16th century.6 Early documentary evidence of a Judaized group opposing the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is found in a royal chronicle from the reign of Emperor Amde Zion (1314-1344) referring to a war with part of the Christian population which abandoned Christianity in favour of people “like Jews”, who had “denied Christ, like the Jews who crucified him”. In the same century, a renegade monk Qozmos, left the Christian clerics in Lake Tana and joined the Jews in opposition to local Christian armies. From the period of Emperor Ishaq (1413-1438) until the reign of Susenyos (1607-1632), there are reports of "Ayhud",

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who may have been "Jews", but also might have been groups of other rebellious populations, who resisted conversion to Christianity. Emperor Ishaq declared war on the Beta Israel, and they were defeated. They lost their rights to land (rist) and became a subjugated people. They were employed as blacksmiths, weavers and potters, which were considered lowly professions, and were accused of possessing buda, or the evil eye .7 During this period, they adopted monasticism as religious expression, as well as developing a strict code of purity, involving menstruating women, women in childbirth, burial and restrictions on contacts with outsiders. During the reign of Emperor Sarsa Dengel (1563-1597), the Beta Israel leader Gushen (d.1594) initiated a hopeless raid in Woggera against the Christian Emperor. During the reign of Emperor Fasilades (1632-1637), Gondar became the political metropolis of the empire, and the situation of the Beta Israel improved somewhat. Local Beta Israel were employed in higher-ranked professions, as carpenters and masons in the churches and royal castles; this practice was continued by Emperors Yohannes I and Iyasu I. In addition, Beta Israel were recruited as soldiers by the Emperors for their personal armies. According to the Scottish traveler James Bruce, the Beta Israel were responsible for building the roof of the palace of Emperor Iyasu II.8 They continued in their roles as craftsmen well into the nineteenth century but, during this historical period, their economic and religious status deteriorated. The encounter with the Western world began as late as the nineteenth century.9 Protestant missionaries from the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews succeeded in converting some Beta Israel to Christianity; they also brought into question the Beta Israel’s religious practices, such as monasticism, sacrifices more or less as specified in the Bible, rigid purity laws and so on. Aragawi, an Amhara Christian, along with other Beta Israel-born native agents (such as Debtera Beroo Webe, Gebra Heiwot and Hiob Negoosie), ran the London Society mission in Ethiopia during the period 1864-1922, after Tewodros II imprisoned and thereafter expelled European missionaries from Ethiopia in 1863.10 In 1867, Prof. Joseph Halévy (1917-1827), a Semitics scholar from the Sorbonne, Paris, met with the Beta Israel in Ethiopia. In a detailed report in 1877 to the Alliance Israelite Universelle, which sponsored the trip, Halévy described the religious practices of his fellow co-religionists, who had not been exposed to the Oral Law, and recommended steps to improve the socio-economic condition of the Beta Israel; no action was taken. Dr. Jacques Faitlovitch (1953-1881), a student of Halévy, left Paris under the sponsorship of Baron Edmund de Rothschild for his first

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expedition to Ethiopia in 190411 arriving after the devastating Kifu-Qen, or Great Famine (1888-1892), which had hit Ethiopia, and in which many Beta Israel either starved to death or converted to Christianity. During this visit, Dr. Faitlovitch surveyed the situation of the Beta Israel and returned to Palestine and Europe in 1905 with two “Falasha” boys: Taamrat Emmanuel, whom he took out of a Swedish Protestant mission in Asmara, and Gete Hermias, whom he met in a village in Gondar. From the time of his first mission to Ethiopia until 1935, Dr. Faitlovitch took out of Ethiopia twenty five young males, whom he “planted” in different Jewish communities in Palestine and Europe.12 His vision was that the boys whom he placed in orthodox Jewish communities in Palestine and Europe would return and educate their brethren in the tenets of normative Judaism in the villages in Ethiopia. Dr. Faitlovitch also established a “Falasha school” in Addis Abeba in 1923. His activities were curtailed by the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in 1935-1936. Emperor Haile Selassie was restored as emperor of Ethiopia in 1941, after a brief period in exile in Jerusalem, but there was no mass emigration from Ethiopia by the Beta Israel after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, as with other Jewish communities. In 1952 and again in 1956, Emperor Haile Selassie allowed two groups of young Beta Israel pupils to study in a boarding school, Kfar Batya, in Israel, on condition that they return. In 1974 Haile Selassie was replaced by a revolutionary Marxist government headed by Mengistu Haile Mariam. Although the revolution included land reform, the economic position of the Beta Israel in the villages did not really improve. In 1973, on the basis of the halachic (Jewish legal) precedent by the Radbaz that the “Falasha”, as they were known, were members of the lost tribe of Dan, the Israel Sefardi Chief Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef declared that the Beta Israel could be accepted as lost Israelites from the tribe of Dan and thereby return to their historic homeland. In 1975, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren also accepted the Ethiopian Jews into the fold, although “symbolic conversion” was still demanded. The Beta Israel began to organize to emigrate; up to 1980, some 250 Jews from Ethiopia had managed to reach Israel. The Beta Israel immigrated in two major operations: Operation Moses (1984-1985) and Operation Solomon (1991). 130,000 Beta Israel or children of immigrants from Ethiopia born in Israel (including “Felesmura”-see below) live in Israel today.

Longing for Jerusalem In 1993, Shlomo Gronich, a gifted Israeli pop and rock musician, founded the Sheba Choir. He put to music a wonderful poem composed by

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Haim Idisis, which was inspired by the arrival of the Ethiopian Jews to Israel in Operation Moses and based on an ancient folktale common among the Beta Israel. Young Ethiopian Israelis sang the song in Israel and abroad and Gronich won Israel’s Gold Award for the composition. Sung generally in Hebrew, the second line is usually sung in Amharic. In translation, it appears thus: Oh stork, oh stork, How is our city of Jerusalem? The stork flies to the land of Israel, Spreading her wings above the Nile On her way to a distant land Beyond the hills, The Ethiopian House of Israel Sits and waits expectantly. Oh stork, oh stork with your lily-white neck, What have your eyes seen? Sing me a song. The stork is silent. She doesn’t open her beak. She rests on her leg, but soon she will return. Flapping her great wings, On her way to the cold lands, She will stop in Zion, city of light. Oh stork, oh stork, with red beak, Will Jerusalem still remember us? Oh stork, oh stork, with white wings, Sing to us about the city, about Jerusalem.

The song expresses the yearning for Jerusalem from far-off Ethiopia. According to the folktale, only the stork, which annually flew to Jerusalem via Egypt, could return and give the Beta Israel news of their beloved Jerusalem and Zion. Throughout the centuries, the Beta Israel prayed to the heavenly Jerusalem, sometimes used interchangeably with “Zion”. Indeed, the scholar Edward Ullendorff (1920-2011) entitled the book on his two “homes” The Two Zions: Reminiscences of Jerusalem and Ethiopia.13 In one of the unique Beta Israel prayers recorded by ethno-musicologist Kay Kaufman Shelemay from Kes Berhan Baruk in 1973, the whole prayer is devoted to longing for Jerusalem.14 Jerusalem proclaims to us, Jerusalem, Her ways, Jerusalem, her willows, Jerusalem. Tell us the news of peace, tell us the news of peace. Alef, how is her lonely life?

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Bet, weeping she wept. Gamel, the exile of Judah. Dalet, the ways of Zion. Het, she commits a sin. Qof, I called your name. Res, see, Lord, our sickness. Res, see, Lord our insult. San, the angels expelled me. Taw, may my request come to you. Alef, who was gold and silver tarnished? By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down there, and we wept when we remembered Zion. Among the willows we hung our lyres. For there those who took us captives asked us for a song, And those who led us into captivity asked us, saying, “Sing us songs of Zion”.

In the specific case of the prayer iyyarusalem (Jerusalem), it is clear that some of the verses are based upon Lamentations and also on Psalms and that some verses were forgotten or are missing. However, as mentioned in my introduction, this chapter does not delve into the musical or linguistic sources of every word or verse, but brings the song in its entirety to exemplify that ancient prayers recited regularly mourned and yearned for Jerusalem. At one stage in their history, in the mid- nineteenth century, when the longing for Jerusalem came to a peak in a period of devastation and hardship, some Beta Israel even took practical steps to reach Jerusalem. In 1862, an abortive attempt to reach Jerusalem was made by a band of Beta Israel under the leadership of Abba Mahari, but it ended in tragedy. The attempt to cross the Red Sea and reach the Promised Land, which has been documented in missionary sources and recounted by members of the community.15

Jerusalem in Ethiopia and Ethiopia in Jerusalem This yearning for Jerusalem is not exclusive to the Beta Israel in Ethiopia but an Ethiopian phenomenon for Jerusalem is central in Ethiopic prayer, be it Christian or Jewish. As we know, Ethiopic Christianity and Judaism share many common features.16 Even “The three-fold division of churches in Ethiopia clearly replicates the architectural structure of the Temple in Jerusalem”.17It can be speculated that the focus on Jerusalem may originate in the above mentioned Biblical story (see: I Kings 10: 1-13 and 2 Chronicles 9:1-12) of the encounter in Jerusalem between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. In the Biblical version, the Queen of

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Sheba, after trying King Solomon with riddles, returned to her land with gifts. In the Ethiopian text, formulated in the Kebra Nagast (“The glory of the Kings”), Makeda, the Queen of Sheba came from Aksum to visit King Solomon in Jerusalem. Upon her return home, she discovered she was pregnant with Menelik. As a young adult, Menelik with companions went to Jerusalem to meet his father but on the way back, stole the Ark of the Covenant from the Temple and installed it in the new Zion, Aksum. “Whatever the initial intent of the earliest compilers of the Kebra Nagast, the Solomon-Sheba legend eventually became the basic metaphor for legitimacy and authority within Ethiopian culture”.18 It also represented symbolically the special tie between Ethiopia and Jerusalem. With the advent of Christianity, monasteries were set up in Ethiopia, where the monks prayed to Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem, where they continued their special Ethiopic Orthodox and Coptic rites. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem started by the end of the fourth century C.E. In 636 C.E. Caliph Omar, who had conquered Jerusalem, issued an edict establishing the rights of Christians in Jerusalem, including the Ethiopians. With the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 by the Crusaders, Ethiopian monks were removed from the Jerusalem monasteries, only to be replaced by Augustine monks. However, when in 1187 the Muslim ruler Salaheddin wrested Jerusalem from the Crusaders, he restored the presence of the Ethiopian and other Orthodox/Coptic monks in the holy places. One of the ruling Zagwe dynasty in Ethiopia, King Lalibela (1190-1225) was sent into exile from Ethiopia to Jerusalem. Upon his return, he had difficulty maintaining contact with the monks in Jerusalem, so he decided to recreate Jerusalem in his land. This resulted in the construction of 13 rock-hewn churches at Lalibela in Ethiopia. As the “new Jerusalem”, Lalibela became the capital of Ethiopia until the mid-thirteenth century. Simultaneously, Ethiopian Christians resided in Jerusalem continuously until this day; they are mentioned in written accounts by mediaeval pilgrims Ottoman rulers including Sultan Selim I (1512-1520) and Suleiman “the Magnificent” (1520-1566) as well as later ones in the 19th century, issued edicts authorizing groups of Ethiopian monks to reside in Deir Sultan or the monastery (place) of the Sultan, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in Jerusalem’s Old City. 19 In 1888, the community bought a plot of land called Debre Gannet outside the walls of Jerusalem with treasure which Emperor Yohannes had captured from the Turks.20 Today, there is a small community of several hundred Ethiopian Christians living in and around the Ethiopian quarter in Prophets’ Street, Jerusalem.21

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The “Aliya” (“Going Up”) of the Beta Israel to Jerusalem22 In 1979, Ferede Aklum, a Beta Israel from Tigray, arrived in the Sudan and was contacted by the Israeli Mossad. The idea of exiting Ethiopia through the Sudan was conceived. Beta Israel walked in the night led by guides, who took them to the Sudanese border, where they waited in refugee camps. An estimated 4,000 Beta Israel died on the way. Finally, in 1984-1985, Operation Moses took place, in which 7,700 Beta Israel were airlifted from the Sudan to Israel. However, the operation was terminated suddenly by the embarrassed Sudanese government, following a speech by a Jewish Agency official in New York, which was picked up in an obscure Israeli newspaper and then quoted throughout the world. Operation Sheba, a few months later in 1985, mopped up some 700 Beta Israel, who were stranded in the refugee camps in the Sudan and had not returned to Ethiopia. From Operation Sheba until 1989, when diplomatic relations were restored between Ethiopia and Israel, approximately 2,400 Beta Israel emigrated to Israel. International pressure, and in particular the intervention of American Jewish organizations advocating the “rescue” of the Beta Israel, built up, culminating in Operation Solomon, which took 14,310 Jews out to Ethiopia to Israel in 36 hours May 24-25 1991, as the future of the Ethiopian government headed by Mengistu Haile Mariam, hung in the balance. Upon the termination of Operation Solomon, different groups of Beta Israel began to emerge, claiming the right to live in Israel. Some had been overlooked in Operation Solomon; others in remote areas had been forgotten. In 1992, some 2,500 Jews from the outlying district of Qwara were brought to Israel. From 1992 to 1998, the emigration of the Jews of Qwara took place at a slow pace of a few hundred a year, and in 1999 and 1,200 additional Beta Israel from Qwara arrived in Israel. In addition, thousands belonging to a group now being called “Felesmura”, whose ancestors had converted to Christianity from the mid-nineteenth century on, have migrated to Israel and officially converted to Judaism. More are waiting in Ethiopia in the hopes of emigrating.23

The Segd Festival Undoubtedly influenced by their Christian neighbours, but also swayed by the centrality of Jerusalem in the Jewish religion, the Beta Israel not only prayed every day to be reunited with their co-religionists in

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Jerusalem, but also dedicated a whole religious festival to that very theme. This festival, unknown in other Jewish communities, was celebrated by the Beta Israel on the 29th day of the eighth moon in a ritual cycle seven weeks after the holy Day of Atonement.24 Inspired by the books of Nehemiah and Ezra in which the longing for Jerusalem is reiterated by a people in (Babylonian) exile, the Beta Israel ascended a mountain and prayed to Jerusalem annually in a day-long fast and recitation of prayers. Facing the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the kessoch (priests) recite: Let us bow down and thank him alone who is holy, Let us prostrate ourselves, let us pray, let us sing, let us bless, let us sanctify the father of the creation of the heaven and the earth. Let us bow down, let us pray, let us sing, let us bless, let us sanctify, let us pay attention, let us approach the father of the heaven and the earth, And let us bow down in his temple, the place where the Lord’s foot rests And prostrate ourselves in the temple of your sanctuary. Bow down to the Lord inside the temple of his sanctuary So will we prostrate ourselves in our hearts. 25

At the end of the fast day, as the Orit (Torah) is being returned to the Ark, the kessoch recite the prayer “And Come to Zion”, which contains illusions to quotations from the Book of Isaiah (56:13; 60:4) and contains the following stanza: I longed for Jerusalem, I longed For they will serve (me) inside my House and inherit my Torah. For they will want (to come) inside my House, and will inherit my Torah. For those who will desire (to come) inside my House, they receive their reward.

In Israel, this practice continues and has become the most important day of the year for the Ethiopian Jews in Israel.26 Since 2008, the Israeli Parliament decided to make the Segd an official holiday. Over 20,000 Ethiopian Jews are bused into Jerusalem and congregate on the Sherover promenade near the UN Headquarters, where they face the Temple Mount and are led in prayer by the kessoch (priests); the young people socialize nearby. A smaller gathering of Tigranian Jews gather near the Wailing Wall and recite prayers for the rebuilding of Jerusalem.

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Heavenly Jerusalem and Earthly Jerusalem: The Dissonance Germaw Mengistu was born in the Gondar area. In an interview, Mengistu said “I dreamed of coming to Jerusalem and continuing my studies.”27 Two months after Operation Solomon (May 1991), his family emigrated to Israel. He explained: “The Jews of Ethiopia are a minority from which kings came forth at various times in history, and ruled over a great nation. They arrived in Israel with a great sense of pride, and the cultural shock of absorption created a great sense of frustration. Some of them live here in a virtual reality—the elderly live in an imaginary Jerusalem.” Mengistu studied political science and communications at Haifa University and went on to do an M.A. in communications. His thesis compared the media coverage of new immigrants from the former USSR in 1976, 1990 and 2000 in comparison with the coverage of new immigrants from Ethiopia in 1980, 1990 and 2000. Mengistu concluded that the more a group like the new immigrants from Ethiopia are culturally remote, the less the media will be supportive, and the more the failure of immigrants to integrate into society will be perceived as the outcome of social backwardness. In 2009, Mengistu submitted a short story essay to the annual competition of the prestigious Israeli daily Ha’aretz, and to his surprise, he won. The story, which expresses the dissonance between the imagined and the “real” Jerusalem, is the basis of this section. The story entitled “A Dream at the Price of Honor” is about an imaginary elderly man, who in some respects resembles Mengistu’s own father. 28 The elderly woman is very similar to Mengistu’s grandmother. “I wrote this story in the manner of these elderly people, a somewhat biblical language, which gives the plot an angle showing the gap between age and culture”, he explains in an interview on the above website. I bring here selected excerpts from the complete short story: 1985. 40,000 feet about the Red Sea grant boundless space for longings, even as it brings ages of yearning closer to an end. 70 dark-skinned Jews and one Cohen, our spiritual leader, closer than ever to our hearts’desire. Above us the heavens are wide open, below us corpulent clouds, bounteous and peaceful…. Close together we sat in the two frontmost seats, Cohen Betibebu and I, Emawayish Menashe. The rest of the people sat in the back. Soul Father I call him, and he calls me Great Mother: 80 times we have both watched the wax drip from the candle of another year gone by…. We are not as other peoples who reside permanently in a country they call their own. We dimmed the burning taper of our lives as we lit the spark of hope in our

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Chapter Nine hearts: next year in Jerusalem, we wished ourselves, year after year. Many believe that these three words are the key to our longevity….. “Suddenly, I truly fear”, I said….. “that perhaps our Soul Father will be glorified many times over in Jerusalem, and his body will be made to rise to the heavens guided by his spirit, as were the holy men of ancient times. And he will be forever gone from this earth and will forever be perpetuated in the hearts and minds of men.”…. “Honor”, said my Soul Father, “Runs like a shadow from is pursuers; it draws to it like a lodestone those who serve God. And the aged. Among our brothers in Jerusalem we will walk with our heads held high.”…. Suddenly, a voice from the heavens spoke: “Honorable brothers and sisters, we are now flying over Jerusalem, at last you may look down upon Jerusalem from the airplane windows.” Our chest rose and fell quickly, pumping air so fast that our hearts thought to jump out. From the youngest to the oldest, we covered our faces with our festive scarves and buried our heads between our knees. If we should look upon the lights of Jerusalem, our eyes would lose their sight and our bodies would melt, so we truly believed. Silence. Wrapped within our thoughts we gazed up on Jerusalem in awe. I know exactly which Jerusalem each one of us sees in their imagination. I am 80 years old. One sees the Temple embellished with gold, beams of light coming forth resplendent from its crown, rising skyward and falling to the earth sowing seeds of peace and security among the tribes of the Israelites. Another sees the Holy of Holies upon the Foundation Stone, which houses the Ark of Covenant and cherubim in all their glory, he sees the Outer Altar of sacred rituals and the courtyard through which passed thousands of worshippers. Another joyfully watches animals of prey as they creep up the sides of Mt. Zion, grazing as sheep on succulent forage; and yet another looks on in wonder as seeds fall from the beaks of doves, plant themselves in the blink of an eye, and that same day give forth sweet and nourishing fruit, picked and eaten by those who diligently study and pray in the House of God.”

Mengistu then goes on to describe how the plane landed at Ben-Gurion airport, how government officials, rabbis and artists stood in rows to greet them, how when they reached an open space everyone bent down to kiss the holy ground but the tarmac was surprisingly hard for they had imagined that Jerusalem is covered with soft earth. They finally reached a room where a young, half-naked woman who was wearing the attire of men provided them with promissory notes to cover living expenses. The immigrants were put on a train with no special chair or place for the kes. Then they arrived at the absorption centre where the government official said:

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“…we will teach you to forget your old way of life, and you will be taught to assimilate to a new culture and way of life.” “Soul Father and I, and the rest of the elderly, were banished to the bottom of a 100-storied building, alone in the world, and our young people have been raised to the top floors that touch the sky…..Betibebu, we have realized our dream,” I said…”We have realized our dream at the price of our honor.” Awakening is the end of the dream. Passing from dream to reality is a painful birth; still it is better sevenfold to awaken from illusion than to yearn for a utopian dream. “

The dissonance that Mengistu narrates between the image of Jerusalem, which his ancestors had cherished for hundreds of years, as a heavenly destination and the harsh realities of arriving in Jerusalem in Operation Moses (1984-5) is poignant. He highlights the culture gap, the generation gap, the new mores and the lack of honour. It is no secret that Ethiopian Jews have suffered great difficulties adjusting to their new modern life in Israel. In this chapter, I have traced the centrality of Jerusalem in Ethiopian liturgy and prayer, to the extent that “Jerusalem” was recreated in Ethiopia and “Ethiopia” was recreated in Jerusalem. In Ethiopia, the Beta Israel prayed daily to Jerusalem and once a year, they enacted the Segd festival in which they went up a mountain and expressed their yearning for Jerusalem. In Israel, an ancient folktale popular among the Beta Israel about a stork who flies to Jerusalem and back has been put to music to describe the yearning for Jerusalem that they felt. Like other Jewish diasporic groups, the longing for Jerusalem is conceived as a yearning for "home", which is reached by "aliya" ("going up"), a physical and spiritual uplift to Jerusalem. It is significant that the Beta Israel are different from other non-Jewish Ethiopian diasporic communities in that there "sojourn" of hundreds or even thousands of years in Ethiopia is represented as a diasporic experience.29 With the immigration of the Ethiopian Jews to Israel, “the land of milk and honey”, the dissonance between the heavenly Jerusalem and the earthly one came to a fore. A young Israeli-Ethiopian author, writing in Hebrew in an ancient genre similar to that spoken by older Beta Israel, has managed to capture the painful passing from dream to reality. It is possible that in paradoxical manner, despite the difficulties experienced by Ethiopian Jews in integrating into Israeli society, the longing for Jerusalem among the Beta Israel may be a precedent for other ethnic groups who perceive them as successful role models.

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Notes 1

Cf. Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Music, Ritual and Falasha History (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, 1986); Margaret Hayon, “Bet Israel Prayers: Oral and Written Traditions-Analysis of a service for the New Moon”, in The Beta Israel in Ethiopia and Israel: Studies on the Ethiopian Jews, eds. Tudor Parfitt and Emanuela Trevisan Semi (London: Curzon, 1999), 209-234; Frank AlvarezPereyre and Shoshana Ben-Dor, “The Formal Organisation of the Beta Israel Liturgy - Substance and Performance: Literary Structure”, in The Beta Israel in Ethiopia and Israel: Studies on the Ethiopian Jews, eds. Tudor Parfitt and Emanuela Trevisan Semi (London: Curzon, 1999), 235-251. 2 There are thousands of bibliographic references to the history of the Beta Israel. This section is based upon Shalva Weil “Ethiopian Jews.” In The Cambridge Dictionary of Judaism and Jewish Culture, ed. Judith Baskin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 165-166. 3 Wolf Leslau, Falasha Anthology (New Haven: Yale Judaic Series, 1951), 6. 4 Parfitt, Tudor 'The Connection between the Falashas and the Land of Israel.' In Pillars of smoke and fire: the Holy Land in history and thought, ed. Moshe Sharon (Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers, 1988), 63-75. 5 David Kessler, The Falashas: the Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia (New York: Africana Publishing Co., 1982). 6 Cf. Steven Kaplan, The Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia (New York: New York University Press, 1992). 7 James Quirin, The Evolution of the Ethiopian Jews: A History of the Beta Israel (Falasha) to 1920 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992). 8 James Bruce, Travels to the Source of the Nile (Edinburgh, 1790), 2. 9 Daniel Summerfield, From Falashas to Ethiopian Jews (London: Routledge, 2003). 10 Shalva Weil, "Mikael Aragawi: Christian Missionary among the Beta Israel", in Beta Israel: the Jews of Ethiopia and Beyond, eds. Emanuela Trevisan Semi and Shalva Weil (Venice: Cafoscarini Press, 2011),147-158. 11 Emanuela Trevisan Semi, Jacques Faitlovitch and the Jews of Ethiopia (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007). 12 Shalva Weil "Beta Israel Students Who Studied Abroad 1905-1935" in Research in Ethiopian Studies, Selected papers of the 16th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Trondheim, July 2007, eds. Harald Aspen, Birhanu Teferra, Shiferaw Bekele, and Svein Ege, (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz Verlag: Aethiopistische Forschungen, 2010), 84-92. 13 Edward Ullendorff, The Two Zions: Reminiscences of Jerusalem and Ethiopia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 14 Shelemay, Music, Ritual and Falasha History, 1-15D, 307-8. 15 Shoshana Ben-Dor “The Journey to Eretz Israel: the Story of Abba Mahari”, Pe’amim 33 (1987):5-32. (Hebrew). 16 Richard D. Pankhurst, “The Beta Israel (Falasha) in their Ethiopian Setting,” in Ethiopian Jews in the Limelight ed. Shalva Weil (Jerusalem: NCJW Research

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Institute for Innovation in Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1997), 1322. (Hebrew). 17 Quirin Evolution of Ethiopian Jews, 18. 18 Ibid, 23 19 In 1283, the Dominican Friar Burcardus de Monte Sion mentioned the piety of the Ethiopians and to their customs. In 1347, Father Nicolo da Pogibonsy, a Franciscan friar from France, who visited the Holy Land that year describes the Ethiopians praying in a chapel called "St. Mary in Golgotha" in the Holy Sepulchre. 20 It is situated in Ethiopia Street off Prophets' Street in Jerusalem, so named till today. 21 Kirsten Stoffregen Pederson, The Ethiopian Church and its Community in Jerusalem (Trier: Kulturverein Aphorism, 1995). 22 This section is based upon Shalva Weil, “Zionism among Ethiopian Jews” in Jewish Communities in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Ethiopia, ed. Hagar Salamon (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2008), 187-200.(Hebrew). 23 Ravit Cohen "The Ethnography of the Gondar Compound: "Waiting" and What it Means", in Beta Israel: the Jews of Ethiopia and Beyond, eds. Emanuela Trevisan Semi and Shalva Weil (Venice: Cafoscarini Press, 2011), 147-158. 24 James Quirin "Segd" in Encyclopedia Aethiopica, ed. Siegbert Uhlig (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011), 4:595-596. 25 Shoshana Ben-Dor “Segd” in Jewish Communities in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Ethiopia, ed. Hagar Salamon (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2008), 142. (Hebrew) 26 Jon G. Abbink, "Segd Celebration in Ethiopia and Israel: Continuity and Change of a Falasha Religious Holiday", Anthropos, 78 (1983): 789-810. 27 http://www.olimbeyahad.org/sites/webo.olim/files/newsletter/newsletteraug10.pdf, 3-5. “Google Privacy Policy,” last modified November 21, 2011. 28 The entire story can be found in English translation on the same website, 6-8. 29 Steven Kaplan, "Tama Galut Etiopiya: The Ethiopian Exile Is Over", Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 14, (2005): 381-396.

PART THREE NEGOTIATING BLACK JEWISH IDENTITIES IN THE UNITED STATES AND INDIA

CHAPTER TEN A COLONY IN BABYLON: COOPERATION AND CONFLICT BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE JEWS IN NEW YORK, 1930 TO 1964 JACOB S. DORMAN

In the course of his ill-fated attempt to establish an American settlement in Africa, Black Israelite Rabbi Arnold Josiah Ford urged New York Black Israelite Rabbi Wentworth A. Matthew and his followers to come to Ethiopia and help him settle that country. In a 1931 letter, Ford urged Matthew to send funds and additional settlers.1 Matthew and his followers, however, took a rather more mundane approach to resettlement by buying property in the suburban community of Babylon, Long Island. Matthew proudly displayed the certificate Ford had sent him from Ethiopia on the wall of his office for many decades, and used it to legitimate his rabbinical authority. Like many followers of Marcus Garvey, Matthew was an impassioned supporter of Haile Selassie, and even made small contributions to the Abyssinian cause in the thirties, but he never sent any colonists to aid Ford’s venture. Instead, in 1930 and 1931, a member of Matthew’s congregation purchased six lots in the new Black suburban development of Gordon Heights, in Suffolk County, Long Island. During and immediately after the Second World War, Matthew and his associates amassed seven more lots in Babylon, Long Island and nearby Wyandanch, as well as two parcels in Manchester, New Jersey.2 In all, Matthew and his relatives and followers controlled a sizeable collection of real estate in a rapidly developing part of Long Island. Matthew thought of his settlement as a colony, even though it was a colony of another county, not another country. In a 1947 letter to a Jamaican clergyman, Matthew wrote, “I have been busily striving to create a Colony for my people, which [has] taken every moment of my time and labour…”3 Like Father Divine, who had also invested the profits of his

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urban ministry in suburban Long Island real estate, Matthew met with friction from some of his white neighbors. But Matthew also shared Father Divine’s ability to create havoc in the lives of those who crossed him, or at least claimed to be able to do so. One story has it that when Matthew and some followers moved to Babylon, Long Island, the neighbors protested the presence of the newcomers who were both Black and Jewish. Matthew claimed that “on their first day, a lady came for the rabbi with a shotgun, but at that moment her husband had a fatal heart attack, and next morning one of her sons was killed in an accident.” Needless to say, the neighbors did not bother the Black Israelites again.4 Given the choice between the Zion of Ethiopia and the Babylon of America, Matthew ironically chose Babylon, Long Island.5 Yet he was not alone in this choice; by 1930 African American residents of Harlem were moving en masse, not to colonize new lands but to settle new neighborhoods in suburbia. Blacks moved from Harlem to places such as Astoria, Jamaica, Flushing, and Corona in Queens, Flatbush and the Rockaways in Brooklyn, parts of Long Island, Newark, New Jersey, and sections of Westchester County such as Nepperham, New Rochelle, White Plains, Mount Vernon, Pelham Manor, and Tuckahoe.6 Yet restrictive covenants and the refusal of white developers and sellers to admit Black families into new suburban communities hemmed African Americans into a select few neighborhoods. In the words of architect Louis Fife, who founded Gordon Heights as an African American suburb and advertised his settlement amongst Harlem churches, “to the overflowing population of Harlem the East River was like the River Jordan to Israel in the days of Moses. The land beyond was good to look at; but it was not attainable.”7 Rabbi Matthew and his students became the torchbearers for Black Judaism in New York City with the deaths of Bishop William Saunders Crowdy in 1908, Bishop Warien Roberson in 1931, and the departure for Ethiopia of Rabbi Ford in 1930 and his subsequent death in 1935. Yet Matthew had to walk a metaphorical tightrope and a literal gauntlet, at times, distrustful of white Jews, as whites, and distrusted by Black Christian neighbors for being a Jew himself. As Matthew later recalled, “Upon the awakening of the Black man to self-realization and the glory of his ancient past, my greatest opposition came from the very man I tried to enlighten. He was afraid he would lose the slave master’s heaven, with its milk and honey, its golden slippers and long white robes with flowing wings. For interfering with this, I was disqualified by my own, and even had bricks thrown at my head from rooftops.”8

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Matthew also had a long and troubled relationship with New York’s white Jews. According to one newspaper interviewer, when he arrived in New York “he was shocked at the attitude of fairer Jews toward Negro Jews. He determined to help the Harlemites, so he went to school in Missouri and Cincinnati to learn theology.”9 In 1931 the New York Board of Jewish Ministers established a committee to study the status of the three synagogues of Black Jews in Harlem. Yet this moment of interracial Jewish outreach was short-lived, not to be seen again until the early sixties. Only a few months later, Dr. Norman Salit attacked the African American synagogues as “a mixture of superstition and ignorance that has nothing to do with Judaism.” The Moorish Zionist Temple and New York’s other Israelite movements faded away in the thirties, leaving only Matthew and the rabbis he trained.10 Not all Black Jews were enchanted with Rabbi Matthew’s polycultural version of Judaism; some African Americans wanted to follow a path that stuck closer to the normative Judaism they saw around them. Julius Wilkins and Ellis McLeod, two of the rabbis whom Matthew trained, split off to form their own congregation in August 1945.11 Called Kohol Beth B’nai Yisrael, the congregation included a few veterans of Rabbi Ford’s adventure in Ethiopia, including Nancy and Eudora Paris, Aida and Augustine Bastion, and Helen Piper.12 The congregation originally met at the home of Julius and Cora Wilkins at 238 West 122nd Street in Harlem, only blocks away from Matthew’s congregation at 87 West 128th Street, before moving into a building at 204 Lenox Avenue in Harlem. Like the original Commandment Keepers, Kohol Beth B’nai Yisrael was a small congregation; a total of 59 members grace its membership rolls between 1945 and 1954. The new congregation was a competitor as much as an offspring of the original synagogue, motivated in part by a desire to create a more traditional Jewish ritual, and perhaps by a feeling of unease among former followers of Rabbi Ford over the leadership of Rabbi Matthew. At a time when eighty-nine percent of the songs sung at Rabbi Matthew’s conventions were Christian hymns, the new congregation attempted to create hymnals which eliminated songs that violated Jewish belief and incorporated many of Rabbi Ford’s compositions instead. The torah that Rabbi Ford had given to Eudora Paris in Ethiopia, and that Paris had sneaked past the Nazis in Hamburg, came to reside at this new synagogue in 1948. At the first membership meeting in January 1948, Rabbi Wilkins thanked Sister Paris for her generosity in bringing the Torah back from Ethiopia and turning it over to the congregation, to which she replied that the Torah was always the property of the synagogue, as she had been entrusted to bring it to the congregation. Yet the fact that Paris had not

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given the Torah to Rabbi Matthew in the twelve years since her return from Ethiopia suggests a rift between Rabbi Matthew and the remnants of Rabbi Ford’s congregation.13 The new congregation also reached out to those they referred to as their “co-religionists” by placing ads in Jewish papers advertising their need for torahs. The ads “brought electrifying results, with a Torah from Canada, one from Washington D.C. and one from the Daughters of Israel in the Bronx.”14 New York’s Black Jews became more observant of conventional Judaism while maintaining their Black nationalism and support for Ethiopia in the forties and fifties. The various Commandment Keeper congregations began to observe the Jewish dietary laws of kashrut, and Rabbi McLeod sought to encourage young men to become kosher butchers to supply the community with meat. While Rabbi Matthew felt hostile towards white Jews, he and his followers became increasingly dependent on them for funds and support as his movement weakened over the ensuing decades. By the 1960s, Matthew collected speaking fees for lectures at Jewish groups and synagogues, while some congregations were housed in Jewish communal buildings. Former pioneers who had returned from Rabbi Ford’s colonization attempt in Ethiopia led efforts to maintain ties with Ethiopia. Kohol’s rabbi, Julius Wilkins, supported a petition drive to get the United States to pay for the repatriation of African Americans back to Africa that was organized by the brief-lived New York publication The African Times. The congregation’s former pioneers thought of Ethiopia as the true home of the Black Jews and sought to recreate Ford’s efforts at a future date. Sister Paris reported “we are aiming at our homeland, and that we are starting here to lay the groundwork for our journey back home.” 15 Yet efforts to aid Ethiopia or to immigrate never got off the ground, and funds collected on behalf of Ethiopia in 1950 were so meager that the congregation decided not to send them.16 In 1951 the synagogue sought to purchase an American flag and an Ethiopian flag, but only had enough cash to buy the American flag. They were able to come up with an Ethiopian flag through the generosity of one of the former pioneers, but the incident is telling: the congregation did not have the funds to support Ethiopia even on a symbolic level.17 New York’s Black Jewish synagogues were often fractious and disunited. Kohol Beth B’nai Yisrael was torn by petty bickering and personality conflicts that hindered its growth. Sister Paris, the head of the music committee, resigned in a huff in a flap about the hymnals on November 14, 1951, though she later returned. Rabbi McLeod attempted to start a benevolent association around the same time, but faced

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opposition from some in the congregation and abandoned the task. Rabbi Wilkins split off from the congregation in the spring of 1954, demanding $2,000, two Torahs, and half of the prayer books, and founded his own congregation close by. Rabbi Matthew claimed to be the chief rabbi of the “Black Jews in the Western Hemisphere,” yet he did not even exert dominion over all the Black Jews in New York. In March 1955 the remaining rabbis of Kohol Beth B’nai Yisrael proposed writing a letter to Rabbi Matthew, “asking him to call Rabbis of our race together, to try and form a union.” Rabbi McLeod thought that they should only ask Matthew to play the role of organizer “out of common decency and courtesy,” since he had trained the others, but “if he refuses we can take the initiative, since some of the members feel that since the thought was ours, we should call the Rabbis together.”18 The congregation sent a letter and had a meeting, but the two parties could not come to an agreement and Kohol decided to drop the idea of federating themselves with Rabbi Matthew in September of 1955.19 Black Jews’ hopes for return to Africa came to rest on the shoulders of Hailu Moshe Paris, who left for Israel and Ethiopia in 1957, just as Kohol followed many of its members and left Harlem for Jamaica, Queens. Hailu Paris was born in Ethiopia to a Christian family and was adopted as a child by the Parises, followers of Rabbi Ford, who had brought him to New York. Now Paris, who became a Bar Mitzvah in 1947, returned for a visit to Ethiopia as a twenty-seven year old Black Jew with the support of the congregation. But Paris’ journey was not to be the start of a renewed attempt to colonize Ethiopia: amid allegations of sexual and financial improprieties, the congregation fired Rabbi McLeod and asked Hailu Paris to return to New York to take over the helm. The weakened state of Black Judaism in New York by the nineteen sixties can be seen in the 1964 merger of three congregations affiliated with Rabbi Matthew’s Commandment Keepers. On July 18 of that year, Congregations Mount Horeb, Kohol Beth B’nai Israel and Beth Emet merged into a congregation that took the name Mount Horeb and met at the Ashkenazi-funded Young Israel Building on Stebbins Avenue in the Bronx. Albert Moses was the senior rabbi, assisted by Elder Mathias and Rabbi Hailu Moshe Paris.20 Rabbi Matthew was not only attempting to unite his fractious movement and reach out to other African Americans who believed in the Black Israelite doctrine as it had been passed down from the Holiness Church pioneers of the 1890s; he was also reaching out to white Ashkenazi Jews with whom he had a long and troubled history. The Moorish Zionist Temple, (M.Z.T.) the congregation that Rabbi Ford had first joined before founding his own Beth B’nai Abraham, had a long

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history of interracialism. In 1932, about 25 of the 150 members of the congregation were white. The rabbi, Israel Ben Yamin, was African American, and also ministered to a Black Jewish synagogue in nearby Newark, New Jersey. Max Glickstein, the congregation’s Ashkenazi president, claimed that “In our congregation there is absolutely no discrimination.”21 Rabbi Ben Yamin’s successor, the blind Rabbi Hezekiah Jacob, born Steven Lee, carried on the M.Z.T.’s tradition of interracialism. In a 1939 report the temple still had about 150 members, but whites were not mentioned among them. However, Rabbi Jacob taught a messianic version of the unity of the Jewish people. A writer for the Works Progress Administration Writer’s Program wrote: “Rabbi Jacob is firm in the belief that a Jewish Messiah will one day arise to lead both Black and white Jews back to Palestine, where Jerusalem will become the world’s capitol and the Jews will be the ruling race.”22 Despite the lack of formal institutional cooperation with white synagogues, there was much informal cooperation between Black and white Jews in New York. For many years the Commandment Keepers received donations from sympathetic white individuals, and Matthew passed along requests for domestic help from white Jews to women in his congregation.23 Yet even when Black Jews worked for white Jewish employers, they often found the white Jews to be insufficiently observant and some refused to work in the home of families that did not observe the Jewish dietary laws of kashrut.24 The degree of interracialism within the Moorish Zionist Temple was truly exceptional; in later years it would be virtually unthinkable for a Black Jewish rabbi to cater to a synagogue that was one sixth white, or for a Black rabbi to espouse the idea that Jews, Black and white, formed a single race. In 1939 Matthew’s congregation included about a dozen white Ashkenazi Jews, according to the New York Amsterdam News, but “for practical purposes there is no cooperation or religious fraternizing between the Black and the white Jews in New York.”25 Matthew expressly forbid marriage with whites.26 Howard Brotz reported in 1952 that there were at least a dozen white visitors at every service but that “in relations between the Negroes and their white visitors, the individuals do not actually depart from their roles as members of two different races. The Negroes on their part are fearful and suspicious of the whites; the whites on their part view this ‘Jewish service’ as ‘queer’.”27 However, despite these beliefs, even Matthew’s own synagogue, the Commandment Keepers, had several white members until the 1960s. White Ashkenazi Jews commonly viewed Black Israelites as curiosities or imposters. Especially in the aftermath of the Elder Robinson’s 1926

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indictment for running a “baby farm” in New Jersey, Ashkenazi Jews sometimes attacked Black Jews as fakers or wrote them off as mercenary businessman. In 1931, Rabbi Matthew applied for membership in the New York Board of Rabbis, but was turned down.28 That same year, Dr. Norman Salit, described as a “white Zionist leader,” unilaterally declared that Black Judaism was “based on a mixture of superstition and ignorance that has nothing to do with Judaism.”29 In another address in 1936, Dr. Salit said that “There are several synagogues in Harlem, but they are not Jewish. The services are hybrid and mongrel. They make an appeal to the childish and simple heart[ed] but they are faked.”30 However, the concern for world Jewry that Black Jews showed during the 1930s and 1940s improved their standing in the eyes of white Jews. Rabbi Matthew pledged his support to an anti-Nazi drive in 1934, saying, in a prepared statement to a Jewish newspaper: “We have heard of the atrocities being committed against our brothers in Germany and we will not remain silent longer.” Furthermore, Matthew connected the fight against fascism abroad with the battle against racism at home, stating: “we are fighting barbarism of all kinds on two fronts. One is the Hitler terror and the other is the wave of lynching of colored folks that has swept the South.”31 An anthropologist of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, Ruth Landes, described how Jews reacted positively, if condescendingly, towards the store-front Black Jewish congregations in Harlem in the Depression years. “Jews everywhere...were touched, partly by the pathos of the situation amid Nazi and Negro tragedies. Great and modest Jewish individuals came to watch the group I describe, to teach and otherwise to help them.”32 Likewise, Black journalist Roi Ottley described how Black Jews’ status in the Jewish world improved due to their support for Jewry in the Holocaust. “Until Hitler began to persecute the Jews in Germany, and American newspapers dramatized the atrocities, Harlem’s Black Jews were denounced as impostors, fakers, and fools,” he wrote. “The majority of white Jews hardly knew of their existence, nor was there any manifest concern when the fact was mentioned.... Today, however, the Black Jews have gained status, a status born of the persecution of their white co-religionists.”33 In 1941, the Commandment Keepers had put out feelers to determine whether they would be accepted by the B’nai B’rith and were turned down because B’nai B’rith did not recognize them as Jews, citing the fact that their rabbis were not ordained by any mainstream Jewish denomination. Matthew sometimes conducted services in white synagogues in the postwar years, although acceptance was still elusive.34 Episodic Ashkenazi efforts to raise funds for Black Jews and to legitimate them in the eyes of white Jews continued during the 1940s and

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1950s, resulting in the purchase of a building to house the Commandment Keepers’ synagogue but creating little institutional acceptance of Black Israelite religious traditions. In 1949, Jewish philanthropist David Morgenstern organized a benefit concert for the Commandment Keepers at Share Tziddik, the first Hungarian Synagogue on Riverton Street in New York. The concert featured Eliezer Brooks, David Kushovitsky, Shalom Katz, Moshe Ganshev, and Sam Sterner and his Boys Choir from a synagogue in the Bronx. Brooks remembers: “I sang at that concert because David Morgenstern, he visited that shul [synagogue] on the shabbat, and he heard me singing, and he asked the Rabbi to put me in the concert. I was the only Black Jew that sang in that concert.”35 The proceeds of the concert helped to purchase a building at 1 West 123rd Street, which housed the Commandment Keepers synagogue until the building’s sale in 2007.36 When Rabbi Matthew approached the Jewish Welfare Agency around 1950, that organization offered support on the condition that Matthew allow observers and instructors to advise his followers. At least one other New York Jewish organization had offered to provide Black Jews with education in Jewish schools, but Matthew refused the offer because it threatened his rabbinical authority.37 Matthew responded angrily to such conditional offers of support. In a 1957 interview, Matthew asked rhetorically: “Do they think I’m a child? Do they think that after a lifetime of struggling, I’ll permit strangers to replace me? It will never happen. I can assure them of that. I am the chief Rabbi of the Black Jews, I and no one else.”38 One of the greatest Ashkenazi advocates for Black Jews was Rabbi Irving J. Block, long-time rabbi of New York’s Brotherhood Synagogue. Born March 17, 1923 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Rabbi Block’s interest in Black Jews dated from the time he was in religious school. Seven years before his passing in 2002, he remembered: “I’ve always had an interest in the Black Jewish community, from the time that I went to cheder [Hebrew school] and I met a young Black boy and I looked forward to developing a wonderful friendship, but he left about six months after he had come to Bridgeport, and that was the last I had seen of him.”39 Rabbi Block, who fought in the Israeli defense forces during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, began his rabbinical career at Rabbi Stephen S. Wise’s synagogue, and considered himself a disciple of the scion of American Reform Judaism. For many years he led the Brotherhood Synagogue, which was founded in 1954, and shared a joint sanctuary with the Village Presbyterian Church, at 139 West 13th Street. The Brotherhood Synagogue embodied the ecumenical spirit—it had a covenant of brotherhood not only with its

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Christian counterpart, but also actively welcomed Jews of all races and religious backgrounds. With his brother, Rabbi Allen Block, Irving Block became the most outspoken supporter of Black Jews among white rabbis. Upon his death the New York Times remembered him as an “ecumenical rabbi,” and indeed, ecumenicalism was at the heart of his personal and religious philosophy. Making friendships with those of different religions and races widened his rabbinate, he asserted in 1995. “Your philosophy is not constricted but enlarged,” he said. “Life becomes far more exciting, far more humane, far more true to form, as God would want it, and you see all the people of races working together.” For Block, building ties with Black Jews promised to benefit both whites and Blacks. He wished that “there were no enemies, only enemies of oppression, with regard to the Black Jews so that there could be a great effort on helping them, and a willingness on their part to be helped. Because I think they have much to contribute to us. We could give them much, but they would give back much more in return.”40 In 1952, as a rabbinical student at Reform Judaism’s New York seminary, the Jewish Institute of Religion, Block struck up a friendship with Rabbi Matthew and then encouraged him to apply for membership in the New York Board of Rabbis. At the time, Block was unaware of the Board’s rule that members had to belong to one of the recognized rabbinical bodies or be graduates of an Orthodox yeshiva. When Rabbi Matthew applied for admission, the New York Board of Rabbis advised Matthew to go to the Rabbinical Council of America, and predicted that they would make an exception and accept him. Rabbi Matthew was not optimistic about his chances of success, and the board did in fact turn him down because it did not recognize his smicha, or ordination, which he claimed came from Ethiopian Falasha rabbis, accompanied by Ford’s 1931 letter from Addis Ababa. The experience deeply embittered Matthew. “We are not a new organization,” he said. “We feel a little more pride. Perhaps if I got down on my knees and begged for this, I might get it.” Matthew was prepared to accept white Jewish aid or interaction only on terms of absolute equality. He stated: “we must be accepted by the white Jewish community as a part of the Children of Israel on an equal basis.”41 Matthew contacted Rabbi Isaac Trainin of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies to protest his rejection by the New York Board of Rabbis, and Trainin established a task force on Black Jews as a result. Trainin recalled: “We invited a number of these so-called Black Jews, and there were a couple of other congregations at that time, and I had a long conference with them, as to how, if possible, we could integrate them into the Jewish community, and it was a wild

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meeting. They accused us white Jews of racism, the whole business….”42 After several meetings, the task force established a committee to assist Black Jews to convert halachically, that is, according to Orthodox Jewish law, although many refused to do so. Trainin’s committee made sure that Black Jews who could benefit from the services of Jewish Federation agencies could be accepted as Jews and receive services. The committee also found spaces for Black Jewish children in Federation-affiliated summer camps and a few right-wing Orthodox yeshivas, which accepted them on the basis that they might decide to convert upon reaching the age of bar mitzvah. By 1960, however, Rabbi Matthew was deeply discouraged about the prospects of gaining equal footing in the white Jewish world. “We don’t ask to be accepted by white Jews,” he said. “When we made the attempt to become integrated we hit a solid stone wall. Nobody really did anything to help, so we developed our own way of life.” By the beginning of the 1960s, Black Jews continued to be separate from the overwhelming majority of Jews in New York. “Still isolated on the fringe of New York Jewry are the Falashim or Black Jews,” a writer for The National Jewish Post and Opinion reported. “Participation in Jewish life is scant, and intermingling with their white ‘brethren’ is rare. Despite the enthusiasm and pride they express for their religion, they do not get the recognition they feel is deserved.”43 Nevertheless, Rabbi Matthew did not stop trying to gain recognition in the mainstream Jewish world. In 1961, the Commandment Keepers again attempted to gain membership in B’nai B’rith. This time, Douglas Gibbs, a member of Matthew’s synagogue, approached Abraham Levenson, who decided that the Commandment Keepers were a legitimate Jewish congregation, and agreed to sponsor their application. Again, B’nai B’rith denied the Commandment Keepers admittance on the grounds that “we are not a religious or theological body. It is not for B’nai B’rith to pass on the legitimacy of the genuineness of any group of colored Jews, but rather for the Synagogue Council of America or one of the three denominational groups...” Levenson charged that Matthew was turned down because of racism, to which Rabbi Aaron Gewirtz of the Hillel Foundation of the University of Connecticut replied that Matthew “has only a very superficial acquaintance with the Bible, Judaism, and any other traditions and practices which one would expect a Rabbi to be familiar with in an intimate way. Thus in saying these things I am not discussing whether Mr. Matthew is a Jew or not but only whether he is a Rabbi.”44 Liturgical and professional Jewish associations, the stewards of Jewish respectability, were as unwilling to accept Black Jews in the 1960s as they ever had been.

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The push to organize and serve Black Jews that resulted in a New York City-based group called Hatzaad Harishon in 1964 came from white Zionist Jews and was supported by Zionist organizations to a much greater degree than it came from white religious Jews and white Jewish religious organizations.45 But by the mid-sixties Matthew and most other Black Jewish leaders in New York had been thoroughly repelled by white Jewish institutions, and were unwilling to cooperate with them. It was not always this way: as we have seen, there were episodes of interracial cooperation among New York City’s Jewish communities going back to the 1920s. White intransigence played a large role in the failure of interracial Jewish diplomacy. But the rise of a new generation of Black nationalist Black Israelite groups also pulled Black Israelite young people away from Judaic identities and organizations and into new Black Israelite orbits. New, bold, Black Israelite movements dominated the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, rejecting Judaic models for “Israelite” ones. These movements often instituted highly patriarchal and masculinist social systems and frequently advocated emigration—whether to rural areas in the U.S. or overseas.46 The largest of these movements, the Original Hebrew Israelites, left Chicago for Liberia in 1967 and then settled in Dimona, Israel, in 1969, where they remain to this day.47 Matthew may have built a colony in Babylon, but newer Black Israelite groups continued to search for their own Zions. Special thanks to the General Research Fund of the University of Kansas for grants that aided in the preparation of this chapter.

Notes 1

Rabbi Arnold Josiah Ford, Addis Ababa, to Rabbi Wentworth A. Matthew, Harlem, June 5, 1931, 3. Wentworth A. Matthew Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox & Tilden Foundations. 2 Deeds, Folder: Deeds 1/10, Wentworth A. Matthew Collection, Schomburg. 3 Correspondence, Rabbi W. A. Matthew, New York to Bishop C.H. Brown, Amity Hall, Jamaica, March 28, 1947, page 2, W. A. Matthew Collection, Schomburg Center. 4 David Pryce-Jones, “The Black Jews” Publication unknown, clipped on August 26, “Black Jews” vertical file, Blaustein Library. 5 In Rastafarian lingo, Babylon, as the place of exile for the Israelites after the destruction of the First Temple, became synonymous with corrupt capitalist system African Americans encounter in the exile of the West. 6 George H. Hobart, The Negro Churches of Manhattan (New York City), (New

Cooperation and Conflict between Black and White Jews in New York 231

York: The Greater New York Federation of Churches, 1930), 8. See also: Andrew Wiese, Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Kenneth L. Kusmer and Joe W. Trotter, eds. African American Urban History Since World War II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 7 Louis Fife, “Twenty Five Years of Gordan Heights” Gordan Heights Bulletin (c. 1952) accessed on November 28, 2009 at http://www.gordonheights.net/twenty%20five%20years1.htm; Jerry Komia Domatob, African Americans of Western Long Island (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2002), 109-126. 8 Rabbi Wentworth A. Matthew, “The Truth About Black Jews and Judaism in America, Part II” The New York Age, (May 24, 1958). 9 Newspaper Article, September 29, 1934, Black Jews Vertical File, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 10 “Moorish Group President Describes Program of Mixed Body in Synagogue” The New York Amsterdam News, January 13, 1932; “‘Black Jews’ Synagogues Attacked” Pittsburgh Courier (December 5, 1931), Black Jews Vertical File, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 11 Certificate of Incorporation, Kohol Beth B’nai Yisrael Inc., August 12, 1945, New York City Department of Old Records, New York Municipal Archives. 12 Membership Meeting Minutes, Sunday January 25, 1948, Ledger Book, 2., Kohol Beth B’nai Yisrael Collection, Box 1 of 2, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 13 Membership Meeting Minutes, January 25, 1948, Kohol Beth B’nai Yisrael Congregation, Ledger Book p. 2, Kohol Beth B’nai Yisrael/Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation Collection, Box 1, Folder 2, Schomburg Center. 14 Kohol Membership Meeting Minutes, September 26, 1948, 5, Kohol Beth B’nai Yisrael/Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation Collection, Box 1(2), Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 15 Meeting Minutes, Sunday March 20, 1949 Ledger Book, 9, Kohol Beth B’nai Yisrael/Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation Collection, Box 1(2), Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., October 6, 1951, 63. 18 Meeting Minutes, Sunday March 6, 1955 Ledger Book, 66-67, Kohol Beth B’nai Yisrael/Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation Collection, Box 1(2), Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 19 Ibid, September 4, 1955, 73. 20 Hatzaad Harishon Newsletter no. 1 (August 1964), Hatzaad Harishon MS, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library,

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Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 21 "Moorish Group President Describes Program of Mixed Body in Synagogue: Interracial Congregation Asks Aid for Plan to Enlist More Members and Enlarge Work--Hebrew History Cited” The New York Amsterdam News 13 January 1932. 22 S. Michelson, “The Black Jew & Their Synagogues in New York,” 6, Group XVI, Negro Group, The Black Jews of Abyssinia and Harlem, Assignment Editor C.B. Cumberbatch, WPA Writer’s Program New York City, Negroes of New York 1939, microfilm, Schomburg. 23 Sherman 175; Brotz Black Jews of Harlem, 44. 24 Walter “Harlem’s Black Jews,” 19. 25 "Harlem Negro Jews Branded Fakes by White Man Who Accredits Abyssinians: Rabbi Matthew Answers Charge, Stating That Ethiopians Who Trace Ancestry to Israel Are in His Congregation Here” The New York Amsterdam News, Dec. 14, 1936; Michelson 2. 26 Marie Walter, “Harlem's Black Jews,” Jewish Spectator 25, no. 9 (November 1960): 19. 27 Brotz, 1952 Jewish Monthly, 152. 28 Graenum Berger, Graenum 296. 29 "'Black Jews' Synagogues Attacked” Pittsburgh Courier, 5 December 1931. 30 "Harlem Negro Jews Branded Fakes.” 31 "N.Y. Negro Jews Aid Anti-Nazi Drive Abroad: Funds Pledged for World Wide Drive on Brown Shirts” The Philadelphia Tribune 1 February 1934. 32 Landes, “Negro Jews,” 175. 33 Ottley, New World A’Coming, 142. 34 Dobrin, “A History of the Negro Jews in America,” 33. 35 Rabbi Eliezer Brooks, interview by author, 22 August 1995, The Bronx, New York, tape recording. 36 Eric Herschthal, “Decline Of A Black Synagogue: Amid Legal Battles That Have Gone on for Many Years, Historic Harlem Congregation Has Almost Disappeared,” The Jewish Week, July 6, 2007, http://joi.org/bloglinks/Black%20synagogue%20Jewish%20Week.htm (accessed October 26, 2009). 37 Brotz, Jewish Monthly, 153. 38 Sherman 174. 39 Rabbi Irving J. Block, interview by author, August 11, 1995, New York, New York, tape recording. See also: Paul Lewis, “Irving J. Block, 79, Ecumenical Rabbi, Dies,” The New York Times, November 6, 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/06/nyregion/irving-j-block-79-ecumenical-rabbidies.html, (accessed October 26, 2009). 40 Block interview by author, August 11, 1995. 41 Ben Gallob, “Falasha Rabbi Seeks Membership in New York Board of Rabbis.” The National Jewish Post, 5 September 1952, 12. 42 Rabbi Isaac N. Trainin, interview by author, 31 August 1995, New York, New York, tape recording. 43 Michael Roth, “New York's Unique Colored Jews Remain Outside Jewish

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Activity,” National Jewish Post And Opinion, 10 June 1960. 44 Dobrin 33-34. 45 Jacob S. Dorman, “Hatzaad Harishon: Integration, Black Power and Black Jews in New York, 1964-1972” (Honors thesis, Stanford University, 1996); Janice Fernheimer, “The Rhetoric of Black Jewish Identity Construction in America and Israel: 1964-1972.” (Ph.d. diss., The University of Texas, 2006). 46 Jacob S. Dorman, 47 Israel J. Gerber, The Heritage Seekers: Black Jews in Search of Identity. (Middle Village, NY: Jonathan David, 1977); Morris Lounds, Jr. Israel's Black Hebrews: Black Americans in Search of Identity (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981); James E. Landing, Black Judaism: Story of An American Movement (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2002), 387-431; Wardell J. Payne, ed., Directory of African American Religious Bodies: A Compendium by the Howard University School of Divinity, (Washington, D.C.: Howard UP, 1991), 133; Jesse Nemerofsky, “The Black Hebrews,” Society 32, no. 1 (Nov-Dec, 1994): 72-77; Merril Singer, "Now I Know What the Songs Mean!: Traditional Black Music in a Contemporary Black Sect" in The Southern Quarterly 23, no. 3 (Spring 1985) 125-140. For historical accounts from members of the group, see: Shaleak Ben Yehuda, Black Hebrew Israelites from America to the Promised Land: The Great International Religious Conspiracy Against the Children of the Prophets, (New York: Vantage Press, 1975); Prince Gavriel HaGadol and Odeyah B. Israel, The Impregnable People: An Exodus of African Americans Back to Africa, (Washington, D.C.: Communicator's Press, 1993). On Black Hebrew theological beliefs, see: Ben Ammi, God The Black Man and Truth, (Washington, D.C.: Communicator's Press, 1982); idem., The Messiah and the End of This World., (Washington, D.C.: Communicator's Press, 1991); idem, God and the Law of Relativity: New World Concepts of Love, Family, Salvation, Male/Female Relationships, and More, (Washington D.C.: Communicator's Press, 1991); Eliyahu Ben Shaleak, Rayiyah Ben Israel, Elyakeem Ben Shaleak, et al., 100 Amazing Facts on the African Presence in the Bible, (Nashville, Tenn.: WinstonDerek, 1992).

CHAPTER ELEVEN LEADING THROUGH LISTENING: RACIAL TENSIONS IN 1968 NEW YORK JANICE W. FERNHEIMER

Listening will be useless unless you let it change your rhetoric. —Wayne Booth, Rhetoric of Rhetoric

If ever there was a time when listening was desperately needed, it might have been racially divided New York before, during, and after the Ocean Hill-Brownsville controversy. The controversy began with the New York City School Board’s decision to allow African Americans community control over Brooklyn’s predominantly black schools in the Ocean HillBrownsville area.1 Once granted this community control, the black local school board promptly dismissed several white teachers and members of the white leadership.2 On May 9, 1968, Fred Nauman, a Jewish junior high school science teacher and “chapter chairman of the city’s ninety-percent white, and majority Jewish union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT)” was fired, and as Podair points out, “the issue of whether the black local school board could fire this Jewish, unionized teacher on its own initiative” ignited a controversy that fundamentally altered “politics, culture, and race relations in New York city.”3 In response, the autumn of 1968 witnessed “three city-wide teacher strikes launched by the UFT” which aimed to reinstate “Nauman and nine of his union colleagues” also fired by the Ocean Hill-Brownsville local school board.4 The strikes lasted nearly two months, affected nearly one million public school children, and were deemed “the most bitter in the city’s modern history, rife with charges of racism, union-busting, and anti-Semitism.”5 Melissa Weiner argues that the controversy erupted not from a failure to listen or hear, but rather a failure to see the problem within the same definitional frame. On the one hand, African Americans blamed “America’s racist structure for their poverty and oppression” and saw Jews as “an embodiment of this system, even if they were not wholly a part of

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it”; whereas “Jews misunderstood African American’s desires for their schools and their multiculturalist demands for Black Power.”6 This misunderstanding arose through “Jews’ inability to remove their newly acquired spectacles of whiteness and look at the world through the lenses of oppression worn by African Americans’ and ‘tore asunder these longstanding, though conflict-rife bonds. More than this, it cemented Jews’ racial status as whites.”7 At stake in these divergent lenses were the worldviews through which each group interpreted themselves and the other stakeholders in the conflict. Race and cultural expectations were at the heart of the conflict, especially since Jews’ status in the American polity was changing so rapidly that they had not yet come to fully identify with the “whiteness” granted them. In some ways, the failure to see and hear across cultural lines might exemplify in the negative Booth’s understanding of listening rhetoric’s high stakes: “Unless we pay more attention to improving our communication at all levels of life, unless we study more carefully the rhetorical strategies we all depend on, consciously, unconsciously, or subconsciously, we will continue to succumb to unnecessary violence, to loss of potential friends, and to the decay of community.”8

The Ocean Hill-Brownsville conflict certainly resulted in the loss of friends and the decay of community, but at the same time it initiated the beginning of a new social reality. This reality was not, perhaps, the “colourblind” meritocracy where race ceased to matter, on the contrary, as Jews became “white” and were more likely to be perceived that way by themselves and others, race seemed to matter more than anything else. Yet while this might have been the case, since this whiteness was in flux, many American (and mostly Ashkenazi) Jews still identified primarily as marginalized “others” and in so doing failed to recognize the social privileges afforded them by their light(er) skin. It is against this backdrop that I want to call attention to a small but important New York-based non-profit organization, which called itself by the Hebrew phrase Hatzaad Harishon—the First Step. This multi-racial group was formed in 1964 and lasted until 1972. It included Jews of all races, and worked tirelessly in New York’s racially fraught environment to create a “first step” toward a more inclusive notion of “Klal Yisrael” or Jewish peoplehood. The new path aimed to foster a new reality that would recognize Black and White Jews equally at least as far as “Klal Yisrael” was concerned.9 In what follows, I analyze three instances where white Jews’ interactions with Black Jews reflect the heightened sensitivity to

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race inspired by New York’s turmoil over Ocean Hill-Brownsville. First, I examine a controversy between white Jewish Yaakov Gladstone and Black Jewish Rabbi Wentworth Matthew. It was sparked by comments allegedly made by Gladstone and recorded in the minutes of the Committee on Black Jews’ meeting of May 9, 1968, the very day that Nauman was dismissed. Second, I analyze a letter written by the youth advisor for Hatzaad Harishon Sybil Kaufman to Black Jewish Florence Dore who was the youth advisor for Matthew’s Commandment Keepers’ youth group. It was sent in late October, 1968 after two major strikes had taken place (with a third to occur shortly thereafter). Finally, I analyze excerpts from a dialogue Symposium that took place between black and white Jewish youth in January 1969. In each of these exchanges, the participants imagined that their words might positively impact the rhetorical situation they confronted, contribute toward greater cross-racial understanding, and increase collaboration toward a shared goal of cooperation and equality between Black and white Jews. Though these examples offer models for “listening rhetoric in action,” they also demonstrate the limitations of such openness even when it operates at its rhetorical best. For if the speaker and audience do not already share the same values or worldview, the consensus-building such listening rhetoric can achieve is often both limited and fleeting. Consequently, these instances also call attention to listening’s double-edge and the necessarily partial and incremental aspects of “hearing’s” inventional power. For unless attempts at listening rhetoric are coupled with a type of conciliatory or integrative argument that both acknowledges and accounts for others’ perspectives without unduly appropriating them, ironically, they may create more interference than positive rhetorical intervention. To better understand what I mean by conciliatory argument, I borrow some terms from Barry Kroll who articulates a vision for such conciliatory rhetoric in his 2005 Pedagogy article, “Arguing Differently,” which critically analyzes his undergraduate course with the same name.10 In describing the course goals, Kroll explains that he wanted his students to understand the benefits that came from a broader understanding of what argument is. Since “traditional argument” and the adversarial tactics often associated with it had both valid uses and limitations, he wanted his students to learn alternative methods.11 In order to teach these alternative methods, he broke the course into three units that explored the merits and strategies for what he termed conciliatory, integrative, and deliberative argument.12 The unit on conciliatory argument focused on “how to shift from describing the opposition’s view to presenting one’s own,” the integrative unit focused on “how to convince the parties that there was

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basis for cooperation or agreement,” and the deliberative unit focused on “how to assess, reject, and endorse proposals without falling into familiar patterns of critique and rebuttal.”13 Although Kroll remarked, “the three approaches were more like siblings in a family than distinct types and that certain tactics (such as conciliatory gestures) were appropriate for several” rhetorical situations, all three types prove instructive for the kind of listening rhetoric that Booth would like to see enacted. In what follows, I look at examples where individuals attempted the conciliatory and integrative types of argument that Kroll describes with greater and lesser degrees of success.14 Before I introduce the interactions I analyze, I would like first to provide a bit more background about Hatzaad Harishon, the particulars that gave rise to its inception, and the specific hurdles they faced in 1968 before, during, and after the Ocean Hill-Brownsville controversy broke out. The multi-racial Jewish non-profit organization’s name, Hatzaad Harishon, was chosen by Ellie Bivens to represent the difficulty involved in the first steps Black and white Jews were taking toward achieving full recognition of and legitimacy for Black Jews’ place among “klal Yisrael.”15 They held their first gathering on July 12, 1964, just ten days after the Civil Rights Act was passed in the U.S. and attracted members and leaders from New York’s mainstream and mostly white or what I term “recognized” Jewish community as well as Black Jewish communities; it was the first organization of its kind where black and white Jews consciously joined forces to advocate greater recognition of and legitimacy for Black Jews. Framed by Civil Rights on the one hand and Black Power on the other, the organization eventually folded in 1972 due to a variety of factors—lack of funding and disagreement about “who is a Jew” among them. Of course, during the intervening years Israel won the Six Day War in 1967, the Ocean Hill-Brownsville controversy broke out in 1968, and in 1969 the Hebrew Israelites, a large group of African American from Chicago, emigrated to Israel and attempted to claim Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return, a law which grants automatic Israeli citizenship to any “recognized Jew” who settles permanently in Israel. Sandwiched between the competing narratives offered by Civil Rights and Black Power, and influenced by these other events of the late 1960s. Hatzaad Harishon’s organizational life was relatively short, yet it successfully supported a multi-racial adult organization and a Black Jewish dance troupe and youth group throughout its brief existence. Its members confronted numerous challenges without and within the organization. In facing the broader Jewish community of New York, Hatzaad Harishon struggled to gain recognition and financial support. It

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was not until May 1968 that they finally were awarded a $10,000 grant from the New York Jewish Federation, a full four years after their first meeting on July 12, 1964. They also faced difficulties within as they struggled to define who would be recognized as a Jew in light of the international attention the Hebrew Israelites’ emigration had brought to this issue. Among the Black Jewish groups and organizations that were not part of Hatzaad Harishon, the organization struggled to gain legitimacy because initially its leadership was white. Although they encountered difficulties along the way, by October 1968 Hatzaad Harishon Youth had become relatively successful in their quest to gain recognition from established Jewish communities in New York. Their relationship with other Black Jewish communities, however, was more complicated. Although the Hatzaad Harishon youth had discussed the issue of integration with white youth groups, and had many social functions with other white Jewish groups, they did not often, if at all, interact with the other Black Jews or Black Judaic groups in Harlem.16 Perhaps most conspicuously absent from Hatzaad Harishon’s supporters was Rabbi Matthew Wentworth and his Commandment Keepers congregation, the best known and most influential of the Black Jewish groups in New York at the time. Rabbi Matthew’s congregation was one of the first to observe exclusively Jewish practices, and in 1925 R. Matthew 1925 established the Ethiopian Hebrew Rabbinical College to help train Black Jewish Rabbis and spiritual leaders.17 As these spiritual leaders went on to found affiliate synagogues in other parts of New York, the U.S., and the Caribbean, Rabbi Matthew’s influence was far-reaching. On two separate occasions, Rabbi Matthew attempted to gain legitimacy from the recognized Jewish community by applying for membership to the New York Board of Rabbis, first in 1931 and then again in 1952, and later he attempted to join the B’nai B’rith Lodge.18 On each occasion his requests for membership were denied. Although the rationale varied, in most cases the recognized Jewish community did not accept the legitimacy of Rabbi Matthew’s ordination by Rabbi Ford, a founder of Black Jewish congregation B’nai Beth Abraham and an active member of Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) who moved to Addis Ababa in 1930.19 Similar to some of the contested issues in the Ocean HillBrownsville controversy, credentials became a key issue in Rabbi Matthew’s interactions with the recognized Jewish community. Part of the breakdown stemmed from disagreement over the definition of Judaism and recognized ways of becoming ordained and thus accredited as a rabbi. Rabbi Matthew claimed Rabbi Ford’s ordination was authentic, and invoked Ethiopian authorization for the ordination document Ford had

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created, and attributed the failure to accept these credentials to racism. However, the New York Board of Rabbis maintained that there were no documents sanctioning his status as “Rabbi” and continued to stress that he had not attended or been approved by any recognized institution for Jewish learning. Matthew’s 1931 attempt attracted media attention. As a result, Dr. Norman Salit, then chairperson of the American pro-Falasha Committee, visited Rabbi Matthew’s congregation in November and December.20 Dr. Salit “bitterly denounced” Rabbi Matthew’s congregation, along with several other Black Jewish groups in Harlem, for having “faked Jewish services that appeal to the childish and simple hearted.”21 Worse still, Dr. Salit said that Harlem synagogues “are not Jewish. The services are hybrid and mongrel, but they are faked…The Harlem temples are grotesque phenomena rising out of the mystic sensitivity of the Afro-Americans played upon by charlatans” (quoted in Landing 207). According to Landing, “Rabbi Matthew rose to the defense and challenged Dr. Salit’s observations” and even offered to “debate him on the issues at any convenient place,” but Dr. Salit did not accept the challenge.22 Shortly after Salit’s attack, other critiques followed, and Landing argues that “Black Jews [became] a simple curiosity in the eyes of white Jews” as a consequence.23 Not surprisingly, relations between the established Jewish community and Rabbi Wentworth Matthew’s congregation were tense at best. As Landing astutely points out, “It would not be until the Civil Rights era of the 1950s when white Jews became aware of a rise of antiSemitism in the black community that Black Judaism was offered a new look, although primarily as a base for Jews to gain an ally in the black community.”24 After these early attempts to gain acceptance had been rebuffed, Rabbi Matthew became understandably bitter and kept his congregation largely separate from the white Jewish mainstream. In a December 26, 1966 Newsweek article, “The Black Jews,” Rabbi Matthew complained, “Some years ago, the New York Board of Rabbis rejected my application for membership” and since then “we have learned to do for ourselves, and now every Tom, Dick and Harry wants to take credit for it.”25 Ever since the dispute with the Board of Rabbis concerning his qualifications, Rabbi Matthew and his congregation were no longer interested in trying to gain recognition from the mainstream community. This separatist attitude, like that reflected by the local school board in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville controversy, was not well-received by the recognized, mainstream Jewish community in general or Hatzaad Harishon and its then-white leadership in particular.

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In Spring 1968 there was a serious miscommunication between Yaakov Gladstone, then executive director of Hatzaad Harishon, and Rabbi Matthew, and though Gladstone attempted to offer an apology the disagreement resulted in further distance between Hatzaad Harishon and Rabbi Matthew’s congregation. The disagreement is recorded in the May and June minutes from the Committee on the Black Jews, a subcommittee of the Commission of Synagogue Relations (a branch of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies), and two letters sent from Gladstone to Matthews.26 The May 9, 1968 Minutes report that “Mr. Yaakov Gladstone the director of Hatzaad Harishon, noted that the Committee on the Black Jews had appointed a bigoted Black Nationalist, Rabbi Wentworth Mathews [sic], as its co-chairman.”27 Martin Warmbrand protested at this classification, and the minutes take special care to note parenthetically that “Rabbi Mathews’ appointment was made unanimously by a committee attended by a majority of Hatzaad Harishon Board members.”28 The Committee asked Gladstone to formally apologize to Rabbi Matthew, and he complied.29 Gladstone sent his first letter of apology on June 14, 1968. Attempting to “set the record straight”, he explained that he was “misunderstood and misquoted in a discussion regarding your [Matthew’s] leadership role in the Black Jewish Community.”30 He continues: “Because I know of your dedicated endeavors in the past, as well as your abiding concern for the future of black Jewry, I want to apologize to you and hope that we will work together in the future for the cause that is our common concern.”31 Gladstone closes the letter wishing Matthew a “healthy summer.”32 Although Rabbi Matthew’s response was not in the archives, neither he nor the Committee was satisfied with Gladstone’s initial apology. The June 26, 1968 minutes to the Committee on Black Jews report that “The grant to Hatzaad Harishon. . . had been held up by Federation pending apology” but the grant was then reinstated after Matthew received Gladstone’s letter; however, it was not satisfactory because the minutes continue,“[o]bjections were raised as to Mr. Gladstone’s claim that he was misunderstood in his remarks” and “Rabbi Irving Block raised a protest asking for apology acceptable to Rabbi Matthew.” Gladstone’s second letter to Matthew, dated June 25, 1968, first thanks Rabbi Matthew for his response on June 18, 1968 and then continues: “It is precisely I and my fellow workers of Hatzaad Harishon [sic] do not want friction but rather understanding and cooperation between the black and white Jews that we have been trying these past five years to instill upon you and other Spiritual Leaders of the Black Jewish communities, the vital importance of working together.”33

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Although Gladstone’s desire for “cooperation” and “understanding” is clear, so is his frustration. He emphasizes the importance of working together, but his use of the phrase “instill upon” suggests to Rabbi Matthew and the other leaders that Gladstone’s method might have been perceived as “less cooperative” than Gladstone intended. To “instill upon” suggests that one group is doing the instilling to another, and there is no equality in the actions. Instead the group doing the instilling behaves in a paternalistic way toward the group on its receiving end, and of course it goes without saying that if one must instill the importance “of cooperation” on another individual or group, then the action becomes far less cooperative. Although Gladstone’s letter might first appear to be an attempt at listening rhetoric, he does not acknowledge the way that his intentions might have been perceived differently by Rabbi Matthew. Gladstone offers further elaboration to explain how he was “misrepresented in the minutes.” His explanation, however, employs the topos of cause and consequence to essentially blame Rabbi Matthew for denying his community the “privilege” of getting involved with Klal Yisrael: “Since you have chosen to remain to keep your congregation separate from Klal Yisrael and since through your actions your congregants and their children are being denied access to the very many educational, cultural and social activities which Hatzaaad Harishon offers as well as the very many beautiful Jewish experiences which the Jewish Community of New York offers.”34

Gladstone illustrates how he misunderstands R. Matthew’s desire to keep his congregation separate from Klal Yisrael. Rather than acknowledging the positive benefits such separation might offer, Gladstone uses cause/ consequence to attribute Rabbi Matthew’s decision to remain separate as something that has had negative consequences on Matthew’s community. But Gladstone’s whole frame of evaluation presumes that Rabbi Matthew wants his community to be part of Klal Yisrael, something that Matthews might have desired at one point, but which he clearly spurned after the New York Board of Rabbis rejected his appeals for recognition. Although Gladstone attempts to offer an apology, he fundamentally misunderstands Rabbi Matthew’s desire for independence from, rather than integration into the recognized Jewish community. Instead, Gladstone continues to use cause/consequence to explain his interpretation of the established Jewish community’s reaction to Matthew’s separation:

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Chapter Eleven “It is felt in many quarters of the Jewish Community that you espoused Black Nationalistic and almost bigoted feelings toward the rest of the Jewish Community. At the meeting which was held at the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, I tried to convey this message. I did not say that I feel that way. I certainly did not call you ‘a black egotist nationalist antisemite.’”35

In fact, even the minutes did not report Gladstone as having uttered those exact words, though the fact that Gladstone quotes this specific phrase in his own letter suggests that the quoted material came from the letter R. Matthew sent to him. Rather than taking personal ownership of or accountability for expressing that R. Matthew “espoused Nationalistic and bigoted feelings toward” Klal Yisrael, Gladstone uses the passive voice to place the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the “Jewish community” and differentiate himself from it, insisting instead that he, Gladstone, did not say he felt that way. Then, Gladstone reassures R. Matthew that “…the minutes? which misinterpreted and misquoted what I said will never find its way into any newspaper [sic] or periodicals. I also want to assure you that on my part, I still admire all that you have done for the black Jewish People and once again I reiterate the sincerest and deepest desire of the leadership of Hatzaad Harishon to work with you for the good and welfare of all Jews. I once again apologize if I in any way insulted you or caused you hurt. It was certainly unintentional.”36

Oddly enough if Gladstone had begun where he ended—with a clear, conciliatory appeal and acknowledgment of the hurt feelings his words had caused, his apologies might have been better received. Although he was trying to engage in listening rhetoric, he got caught up in defending his stance and stating his position first so that he could explain how his position was mis-represented rather than focusing on personal responsibility for the unintended negative effects and the conciliatory tone necessary for an apology that might have had a greater chance of being heard by its intended audience. As Kroll remarks: “If the writer begins an essay on a divisive topic by asserting a strong thesis or by engaging in refutation, a likely outcome is a defensive response that leads, in many cases, to what might be called oppositional gridlock. . . .the alternative . . .is a conciliatory stance in which the goal is to get people who disagree with you to listen rather than to respond defensively.”37

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In the case of Gladstone and Matthew, the “divisive topic” was the content of the minutes, the intention behind them, and the racist assumptions expressed within them. Since Gladsone begins his second apology by asserting his position and refuting claims, it is not surprising that relations between Hatzad Harishon and Rabbi Matthew’s congregation chilled considerably as a consequence. The distance between them persisted, even though Matthew played an instrumental role in training several prominent Black Jewish members of Hatzaad Harishon. Rabbi Matthew had taught Hebrew to Esther Bibbins, the first President of Hatzaad Harishon, a black Jewish woman who had converted to orthodox Judaism, and he had also trained another prominent member black Jewish Rabbi Moshe Hailu Paris. Despite these significant contributions to the Jewish education of prominent Hatzaad members, Rabbi Matthew was reluctant to endorse Hatzaad Harishon or to encourage his congregational members to participate in Hatzaad’s activities. Given this heated exchange between the male leaders of the respective groups, it is not surprising that relations between the organizations were minimal. Perhaps what is surprising is the active role female leadership played in attempting to lead the groups down another path. The following letter from white Jewish Sybil Kaufman, then youth advisor of Hatzaad Harishon, to Black Jewish Florence Dore, who was not only Rabbi Matthew’s daughter but also the youth advisor for Rabbi Matthew’s congregation’s youth group, suggests that Hatzaad Harishon very much wanted to mend relations with Rabbi Matthew’s congregation and that a more explicitly conciliatory approach was necessary to first build trust and establish common ground.38 Kaufman’s October 24, 1968 letter to Florence Dore makes no mention of the specific conditions that caused the “strained relations” between the two groups, but it does present an example of the potential power of “listening rhetoric” inflected with a conciliatory attitude. Here, Kaufman’s goal is to preserve the relationship between the groups and keep the “lines of communication open” rather than to win “a particular dispute.”39 By using conciliatory argument Kaufman works as a skilled rhetoric to engage in listening rhetoric and attempt to build bridges to R. Matthews’s community. The impetus for the letter was a “lengthy discussion” on the phone that the women had shared.40 The details of the phone conversation are not mentioned, but it was clearly inspiring enough to prompt Kaufman to write to Dore “personally.” Unlike Gladstone who hopes to “instill upon” Rabbi Wentworth and his community, Kaufman addresses her letter to Florence Dore as an

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equal. She begins the letter by calling attention to the shared ground their phone conversation uncovered: “I think the one idea that reoccurred in my mind this afternoon after we spoke was that if you and I, the advisors of our two groups, could sit and talk as we did and could agree on so many points as we did and could be so frank with each other, then it must be you and I as the advisors who will work to bridge the gap that exists between our groups.”41

Kaufman begins with “you and I” and directs her letter to Dore as an equal, from youth advisor to youth advisor. She twice repeats “as we did” to emphasize how they were able to both “sit and talk” and also “to agree on so many points.” More than that, Kaufman underscores how the two women were able to be “frank with each other.” Given the history of conflict and lack of face-to-face contact between competing Black Jewish groups in general and these two groups in particular, this “frankness” is especially noteworthy and commendable.42 Based on this shared ground of agreement, Kaufman suggests that she and Dore should be the ones to work to “bridge the gap” between their communities. In what follows, Kaufman’s appeals to Dore read as a “textbook example” of listening rhetoric. They exemplify the key elements that Kroll associates with the conciliatory approach where a writer begins with “gestures of empathy or respect” or when the writer “call[s] the reader’s attention to an urgent problem, thereby moving the focus away from the contentious debate about how to solve it.”43 As Kroll points out, this strategy can work in conciliatory, integrative, and deliberative arguments alike, and it is especially useful if “a writer is trying to reconcile and integrate positions on a particularly hot topic or one that has reached a state of gridlock,” for if a rhetor confronts such circumstances, “it’s often useful to shift attention away from the immediate controversy to a larger or more significant problem: the aim is to build some initial agreement that something has to be done.”44 And this is precisely the rhetorical strategy that Kaufman employs in her letter to Florence Dore. She begins with the shared ground they established orally, reiterates the “we” their two communities could form, attempts to describe one of the misunderstandings and where it stems from, and then ends with a call for action. Kaufman writes: “We both agreed that there were so many prejudices, so much misinformation, so many misunderstandings between your superiors and mine, your youth’s parents and mine that having these filter down to our youth has caused feelings which we should try to erase.”45 Kaufman again begins with “we” and then underscores how the two women “agreed” about how much “misinformation” and

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“misunderstanding” had circulated among the various members of their communities. She calls attention to the “superiors” and the “youth’s parents” in both groups to demonstrate how muddled the lines of communication had become and also to emphasize how direct communication might provide a remedy. Although she does not specify the kind of “feelings” that needed to be “erased,” she suggests that the misinformation that produced such bad feelings could be eliminated through direct communication. Once she has established the need for direct communication, Kaufman repeats how direct communication such as that which she shared with Dore on the phone helps to foster mutual understanding. Then she explains how the two groups could be seen as complimentary rather than competitive: “We were both frank in our aims. You feel that your youth do achieve much from their group and I’m sure they do just as I expressed what advantages our group had as a supplement to members’ religious affiliations and congregations. We are a community movement not a religious one and thus we strive to serve community goals.”46

Kaufman emphasizes the shared value of the groups’ activities. As she advocates for Dore to allow her youths to participate in Hatzaad’s activities in addition to their religious congregations’ activities, Kaufman emphasizes that Hatzaad is not a religious organization, but rather a “community movement” striving to serve community needs. Her use of the word community is ambiguous and could mean either the recognized “Jewish” community or the “Black Jewish community,” or both. Given the context, it seems she might mean the Black Jewish community, but the ambiguity in the terms opens the possibility for a new identification—for Dore and Matthew’s congregation to see themselves as part of not just the Black Jewish community, but Klal Yisrael and the broader Jewish community as well. Now that Kaufman has created the rhetorical space for a new identification, one that moves beyond individual organizations to a more inclusive sense of Klal Yisrael, she emphasizes the shared ground of motherhood and advising and speaks from personal experience. She writes: “As both a mother and youth worker you bring many skills to your group. As a youth worker, I too bring background and skills to my group. My point to you was that your group should not feel that the work of ours is an overlapping of yours not a substitute for yours: your members could easily find themselves in our group learning and facing experiences completely unique from those they derive in their synagogue group. As a teenager,

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Kaufman emphasizes the equal footing of their status by employing parallel structure in the sentences she uses to describe their respective roles. She then draws from her personal experience of participating in multiple youth groups, repeating the word “different” three times to demonstrate how the more groups she was active in, the more she gained personally. Since she has set the argument up to show how their experiences are similar as mothers and advisors, her rationale that her experiences as a youth involved in multiple youth groups was beneficial can be extrapolated to apply to Dore and the youth Dore advises as well. Kaufman strategically structures her letter in this way to advocate for and explain how the youth in Dore’s group could participate in their synagogue group, which Dore leads, and Hatzaad Harishon without any detriment to the things they were learning at home or in their synagogue. Rather than seeing these experiences as detracting from or substituting for the youth’s experiences in their home congregation, Kaufman advocates that participation in Hatzaad would only increase the diversity and value of the youths’ experiences. This is an especially commendable point given how proprietary most Black Jewish leaders felt about their respective community members. In his strategies for conciliatory argument, Kroll recognizes that though “there is no formula for every case” he and his class determined that “it was usually best to reveal one’s viewpoint early in an essay” because by “stating it simply and succinctly while keeping the focus on a fair-minded presentation of the view with which you disagree, “the author neither hides his or her view from readers” nor does he or she “advocate [his or her] position until later in the essay.”48 He notes: “Even if the writer forecasts his or her position, many conciliatory essays break into two parts: an initial section in which the writer empathizes with the opposition’s concerns, demonstrates a clear understanding of opposing arguments, and acknowledges (when possible) the contexts in which the opposition’s position might be appropriate; and a second part in which the writer explains, in a parallel fashion, that he or she has somewhat different concerns, leading to a different position that is valid in a particular context or problematic situation.”49

Kaufman’s approach with Dore seems to fall under the rubric that Kroll has eloquently articulated. Moreover, Kroll suggests that the writer

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should “capitalize on the leverage of fairness at the point of transition between these sections” because “…[a] lot depends on the way the writer approaches the tricky moment of transition. As Richard Coe (1992) has noted if the turn is abrupt, the reader may feel vulnerable; it’s as though the writer signals a truce, gets the opponent to let down his guard, and then exploits this attitude of receptivity to score a quick punch. If the reader feels manipulated, any impulse toward reciprocity is lost.”50

But Kaufman navigates this transition deftly. In the latter section of the letter, she makes this transition by moving from the shared territory of their personal experiences to that of the future actions the groups might take together, actions toward the more inclusive sense of Klal Yisrael she has already imagined and articulated. First, she reiterates their agreed interpretation of the messy state of Black Jewish affairs: “As we both also agreed, there is enough dissention in the world, enough hate and distrust to have such between fellow Jews. You and I both felt that only through direct communication will the problems of the world be solved—not through revolt or revolution or rioting or speaking evil behind each other’s backs.”51

Her repetition of the word “enough” and her parallel structure emphasize the terms of agreement she and Dore arrived at on the phone. She sets up a contrast between the possibility of solving problems through direct communication or creating further misunderstanding through “revolt, revolution, rioting.” After drawing this distinction, she underscores the importance and benefit of direct communication between the youth groups, “My young people are young adults capable of holding their own, as are your [sic], capable of communicating with others, of speaking their minds, of looking for common ground on which to build not to destroy.” Here she again reiterates their shared interpretation of the problem and the equal capabilities of both youth groups to build common ground, before she goes on to suggest a way to solve the problem: “As we said, most of your youth have never come face to face with ours, they have never questioned whether the untruths which have come to their ears have foundations. The same is true of my youth. They believe the words of their parents and they have not sought the truth for themselves. Both our groups are old enough to question, to seek the truth. This can only be done through direct confrontation and communication.”52

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In words remarkably similar to those Booth employs nearly 40 years later, Kaufman asserts that the time has come for both Dore’s and Hatzaad’s youth to “seek the truth” through “direct confrontation and communication.” In the closing part of the letter, Kaufman suggests that the two groups should meet either at Dore’s synagogue, the YM-YWHA, or the moadon (clubhouse) that Hatzaad Harishon youth use, to have “an open and frank discussion and get to know each other.”53 She concludes with an inclusive repetition of “all of us” and an appeal to the groups’ shared status as Jews: “All of us follow the same way of life, we are all part of the same peoplehood. ‘Have we not all one father? H[sic] at not one g-d Created us?’”54 Her repetition of “us” and “we” show how she sees both her group and Dore’s group as part of the same Jewish people. She closes the letter with a personalized call: “Florence, let us as mature, adults, as advisors to those who seek our assistance, take this step; let us do all that we can to influence our youth to come together, just as we did on the phone, to speak their minds, to get to know one another, to eradicate the mistrust, injustice and misunderstanding which their elders have perpetuated.”55 She hopes to encourage Dore based on the positive interaction in listening rhetoric that they had shared on the phone, and she argues it is possible for their youth to meet and “eradicate the misunderstanding their elders have perpetuated.” Both Gladstone’s and Kaufman’s letters invoke different approaches to the rhetoric of reconciliation, approaches which reflect their attitudes toward their relationship with Rabbi Matthews and his community. While Gladstone’s apologies reflect an air of paternalism that suggests a superior-inferior relationship, Kaufman’s letter to Dore reflects an attitude of collaborative equality. Both were penned by Hatzaad Harishon’s white leadership in attempts to reach out to Rabbi Matthew and his community. Kaufman’s letter offers a much more conciliatory and collaborative approach, enacting the kind of shared responsibility for working toward greater Klal Yisrael that she was inviting Dore to take part in. While it is unclear whether or not the two youth groups ever met as a consequence of Kaufman’s letter, it is clear that Kaufman and the Hatzaad Harishon youth strongly believed in the revolutionary power of dialogue. If perhaps this promise remained untested with other Black Jewish youths, on January 5, 1969, they attempted to put their beliefs into practice when five Jewish youths, black and white, gathered to discuss the topic “Negroes and Jews in America” and other issues that were of common concern to Black and white Jewish communities alike.56 The dialogue was sponsored by Our Age, a monthly magazine published by the Reform Movement for Jewish Youth, and excerpts from the conversation were

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later published in the February 16, 1969 issue.57 Two of the youths were white and Jewish: Rick Hoffman, a senior at Pirkiomen, a private school in Pottstown, PA and Sarrae Crane, a junior at Tresper Clarke High School in Westbury, NY. Three youths were black and Jewish and members of Hatzaad Harishon: Allen (Avraham) Terry, a senior at Weequahic High School in Newark, NJ; Sarah Bibbins, a junior at Seward Park High School in New York City; and Pat (Peninah) Terry a junior at Rutgers University in Newark, NJ. Although Allen and Pat introduced themselves as such, throughout the dialogue they and the other participants referred to them as Avraham and Peninah respectively. The moderator was Sybil Kaufman, then-youth advisor for Hatzaad Harishon, though she would step down from her position just days before the dialogue was published in Our Age in February 1969. The original transcript was 42 pages long, and of these, a mere four pages were actually published in the magazine.58 The dialogue covered a broad range of topics: inter-faith dating, inter-racial dating, being the only Jew in a non-Jewish suburb, what it’s like to be Black and Jewish, the nature of Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights movement, the nature of the Black Power movement, and the need for more dialogue and direct communication between Black and white Jews. While the transcript merits greater scholarly attention in its own right, this discussion will focus on three main parts: 1) the nature of Jewish involvement in the civil rights movement and its relationship to Jewish identity, 2) the nature of the Black Power movement and the need for blacks to develop independence, and 3) the closing summary comments which testify to the value of the dialogue itself. The dialogue illustrates that listening rhetoric can work to broach new understandings and negotiate new, shared territory, but it also demonstrates the limitations of even successful dialogues of this sort. In this first segment, white Jewish Rick, and black Jewish Sarah and Peninah broach the controversial issue of Jewish involvement in Civil Rights and the relationship between that movement and the Black Power movement. Rick has transitioned from white, Jewish Sarrae’s observation that many people do not see a need for contemporary religion to discuss the role Jews played in the Civil Rights movement. He raises the question of why Jews were ultimately pushed out of Civil Rights organizations: Rick: “Discussing civil rights from a Jewish viewpoint. . . .in the early civil rights movement, look how many white Jews were involved. And then they were sort of siphoned out of SNCC, out of CORE no longer allowed to be there [sic]. Well, why?. . .Why were the Jews thrown out of these organizations?”59

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He begins with a question that many white Jews had, given that in 1969, Jewish involvement in Civil Rights organizations was already resisted and questioned by African-Americans.60 Rick’s use of the words “siphoned out,” “thrown out,” and “no longer allowed to be there” suggest that he felt that this shift in emphasis was not one that Jews voluntarily participated in. Sarah Bibbins responds to his question by explaining black people’s desire for independence: Sarah: “Because the black people felt that all their lives, whenever they wanted something, they had to turn to somebody, whether they were white Jews or just plain white. They had to turn to them to have them help them. So they thought that now with the times they should stand up on their own two feet, and accomplish something and say, well, look, we, in my community, we did it. They could tell their friends they did it all alone without saying we had the help of somebody. . . it makes you more independent when you can say, well, I built this house and I built it all by myself, instead of turning around and saying, well, I built most of it but this white person helped me to do it.”61

Sarah explains how important it is for anyone to feel like she or he has the autonomy necessary to accomplish tasks without depending on someone else. Although she employs the example of building a house, her repetition of phrases like “stand on their own two feet,” “they did it alone,” “makes you feel independent,” and “I built it all by myself” underscore how she thought it was important for African Americans to feel they could accomplish things without the help of whites or white Jews. Rick concedes that independence is important, but expresses fear that too much independence results in isolation and “schism.” The conversation rises in intensity as the two question and answer one another, expressing their different “realities”: Rick: “This if fine to begin with. Right. A person has to have pride and has to believe in himself. But what happens when they’ve begun doing this and then everything they do has to be done by themselves? When black has to build his own house [sic], build his own community, man his own community and can accept nothing from the outside. Then we have a schism…” Sarah: “That’s right. It’s because he wants to feel he’s done it all himself.” Rick: “But what happens when we’ve gotten to the point where there’s nothing where they’ll interact? Where it’s two separate societies? Is there what we’re moving towards [sic]?” Sarah: “No, I feel that we’re trying to move towards a united society between black and white, but it’s just…” Rick: “United through separation?” 62

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Rick and Sarah volley back and forth, as Sarah struggles to articulate why it is so important for blacks to feel independent and how that independence might come at the expense of collaboration, and Rick expresses the threat that black independence presents for his idea of an integrated society. Although Rick expresses this concern in regard to Blacks and Jews in the Civil Rights movement, his concern echoes the kind of anxiety Gladstone expressed when Rabbi Matthew insisted on preserving his Black Jewish congregation’s separateness, though the attitude with which Rick approaches the other youths emulates more of Sybil’s sense of equality. It is not until Peninah chimes in, adding a third voice to the mix, that the context for Sarah’s point is deepened: Peninah: “I don’t think it’s a separation policy. This is what everybody says all of a sudden because of the fact that it is occurring. It seems that the black man all of a sudden wants to do things on his own. I think previously, when he relied on the whites, he didn’t get as much accomplished. He would say, would you help me build this house—let’s take an example. All right, we’ll do it next week. Then postpone it. It will be-next week will come and he’ll say, next month. Then the next month will come and he’d say, next year. Eventually it would get done, but it would take such a long time. This reliance on other people. . .there’s a statement that goes “if you want things done well, you do it yourself.” And this is what the black man’s policy is now. It’s not just because he’s black or anything like that. It’s because he wants to, for a change, rely on his own people and bring his own people in. You see, what was happening was that you’d only get the intelligent bourgeois black man into these movements, like CORE and NAACP. The ignorant masses would still be left out. This is part of the reasoning behind, okay, let’s forget about the whites for a while, Jew or otherwise and let’s bring the masses into these movements. As sort of a replacement.”63

Peninah attempts to put blacks’ desire for independence into deeper historical context. Her use of the language of the time highlights the differing perceptions among white and Blacks. While whites perceived Black desire for independence to have occurred “all of a sudden,” Blacks understood this desire as long existent and all the more necessary in light of the reluctance or postponement of outside help from whites or others. Peninah returns to the house-building example and stresses how easy it is for whites to postpone action on something that does not affect them in the same material way. She emphasizes that it is not that blacks “all of sudden” want independence, but rather that independence was something that everyone wants, and only now were blacks able to articulate more strongly for it. She also explains how it is not just up to a few educated

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elites, whether Black or white, but rather that for her it’s important that the movement include the masses. Both she and Sarah attempt to explain to Rick how blacks interpreted the situation differently. And because multiple points of view from both Black and white Jews are expressed, together they arrive at different conclusions that each individual participant interprets through his or her own worldview. Throughout the entire dialogue one of the main points that the Black Jewish youths reiterate is how it is impossible for them to be seen as anything but black. Sarah explains how everyone “busybodies” when she enters an unfamiliar synagogue, and when Kaufman asks Avraham if he would prefer to be “just Jewish,” he cannot even fathom the question—he cannot imagine what it would be like to live in a world where race didn’t matter. In this particular part of the conversation, Kaufman attempts to reign the conversation back to the topic of Black Jews in particular to see how they fit into the conversation about Black Power: Moderator: “Where does the black Jew fit into all of this?” Peninah: “The black Jew basically fights for the same things. Because it goes back to that what you’re seen as first. At first you’re always seen as a black man. . . The black man has to fight—he believes in black power that part of black power that says we need selfpride, we need self determination. This is the part of black power he believes in. So this is where the black Jews fits in. He’s both black and Jewish.”64

Peninah reiterates that it “goes back to that what you’re seen as first,” and reminds the white participants that Black Jews are always seen as “blacks first.” As black individuals, Black Jews need “self pride” and “self determination” just as non-Jewish blacks do. Kaufman intervenes to push the conversation toward action—how might a new reality be created? She begins by explaining how Jews have always had “this kinship with his fellow Jew[s]”.65 She explains that when “two Jews meet, there’s like something clicks between the two [sic]” but when Black Jews are added to the equation, the Black Jew has to “sort of prove himself before there can be that click. What do we do?” In his response to Kaufman’s question, Rick demonstrates how he has truly been listening hard and well to his Black Jewish peers. He says: “I think we’ve answered that, really, by saying that you see a person is black before you see a person is Jewish. Or you see someone by their skin color before you know their religion. And while you’re still accepting people at that face value, how can you recognize them for anything deeper. . . .you know. . . .Jews are just like everyone else in that sense, they’re subject to the social norms of the day. They must register you as

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black before they register you as Jewish but you know this is ignorance too and we have to work at this.”66

Although Rick clearly has understood the intractability of black difference, he has little to suggest by means of changing it other than “we have to work at this.” What is valuable about his response, however, is how he takes responsibility for Jews who are “subject to the social norms of the day” and admits in these implicit terms the insidiousness of racism. His perception of the unavoidability of these racist inclinations is reflected in his use of the word “must” when he describes how “they” (white Jews) register “you” (black Jews) as black first. But his commitment to “work at this” suggests his optimistic belief that it might be possible to overcome such inherent racism among Jews. Interestingly his language reflects both an identification and dis-identification with white Jews’ implicit racism. On the one hand he uses the third person plural “they” to distinguish himself from those white Jews who see Black Jews as Black first, but in the middle of the sentence he switches to the more inclusive “we” acknowledging his own participation in this cultural logic and responsibility for working to change it. Later in the conversation, Rick begins to synthesize some of the statements that Peninah and Sarah had made earlier regarding the need for black independence, and wonders what that need for independence might have in common with Black Jewishness: Rick: “The fact that blacks embrace Judaism to a greater extent, could that possibly be because of the fact that they are black, they feel that in this society they don’t have the proper recognition and so they turn to Judaism as an identity symbol, as something that will give them their sense of pride, their sense of being.” Sarah: “Yeah, I think so.” Peninah: “I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that, blacks turn to Judaism for identity, sense of pride. You mean black Jews. I wouldn’t say that a black would necessarily convert to Judaism…” Rick: “I mean the blacks that accepted Judaism. Did they accept it...now that they’ve accepted it, has that become their symbol of identity? Is that more important? Because Judaism is a way of life so it’s obvious that it is very important as an identity symbol.”67

Although Rick raises a question that contemporary scholars, more than 40 years later, continue to ask, he doesn’t really receive a decisive response. While Sarah agrees with him, Peninah argues that he might have a point but quickly suggests that “a black would [not] necessarily convert to Judaism.” What is interesting about Rick’s response is that even though earlier in the conversation he acknowledged that it is impossible for Black

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Jews to be seen as Jews first, he still wants to believe that Black Jews see themselves as Jews first, “because Judaism is a way of life” and an “important. . . identity symbol.” Of course the question of seeing and seeing differently is what prompted not only the Symposium discussion, but also the analysis I present in this chapter. Here Rick expresses a desire for Jewishness to become the dominant identity lens through which Black Jews perceive themselves and other people perceive them, and perhaps, through primarily identifying as Jews gaining access to the social privileges and acceptance he sees attendant with white Jewishness. For him, this move to privilege Jewishness seems to offer an opportunity to move away from the marked discourse of race, a move that he values as positive. Yet it is precisely the issue of race that the Black Jews seem so intent on preserving. In what follows I discuss the limitations of listening rhetoric, especially when what Ratcliffe terms the cultural logic of colorblindness comes into play.

“Each time you go out and talk, you learn a little bit more”: Reflections on the Possibilities and Limitations of Dialogue At the close of the dialogue, all of the participants remarked positively on their experiences. Each person suggested that he or she learned something new. Kaufman says: “As far as the things we accomplished today, I think this was a very good discussion, because I think that I know a lot about this type of discussion, but I did learn here…”68 In spite of her varied experiences with such activities and her self-reflection that she already knows about these types of interactions, she says that even she learned, though she doesn’t specify what, at least initially. Sarrae, one of the white Jewish youths remarks, “I gained a lot, because I didn’t know too much about the problems of the black Jews. I didn’t know too much about them at all. It’s the first time I’ve actually had a chance to talk with them. I gained a lot in understanding… and just the idea of being together, and talking is something.” Although this was her first time encountering Black Jews, she twice repeats the fact that she “gained a lot in understanding.” She claims that “just the idea of being together, and talking is something.” But what kind of something is it? And what kind of understanding can one gain from a single interaction? I will return to these questions in a moment, but offer this tentative answer: the understandings gained by white and Black participants are different and come with different potential benefits and risks to each.

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Moreover, in terms of listening rhetoric, each individual participant, whether black or white, can only be influenced by the discourse to the extent that she or he is willing to open herself to hearing it, regardless of whether or not it conforms to his or her preconditioned expectations. To illustrate this point, I call attention to Avraham’s remarks, because he is more detailed in explaining what he learned: “I think this is a very interesting discussion and Rick I learned something about your community and some more about the white Jews—their problems. I know just the general problems Jews have but I understand some of the problems white Jews have now. I think it was very interesting and I learned a lot.”69

He twice repeats the fact that the conversation was interesting and that he learned something, and specifies a distinction between his black Jewish community and the others’ “your” white Jewish community and its problems. Rick responds, “What I really think is important and has to come out of this conference is a willingness on our part to have confrontation of white Jews and black Jews to interchange ideas, to come together to live together. Because we must realize that we can’t improve the situation if we’re not ready to get down and talk to each other”.70 Rick, like Kaufman and later Booth, praises the coming together to “talk to each other” and goes on to suggest a reciprocal relationship of “interchanging ideas” and “living together.” Black Jewish Sarah concurs with Avraham that, “. . .it was a very interesting talk,” and though like Kaufman it was not her first time participating she remarks: “Each time you go out and talk, you learn a little bit more.”71 Of course, what each participant learns and gains in terms of listening rhetoric depends on the position in which she or he is situated and the potential openness she or he brings to the discussion. While the youth banter back and forth, modifying and adjusting their arguments in response to one another, the moderator Kaufman, seems to miss some of the key points of the dialogue, as illustrated by her concluding remarks. In spite of all the conversation to the contrary which suggested that skin color was eminently important, in the closing remarks to the conversation, Kaufman remarks: “I know that members of our group often say that we’d like to be an example to the world because we’d like to show them that as Jews we have so much in common that our color is irrelevant—whether I’m white and you’re black and you’re black and I’m white. And I think that this discussion has shown that it’s communication, it’s dialogue, it’s sitting

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Although her last words are meant to seem optimistic, that “sitting around and exchanging ideas” can help make for a “better tomorrow,” they also point to the limitations of dialogue and the different benefits it offers to participants with different degrees of power. Even after what seems to be a model case of listening rhetoric, where all parties seem genuinely engaged in the act of listening to and learning from the other, at the conversation’s end Kaufman still insists that as Jews, color can become “irrelevant.” While Kaufman believes this race-free future is a noble vision to aspire and work toward, it’s unclear how the simple exchange of ideas can help bring the requisite changes to make her vision of a “better tomorrow” a reality. In fact, the content of the symposium belies this hope and actually demands that Sybil and other white Jews who share such hopes and beliefs, hear and see something else—that race and independence do matter, that understanding that they matter is perhaps the crucial possibility such dialogues offer, especially for the white people participating in them, and that perhaps, acknowledging how they matter is the first step in “learning a bit more” about what might facilitate material changes that will enable them to matter differently. The fact that race matters and has different effects on white and black people should not prevent Blacks and whites (Jewish or not) from gathering to discuss and interchange ideas about how they could matter less, or at least differently, but it does require that participants recognize the existence of difference. In glossing over the very important differences so clearly expressed by the Black Jewish youth—Sarah, Peninah and Avraham—Kaufman participates in a cultural logic of colorblindness. As Ratcliffe explains, many white people function “as if such [colorblind] ideals were reality” and in so doing “many well-meaning people promote gender-blindness and color-blindness as ‘solutions’ to the ‘problems’ of gender and racial differences. But despite good intentions, these blindnesses mostly reinforce the status quo….”73 To the extent that Kaufman concludes the discussion with such a “colorblind” summation, she draws attention away from the very important and mutually influential aspects of the dialogue that the youth call attention to in their remarks.74 Thus for Kaufman, the Symposium dialogue demonstrates the persistence and strength of her colorblind assumptions, even in the face of direct evidence and testimony to their failure to accord with the experienced social reality of the Black Jewish youth. This failure to see and hear eventually had material effects for both Sybil and the Black Jewish youth she led, as just a few days

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before the Symposium was published, Sybil resigned from her position as youth leader, alluding to racial tensions in her resignation letter.75

Toward a New Ethic of Multi-Racial Jewish Dialogue So what can we learn from these instances of “listening rhetoric in action”? In this chapter I analyzed two instances where white Jewish leaders who believed very deeply in the values of Civil Rights approached Black Jewish leaders in a Black Jewish congregation in an attempt to persuade them away from separatism and toward interaction with Hatzaad Harishon, and one transcript from the type of dialogue these white Jewish leaders valued dearly—where Black and white Jews both participated. While I don’t want to devalue the very important relationship-building work that such dialogues can and do have, I want to emphasize their limitations and offer some guidelines that might help both to clarify their goals and help bring such goals into fruition. Perhaps it goes without saying though it bears repeating, that as the youth point out, for material changes to take place more than simply dialogue needs to happen. Many white participants in Civil Rights, and many Jewish people among them, failed to acknowledge this need for such material changes, and this failure reflected the different ways that whites and non-whites experience the social impact of “colorblind cultural logics.”76 Yet if dialogue is meant to achieve more than a reenactment and reification of status quo power relations, it must move beyond or at least begin to chip away at the (often colorblind) values that sustain such inequalities and address the discourse and material realities of white privilege. As Jensen points out, listening rhetoric works best when it creates a “scene where individuals may encounter difference on its own terms and thus begin to unravel prevailing logics that promote and sustain identity-based violence.”77 So in order to move beyond the status quo participants must be willing to acknowledge that dialogue is only the first step in a process toward greater material change. Of course there are at least two elements to such a process of successful listening rhetoric—one where individuals encounter difference on its own terms, which is more than simply encountering difference. Like all of the participants, Kaufman encounters difference in the Symposium. But instead of acknowledging it and letting it exist on its own terms, she narrates over it without allowing the difference she encounters to challenge the “prevailing logic” of “colorblindness” which sustains rather than stops identity-based violence she participates in. In other words, she listens, but she doesn’t “hear,” and consequently, the “listening” as Booth

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pints out, becomes “useless” precisely because it doesn’t change her rhetoric. Perhaps one of the most important things we can learn from this failure to hear is how we all, and those in positions with social and other privileges especially, must listen harder in the very moments when what we hear contradicts or disrupts the values that we hold most dear—in Kaufman’s case—the desire for an idealized future where race didn’t matter. The first step to enabling listening to change one’s rhetoric is recognizing the difference between hearing the need for change and acknowledging the value in hearing a different interpretation of an event or experience, and engaging in behaviors, actions, or changes that help rectify material conditions. While it is extremely important to listen and to interact, the imbalance of power influences even these dialogic encounters, and those in power benefit more from such interactions than those who are not. To change that dynamic and begin to realize different power relations, participants must be open to encountering difference on its own terms, and acknowledging, as Rick did, their own participation in systems which perpetuate injustice and inequality. That recognition is a necessary though far from sufficient step in helping to create change, which helps to enact more just structural and material conditions. Though such changes begin with listening rhetoric, to be effective they must evolve into action.

Notes 1

Jerald Podair, The Strike That Changed New York (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002): 4. See also Jerald Podair, “The Ocean Hill- Brownsville Crisis: New York’s Antigone” (paper presented to the History Department, Lawrence University, October 6, 2001). Available at http://www.gothamcenter.org/festival/2001/confpapers/podair.pdf (Accessed 20 November 2011). 2 Ibid. See also Melissa F. Weiner, Power Protest and the Public Schools: Jewish and African American Struggles in New York City (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press 2010): 170-174 and Jane Gordon, Why They Couldn’t Wait: A Critique of the Black-Jewish Conflict over Community Control in Ocean HillBrownsville (1967-1971) (New York and London: Routledge Falmer, 2001). 3 Podair, “The Ocean Hill- Brownsville Crisis.” 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Melissa Weiner, Power, Protest and the Public Schools, 173. 7 Ibid. 8 Booth, Preface, The Rhetoric of Rhetoric, xii. 9 I use the term Black Jewish because not everyone identifying as Jewish was African American or would have identified as such. I capitalize the “B” in Black to distinguish these self-identified Jews from black Jews who have already converted

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under halacha (Jewish law) or have been accepted by the recognized Jewish community for other reasons (i.e., Ethiopians were accepted as legitimate, but then forced to convert upon their entry to Israel in the 1980s). I use the term “recognized Jewish community” as an umbrella term that encompasses all mainstream Jews and the organizations affiliated with them. The term recognized is meant to be inclusive of Ashkenazi (Jews of Eastern European descent), Sephardi (Jews of Spanish and Portugese descent), and Mizrachi Jews (Jews of Eastern descent from Yemen, Iraq, Iran, India, etc), although most Jews in a U.S. context are descendents of Ashkenazim. The term recognized is meant to include all these religious traditions, even though in the U.S. and Israel “recognized Jewish culture” tends to be much more closely identified with Ashkenazi traditions. See also Aziza Khazzoom “The Great Chain of Orientalism: Jewish Identity, Stigma Management, and Ethnic Exclusion in Israel” American Sociological Review, 68: (2003): 481-510 and Ella Shohat “Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims” Social Text 19(1988): 21-35 for a discussion of the dominance of Ashkenazi hegemony. 10 Kroll, “Arguing Differently,” 37-60. 11 Ibid, 40. 12 Ibid. 13 Kroll, “Arguing Differently,” 45. 14 Ibid, 42. 15 Ellie Bivens, Letter to “My Newest and Most valuable friend” 16 July 1964. Hatzaad Harishon Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY. 16 Hatzaad Harishon Newsletter February 1967, “Hatzaad Harishon Youth News.” Hatzaad Harishon Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY. 17 See also Jacob Dorman. “I Saw You Disappear With My Own Eyes: Hidden Transcripts of New York Black Israelite Bricolage,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 11 (2007): 61-83 for a discussion of Matthew’s religious innovation; Janice W. Fernheimer, “Commandment Keepers of Harlem” The Encyclopedia of African American Religious Culture. Ed. Anthony B. Pinn. (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio Publishing, 2009): 97-101. 18 Note that according to James Landing, the New York Board of Rabbis was initially called the “New York Board of Jewish Ministers.” See also James Landing, Black Judaism: Story of an American Movement (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2002), 206. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid, quoted in Landing 207. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 "The Black Jews." Newsweek December 26, 1966. Hatzaad Harishon, Inc. Ethiopian

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Hebrew Congregation Records, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, 264 Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 26 Yaakov Gladstone. Letter to Rabbi Wentworth Matthew, 14 June 1968. Hatzaad Harishon Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY. Yaakov Gladstone. Letter to Rabbi Wentworth Matthew, 25 June 1964. Hatzaad Harishon Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY. 27 Leonard Benari. Minutes Committee on the Black Jews and Hatzaad Harishon 9 May 1968. 2. Hatzaad Harishon Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY 28 Ibid. 29 For another detailed account, see Jacob S. Dorman, “Hatzaad Harishon: Integration, Black Power and Black Jews in New York, 1964-1972” (Undergaduate Honors Thesis, Stanford University, 1996), 76- 87. 30 Yaakov Gladstone. Letter to Rabbi Wentworth Matthew, 14 June 1968. Hatzaad Harishon Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Yaakov Gladstone. Letter to Rabbi Wentworth Matthew 25 June 1968. Hatzaad Harishon Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY. 34 Ibid., emphasis mine. 35 Ibid., emphasis mine. 36 Ibid., emphasis mine. 37 Kroll, “Arguing Differently,” 35. 38 Sybil Kaplan, email to author, 13 March 2006. When I questioned Kaufman in an email exchange on March 13, 2006, she had no recollection of the letter to Dore, nor of any of the circumstances surrounding it. 39 Kroll, “Arguing Differently,” 40. 40 Sybil Kaufman, “Letter to Dore” 24 October 1968. Hatzaad Harishon Collection. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. 41 Ibid., 1, emphasis mine. 42 Ellie Bivens notes that even at the formation of Hatzaad Harishon in 1964, Black Jewish congregations were often pitted against one another by their leaders. Ellie Bivens, Letter to “My Newest and Most valuable friend,” 16 July 1964. Hatzaad Harishon Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY. 43 Kroll, “Arguing Differently” 44. 44 Ibid. 45 Kaufman, “Letter to Dore.” 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., emphasis mine. 48 Kroll, “Arguing Differently,” 46. 49 Ibid., 47. 50 Ibid. 51 Kaufman, “Letter to Dore”. 52 Ibid., mine.

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Ibid., 2. Ibid., 1-2. 55 Ibid, 2. 56 “Transcription. Our Age Symposium.” January 5, 1969. Personal Manuscript Archives of Sybil Kaplan’s (formally Kaufman) Personal Manuscript Archives, shared with author. Pp1-45. 57 “Black Jews and White: The Relevance of Color.” Our Age, 10:10. Reform Movement of Jewish Youth. February 16, 1969. Pp 1-4. 58 Full Transcript of Our Age Dialogue. Sybil Kaplan’s Personal Archive, shared with the author. 59 Ibid., 7. 60 This issue would become particularly pressing even for Hatzaad Harishon as Sybil Kaufman would resign from the position of youth advisor in February 1969, and white Jewish Yaakov Gladstone would step down from the position of director in May of 1970. For a discussion of the transfer of leadership in Civil Rights organizations from whites (often Jews) to Blacks, see also Cheryl Greenberg, Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2006) and Eric Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2006). 61 Transcription. Our Age Symposium.” January 5, 1969. Personal Manuscript Archives of Sybil Kaplan (formally Kaufman), shared with author. Pp 7-8. 62 Ibid., 8. 63 Ibid., 8-9, emphasis mine. 64 Ibid., 9. 65 Ibid., 10. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid, 30. 68 Ibid., 40-41, emphasis mine. 69 Ibid., 41, emphasis mine. 70 Ibid., 41-42. 71 Ibid., 42. 72 Ibid. 73 Ratcliffe, Rhetorical Listening, 134. 74 And Ratcliffe is careful to note that such “colorblindness” affects both whites and non-white, though it influences them differently. On the one hand, “for whites, colorblindness means denying the privileges often accorded whiteness in U.S. culture; it also means denying very real differences faced by whites and nonwhites,” whereas on the other hand, “for non-whites, it means being made to feel, once again that race is their ‘problem’ to ‘solve’ because they often seem to be the ones noticing that race is in play,” 134. 75 Sybil Kaufman, Resignation Letter February 18, 1969. Hatzaad Harishon, Inc. Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation Records, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library,Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 76 Ratcliffe, Rhetorical Listening, 134. 54

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Jensen, “Rhetorical Listening in Principle,”1.

I would like to thank Sybil Kaplan, Yaakov Gladstone, and Rabbi Moshe Hailu Paris for sharing their materials, recollections, and enthusiasm.

CHAPTER TWELVE EMIGRATIONISM, AFROCENTRISM, AND HEBREW ISRAELITES IN THE PROMISED LAND JOHN L. JACKSON, JR.

In 1966, amidst race riots and related urban unrest in America’s poorest Black neighborhoods, one of Chicago’s native sons, a twentysomething African American named Ben Carter, received a visitation from the Angel Gabriel and was asked to lead God’s people out of the “wilderness” of 1960s America.1 Heeding that celestial call, Carter began to prepare God’s flock for a new home in Liberia, a West African nation created in the early 19th century with help from the American Colonization Society. This mid-1960s emigrationist move to West Africa proved, however, only a temporary sojourn for Carter and his fellow émigrés. That is because Carter, who had already been renamed Ben Ammi (Hebrew for “son of my people”) and Nasi Hashalom (“Prince of Peace”), was also part of a larger ethno-political organization (with documented institutionalized precursors throughout the United States as early as the 19th century) whose members believe that African Americans are actually descendants of the Bible’s Ancient Hebrew Israelites. In this essay, I want to consider the extent to which this Hebrew Israelite community’s theology, ideology, and transatlantic journey fall within a larger tradition of Afrocentric thought, even as this emigrationist group is usually not thematized as heirs of Afrocentrism in most scholarly or popular accounts.2 Afrocentrism often gets attacked from mainstream historical circles for its romantically revisionist racial narratives, for its attempts to recast canonized historiography as a purposeful distortion of the historical record in service to “Eurocentric” ideological and political needs. Most of this debate is framed around questions of ancient Egypt’s racial composition and organized in terms of the extent to which ancient (read: Black) Egyptian mysteries served as the fundamental building blocks for subsequent

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Greek philosophies—and, therefore, as the very bedrock of Western civilization (even as Western culture defines its modernist premises and practices in firm opposition to the “primitive” anteriorities of African culture). Although rarely placed in substantive conversation with these contentious academic and popular debates about Europe’s supposed debts to Africa, I want to argue that Ben Ammi and the Hebrew Israelites represent a direct extension of these disputes, rewiring traditional Afrocentric claims to a contemporary reckoning of African Diasporic subjectivity.3 Afrocentricity has a canon, and the Hebrew Israelites are usually ignored within that canon. However, they demonstrate a clear debt to larger Afrocentric attempts to make sense of global racial hierarchies. I want to challenge the omission of groups such as the Hebrew Israelites from most renditions and histories of Afrocentrism. With that in mind, I use this chapter to unpack some of the parallels between Black Hebrew revisionism and the forms of counter-discourse that Afrocentrists are known to deploy, even as I emphasize the eccentricities that make the Hebrew Israelites a difficult group to assimilate into most canonical versions of Afrocentric thought. Senegalese anthropologist Cheikh Anta Diop and Chancellor Williams have both penned texts that are considered classics in the Afrocentric paradigm, providing interpretations of the ancient past that are vastly different from what many regard as “standard” classical history. 4 Williams’s book is an ambitious 6000-year saga of racial struggles and skirmishes from ancient Egypt to contemporary Ghana. His point is to make a case for the historical depth of “White Supremacy” and its singleminded attempt at black/African annihilation. Diop dramatizes some of that same history, specifically highlighting the scholastic cover-ups that keep such facts hidden from general audiences. George G. M James has probably produced the classic among classics in the “Egyptocentric” branch of Afrocentrism, arguing that those thoughtful ancient Greeks were not so thoughtful after all (i.e., that they actually stole their philosophy from even older Egyptian belief systems). James considers this particularly important because of an equally controversial contention: that those Egyptians of yore were culturally linked to sub-Saharan Africans (and racially “black” by contemporary standards), which is his answer for why European scholars wanted to conceal that part of antiquity’s story in the first place. According to James, Aristotle studied under African teachers. He then simply pretended to write the massive volumes found in Alexandria, volumes only there, James contends, thanks to Alexander’s plundering of Egypt.

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Martin Bernal, a specialist in Chinese political history, revisited and extended this argument in an ambitious multi-part study on the “Afroasiatic roots of Western civilization.”5 Bernal maintained that an “Ancient Model” for understanding the relationship between Egypt and Greece recognized the latter’s debts to the former (just as James contends), but that that position was carefully replaced by an “Aryan Model” more aligned with racist assumptions in the West. Classicists such as Mary Lefkowitz immediately dismissed him as an untrained amateur, an illegitimate “armchair archeologist,” but many interested Afrocentric scholars still hungrily devour Bernal’s critique today. All of these debates are actually somewhat orthogonal to the main academic protagonists and promoters of Afrocentrism, most importantly Molefi Kete Asante. I emphasize Asante for two reasons. First, he is widely considered to be the most significant academic theorist and philosopher of Afrocentrism in the United States today. He has framed his entire career around that scholarly involvement. Second, his texts on Afrocentrism constitute undisputed anchor points for the understanding of the Afrocentric problematic. I will briefly describe Asante’s characterization of Afrocentrism and highlight its implicit and explicit arguments against any political/epistemological investment in constitutive Hebrewism. I will then return to the story of the Hebrew Israelites and their particular version of Afrocentricism.

Afrocentrism: The “Place” of Islam Philosopher Molefi Asante conceptualizes Afrocentrism as a response to the subjective biases of European thinking and thinkers, biases that he claims are passed off as impartial and objective. Afrocentrism is a corrective to Eurocentrism, which Asante argues is a “situated knowledge” that pretends to be universal and non-contingent. This is an important point to highlight because Asante does not argue that Afrocentrism is universal and transcendent. “There is no antiplace,” he declares, not even for the Afrocentrist.6 Instead, Asante maintains that Afrocentrism is also quite situated, undeniably placed. However, it is better situated, Asante argues, from its particular perch to deal with questions about African existence, questions that Eurocentrism’s alternative placeness can only ever self-interestedly and dehumanizingly answer. Asante calls attention to the inescapable situatedness of all knowledge production, an Afrocentric version of feminist “standpoint theory,” and maintains that Afrocentrism merely highlights a more appropriate place from which to theorize about African history, culture, and possibility.7

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According to Asante, centrism is “the groundedness of observation and behavior in one’s own historical experiences.”8 It does not matter if one is studying the historical record, processes of psychological development, political science or anthropology, Afrocentrism is meant to provide a radically anti-Eurocentric point of entry into any of those domains. Asante’s aforementioned invocation of “historical experiences” is significant, because it justifies his attempt to deploy ancient Africa, especially Egypt (Kemet), as a foundational part of the “origin story” that grounds African difference. Although Asante’s first two book-length treatments of Afrocentricity give relatively short shrift to the place of ancient Egypt, his most exhaustive treatment of the philosophical underpinnings of Afrocentrism spends a great deal of time “interpreting the Kemetic record” in an effort to demonstrate the ontological and epistemological difference that the placedness of ancient Africa represents vis-à-vis Eurocentric theorizations of life and death, biology and sociality, political life and its supernatural/divine correlates. If Afrocentrism places Africa at the cultural and ontological center of the African Diaspora, the emphasis on ancient Egypt links that nation’s classical history to the center of Africa’s civilizational past. For Asante, African difference is predicated on the radical irreducibility of African (Ma’atic) and European spiritualities. “Ma’at in the Kemetic tradition,” Asante writes, “is predicated on our appreciation of the concept of order, measure, limit and form, that is, form in the sense of order and justice.”9 It is “the cumulative appearance of the divine properties.”10 Asante goes on to argue, invoking the previously mentioned work of George James, that Greeks subsequently tried to explicitly redeploy (and re-place) Ma’at as a basis for their own impoverished (because secularized) notion of mathematics. As far as Asante is concerned, mathematics is Ma’at with the soul and spirit ripped out of it. Indeed, Afrocentrism is as mystical and soulful as it is empirical, and that is by design. Asante’s long forays into the Egyptian mysteries and mythology pivot on the centrality of religiosity and spirituality to any authentic attempt at Afrocentric thought. Asante spends quite a bit of time trying to explicate the constitutive significance of “soul” for the Afrocentric project. It is a “concrete motive force” that “activates research” and grounds the validity and appropriateness of knowledge claims.11 Asante’s commitments to these themes of divinity, spirituality, and soulfulness are key, and they help to explain what he excludes from his conceptualization of African/Kemetic situatedness (as foreign to its fundamental nature) and why. Near Eastern Studies scholar Sherman Jackson does a compelling job

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describing Asante’s attempt to disqualify Islam from any fundamental role in rendering Africa’s difference from the West. Jackson calls Asante a “Black Orientalist” (borrowing from Edward Said’s Foucault-inspired and deconstructionist formulation) for (1) characterizing Muslim societies as intrinsically racist, (2) casting Islam as just another form of white racism (no better than Christianity on that score), and (3) defining Islam as categorically alien to his Kemetic Africa. According to Jackson, Asante’s “authentic African self” cannot be Muslim (even though, Jackson points out, one of Asante’s most-cherished theoretical interlocutors is Muslim, Cheikh Anta Diop). “Adoption of Islam,” Asante writes, “is as contradictory to the Diasporan Afrocentricity as Christianity has been.”12 According to Sherman Jackson, Asante portrays Arab Muslims in Africa as little more than invaders; people who don’t naturally belong. If anything, Jackson claims, Asante relegates Arabs and Islam to the role of cancer and poisonous contagion vis-à-vis African life. Their entry into the continent marked the beginning of the end, he says, for Asante’s beloved Kemet. “Indeed, [Asante] seems to intimate,” Jackson writes, “[that] had it not been for Arab Muslims, the Europeans might have encountered a thriving, powerful civilization in Africa that they would not have been able to dominate.”13 Jackson believes that Asante falls into this “Orientalist” trap because he projects American racial circumstances onto an African canvas. Ironically, Jackson argues, Asante’s Afrocentrism suffers from a kind of Americocentrism. The philosopher’s placement in America, the place of American sensibilities in Asante’s conceptualization of Africa, uncritically and unknowingly over-determine his reading of the continent.14 In the same way that Asante can condemn Islam for its historical role in the subjugation of African peoples/culture, Judaism and Christianity function as threateningly extrinsic elements with no necessary relationship to African specificity. In such a philosophical context, one wherein ancient Egypt is privileged and Judaism is little more than potentially complicit in clearing ground for trans-Atlantic slavery’s ideological justifications and practical machineries, the Black Hebrew Israelites represent a radically different articulation of this ongoing attempt to resignify Africa as more than just Europe’s dark lack. However, given his dismissal of Islam, Asante would not fully approve of the Hebrew Israelites’ reclamations of Africa, especially insofar as it pivots on a constitutive inclusion of Israel into the formulation. Moreover, given the complicated historical connections and conflicts between African Americans and Ashkenazi Jews, conflicts fanned by the flames of anti-Semitic comments from groups such as the Nation of Islam, Asante is also negotiating a political

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landscape that already presupposes serious African American skepticism vis-à-vis the Jewish community.15 Of course, all of this coincides with the substantive philosophical and historical links between Judaism/Jewry and Afrocentrism. For instance, early 20th century Jewish American anthropologists such as Franz Boas and Melville Herskovits were quite valuable to Afrocentrists in terms of providing evidence for claims of West African cultural unities and continuities with the African Diaspora.16 Moreover, the earliest practitioners of Black Freemasonry in the 18th century, a group considered central to discussions about longstanding African American investments in the symbolic significance of ancient Egypt, actually identified with ancient Hebrews more than ancient Egyptians, a move that anticipated Ben Ammi’s identitarian claims by some 200 years.17

Life in Liberia Ammi took up to 400 people with him to rural Liberia in 1967, far from the capital city of Monrovia. However, by 1968, almost threequarters of those migrants had returned to the United States, unable and unwilling to suffer the physical and mental hardships of life in the Liberian jungle—beyond the bounds of the nation-state, left to fend for themselves on the outskirts of that nation’s legitimate body politic.18 Many of these African Americans were born in urban cities like Chicago, Detroit, Ohio, New York, and Atlanta, which means that they did not know the first thing about building their own homes from scratch, cooking food without four-burner stoves, or preserving meat and other items without the reliable, electric refrigeration—all things they needed to perfect on the people-less, tree-filled land they occupied in Liberia.19 When these African-American Hebrew Israelites left the United States, they were not necessarily lauded by everyone as valuable ideological and institutional progeny of the still-lionized Marcus Garvey and his early 20th century Black-Star Lined plot to re-locate race-mates to The Continent. Instead, some people saw them as sellouts, cowards, and apolitical freaks. Everyone else was digging in their heels to fight, the rhetorical backing of “Black Power” as wind in their activist sails, and these Black Israelites were leaving the country. They were also following a young twentysomething former foundry worker, Ammi, who was specifically told (by many of the elders in Chicago’s eclectic Black Hebrew Israelite community) that the time was not yet right for such a journey—or, according to some, that such a relocation scheme should never be undertaken at all. But Ammi’s group emigrated anyway, which means that

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they were questioned both for avoiding the Black-Power fight in the land of their birth and for disobeying the decrees of leaders in the Black Hebrew Israelite community they left behind in Chicago. To make matters worse, early life in Liberia was considerably more difficult than some of the émigrés had anticipated. The Liberian government, headed by powerful Americo-Liberian descendants of 19th slaves from the United States, agreed to allow Ammi’s group to enter their country, a decision predicated on Liberia’s historical role as an early settlement for America’s free Black population.20 Once Ammi’s group arrived in Liberia and the novelty of their emigrationist success wore off, the truly daunting nature of their ongoing task became increasingly clear. Some of the early migrants died of diseases, snake bites, and physical accidents (such as falling down open wells). The community did not have a great deal of money, could not grow enough food, and lived about 100 miles from Monrovia’s stores and urban amenities. All of these variables conspired to make the group’s stint in Liberia quite harrowing, and Ammi’s emigrationist experiment seemed doomed to fail by spring of 1968. However, God sent another sign to his messenger. In April of that year, Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a rousing speech in Memphis during what would turn out to be his final public appearance, just one day before he was killed on the balcony of a Tennessee hotel room. In the now-famous speech, one King had given several times before, he offered up his own spiritually-inspired dream, one that resonated with this small community of American ex-pats barely surviving in Guryea, Liberia: “I just want to do God’s will,” King preached. “And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.” These words, spoken by an assimilationist Civil Rights icon and relayed throughout the world proved to be the inspiration for the next departure of a group of seemingly separatist Black expats in Liberia. Ben Ammi interpreted King’s last public statement as prophesy—as another bit of divine intervention.21 Why did God put those particular words in King’s mouth on that fateful day? Was not the “Promised Land” Israel, especially for African Americans claiming to be descendants of ancient Hebrew Israelites? If so, what were they doing in West Africa in a place? It was not where their Diasporic origin story began. So in 1969, the remaining 100 African-American Hebrew Israelites emigrated again—this time, from West Africa to the modern state of Israel.

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One thing that is important to highlight, however, is that the group does not consider this move to imply that they have left Africa. In fact, they have re-geographized Israel as little more than a subsection of the African continent, “Northeastern Africa,” and decidedly not a part of the “Middle East,” the latter being considered a kind of conspiratorial fiction used to buttress attempts to excise Israel from commonsense cartographies of Africa. Of course, forms of Black Nationalism have long drawn on the Middle East, specifically Islam and Judaism, as “cultural anchors” and as metaphorical inspiration. One of the nineteenth century’s “fathers” of Afrocentrism, Edward Wilmot Blyden was clearly inspired by early childhood experiences with the local Jewish community in St. Thomas and even studied Hebrew with local Jews as depicted by Gilroy and others. The Nation of Islam’s religiously inflected nationalist project is an obvious example of Islam’s deployment as a kind of racio-religious project, which Edward Curtis 2002, Carolyn Rouse, Sherman Jackson and others have amply demonstrated. And Marcus Garvey’s envious assessments of early 20th century Jewish Zionism are well known.22 Moreover, Asante’s commitments to Ancient Egypt (at the expense of a delegitimized Islam) parallel African Hebrew Israelites’ designation of Israel as Africa, which displaces Egypt as the symbolic center of African cultural difference. Where the Egyptophilic version of the Afrocentric debate links ancient Egypt/Kemet (genealogically, culturally, spiritually, politically and symbolically) with sub-Saharan Africa, the Black Hebrew Israelites connect Israel to Africa, which they would describe as a reconnection and geographical correction. The group’s iconic pictorial representations of the African continent include a tiny sliver extending from the upper right corner of the image, which helps them to highlight their argument about Israelite refugees populating every section of Africa after Romans destroyed the temple (70 AD) and forced the Israelite tribes to flee. Israel is right in Africa, they argue, so it stands to reason that the tribes would have fled farther into that same continent as opposed to just heading north. In many ways, the Hebrew Israelites represent an alternative re-placing of Africa to the kind found in Asante’s rendition of Afrocentrism, but it is no less predicated on Africa’s centrality. The interior of Africa not only rests beneath Israel, it houses many different manifestations of Hebraic practices and beliefs. The community has even mounted a traveling museum that documents all the tribal rituals in eastern, western, southern and central Africa that demonstrate ostensibly Hebraic traditions extant among a vast number of African groups.

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Not knowing quite what was happening when Ben Ammi and his compatriots arrived in 1969 (or how to respond to their genealogical claims about being “lost tribes”), the Israeli government grudgingly allowed some of the earliest arrivals to exit Ben Gurion International Airport and enter the country temporarily on visitors’ visas, and these African American Hebrew Israelites have been there ever since. By the summer of 2005, the first time I visited them in their quaint and quiet enclaves in Dimona, Arad and Mitzpe Ramon, in Israel’s Negev region, I was surprised to find that the initial 100 émigrés had ballooned to about 3000, and that these African American immigrants who invoke the “Right of Return” to justify their presence in the Holy Land have established themselves as a recognizable segment of contemporary Israel’s multicultural landscape. The group has become a little-known (and under-studied) satellite of Black America, an intentional community, what Anthony Wallace would have called a “revitalization movement,” one that lives on its own relatively self-contained village compound. Dimona, their capital city, is a converted immigrant absorption center, and saints, as members are called, reside there and throughout Israel, from the southernmost town of Eilat to the northern cities around the Sea of Galilee. And there are many more saints in small communities all around the world, particularly throughout the United States. This group has a complicated relationship to the Middle East: one-part Jewish-identification through their professed Israelite genealogy, and onepart Palestinian sympathizing as a function of their own marginalized status in what they would describe as a “racist” nation-state. Of course, the latter is operative even while their “settler” practices prove problematic in the context of competing Palestinian claims to autochthonous belonging. Looking at this from an even broader conceptual perspective, their story provides a lens through which to make sense of conflicted American responses to the contemporary global moment, especially since these African-American Hebrew Israelites are hybrid citizens, invested in Israel (with their high school graduates, for the first time two years ago, voluntarily enrolled in the Israeli army), but still irrevocably connected to American society through friends, family members, an internationally successful vegan restaurant chain with branches all over the United States, and members’ own individual life histories. 23 With that as backdrop, the group’s emigrationist story can also help to problematize conventional assumptions about racial identities and Diasporic communities, placing theoretical and historical treatments of Jewish Diasporic longings and African Diasporic desires into a robust and critical conversation. Scholarship

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on the “African Diaspora” or the “Black Atlantic” (in anthropology, literature, history and philosophy) can sometimes merely gesture towards the general debts owed to Jewish conceptualizations of Diaspora without substantively unpacking the implications of that analytical and interpretive indebtedness.24 If Afrocentric scholarship actually pivots on deconstructionist assumptions about historical inaccuracies promulgated by Western science, letters, and history at the expense of African Diasporic subjects, a serious appreciation of the African Hebrew Israelites allows us to examine a similar deconstructionist project operationalized as a full-fledged social movement.

The Many Bodies of Black Judaism/Hebrewism The Black Hebrew Israelites who arrived in Israel in 1969 had come out of urban American cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, Washington D.C., and Chicago. They were from working class and lower middle class families, and some had been Pentecostals, Baptists and even Black Muslims before accepting the truth of their status as descendants of Ancient Hebrew Israelites. A few of the saints were successful R&B recording artists before they left the United States, and they immediately formed a band that toured Liberia, Israel and Europe to help raise money for the resettled community. Ben Ammi was (and still is) the group’s spiritual leader and messiah, but he formed a governing body of princes and minister quite early on, and these individuals, all men, would become increasingly responsible for the daily operations of the community.25 Their lives in Israel during the 1970s and 1980s were fraught and vulnerable, allegedly replete with million-dollar money-laundering rings and airline ticket fraud operations set up to finance members’ clandestine return to Israel whenever they were periodically rounded up and deported by the Israeli state.26 The community has come a long way since then, which is partially evidenced in their ability to construct a relatively new multi-million dollar school building facilitated (and partially financed) by the United States (even after group members publicly renounced their US citizenship in the 1980s). Moreover, there is also much to be said about their own impressive and ambitious development projects throughout West Africa, in places such as Benin, Senegal, and Ghana. However, I want to hint at their conceptualizations and politicizations of the human body itself (and concomitant notions of personhood) as a way to think about how such deployments frame their collective attempt to wire race and spirituality to a re-imagined national community.

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There are many points of entry into the group’s mobilizations of what might be called “bodied rhetorics.” For instance, there is a complex calculus that determines which bodies are even “Black Hebrew Israelite” bodies in the first place. A different offshoot of the Black Hebrew Israelite community in the United States, the “Worldwide Truthful Understanding” (WTU) Black Hebrew Israelites in New York City, transformed their members from strict genealogists (reading either matrilineality or patrilineality as the indisputable basis for authentic Israelite belonging) to advocates of an adamant anti-genealogic—claiming that the real prerequisite for belonging was not a Black mother or Father, or any epidermal evidence of Blackness at all, only the capacity to hear and accept “Yah’s message,” regardless of a person’s social background, family tree, and phenotypical features.27 That transformation, which took place at the end of the 1990s, was a fairly radical recalibration, a re-reckoning of identity for the once-in-a-lifetime fin de siècle. Where previously the WTU Black Hebrews could definitively proffer a precisely racial and genealogical organizing principle for inclusion and exclusion, they subsequently conceded to a version of social collectivity that ostensibly eschewed any explicit adjudication based on racial logics. The change was predicated on the group’s re-reading of the Bible (including Titus 3:9), which warns Israelites to avoid “foolish questions, and genealogies.” In many ways, that move from genealogy to anti-genealogy already expresses two very direct (even mutually exclusive) ways in which some Black Hebrew Israelites addressed a notion of “the body” and its implications for group belonging. In the first instance, the body’s very history and materiality determined legitimacy. In the second, bodies are deemed unreadable and spiritually unintelligible except as a function of their performances of faith and acceptance. The WTU Hebrew Israelites share some institutional history with Ammi’s Hebrew Israelites now in Israel, but the two groups’ current ideologies and cosmologies are quite different. Indeed, there are several disparate Black Hebrew groups today, all interconnected (in some ways) but distinct. For instance, some of the earliest institutionalized African American identifications with Judaism date back to the eighteenth century and the beginnings of the nineteenth century.28 William Christian founded one of the first self-professed Black Jewish congregations in 1889. At about the same time, Prophet Cherry and William Crowdy started what scholars such as Howard Brotz and Authur Fausett characterize as “Black Jewish” worship services, the Church of God, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and The Church of God and Saints in Christ of Lawrence, Kansas, respectively. Appealing to the metaphorical resonances between American

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slavery and ancient Israelite captivity, these groups made a compelling case for the parallels between Jewish bondage in Egypt and African bondage in America. These early Jewish hubs in Philadelphia and Kansas extended outward to the north and west as congregants and ministers traveled far and wide with their syncretic Judaic teachings. Jamaican Rastafarianism is also often associated with this diffusionist impulse in stories of Black Jewry, especially as a function of its Jewish iconography, most conspicuously the group’s ubiquitous Star of David and invocations of Jah/Yah. The Nation of Yahweh in Florida is a Black Jewish group infamous for its links to crime and corruption, whose leader, Yahweh Ben Yahweh, served time in a Pennsylvania penitentiary before dying in 2007. Another group, the Law Keepers, is a Torah-based organization that spells its self-designation with a capital Y, Yisraelites, meant to orthographically invoke the Hebrew language, and that practices its own distinctive form of Hebrewism. Indeed, even the distinction between Israelite and Jew is significant. Black Jews are usually meant to refer to those African Americans who look to established Jewry (and to the religion of Judaism) for guidance and validation. Black Israelites define themselves against traditional forms of Judaism (including rabbinical extrapolations on the Old Testament), and they usually dismiss the designation Jew as a reference to only a single tribe (the tribe of Judah) as opposed to all twelve tribes of the Israel. Most famously, the Commandment Keepers of Harlem, a group of Black Jews ethnographically canonized in the 1960s were led in the early 1900s by Rabbi Arthur Wentworth Matthew, a black man believed to have come out of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, along with Rabbi Josiah Ford, the UNIA’s choir leader, a person that anthropologist Howard Brotz wrongly theorizes might have been the same Ford/Fard that started the Nation of Islam in Detroit a few years after Rabbi Ford was said to have left for Africa. The Commandment Keepers are usually considered Black Jews (instead of Black Israelites) because Matthew let white Jews visit his services and even consulted with them on Jewish practices and rituals, something the WTU Hebrew Israelites would never imagine doing. Presently, Commandment Keepers all across America are carefully codifying and archiving the history of their particular Black Jewish organization, and part of that project entails making it absolutely clear how their brand of Judaism differs from the practices of the WTU Hebrew Israelites, a group that meets not more than five blocks from the Commandment Keepers’ Harlem synagogue. Making this distinction explicit is important because the WTU Black Hebrews are decidedly vocal

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about their disdain for whites/Europeans, a hatred rooted in racialized readings of Genesis that interpret Rebekah’s birthing of twin boys (Esau and Jacob) as the origin story for two discrete races (blacks and whites). According to the WTU Hebrew Israelites, contemporary Jews are “imposters” purposefully hiding the truth about African Americans’ genealogical links to the ancient Israelite patriarchs.29 Indeed, these current claims about “imposter Jews” demonstrate a clear indication of the overlap between WTU Hebrew Israelite beliefs and those found among the distinct group of Hebrew Israelites that entered Israel with Ammi, overlaps that have become starker divergences in the forty years since Ammi’s group first took up residence in Israel. After being disqualified from citizenship under the 1952 Law of Return, the group responded by deauthenticating the Jews who were already residing in Israel (i.e., calling them imposters and frauds). Up through the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Hebrew Israelites in Dimona dismissed European Israelis’ claims to Jewishness quite emphatically. They also critiqued those Ethiopian Jews who were willing to symbolically convert after being airlifted to Israel in the 1980s, a precedent often cited by government officials as justification for making the same request of the Black Hebrew Israelites from Chicago. Today, the Hebrew Israelites in Dimona no longer voice a categorical denial of European Jewry’s legitimacy, but the WTU Hebrew Israelites in Harlem and Brooklyn still espouse that position, even as they no longer test initiates’ biological/genealogical authenticity through an examination of patrilineality. This slow divergence is not the only thing that distinguishes Ammi’s Hebrew Israelite community from the WTU Hebrews. Unlike Ammi’s group, which considers Israel a part of Africa and calls itself the “African Hebrews of Jerusalem,” the WTU Hebrews define Black Hebrew Israelites in contradistinction to Africanity—with Africans deemed different peoples entirely: Hamites, Hagerenes, Cushites, and Ishmaelites, but not Israelites. The WTU Black Hebrews invoke a Hebrew Israelite Diaspora that is a kind of “racial Diaspora” but without any recourse to Africa at all.30 African alterity is absolute and immutable, regardless of the superficial phenotypical sameness of skin-color. Of course, this kind of conflicted (even hostile) assessment of African difference has defined AfricanAmerican understandings of the “motherland” for centuries, especially as filtered through the prism of religion. For instance, Christianity’s offer of salvation helped to justify many nineteenth century African-American missionaries’ “redemptionist” demonizations of African spiritual beliefs.31 However, unlike the WTU Hebrew Israelites, Ammi’s Hebrew Israelites turn the African Diaspora into a proxy for a form of Black Diasporic

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subjectivity that is African and Israelite in the selfsame instant. Where one of these two contemporary Black Hebrew Israelite groups (which share the same splintered historical lineage to those 19th century and early 20th Black Jewish institutions in Kansas, Philadelphia, and New York City) defines Africans as external to Israelite identity (regardless of commonsensical assumptions about somatic similarities and historical contiguities) and as excluded from any valid definition of a Black Hebrew Israelite Diaspora (which is not in any way, then, an African Diaspora), the other group, the one residing in Israel today, makes Israelite identity inextricably connected to a larger African genealogical, geographical, and cultural landscape.32 Of course, the Hebrew Israelites currently residing in Israel might consider Africans to be legitimate descendents of the ancient Israelite tribes, but their unacceptable (because non-Israelite) African religious beliefs and practices are another matter. Moreover, the Black Hebrew Israelites’ explicitly invoke “culture” (as a label for what their revisionist project entails) at the expense of discourses about religious affiliation of any kind. The Black Hebrew Israelites declare, in no uncertain terms, that they do not practice a religion. Their beliefs exemplify a cultural worldview, they argue, a holistic lifestyle. And they specifically call it a “lifestyle,” a culture, not a religion. Religion is the problem, AviMelech once told me during a trip we took to visit some Bedouin outside of the town of Beer-sheva. AviMelech describes himself as a “Divine Guide and Hermeneutic Scholar,” someone who studied with one of the group’s most famous priests, Prince Shaleak Ben Yehuda, throughout the 1980s and 90s. We were driving through the nearby city of Rahat as he periodically pointed his index finger out the window of the air-conditioned mini-van and into the hot sun, directing my attention to people walking the streets who “look like Pookie and Rae-Rae and Big Earl and all those folks you know from back home.” AviMelech relishes the opportunity show new American visitors “the African presence in Israel”—a reality, he says, which never gets represented on CNN. However, that does not mean Black Hebrew Israelites in Dimona are sympathetic to the Africans’ religious beliefs. Saints maintain that Christianity, Islam and Judaism actually cause all the problems in the world, especially the violent conflicts in the Middle East. At the same time, they make a clear distinction between their lifestyle practices and others’ religious doctrines.33 Indeed, whether they are defining themselves in opposition to African cultural groups (as the WTU Black Hebrews do) or considering themselves part of a larger African cultural worldview (with Israel defined as Africa’s northeastern tip), Black

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Hebrew Israelites highlight their own cultural distinctiveness as the organizing principle for grander claims about their embodied difference. They privilege a nationality of alterity over and against Euro-religions and their claims of monopolistic access to true divinity. The Hebrew Israelites’ commitments to Yah are about ancestry, they argue, not the impoverished and compartmentalized sense of spirituality institutionalized as formal religious denominations.34

Bodies That Matter In any discussion of Israelites and their bodies, it might also make sense to invoke the case of the Dimona Black Hebrew Israelites’ first victim of terrorism, a young musician killed by a suicide bomber while playing with a band on the Northwest coast. Israeli sympathy poured out for the community as a function of the incident, members claim, and it served as the beginning of a more robust acceptance from the Israeli state.35 They were made to feel less “foreign” as a function of this tragedy, and it served as a mechanism for facilitating their further acceptance as a part of the Israeli nation, an acceptance manifested in their recently achieved status as “permanent residents,” the penultimate step along a path to the citizenship that they have been demanding since 1969. In this instance, the body, even and especially the deceased body, has productive force as a thematized and politicized fixation.36 This discussion of death, of the dead body, is key, and I want to use its invocation as the suggestive scaffolding for a different examination of the Black Hebraic definitions/operationalizations of “the body” as a politicized form of materiality and performativity in the selfsame instance, operationalizations that serve to further marginalize the group in discussions of Afrocentric theorizing. To get at this one last deployment of “the body,” let me continue, as anthropologists are wont to do, with the invocation of a public ceremony. In 2006, during the group’s New World Passover festival (an Easter-time affair commemorating their 1967 journey from the United States), the community spent several days putting on theatrical productions that narrated their story, emphasizing (even lampooning) the fact that Ben Ammi, their messiah, heard his message from the Angel Gabriel and did not initially know how to respond. The Hebrew Israelite community’s “Ministry of Information” videotaped the performances, which included young teen and twenty-something saints playing the roles of Angel Gabriel, Ben Ammi, and his childhood friend Gavriel Ben Yehuda.

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During one skit, an elderly Ben Ammi is smiling and enjoying the dramatic re-enactments under the bright Israeli sun. With several princes and ministers, the male authorities in the community, sitting by Ammi’s side, the young people perform the visitation of Angel Gabriel in the middle of the village’s parking lot, carefully transformed into a “theater in the round” for the week-long festivities. The young Ben Ammi is first startled by the voice. He doesn’t quite believe it. At first, he thinks he is just going insane, and only grudgingly begins to heed the call—cautious, doubtful, and hesitant all the while. The entire performance is done almost like a kind of spoof, with the saints laughing to themselves at how crazy this all must sound to the outside world. They were putting this theatrical performance on specifically for themselves, with saints from all over Israel, Europe, the United States, the Caribbean and Africa returning for this popular annual event. And they were highlighting the odd form of spiritualized disembodiment that prompted their transcontinental journey. This sense of self-mockery, their self-conscious recognition of how odd and peculiar they must look to the outside world, is one of the group’s most amazingly powerful traits—a cognizance that informs every decision they make about how to frame their efforts for external consumption. Their Internet Radio Station and community-produced video/film archival efforts show a subtle understanding of their complex relationship to AfroAmerica more generally. Indeed, it is complicated by the fact that they espouse a vernacularized version of the infamous “culture of poverty” argument emphasizing African American pathology. Black culture, in its American context, the culture these Hebrew Israelites left behind in the 1960s, perpetuates Black dysfunction in every way—in music, most recently instantiated by hip-hop, through religious services, family structure, anti-intellectualism and underachievement. However, there is one major wrinkle to their iteration of this “culture of poverty” critique that continues to serve as justification for their post-emigrationist endeavors: Black culture is pathological in the United States because American culture, writ large, is the apogee of cultural pathology. According to the Hebrews Israelites, this is not about Black American exceptionalism. It is a function of God’s people not making themselves exceptional, about their too-easy acceptance of destructive American perspectives. Again, this is a move similar to the kind that animates Afrocentrism: a critique of Black cultural practices/assumptions as a function of American (i.e., Western, European) “miseducation” (as Carter Woodson framed things) and assimilation. “We [Black Americans] like eating ham hocks and chitlins and whatever else they use to kill us,” Ahmadiel Ben Yehuda, a community

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minister, offered up during a late-night discussion at the group’s guest house during one of my visits in 2007. “It took us [the African Hebrews of Jerusalem] time to get where we are now, to really understand the power of divine eating,” a codified response to decidedly dysfunctional African American dietary practices.

Divine Eating Within a few days of my 2007 arrival in Dimona, I met Oriyahu, a nineteen year-old Black Hebrew Israelite who was born and raised in Israel. Oriyahu was the community’s first and only military inductee the year before, the community’s attempt to demonstrate its commitment to the Israeli state and its appreciation of a newly conferred “permanent residency” status for its members. On furlough for a portion of the summer when we met, Oriyahu sported a mandatory buzz cut, which made him the first and only Dimona member with a bald head (because he had to shave it upon entry into the Israeli military). In a version of their own Hebraic orthodoxy, saints believe that God outlaws the shaving of facial hair. However, with their new military service, the children of this close-knit and insular community will be integrated into the larger Israeli society like never before, which might potentially create problems for the group and its ability to enforce their rules, especially those about health: including that aforementioned anti-shaving regulation, a community mandate to wear all-natural clothes (military uniforms being made of both natural and synthetic fabrics), their no-salt mandate (every other day), and their strict veganism (which I will discuss a bit more in a moment). One serious question that the community must address has to do with whether or not they can even reproduce another generation of saints without being able to monitor their young adults as stringently as they have in the past. This newly instituted military service might potentially threaten social reproduction, especially when the community is predicated on a strict division between insiders and the outside world. Given such newfangled porousness between young adults and the larger Israeli community, will the Hebrew Israelites continue to be successful in the Negev desert? And make no mistake about it; the group can boast some amazing successes, especially in the area of health and nutrition. At the end of the 1990s, a team of American physicians from Vanderbilt University and Meharry Medical College traveled to Israel and tested many of the community’s senior adults for hypertension and high blood pressure, diseases known to disproportionately plague African Americans in the United States. The community’s elderly saints were

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much healthier than their American counterparts, with few incidents of the aforementioned diseases (especially when compared to the African American population in the United States). During my fieldwork stints in Israel, saints always ply me with stories about septuagenarian members who regularly, say, run in Israeli marathons or take part in other nationwide sporting events. This, they argue, is only possible because of Ben Ammi’s mandated, community-wide veganism, a lifestyle that has evolved over time since the Hebrew Israelites left Liberia.37 The group currently runs its own community-accredited “School of the Prophets,” where they train their own specialists in subjects such as statesmanship, diplomacy, history, the priesthood, preventive medicine, and nutrition. One of their locally trained health experts provides visitors and guests with lectures on the health benefits of periodic colonics (which they administer to adults several times a year) and on the early twentieth century medical research conducted by French physiologist and Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel.38 Carrel was an eccentric medical doctor who was famous for his apocryphal and tabloidized “immortal chicken heart” experiment. Starting in 1912, he claimed that he was able to keep an excised chicken’s heart cells regenerating indefinitely in his laboratory. He was believed to have kept the organ alive and growing inside plasma for over three decades. The heart only “died,” it was claimed, because an absent-minded office assistant failed to replenish the nutrients one morning—some thirty years into the experiment. Explicitly invoking Carrel as a kind of experimental forefather (a controversial figure in France as a function of his work under the Nazi regime), the Black Hebrew Israelites argue that their Ammi-decreed vegan lifestyle is the key to human cell-regenerating eternal life here on earth.39 The Black Hebrew Israelites argue that casein, a protein precipitated from milk, which serves as a basic element in cheese, is proven to be the single most important carcinogen in our diets, citing medical studies from all over the globe to bolster such claims.40 The human body is only fallible, they argue, only mortal, as a function of its divergence from God’s Edenic laws.41 But veganism can cure the incurable, beating back diseases such as cancer and diabetes.42 They conceptualize our bodies as walking corpses only insofar as they testify to our own cosmic disobedience. The community’s concerted recuperation (through revision) of the Black Southern soul food diet (as manifested in their popular chain of vegan soul food restaurants, Soul Veg) is specifically meant to address that fundamental and suicidal cultural pathology of the black community. Saints in the kingdom are so strict about their live-it (a community-wide replacement for the word “diet”),

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because they want to live forever—and right here on earth, not during some fanciful heavenly afterlife. For now, they’ll consider themselves well on their way toward that goal if their oldest members—saints in their 60s and 70s who have resided in the community for three or four decades—are able to live 125 or 150 years. Toward that end, members regulate their own live-itary choices and use their Biblically-informed normative claims to organize that network of vegan restaurants all around the world: in places such as Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Tallahassee, St. Louis, Houston, Tel Aviv, London, and Accra. The Black Hebrews’ revisionist history and counter-biology are bogeymen that exploit the kinds of fears and trepidations that plague the non-Western other, fears and trepidations that help to animate the counterdiscourse of a field such as Afrocentrism, a purposeful revaluation of the relationship between Europe and its imagined others. The unconventional theories/beliefs of figures such as Ben Ammi often allow scholars/proponents of Afrocentrism to bracket them out of serious discussions, dismissing them as odd characters with little representative value. However, I want to argue that such gestures are made at Afrocentrism’s intellectual and scholarly peril, and for reasons that rest on somewhat narrow definitions of Africanness. These dismissive moves mask the powerful links and parallels between Afrocentric thought and some of its marginalized, theme-sharing interlocutors, past and present. As historian James Landing contends, not accurately capturing the story of Black Judaism means potentially misunderstanding its nuanced historical relationship to Black mobilizations of Islam and Christianity.43 Moreover, examining how the Black Hebrew Israelites mobilize Africa as a foil and frame for their historical and biological claims demonstrates suggestive overlaps with Afrocentric presuppositions (about categorical African difference) and strategies (for reconceptualizing the African subject). Engaging such links more rigorously will only enlarge our appreciation of Afrocentrism’s claims and their impact on broader and varying social, political and cultural initiatives. It will also allow us to gain a richer sense of just how far-reaching and wide-ranging Afrocentric sensibilities have become. For instance, they might even be said to play a central role in the attempt to remap Israel as Africa while providing cosmological frameworks for ethnobiological projects of genophilic racial recuperation.

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Notes 1

See Gavriel Hagadol and Odehyah B. Israel. The Impregnable People (New York: Communicator, 1992). This invocation of “native son” is meant to invoke the Richard Wright. Native Son (New York: Harper, 1966), a novel about an African American man trapped in the suffocating grasp of a racialized urban America. Moreover, just for clarification, my version of the emigration story owes a great deal to the group’s own rendition of their journey. Ben Ammi highlights this celestial visitation as part of his own narrative, actually invoking the Angel Gabriel as his direct interlocutor in 1966. Most academic renditions of the story render the journey’s impetus in much more pragmatic, secular, and this-worldly terms. My reference to the “wilderness” is meant to invoke the Biblical tale of God’s people wandering through the wilderness. Groups such as the Nation of Islam (and many others) pick up on this same narrative of sacred nomadism. 2 For a useful anthology that offers several accounts, including one that briefly flags links between the Nubian Islamic Hebrews and Afrocentrism, see Black Zion (Chireau and Deutsch, 2000). My fieldwork among the Hebrew Israelites started while I was still a graduate student of anthropology at Columbia University in 1994. I document the beginnings of that ressearch interest in my second book (Jackson 2005). I have also conducted fieldwork stints in Israel and throughout the United States, the latter constituting most of my sustained ethnographic engagement (including interviews and participant-observation) with the community over the past ten years. I have visited members of the community in Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Atlanta over the past decade. 3 Paul Gilroy. The Black Atlantic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1993); Brent Hayes Edwards. The Practice of Diaspora (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003). 4 In some ways, Black Nationalism and/or Afrocentrism are categorically predicated on race-base suspicions and cynicism vis-à-vis whiteness, which isn’t to say that those models lack other forms of pragmatic/theoretical usefulness or intellectual validity. There are powerful critiques of non-rigorous definitions of “Afrocentrism,” see Michael Hanchard. Party/Politics: Horizons in Black Political Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 87-97, including those that would mistakenly reduce it to forms of “Egyptocentricism,” merely one subset of Afrocentric thinking, see Wilson Jeremiah Moses. Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 5 The term Afroasiatic was coined by early 20th Century ethnographer and colonialist Maurice Delafosse. The term is meant to invoke a series of related African and Middle Eastern languages/cultures. 6 Molefi Kete Asante, Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1990), 5. 7 For a discussion of “standpoint theory,” see Sandra Harding. The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies (New York: Routledge, 2003).

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8

Asante, Kemet Afrocentricity and Knowledge, 12. Asante, Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge, 90. 10 Asante, Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge, 88. 11 There is a productive tension between Asante’s commitments to situated knowledge and his unpacking of an African case/place that can also traffic in seemingly ethereal and universalist concepts of transcendent and sui generis spiritualities. 12 Quoted in Sherman Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005a), 109. 13 Ibid. 14 As one of this piece’s reviewers emphasizes, Asante’s hostility to Islam is a function of his attempt to distinguish Afrocentrism’s political and national project from the revisionist efforts of African American groups such as the Nation of Islam. For a systematic examination of Judaism across the African continent, see Edith Bruder, The Black Jews of Africa History, Religion, Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). For particular treatments of the Lemba (as an example of the further geneticization of Judaic claims), see Tudor Parfitt, Journey to the Vanished City (New York: Vintage, 2000) and Noah Tamarkin, “Religion as Race, Recognition as Democracy: Lemba ‘Black Jews’ in South Africa” In The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, September 2011, 637, 6-16. 15 For example, see Paul Berman. Blacks and Jews: Thirty Years of Alliance (New York: Delacorte, 1994) and Eric J. Sundquist, Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009). 16 See Wilson Jeremiah Moses. Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Melville Herskovits. The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon Press, [1941]1990). 17 For a discussions about links to freemasonry, see Moses, Afrotopia and William Grimshaw. Official History of Freemasonry Among the Colored People of North America (New York: Broadway Publishing, 1903). Also, forthcoming, Jacob Dorman, Chosen People: African Americans and the Rise of Black Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). (Also, Walter Isaac provides a powerful (and as yet unpublished) critique of what he calls “ontological Jewishness,” a critique that challenges all discussions of “Black Judaism” that pivot on proving or disproving claims to authenticity. 18 See the work of Agamben on “bare life” for a discussion of such forms of merely/barely existing. 19 Several books chronicle this history, including the work of Israel Gerber, Hagadol and Israel, and James Landing. 20 See the work of Gerber and Akpan for more on this. 21 According to Israel Gerber, the group’s decision to leave Liberia for Israel was much more of a practical and calculated response to the empirical failures of their tenure in Liberia. The community maintains that they actually always intended their sojourn in Liberia to be temporary, a quick stop on the way to Israel. The 9

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King speech just reminded them of that fact. Most historians of the group seem to argue that talk of Israel only began once life in Liberia proved untenable. 22 Colin Grant’s recent book on Garvey is particularly informative of the icons political career. 23 See Markowitz and Stefansson, 2004. There are many subtle implications of Hebrews Israelites’ conceptions of political difference, some of this is treated in the article on “Soul Citizenship” by Markowitz, Helman, and Shir-Vertesh. 24 Anthropologists are engaged in quite ambitious re-articulations of a transatlantic narrative of black racial re-imagining, I’m think of the work of scholars such as Lorand Matory, Deborah Thomas and Kamari Clarke, including the edited volume compiled by Thomas and Clarke. 25 There are twelve princes and many more ministers who run the ministries (of transportation, education, information, etc.). The third level of leadership is the “Crowned Brothers and Sisters,” and many of the crowned sisters are responsible for major aspects of the community’s development and public image. Fran Markowitz describes these level of political leadership throughout her work. 26 Having only “temporary visas” (if particular members had visas at all) meant that Black Hebrew Israelites couldn’t work legally in Israel. Therefore, they often worked off the books. For instance, they would go out and secretly build homes for nomadic African Bedouin forced into sedentary living by a census-taking and taxcollecting Israeli state. The men would sometimes get rounded up and deported while they were out on such jobs. 27 I discuss this in John L. Jackson, Jr. Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 28 For a discussion of these earlier examples, see James Landing, Black Judaism. 29 According to some Black Hebrew Israelite communities, Esau’s offspring (the Edomites) are currently passing themselves off as Israelites (descendants of Esau’s brother, Jacob). Moreover, it is important to remember that both Esau and Jacob, Edomites and Israelites, are considered Hebrews, which is why the designation “Israelite” is an important specification. 30 This actually performs the same move that Sherman Jackson attributes to Asante’s Afrocentrism vis-à-vis seemingly foreign religions, only in reverse. 31 The work of Campbell and Moses are good examples of this. 32 Of course, a different scale of embodiment, from the “biopolitical” to what Paul Gilroy and others label the “nanopolitical,” has always served as one of the most foundational justifications for claims of Jewish/Hebrew authenticity. That includes genetic research on the Y-chromosomes of the Lemba peoples from Southern Africa as well as more recent (and popularized) deployments of genetics as the final adjudicator of all Jewish belonging, see Entine and Thomas et al. for more on this. . 33 The group has a complicated racial logic. They are both post-racial (as evinced in what a colleague of mine, Charlie Piot, has called their Pentecostelization of belonging, which I have already described above) and decidedly not post-racial at all—African Bedouins’ epidermal blackness is a point of identification even as they move to a more all-inclusive and race-neutral definition of Israelite identity

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that allows for the idea that ancient tribes were dispersed to the south (i.e., the rest of Africa) and the north (Europe) after the destruction of the Temple in 70AD. 34 It is also important to note that the Hebrew Israelites in Dimona read the Transatlantic Slave Trade as a fulfillment of divine prophesy and Yah’s justified response for ancient Israelites breaking their covenant with Him. In some ways, this reading reduces Europeans to pawns in a larger Providential game, which might be read as either letting European colonialism off the hook or, alternatively, humbling the world-historical hubris of European imperialists/expansionists and their sense of cultural might. 35 The community always makes a distinction between the mostly cool treatment that they believe they have historically received from the Israeli government and the warm acceptance that they say characterizes the response of Israeli residents themselves. 36 You don’t have to be an anthropologist to argue that there is no such thing as a “natural death,” at least not for critics interested in discovering what we “do” with the dead—how we embalm them for ritualized resurrection. Death has obviously inescapable cultural trappings, as James Green and many others have pointed out. For instance, there are also the arguments that Black Hebrew Israelites in Israel deployed in the 1980s, arguments about their racialized marginalization and “social death” (Patterson 1985) as evidenced in the group’s vocal claims that the Israeli state would not even provide them with a proper cemetery in which to bury their dead. Instead, and quite infamously, they were said to dispose of those bodies in a nearby toxic waste dump. And this was one of the tragedies, some members say, that finally compelled (really shamed) state institutions into helping them, forcing a ratcheting up of assistance from Israel and the United States: members of the Congressional Black Caucus were supposedly moved by such narratives, and, on the Israeli side, the Black Hebrews laud a friendly Sephardic mayor willing to assist them on such matters in ways that Ashkenazi elected officials supposedly never had before. 37 Ben Ammi has written extensively about this. As have Hagadol and Israel. The Nation of Islam’s Black Nationalist advocacy of healthy eating is in direct conversation with the Black Hebrew Israelites’ interventions on this score. Elijah Muhammad and Ben Ammi share several dietary mandates. 38 The work of Reggiani and Friedman are quite valuable here. 39 The Black Hebrews do not call their eating habits a “diet” at all. A diet is for people who eat to die by eating meat and meat byproducts. They call what their eating practices a “live-it,” reminiscent of how other groups in the Black Nationalist tradition use words to literalize their critiques. I am specifically thinking about groups such as the Rastafarians and their attempts to rename, say, “understanding” “overstanding” as a way to linguistically mark their reconceptualization of social life. 40 The community does a careful job collecting tons of books that lay out similar arguments to their vegan theories, even if few others think specifically in terms of potential immortality. Campbell and Campbell’s The China Study is but one example.

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The work of Griffith is noteworthy here. As is Madden and Finch. There is, of course, a larger movement of veganism as a kind of miracle cure and corrective for conventional dietary habits, see Campbell and Campbell 2005; Trudeau 2004; Griffith 2004). The latter reference provides details about Christian commitments to disciplining the human body. 43 See the work of Marla Frederick and Deborah Thomas, among many others. 42

CHAPTER THIRTEEN KINCAID, DIASPORA AND COLONIAL STUDIES MARLA BRETTSCHNEIDER

“…who are these people…who forced me to think that the world I knew was incomplete, or without substance, or did not measure up because it was not England; that I was incomplete, or without substance, and did not measure up because I was not English.” “There they were, the white cliffs, but they were not that pearly majestic thing I used to sing about, that thing that created such a feeling in these people that when they died in the place where I lived they had themselves buried facing a direction that would allow them to see the white cliffs of Dover when they were resurrected.”1

Jewish engagement with the growing field of diaspora studies is a rich site for multi-layered examinations of politics, the movement of peoples in history, and core matters of justice. This work is based in a study of African heritage Jews in the Americas and takes a theoretical approach to how we might make better sense of somewhat balkanized fields of diaspora studies in order to place Jewish experiences globally in new ways. While Post-Colonial Studies is a crucial aspect of Diaspora Studies and required in examinations in African and Latin American Diaspora Studies, Jewish work is not adequately integrated into these overlapping fields. Afro-Caribbean writer Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson in 1949 in Antigua—a Caribbean island colonized by the British. Kincaid is a prolific writer, representing a quintessential Caribbean woman’s voice. Her work stands out in any study of Africana, Caribbean and African American, and African Diaspora literature. The central themes in her work have been the ravages of colonialism and imperialism, migration and diaspora, exile and loss. Kincaid is also Jewish, and these are likewise perennial Jewish themes. However, among the extensive

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literature on Kincaid there is a marked absence of attention to the fact that she is Jewish or to matters of Jewish interest. Bringing a Jewish lens to the study of Kincaid’s work and including Kincaid among those of significant import to study in a Jewish context will enrich and expand the scope of both fields. Yet, we immediately reach an impasse when we begin to analyse the contribution of Kincaid’s work to Jewish life, as well as the ways that using a Jewish lens deepens the larger impact of her work. Including new parts of the community into Jewish studies will require transforming the frameworks and central categories of inquest in the field. For example, analysis of Kincaid’s work necessitates taking colonialism seriously, an endeavor not fully undertaken in most Jewish studies paradigms. Grounded in a study of Kincaid’s full body of work, this paper focuses on her essay “On Seeing England for the First Time” as a primary example of the dexterity of Kincaid’s relentless critique of colonialism. In Kincaid’s work, and particularly the text studied in this paper, there are traces of interwoven experiences of this woman’s Jewish feminist sensibility and her situation as a survivor of colonial subjugation. Kincaid’s work tends to name a focus on colonialism, not directly on a diasporic condition. In fact, in 1989 Kincaid reflected “I didn’t have the luxury of longing to be a displaced person…”suggesting a difference in her thinking between the experiences of colonial and diasporic living.2 Being displaced, in a clear and embodied exile of the diasporic, seems to her an experience that might give clarity to the tumultuous feelings, the confusions involved in the difficulty of making sense of her life as a colonial subject in such a way that can enable proper subjecthood. According to Kincaid, the cultural imperialism involved in the colonial project robbed her of her capacity for independent sense making, a faculty she considers necessary to the development of agency that might facilitate more productive resistance strategies than the ones she recounts in her novels (important as they are). Kincaid’s experience as an immigrant to the United States who converted to Judaism as an adult broadens the study of African Heritage Jews in the United States offered in the other chapters of this book, for example by Dorman, Fernheimer, and Jackson. While the focus on the colonial experience serves as the “text” in this text, there is also a “subtext” of the diasporic. Kincaid’s critique of colonialism often hints at parallel facets of diasporic phenomena, particularly Jewish ones. For example, in the second opening quote above, Kincaid notes acerbically the well of feeling which the white cliffs of Dover aroused in her British colonizers, and their ritualistic turning to face that direction. For millennia, it has been a common Jewish practice,

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particularly of the diaspora, to say prayers in the direction of Jerusalem, a mytho-cultural-religious Jewish center. Kincaid does not offer an explicit Jewish parallel in her text. It is my argument here, though, that bringing a Jewish orientation to a study of Kincaid’s political thinking exposes aspects of her work undetected when the Jewish lens is absent. Further, studying Kincaid in a Jewish context creates opportunities to broaden and deepen Jewish political thinking in ways this volume attempts in other sections. While Jewish political thinking has long focused on the realities and concept of diaspora, rarely has such thinking brought into the frame insights from a critique of colonialism. The lack of a critical awareness of colonialism is a gap in Jewish discourse contributing to a kind of nearsightedness, a less than full ability to recognize broader contexts of power in Jewish diasporic trajectories. Diasporas are almost always created out of circumstances similar to, and often the same as, what are more commonly understood as colonial. As in other areas where post-colonial and diaspora theorizing are more closely joined projects, introducing a critique of colonialism can contribute to Jewish diaspora theorizing. The term diaspora is connected inherently to both Jewish and colonial phenomena. The word diaspora was originally used in Greek to reflect the experience of colonizers in an imperial victory. Only after the creation of the Jewish diasporas of antiquity did the term become used to reflect the experience of the subjects of inquisition. A study of Jamaica Kincaid’s work proves a fertile beginning for work bringing together anti-colonial critique and diaspora studies in a Jewish frame given her situation at the nexus of multiple layers of colonial and diasporic dynamics as well as the intense and complex nature of her capacity for insight into, and analysis of, these dynamics.

Methodological Notes “In Bath, I drank tea in a room I had read about in a novel written in the eighteenth century. In this very same room, young women wearing those dresses that rustled and so on danced and flirted and sometimes disgraced themselves with young men, soldiers, sailors, who were on their way to Bristol or someplace like that, so many places like that where so many adventures, the outcome of which was not good for me, began. Bristol, England.”3

Kincaid’s method resonates with modes of resistance central to Jewish historical consciousness. Like the midwives of Exodus, who defy the Egyptian Pharaoh’s decree to kill Jewish newborn males, Kincaid’s mode

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is to stand up to the mightiest power source of her experience. Kincaid’s method inspires and instructs us in how to speak truth to power. Kincaid’s methodology as a writer is, and enacts, a politics. Key to Kincaid’s method is to start with power dynamics. Her method then calls into question the position of the dominant and attends to the view of the less powerful. In creating the very frame from the view of the dominated and speaking from this position she makes those at the margins, their experiences and knowledges, primordial—of the first order.4 Kincaid’s method teaches us to turn history on its head for a new view, one better equipped to answer to questions of justice. For example, in her essay “On Seeing England…,” Kincaid writes that the stories of glory taught in her colonial education “never end well” for her, the colonial subject. The histories of empire come at the expense of her and her history. Demonstrating how her method derives from and enacts a politics, Kincaid tells the stories of the people who make the canonical tales and realities possible: the laborers. Kincaid not only turns the unseen into the seen, but into the subjects of the story. In doing so she re-orients the reader from the victors to the spoils of history so that we might be able to undertake a reckoning. This is part of the process of holding those responsible for the “spoiling” accountable for their position in historic events of subjugation. For example, Kincaid tells of a ride in the English countryside with a white British friend, a sympathetic friend with whom she has traveled to England. They notice the endless hedges Kincaid has long read about in the fiction taught in her British colonial education. The friend comments on how the owner of one set of such plantings has been complaining about the upkeep of the hedges as if the owner is the subject of a look at the hedges. For Kincaid, however, it is the labourers—who have toiled to plant and keep up the hedges over so many years—who are the proper subject for rumination.5 As Jews, many times “the conquered,” and as a people so long of the diaspora, we have had to develop our own histories. We could not accept the versions of the story told by the conquerors. We are called to, choose to, revitalise a plentitude of texts and lore which de-stabilise the frame which the powerful intend to bequeath to history. We have similar opportunities as Jews to employ Kincaid’s method, building together a future in terms of the power dynamics, within our own communities. We can learn from Kincaid that as those of the African diaspora, as women, queers, am ha’aretz we have a claim to this legacy and also a keen awareness that the claim in our case has been unfulfilled. We are taught that all stood together at Sinai and yet, as many pieces in this volume

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demonstrate, so many within Jewish communities, globally and locally, are marginalized. 6 Utilizing Kincaid’s methods we can see that, unlike the disenfranchisement of the colonized, which always ends in a dead end for the subject, the marginalized within Jewish communities can reference this supposed inheritance as a basis for a claim. It is crucial to employ this method in our use of Kincaid’s work on colonial textual power to highlight aspects of diasporic difference and guide a feminist vision of politics.

Text in Colonial and Diasporic Cultures “The naming of the kings, their deeds, their disappointments—was the vivid view, the forceful view. There were other views, subtler ones, softer, almost not there - but these were the ones that made the most lasting impression on me, these were the ones that made me really feel like nothing. ‘When morning touched the sky’ was one phrase, for no morning touched the sky where I lived…The world was theirs, not mine; everything told me so. ” 7

Text in Colonial and Diasporic Cultures Colonial Cultures • British Literature • British Histories • Texts of Colonial Education

“THEIRS”

Diasporic Cultures (Jewish) •Bible •Other Jewish Authoritative Texts

“OURS”

Broadly, “texts” serve a number of similar functions in the postcolonial critique developed in Kincaid’s body of work and for many in diaspora, Jewish and otherwise. While different texts are primary to different Jewish communities, there are central texts for most Jews in diaspora. While there might be no text quite as central to colonial life as

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something like the Jewish bible (known to different Jewish communities over time in different ways), in Kincaid’s rendering, there certainly are central texts of colonial education, both “vivid” and “subtle.” 8 The texts of Kincaid’s colonial education forced into her view specific knowledges, vividly portrayed, of the lives of British Kings, “their deeds, their disappointments.” Even more destructive than the hard facts in the texts, Kincaid writes, were the subtleties of imagery in the texts. Texts functioned here as part of the political context of colonial circumstance. Central to the strategies of her subjugation was that in the truth texts of her British colonial education the facts of imagery and metaphor did not correspond to her lived reality. This practice negated her lived imaginary and its meanings. They undid her personhood. In the diaspora case the relations might be said to be reversed. I might not know first hand the beauty and import of imagery of the morning dew in the Jewish bible, for example, but many Jews in the diaspora keep these images alive culturally. They also are not our lived experience in exile/the place of living that is not the “home place.” Still, we might delight in coming to understand what the images mean, sometimes precisely because they are not obvious to us in diaspora. And then perhaps we make new metaphors with these images, a process of making our lives meaningful, of making connections for us in our time across time and across where ever our people have (been) scattered. To varying degrees we in diaspora are taught the original language of “our” texts, familiarity with them generally, their images and stories, our history. And it is in large part through our relationship (however fraught, mobile, or reconstructed) to the people, language, imagery, and history of these texts that we remain and grow as a people, richly diverse. Often it is in relation to our texts, in our grappling with them, that we find spaces of agency as communities in exile wherein we can mark our exiles and struggle to create collective lives of dignity in diaspora. Perhaps intended to be beautiful, the ways in which the colonial texts are out of step with the actual lives of the subjects in a colonial context serve to create and perpetuate the power dynamic wherein, as Kincaid writes, “the world was theirs, not mine.” Kincaid’s writing on the colonial experience can help bring into relief the function of text for at least Jewish diasporic life via contrasting the power relationships inherent within each. Thus, let us use this particular text of Kincaid’s to engage a comparison of multilayered colonial and diasporic experience.

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The Home Place as Truth “When my teacher had pinned this map up on the blackboard, she said, ‘This is England’—and she said it with authority, seriousness, and adoration, and we all sat up. It was as if she had said, ‘This is Jerusalem, the place you will go to when you die but only if you have been good.’ We understood then…that England was to be our source of myth and the source from which we got our sense of reality, our sense of what was meaningful.”9

The Home Place as Truth Colonial Subjects

Diaspora Subjects

Home = “Here”

Home = “Over There”

(Place of Living)

“Over There”

“Here”

Truth Good Beauty History

(Place of Living) Exile Oppression False Truths

“Here”

“Over There”

Oppression Unworthy

Redemption Meaning

Through the project of colonial education, England becomes the source of all sanctioned reality and myth. It is interesting for this Jewishly inflected study that in order to disprove the “truth” of England, Kincaid juxtaposes England with Jerusalem. The Jerusalem reference gives her access to a critique and an authority to note that the truths of England are false truths. Here Kincaid’s work veers into a central lane of Jewish diasporic history, referencing Jerusalem as a home place, as a grounding for the creation of Jewish meaning making over millennia. With her acute attention to power and the dynamics of domination, Kincaid’s work also highlights distinctions between colonial and diasporic phenomena. There is a fundamental difference between the distance and alienation of those colonized in their homelands and those sent into diaspora. Those still at home, but subjects of colonial rule, develop a sensibility of “over there” as do those in diaspora. But for the colonized, the place “over there” is not theirs, it is the colonizers’. It is a place from which the

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colonized will be permanently alienated but are taught its truths nonetheless. The very creation of the place “over there” comes at their expense, is made possible by their colonization and its truths are developed in part through the negation of their truths. Despite the experience, knowledges, and values historically of the colonized, the colonizers’ view of what is true, meaningful, and important are presented as real—inculcated as the myths, dreams, and aspirations worthy of being considered authentic. While stated starkly for the purposes of this essay, this relationship of home place/over there—falsehoods/truth stands in stark contrast to common traditions of those in diaspora. For those in diaspora, the home place may be “over there.” Thus, similar to the colonial experience, “truths,” stories and myths, are generated from (or re-created over time in relationship to) a life elsewhere. Diasporic existence is one where there is a dominant truth in the place of living but it is overridden by, or explicitly in tension with, truths of the “over there.” The power dynamics within the colonial and diasporic are inverted. However settled communities might be, in diasporic mythology, the place of living is not the common home place. The “over there” is the home. Shown in this volume among African and African heritage peoples as well Western, Eastern, and Middle Eastern Jewish cultures, even after millennia in diaspora, and significant attempts to ground new Jewish cultures in diasporic spaces, there remains for many Jews a connection to an “over there” as home—stronger certainly for some than for others, but central still to Jewish thinking generally. One does not need to espouse a Zionist agenda to acknowledge the significance of an historically situated home place “over there.” For many in the diaspora, in contrast to the relationships in the colonial dynamic, the knowledges of the place of living are challenged as exploitative. As an ethic in itself, as a survival strategy, as a mundane feature of living amongst the peoples of the world, many in diaspora form deep allegiances and alliances over time with others in the place of living, particularly those also marginalized. At the same time, part of the goals of peoplehood in diaspora are to keep in tact and grow the many facets of “truths” from (and created in exchange with those from) afar. The work of firming up and building on the knowledges from over there, working creatively to apply them in innovative ways “here,” is the work of justice, or working against the injustice of the exile. In direct contrast to the colonial experience, working in these truths from afar often sets one against the truths that oppressors attempt to teach in the diasporic place of

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living. Finding ways to resist the universalization of the truths of here and to learn and adapt the truths from the home place is liberation work.

Awe and the Home Place “I did not know then that the statement, ‘Draw a map of England’ was something far worse than a declaration of war...there was no need for war—I had long ago been conquered. I did not know then that this statement was part of a process that would result in my erasure…I did not know then that this statement was meant to make me feel in awe and small…: awe at its existence, small because I was not from it.” 10

Hearing the whisper of a diasporic trope in examining the role of colonialism, awe, and the home place is important to understanding the multivocality of Kincaid’s work. Kincaid’s accessing the concept of awe is spoken in the colonial frame amidst softer diasporic murmurings—like the sounds of the many voices during the standing “silent” prayer in a Jewish service. Awe has the potential to manifest in varied ways, with significant political differentials. Knowledge of the home place of diaspora is intended to create a certain kind of relationship: to ennoble, to enlarge the spirit of, those still connected. In the colonial frame, the home place serves a different function, is meant to make Kincaid invisible, “erase” her very being through feeling small and in awe. After the first generation, those in diaspora may be said to no longer formally be “from” the home place-but in such a way that breaks the people, that succumbs to the violence of the diasporic circumstance. Within diasporic cultures we insist on naming ourselves, a kind of being from the other place, in this case the home place, as an aspect of our seeking life, a life together to determine our cultures and futures. The activities of maintaining that we are (however much still so) “from” over there is an aspect of our freedom work. In a diasporic context, Kincaid likely answers a question she undoubtedly receives often “where are you from” with reference to Antigua, the Caribbean. In the colonial context, this question is a nonissue. She is the one from “here”—the conquered. But Kincaid’s experience demonstrates that contexts and political demands shift, in this case from the complex colonial to the multilayered diasporic. In the shifting locales of home place, from the place of living to “over there,” ones people’s situation as a small and a large group also often shift. In this, power relationships shift as well. In response to my (Ashkenazi) “foreignness,” in the United States I am often also asked where I am from. “From New York,” I say, repeatedly to

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the repetition of the query when my response, “New York,” does not seem to satisfy. The answer the “American” is looking for from me with the question, “but where are you from?” can only be answered with the phrase: “I am Jewish.” Differences amongst Jews are significant. Unlike Kincaid, it does not answer their questioning of my “foreignness” to say that I am from Eastern Europe, the actual place from which my grandparents immigrated. I cannot say, “from Jerusalem,” as a concrete location on the globe to answer the question. I intone “Jewish” to connote the ancestral homeland that makes my minority ethnicity in the United States stand out as geographically—and otherwise—foreign. But Kincaid lives at the crossroads of numerous “other places” differently than I do. As the diasporic and neo-colonial context has race reconfigure diverse peoplehood, the “American” does not imagine that Kincaid could answer “Jewish” as well. Kincaid knows the unspoken intent of the inquisition. While we both might be called to account for our accents and other foreign/minority markers, she is being called first to account for the specific color of her skin. A justification for oppression of colonial subjects is oft explained in that they are inferior for not being from “there”ʊthe colonial home country. On the contrary, those in diaspora are often the target of discrimination in the places they live precisely because they are considered not from “here.” Within diasporic cultures the active work of “not being from” the places in which we are living is part of the project of resisting the genocidal, assimilative tendencies of diaspora. The question as to whether we can remain a people in diaspora, whether life in the diaspora will not require genocidal processes, is central in diaspora studies as it is certainly in Jewish life and thought. A significant link to Jewish experience with text and diasporic life is embedded in this aspect of Kincaid’s critique of colonialism. Out of her colonial experience, Kincaid links the notion of “smallness” to “awe” in the context of power. These are not unrelated in Jewish, particularly diasporic, thinking either. The concept of “awe,” for example, is central to Jewish religious experience. Kincaid’s citation of feeling small in this context is clearly an aspect of oppression, meant to suppress the spirit. In the colonial situation, Kincaid is of the majority numerically, but of the disenfranchised in terms of power. In the diaspora she may be, equally if differently, disenfranchised but a numerical minority. Diasporic sensibility demonstrates that one may be among the “small” numerically, but a power comes from attachment to ones people, a larger group, that works differently for disempowered majorities under colonial rule. Similarly with her use of the word awe, when placed in the context of Jewish

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reference to what is “true” or sacred, feeling small is often noted and is usually positively valenced. In the different power context this same “feeling small” is to feel appropriately humble or part of something larger than oneself. This opens the opportunity for hope and connection.

Forgetting/Not learning the Lesson “I did not know much of anything then — certainly not what a blessing it was that I was unable to draw a map of England correctly.” “The reality of my life was conquests, subjugation, humiliation, enforced amnesia. I was forced to forget.” 11

Under the colonial view not learning the ruler’s version of the truth makes one less worthy and becomes part of the justification for oppression. In a resistive move, Kincaid inverts the colonial view, noting that it was a blessing that she never learned to draw the map of England properly. Despite Audre Lorde’s extraordinary critique, historically some have been able to learn the masters’ tools to bring down the masters’ house.12 The double edged sword of using the masters’ tools is crucial to acknowledge in the many ways that learning the masters’ lessons often requires unlearning ones own peoples’ ways. The colonized often must work to “forget” the lessons they have learned from the colonizers as part of the work in expunging colonial rulers, to take back or create anew their capacities for self-determination in the home place. Thinkers such as Du Bois discuss the need for conquered subjects to develop a double consciousness—one in which they learn the ways of the masters in order to survive in the masters’ world, yet also one of their own people to protect and build spaces of freedom as a conquered population.13 Here, Kincaid notes the nearly holy good fortune—the blessing—of never having learned the colonial texts, the truths, accurately. Resisting learning the colonizers’ truths, from over there, imposed upon us over “here” provides opportunities to see through the modalities in which colonizers conquer. Never really learning the lessons of ones history and culture from within the location of the colonized place of “here” is a lossespecially if due to violence, both physical and that of cultural imperialism. Not learning the colonial cultural touchstones can enable access to our not colonized texts, meaning the varied truths of the here, the home place under colonial rule, in order to resist modalities of our conquest. Often those in diaspora face similar challenges. Developing cultural fluency in ones history, texts, languages is fraught with tensions under the

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pressure to learn and function in the cultural frame of the dominant in the place of living. Syncretism, the influence of new cultures into ones own, can often enliven ones culture—even if ones own is the subject culture from the United States to African nations. How much and in what ways is it best to learn the modes of the place of living, in order to function, survive, learn the rules of the hegemonic game in order to lessen oppression, to inspire new depths in a diaspora community’s culture? As in Kincaid’s relief when she realized that she had not learned certain lessons, how do we determine what is best not to learn, what and how to unlearn aspects of hegemonic culture in the place of living for those in diaspora? For those in diaspora, the politics of forgetting are equally complex. There may well be many aspects of one’s home culture worthy of letting go to history. How can we let go with agency when the oppressive context of our lives in diaspora requires forgetting? It is a matter of distillation. How do we come to clarity about what might be best to forget among the truths learned/forced upon us in diaspora, especially when we have been schooled to think that adherence to such truths are crucial to our very survival among the hosts of our exile? When done in empowering ways, the process itself is indeed a blessing. Kincaid reminds those of us in diaspora, as well as those colonized, that the fruits of the labour, then, can be blessings as well.

History “I knew the names of all the kings of England…their disappointments, their triumphs…It wasn’t as bad as I make it sound now; it was worse. I did like so much hearing again and again [about] Alfred the Great…I loved King Alfred. My grandfather was named after him; his son, my uncle, was named after King Alfred; my brother is named after King Alfred. And so there are three people in my family named after a man they have never met, a man who died over ten centuries ago.” 14

In this text Kincaid recalls that she loved the King Alfred she learned of in history. This love was inculcated also through her family’s acceptance of the valuations of British history, to such an extent that three men in her family are named after this Alfred. However, this love and this naming are cast clearly as factors of oppression and othering. Kincaid brings this aspect of her upbringing under scrutiny in order to demonstrate a colonial process of distorting and warping history. The colonizers’ historical project includes the erasure of the subjects’ history.

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Shifting the prism to the diasporic, if Kincaid had a tie to early Carib figures, African stories or biblical characters, they too would be people she “didn’t know” in a technical sense. However, in contrast to the stories of the colonizers’, she would “know” them in a different sense. In knowing these iconic personages, instead of intentionally severed, as a diaspora subject she can be connected and brought into connection. In naming generations in exile and the names alive in our cultural stories we bring ourselves and each other into history. In the colonized frame of Kincaid’s essay, the grandiosity of history serves to estrange and disempower. In her critical capacity, acknowledging how long ago the Kings she was forced to learn about lived, represents their irrelevancy to her life. Though, legends of African, Jewish, and African Jewish history teach of figures who died even longer ago. For Jews and many in diaspora the historical timeline of so many centuries told in our tales is a grounding factor, not an explicitly alienating one. In the African, Jewish, and African Jewish contexts, to count oneself amongst peoples with millennia of lineage conveys a dignity, a gift, and exaltation for individuals otherwise facing a potentially daily crushing of the human spirit in the commonplace violence too often an endemic feature of exilic living. In the colonial instance, the projects of teaching history pervert peoples’ capacities to live and love in right relation. Kincaid points out the dynamic of oppressive hierarchical relations between colonized and colonizers. Set in history this way the relationship can be nothing but abusive. She is also clear that living in this violent historical context contorts the potential for relationships of equality horizontally, among the colonized as well. People in diaspora often know this dynamic too. It is certainly challenging to learn to love, honor, and treat each other with dignity when the context of our circumstances situates diasporic subjects as foundationally abject.

Text and Imagery of Place: Connection and Subjugation in Colonial and Diasporic Contexts “I went to Bath…The landscape was almost as familiar as my own hand, but I had never been in this place before, so how could that be again?...It was all those years of reading, starting with Roman Britain. Why did I have to know about Roman Britain? It was of no real use to me, a person living on a hot, drought-ridden island, and it is of no use to me now.”15

The descriptive aspects of English literature that Kincaid would never know as her own reality functioned as components of her oppression. The architecture of imagery of place in the colonial texts of her experience is

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the scaffolding of her “Othering,” of her distance from the colonial real, meaning England and the English. In the colonial sense Kincaid can never make a claim. The colonizers’ imagery will always and only mark her status as never measuring up, as conquered. In discussing imagery and connection in the diasporic context, the contrast with the colonial experience can be stark. For diaspora communities, we are intended to own the textual imagery as ours, despite its differences from the place of living. Or we lament our distance from the textual imagery and then develop methods of survival so that the differences between text and diasporic living effect not only disaffection, but inspire the longing to connect. While those in diaspora are often relegated to the margins of cultural production and meaning in the place of living, our feelings of alienation are also from what we claim as our own, not only from what relates to the conquerors. But having our own texts in exile enables possibilities of collective autonomous self making even while within an “other” dominant culture. Kincaid’s conjuring the familiar that is out of place—that everything is familiar in Bath but she has never been there—is a mark of her position as a colonial subject. While truth making strategies can often be confused— usually for specific political ends—with truths themselves, a difference from Kincaid’s rendering can be signified in stories told by some Jews who go to modern Israel, for example, and see things they have only known in stories, and comment on feeling connection. In the diasporic context, the familiarity with the place “over there”—that from which we have been exiled—allows for a claim, a groundedness, connection. This familiarity with a place that is different from the place of living is a mode of truth making. While methods of truth making can also serve imperial designs, often in diasporic cases the capacity for truth making via grappling with text, and the ways that our texts may appear “foreign” to our circumstances in diaspora, is also a core method of establishing sanity through recourse to not completely conquered versions of reality. Kincaid’s scathing text placing the sources of colonial oppression in (as the title names): “On Seeing England for the First Time” highlights interesting and distinct facets of power and resistance strategies for the colonized and those in diaspora. But many of us, such as Kincaid, are multiply situated: in diaspora and colonized. From Kincaid’s position in the nexus of colonized and member of the African, Caribbean, and Jewish diasporas, we can see her incompleteness as a British subject is both an aspect of colonial rule, oppressive, and that such incompleteness is also a call to connection, revolution. In this analysis of Kincaid’s case, we can

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see that she brings together these many knowledges in identifying alienation as a call to justice and social transformation. Kincaid’s critique offered in her text “On Seeing England for the First Time” is itself a political act. The methods employed in her writing serve as a politics themselves. In these processes, Kincaid brings together many of the differences of colonial and diasporic conditions. Kincaid’s critique of the roles of text in the form of subjugation that is colonialism unexpectedly also highlights aspects of note for the political roles of text for those in exile.

Notes 1

All section-head quotes are from Jamaica Kincaid, “On Seeing England for the First Time,” Transitions No. 51 (1991): 32-40. 2 Selwyn R. Cudjoe, “Jamaica Kincaid and the Modernist Project: An Interview,” Callaloo No. 39 (1989): 396-411. 3 Kincaid, “On Seeing England for the First Time,” 39. 4 See Marla Brettschneider, Democratic Theorizing From the Margins (Temple University Press, 2002). 5 “And the countryside did have all those hedges and hedges, fields hedged in. I was marveling at all the toil of it, the planting of the hedges to begin with and then the care of it, all that clipping, year after year of clipping, and I wondered at the lives of the people who would have to do this, because wherever I see and feel the hands that hold up the world, I see and feel myself and all the people who look like me,” Jamaica Kincaid. “On Seeing England for the First Time,” Transitions No. 51 (1991): 32-40 (Indiana University Press on behalf of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute), 373. 6 See Judith Plaskow, Standing Together at Sinai: Judaism From a Feminist Perspective (New York, NY: Harper San Francisco, 1991) for a critical reckoning of this concept; “African and African Heritage Jews: Western Academic Perspective,” Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility March (2011): 16-17. 7 Kincaid, “On Seeing England for the First Time,” 34-35. 8 Of note: the text known to many Jews as “the Bible” is also not necessarily known in the same form to Jewish communities across the globe or specifically to Jews in Africa and the African Diaspora. 9 Kincaid, “On Seeing England for the First Time,” 32. 10 Ibid., 34. 11 Ibid., 34, 36. 12 Audre Lorde, Sister/Outsider (Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1984). An alternative view is offered by Eboo Patel, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation (Boston: MA Beacon Press. 2007), 78. 13 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1961). 14 Ibid., 34. 15 Ibid., 39.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN JEWISH IDENTITY AMONG THE BENE EPHRAIM OF INDIA YULIA EGOROVA

At the end of the 1960s, a group of African Americans left Chicago eventually to settle in the State of Israel. They claimed to be Hebrews or Israelites, and they performed Old Testament rituals. They sought Israeli citizenship, yet they refused either to be called Jews, or to embrace “mainstream” Judaism.1 This group, whose members became to be known as Hebrew Israelites or Black Hebrews, was formed from Black Hebraic groups in Chicago at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Hebrew Israelites turned to the Old Testament in search of their origin and found in it a more promising option for identity and political affiliations than fighting for civil rights and an improvement of material conditions in “white America”, where they faced discrimination, police brutality, and had to negotiate traumatic collective memories.2 In doing so they employed the narrative of the Jewish diaspora to redefine their kinship in the history of humanity.3 At the same time, they explicitly dissociated themselves from “mainstream Jews”, claiming to be the original Hebrew Israelite Nation.4 At the end of the 1980s, a new Israelite group emerged in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh (India), which was led by a former Christian minister Shmuel Yacobi, who declared that his community of Madiga untouchables was of Hebrew descent. Yacobi stated in his early writings and interviews that all Madiga and possibly all Indian Dalits were of Israelite origin, however, they were relegated to the position of untouchables in ancient times as a punishment for having rebelled against the caste system. In 1991 the community established a synagogue in the village of Kothareddypalem of coastal Andhra, adopted a number of Jewish practices, and started a campaign to make aliyah to the State of Israel. However, like the leader of Hebrew Israelites Ben Ammi, Shmuel Yacobi refused to call his group Jewish. Instead, he named it the Bene

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Ephraim to call attention to their descent from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Like the Hebrew Israelites, Yacobi thus tried to challenge recognized notions of Jewishness by dissociating his community from the rest of the Jewish world, while at the same time advocating emigration to Israel as a way of social and spiritual liberation. Markowitz, Helman and Shir-Vertesh refer to the Hebrew Israelites’ attempts at (re)connecting with the Promised Land as “soul citizenship”. They describe it as “an alternate discourse of belonging”, which “emphasizes the right of individuals and groups to assert who they are by matching their self-defined identities with existing states.”5 Hebrew Israelites’ origin narrative did not allow them to obtain citizenship under the Law of Return.6 By dissociating themselves from mainstream Jewry while still asserting Hebrew lineage and a connection to the Jewish State, they challenged the narrative of Israeli officialdom, and implicitly tried to broaden the existing boundaries of Jewish identity.7 In this chapter I shall take the Bene Ephraim example as a means of exploring the trajectories that different routes to expanding conventional definitions of Jewishness and ways of attaining “soul citizenship” in the State of Israel may take. Like the Hebrew Israelites, the Bene Ephraim belong to a community which historically was at a social disadvantage in their country of origin, and like the Hebrew Israelites, the Bene Ephraim are prepared to leave their homeland for Israel. To use Markowitz et al’s formulation, they aspire to match their self-ascribed identity to a state which they feel will suit their cultural and religious aspirations better than their place of birth. However, as the chapter will demonstrate, different community members chose to follow different trajectories towards the achievement of “soul citizenship”. While the founder of the movement, Shmuel Yacobi, seeks to attain identification with the Israeli State through a narrative about a common origin for rabbinic Judaism and the Israelite tradition of the Bene Ephraim, his brother and other followers in the village feel that embracing mainstream Judaism and even formal conversion are imperative for the spiritual liberation of their community. The chapter is divided into two parts. In the first part I focus on Shmuel Yacobi’s account of Bene Ephraim origin and experiences of untouchability and demonstrate how his discourse of social liberation resonates with that of African American Hebraic groups. I explicate this point further by highlighting how the “Judaisation” of the Bene Ephraim mirrors liberation strategies of other Dalit groups in India. The second half of the paper discusses how Shmuel’s vision translates itself into specific practices developed by the Bene Ephraim in the village. I will demonstrate that in the village the community, led by Shmuel’s brother, is seeking out

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the support of foreign Jewish organizations and is moving in the direction of embracing more mainstream Jewish practice. In this respect, I will consider what light this case study might cast on the interface between external categorisation and internal group identification in contemporary debates about the meanings of Jewishness. It has been suggested that social categorisation and group identification are mutually implicated and co-produce each other.8 The Bene Ephraim case raises a question about the degree to which group identification and social categorisation should be viewed as oppositional notions when applied to communities in search of Jewish identities. On one level, the movement appears to present a process of internal group formation assisted by very few external agents. “Brand” Bene Ephraim was created by Shmuel Yacobi and is embraced by a very limited number of Madiga. The State of Israel, local authorities and even most of their immediate neighbours do not recognise the Bene Ephraim as Jewish. However, an analysis of the way religious affiliation is narrated and performed by the Bene Ephraim in the village and in their interactions with foreign Jewish organizations reveals that their collective identification is implicated in external categorisation to the point when it becomes impossible to disentangle the two processes. The chapter shows that though the community came into being as a result of Shmuel Yacobi’s vision, it soon acquired a life of it own both building upon Shmuel’s original teaching, and borrowing from “conventional” Jewish cultures. In conclusion I suggest that both types of engagement with Jewish tradition demonstrated by the Bene Ephraim—the one that rejects mainstream Judaism and the one that embraces it—broaden the horizons of contemporary meanings of Jewishness. I also argue that both could be viewed as expressions of “soul citizenship” that Judaising communities embrace in respect to the Jewish State. My discussion is based on interviews conducted with Shmuel Yacobi in 2007, 2009 and 2010, analysis of manuscripts produced by Shmuel and Sadok Yacobi, and fieldwork that Shahid Perwez and I conducted in Andhra Pradesh and the USA in 2009-2010.

Negotiating Dalit heritage The Madiga community from which the Bene Ephraim come was Christianised about one hundred and fifty years ago by the Lone Star Baptist Christian Missionaries of Valley Forge Pennsylvania. The Madiga are a Scheduled Caste in Andhra Pradesh, which probably has the lowest status among the Dalit groups of the state.9 Their traditional occupations include mainly shoe-making and agricultural labour.10 According to the

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2001 Census of India, Scheduled Castes accounted for about twelve million of the population of the state, out of whom just under a half were Madiga.11 An ethnographic survey conducted in the region at the beginning of the twentieth century describes the Madiga as “the lowest caste found in the State. They are a settled people and generally live apart in ill-built thatched houses, in quarters outside the main village… They are not allowed to use the common village well… Madigas cannot approach Brahmans within the distance of about twenty paces. Any Brahman who has been touched inadvertently or purposely by a Madiga must purify himself by bathing, and washing all his clothes and renewing the sacred thread.”12

As Hugo Gorringe observes, it would be shortsighted to suggest that nothing changed in the position of untouchables since Independence, as Indian constitution did undermine the legitimacy of caste and provided disadvantaged groups with the means to improve their status. Both in the cities and in rural areas caste inequality is increasingly challenged by the modernization of the economy and affirmative action programmes. Nevertheless, Dalits have to continue to renegotiate traditional relations of power at the level of local council politics and everyday interactions with their “caste” neighbours.13 Thus, in the village of Kothareddypalem, the home of the Bene Ephraim, Madiga still live in separate quarters. As Clarinda Still demonstrated in her ethnography of the Madiga of Guntur district, areas designated for untouchables are always spatially segregated in Andhra villages. Even if the quarters of untouchables are not that different from other poorer areas, they clearly represent a qualitatively different section of the village.14 Drawing on André Béteille and other anthropologists who discussed similar spatial organisation in other parts of India, Still notes that the topographic demarcation of Madiga colonies is indicative of the social position of untouchables in respect of their neighbours from other castes.15 In the eyes of the villagers, “residential segregation reduces the chance of Dalits ‘contaminating’ the nonDalits”.16 As it is often the case with Dalit groups, the early history of the Madiga is not documented, though sources of the later British period describe them as the descendants of the earliest inhabitants of the region, and call them an “ancient tribe.”17 Madiga legends of origin connect the community to Jambavant, a figure in the epic of Ramayana, and explain that the low status of his descendants was due to a mistake or a curse.18 Another important figure of the Madiga mythology is Arundhati, who in

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the Sanskritic tradition is the wife of one of the Vedic sages Vasistha. In the Madiga tradition she was one of the community, and according to a legend recorded by Emma Rauschenbusch-Clough, she cursed her people when they tried to prevent her from marrying a Brahman.19 Singh notes that in the twentieth century these legends were revised by Madiga leaders to improve the community’s image. Their new origin narratives emphasize the antiquity and indigeneity of the Madiga, portraying them as the oldest inhabitants of the region and as former rulers of the country who were defeated and had to accept subordinate position in which they stayed until today.20 Simon Charsley has demonstrated the way contemporary Madiga performances of caste puranas celebrate Madiga identity by emphasizing practical importance of leather work and accounting for poverty within a positive context.21 Clarinda Still has suggested that nowadays few members of Dalit communities in Andhra Pradesh view poverty and discrimination as a god-given fact to be accepted and tolerated. Most struggle to improve this state of affairs by negotiating better conditions and creating more positive markers of selfidentification. They question the bases on which they were ascribed a low status in the local hierarchy (such as association with “ritually polluting” leather and meat) and instead celebrate these particular markers of their identity.22 The leader of the Bene Ephraim Shmuel Yacobi reinterpreted many of these narratives in light of his own account of Madiga history. Like other Madiga leaders (as well as the leaders of other Dalit groups) he tried to explain his community’s status as a result of a curse or of an unjust punishment and to create a more positive story of origin. However, unlike other Madiga leaders, he chose an account which located community’s early history entirely outside of the Indic tradition. Who are the Bene Ephraim, according to Shmuel Yacobi? Earlier stories, collected in a typescript on the community’s history and in a book entitled Cultural Hermeneutics published by Yacobi in 2002, assert that all the Scheduled Castes of southern India and possibly even of the entire sub-continent are the descendants of the Bene Ephraim.23 Narratives presented in the book contain three main themes, which have informed the problematics of Bene Ephraim self-identification—the story of their migration from ancient Israel, accounts explaining how their ancestors had become untouchables, and representations of their relationship with caste Hindus. Each theme can be linked to broader discourses, which emerged outside of the historical and social boundaries of the community, such as the centuries old Lost Tribes discourse, constructions of a “higher status”

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origin produced by different Scheduled Castes of India, and anti-caste rhetoric of Dalit movements.24 The book details different aspects of community’s history, which could broadly be summarised as follows. The Bene Ephraim are the descendants of some of the Tribes of Israel, who in 722 BCE were exiled from the ancient kingdom of Israel by Assyria. After a sojourn in Persia they were moved to the northern part of the subcontinent, which was then populated by Dravidian groups including Telugu speaking communities.25 The Bene Ephraim established good relations with them and made an impact on their religions and cultures. In the seventh century BCE the subcontinent was conquered by the “Aryans” who pushed the Dravidians and the Bene Ephraim south. A large part of the book is devoted to the description of the alleged similarities between ancient Hebrew and Telugu languages. In his interviews with us Shmuel also talked about similarities between Biblical practices and those of Telugu-speakers, and specifically of the Madiga. In this respect, Yacobi’s tradition is reminiscent of the way different African and African American Judaising communities engaged with Jewish history through finding parallels between their religious practices and those of ancient Israelites.26 Like, for instance, the Igbo of Nigeria, the House of Israel of Ghana, and the Lemba of South Africa and Zimbabwe, Shmuel Yacobi builds upon such parallels to affirm an ancestral connection with ancient Hebrews.27 The Bene Ephraim theology, which Shmuel describes as “covenantal relationship with the One Living God”, is akin, in its turn, to the tradition of Hebrew Israelites, who observe the rites of the Tanakh, do not identify themselves as Jews and deny that they follow any particular religion.28 Like the Hebrew Israelites, Shmuel Yacobi tries to renegotiate the boundaries of “recognized” Jewish religion by including in it the tradition of ancient Israel. Indeed, Cultural Hermeneutics states that the Bene Ephraim “have no religion in the modern sense of the term.”29 It also posits that If someone is interested to apply or attribute the term religion to the covenantal life style of the Bene Ephraim Communities, it is basically Israelitism or simply Judaism of the tribes of ancient Israel. In today’s terms one can see that the religion of the Bene Ephraim Communities is rather a deritualized, demythologized, dephylosophized, demystified and simple way of life, like the life styles of their forefathers, the ancient Israelites recorded in the Tanach than just a religion.30

Moreover, like members of different African and African American Judaising groups, he finds analogies in the experiences of his people and

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the Jews.31 Shmuel does so in the context of his polemic directed against Indian social structure. He interprets the values of the Jewish tradition against the backdrop of ancient Indian history and of caste inequality, ascribing to “Israelitism” a message of liberation, which allowed his ancestors to stand up to the caste system. According to Cultural Hermeneutics, the Bene Ephraim were relegated by the Aryans to the position of untouchables, because they were against the very idea of caste hierarchy: The Bene Ephraim Communities detested this subtle branding ideology of the Aryans and stayed away from the Aryan caste-color system to this very day… The Sages of the Bene Ephraim Communities openly declared that no one is superior or inferior to any one and all human beings are the children of Adam HaRishon and Noah…32

Yacobi argues that ancient texts that laid the foundation of the current Hindu tradition, such as the Vedas and the Upanishads, contain knowledge, which was “stolen” by the Aryans from the Dravidians, who in their turn had been influenced by the Hebrew culture of the Bene Ephraim: All the stories of the Hebrews were copied and were translated and then became Vedas and Upanishads. The Chronicles of the kings of Israel and Judah became the book of Rajatharangini meaning the waves of kings. The five books of Moshe Rabbenu became the four Vedas and Bhavad-Gita the fifth Veda.33 Having “stolen” this knowledge, the Aryans, according to Shmuel Yacobi, barred “non-Aryans” from it: The Aryans never allowed the non-Aryans into their schools because everything they taught in their school was not theirs. They treated all the non-Aryans as Sudra slaves. The Sudra slaves were not even allowed to hear those teachings.34

The current state of affairs in the community is explained as an unfortunate result of the further advance of the “Aryan rule” under which the Bene Ephraim lost their status and political significance, were reduced to extreme poverty, and, left with no means of maintaining their tradition, almost forgot it. It is claimed in the book that at the time of writing there were about ten million Bene Ephraim living among the Telugu people, and most of them were registered as the Scheduled Castes of Malas and Madigas or were converts into Buddhism and Christianity. However, according to Yacobi, only 125 families identify themselves as Israelite. The rest were not aware of their origin:

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These 10 million members of the Bene Ephraim communities among the 60 million Telugu people do not remember the history as explained in this version unless someone reminds them. Both Bene Ephraim communities and the Telugu people forgot the history, the names, the traditions and stories of this presentation.35

As I demonstrate in the following section, though the Judaisation of the Bene Ephraim is a unique phenomenon in the history of Dalit communities, Yacobi’s narrative that it builds upon is to a large degree informed by the anti-Brahmanic discourse of other Dalit conversion movements, as well as Dalit movements for social justice.

Jewish liberation theology? The Bene Ephraim are of course not the first Dalit group to adopt an alternative religious affiliation—though they are the first to turn to the Jewish tradition. The second half of the twentieth century witnessed mass conversions of Dalits to Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity, which were supposed to dissociate the untouchables from their status in the caste system. The first of these movements was initiated in the 1950s by Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the leader of the Dalit community and a key author of the Indian constitution. As Gauri Viswanathan notes, Ambedkar’s conversion initiative could be seen as “a re-writing of religious and cultural change into a form of political intervention” and an attempt at “developing an alternative epistemological and ethical foundation for a national community.”36 In recasting Buddhism into a Dalit liberation theology, Ambedkar interprets the history of untouchability as a story of religious conflict. In his treatise The Untouchables he describes Dalits’ ancestors as “Broken Men”, who converted into Buddhism in 400 AD and were subjugated by caste Hindus in the aftermath of Brahmanism’s victory over Buddhism. The “Broken Men” refused to return to Brahmanism and to adopt Brahmanic practices, such as avoiding meat, and as a punishment were defined by the upper castes as impure.37 Viswanathan observes that by offering Dalits a narrative of origin that inscribes them as agents of history rather than victims of economic oppression, Ambedkar provided a novel faith-based framework for political renewal. This strategy was also a bold response to Gandhi’s offer to rid Hinduism of its discriminatory practices—an initiative which would confine agency to caste Hindus and leave Dalits as passive observers.38 One could also add that Ambedkar’s framework is not dissimilar to that of Hebrew Israelites and other African American Judaising movements, whose leaders viewed their history as slaves through the paradigm of the

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story of the Exodus. Thus, subsequently some claimed that Africa was the spiritual source of the Jewish religion and that Africans had lost knowledge of their true heritage because of slavery. One of these leaders, Prophet Cherry, conjectured that black people had been exiled from ancient Palestine by the Romans into West Africa, where they were captured and sold as slaves to America.39 Yacobi’s Cultural Hermeneutics embarks on a project similar to that of Ambedkar’s and echoes the spiritual liberation discourse of African American Judaising groups. The book presents ancient Madigas as a community who stood up to the caste practices of the Hindus and was therefore punished with untouchability. However, in Yacobi’s interpretation of Dalit history the ancestors of modern day Dalits were not Buddhist, but Israelite. While Ambedkar sought to convert into a religion, which still originated on the Indian subcontinent (the only other religion that he seriously considered apart from Buddhism was Sikhism), Yacobi explicitly chose a tradition that was completely “external” to India. In this respect, his position is akin to the stance of those Indian activists who prefer to dissociate untouchables from Indian religious cultures completely, and see a connection between Dalit practice and that of Muslims and Christians. For instance, a Dalit writer Kancha Ilaiah suggests in his critique of right wing ideologues’ call to include Dalits into the Hindu fold that Dalits have much more in common with the practitioners of these two religions, which do not recognize untouchability, than with caste Hindus.40 Similarly, Shmuel Yacobi establishes a connection between Madiga practices and those of a religion that originated outside of the Indian subcontinent. However, he goes one step further and chooses a tradition with a strong particularist image to establish not only a connection of belief and practice, but a genealogical link to it, as well. One could suggest that by grounding Madiga identity in the Lost Tribes discourse, Yacobi claimed physical kinship with a community completely foreign to the subcontinent, which provided his group with a stronger chance to distance itself from the caste system. Despite his strong anti-caste rhetoric, Shmuel Yacobi chose to dissociate his community not only from Indian religious cultures, but also from the Dalit movement. He told me in an interview in 2009 that he was once approached by a Dalit activist who wanted him to join his movement. Shmuel refused, explaining that in his opinion Indian untouchables could only succeed in their struggle for equality, if they attracted the attention of foreign governments. It is noteworthy that this position resonates with the attempts of other Dalit groups to internationalise their condition of discrimination by describing their plight in terms that audiences outside of

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India could relate to and sympathise with. To give one such example, some Dalit leaders tried to call the attention of the international community to anti-Dalit atrocities by equating caste discrimination with racism. They argued that the socio-economic situation of Indian untouchables and the severity of their oppression were comparable to, if not worse than, those of Black African communities in the West.41 The issue was debated in the preparations for the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in 2001 in Durban. The Dalits argued that caste discrimination should be considered racism and put on the agenda of the conference, while the Indian government insisted on it being unconnected to race.42 Shmuel’s position on the prospects of his community to achieve liberation in India is somewhat similar. Just like the Dalits who participated in the preparations for the conference in Durban felt that they could not succeed in their fight against discrimination without the support of the international community, Shmuel Yacobi was more hopeful about the support of Israel and Jewish communities worldwide than about the possibility of getting help from the local authorities or from the Indian government. To return to the wider context of emerging Jewish communities, this portrayal of the relationship with the Indian state is similar to the way Hebrew Israelites felt about their place in the United States. For instance, this is how dissatisfaction with life in the US was expressed by a member of Hebrew Israelites in an interview to anthropologist Merrill Singer: I was always a good citizen in America, but it did not matter what I did; America is just a terrible place. I worked, I supported myself; my brothers went into the army. I even lost a brother in the army. Even so, America treated me terribly.43

These words mirror a response that I received from Shmuel Yacobi when I asked him whether he would be happy for his community to settle in Israel despite the numerous security problems that the Jewish State was facing. “In India [as Madiga] we have seen the worst of the worst”, he replied.44 Like the leaders of the Black Hebrews, Shmuel Yacobi is pessimistic about the future of his group in the country of birth and sees affiliation to the Israelite identity as crucial for the social, economic and spiritual development of the Bene Ephraim. Just like the Black Hebrews decided to reconnect with their land of origin and to settle in the State of Israel in the context of extreme dissatisfaction with life in their home country, Shmuel Yacobi and his followers chose to encourage their congregation to prepare

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for an aliyah. However, as we will see in the next sections, this route proved to be tortuous, and led the community on a path for recognition that differed from the one that was originally envisaged.

Building Israel in Andhra Shmuel Yacobi first attempted to arrange for the Bene Ephraim to leave for Israel in the early 1990s. He made a list of about fifty families who were practicing Judaism in Andhra Pradesh and applied for their visas in the Israeli consulate in India. The visas were rejected, and, according to Shmuel, a story appeared in the Israeli media arguing that millions of people were going to the Jewish State from India.45 Unsurprisingly, this response was disappointing, but it did not discourage Shmuel from continuing his efforts to ensure that his community was recognized as Israelite. In Cultural Hermeneutics he argues that it is only one hundred and twenty five Telugu families that were aware of their Jewish lineage, and that they were eager to establish another State of Israel in the independent Telugu country”.46 As Shmuel explained to me, this country could be established anywhere in the world, and it did not necessarily have to be in India or in the Middle East.47 As far as making aliyah was concerned, he realized during a trip to Israel in the early 1990s that for it to happen the Bene Ephraim would have to embrace mainstream Judaism, a step that he was opposed to. As Shmuel explained in an interview with Shahid Perwez, First they said if you undergo process of conversion we will accept you and I denied that… [I don’t recognize] the present Jewish conversion system in Israel under the Law of Return. They asked me in 1994....the easiest way was to accept Judaism. If you are sincere you can come to Israel… I said...in ancient Israel there were no religious conversions. If somebody wants to live with them, they come and stay with them… In my view, Israel is not a religion. Israel is different from Judaism.....so there [should be] no conversion. Israeli culture, Hebrew culture is entirely different from today's Judaism...48

Shmuel thus re-conceptualises the Jewish tradition to make it inclusive of groups who are not halakhically Jewish. In the same way that Black Jewish groups in the USA tried to negotiate a shared space of collective identity with communities who had “more recognized” claims to a Jewish heritage, Yacobi strives for his community to be accepted as Israelite, and, ideally, to be allowed into the Jewish State, while refusing to embrace mainstream Judaism.49

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Michael Satlow has suggested that “communities become “Jewish” first and foremost because they say they are; they buy in to some model or story that links them to past and present Jews. Jewish communities may or may not accept the claims of “Jewishness” of other groups, but all draw ultimately on similar sources.”50 Shmuel’s account of Bene Ephraim history draws on some of the same biblical stories that rabbinic Judaism is based on, but it tells a story of its own, creating yet another ‘branch’ of the Jewish tradition. Shmuel does not claim that his tradition is superior to the Judaism(s) of others, but he hardly sees the Judaism(s) of others to be “more authentic” than his own. In this sense, his position fits well into the tradition noted by Jonathan Webber of Jewish people distinguishing between different Jewish cultures while building their own narrative of origin on the idea of Jewish historical continuity, believing in the unity of the Jews all over the world, and at the same time being aware of Jewish diversity.51 Shmuel is open to contacts with other Jewish groups, but is keen on limiting their influence on the development of the Bene Ephraim tradition. As I discuss in the following section, the actual development of Bene Ephraim Jewishness in the village took a rather different trajectory.

Jews or Madiga? Tudor Parfitt and Emanuela Trevisan Semi observe that the history of Judaism has been characterised by a tension between the conflicting tendencies towards universalism, on the one hand, and particularism, on the other. They remind us that though Judaism has rarely been an actively proselytising religion, there has always been a small “trickle” of converts into Judaism, and the phenomenon of Judaising movements is an important contemporary manifestation of the Jewish tradition’s more universalist dimension.52 The problem of the relationship between different aspects of Jewishness, some of which are seen to be embedded in Jewish genealogy and others are construed along the lines of cultural and religious affiliation, is one of the central issues in anthropology and cultural studies of Judaism. According to the halakha—Jewish religious law, which includes biblical law and later Talmudic and rabbinical law and tradition —a person is considered to be Jewish either if their mother is Jewish, or if they formally convert into Judaism. Conversion itself establishes a genealogical connection between the initiate and the Jewish people, as the former is seen as being born into the Jewish community. At the same time, what exactly constitutes Judaism has also become the subject of vigorous academic discussions. As Satlow pointed out, “Essentialist definitions of

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Judaism can never explain or account for the diversity of Jewish religious life, both today and through history”.53 Jacob Neusner has argued that already in antiquity there were a number of Jewish groups adhering to alternative traditions, none of which should be construed as mainstream.54 Contemporary Judaism in the West is divided into three main branches—Orthodox, Conservative and Reform. Each branch has to recognize—maybe sometimes reluctantly—the diversity of Judaism, but also to draw a line between “normative” Judaism and other Jewish traditions. For instance, just like Orthodox Jews may dismiss Reform Jews as inauthentic, the latter may consider themselves to be just as mainstream as Orthodox and Conservatives, but reject humanistic Jews, who identify as a religious Jewish community, but do not believe in the existence of God. Building upon these examples Satlow has suggested that Judaism “is best seen not as a single organism-like tradition but as a family of traditions.” These traditions may share a lot of characteristics, but some of them will have nothing in common with others, and no single component is essential for a tradition to be considered Jewish.55 In a similar vein, Nicholas de Lange observes that Judaism challenges our ideas about what may constitute a religion, as these days, particularly in Israel, there are Jews who describe themselves as “secular” and engage in activities which could easily be described as religious, and there are “religious” Jews who would say that everything they do in their lives is a part of their religion.56 As we demonstrated in the first half of the paper, Shmuel Yacobi’s representation of Bene Ephraim tradition in itself illuminates different aspects of contemporary debates about “What it means to be Jewish”. Cultural Hermeneutics describes the Bene Ephraim culture as a culture which is close to Jewish without being conventionally Jewish, and as a tradition which is akin to Judaism, but which is not a religion. In the following two sections I will use ethnographic examples from Kothareddypalem and interviews conducted with community members to demonstrate how the way the Bene Ephraim culture developed in the village further problematises multiple meanings of Jewishness that Judaising movements bring into being, and questions the divide between “recognized” and “self-proclaimed” Judaism(s). The core group of community members who joined Shmuel Yacobi and his family in the late 1980sȄcontinued to cluster around the synagogue established in 1991 in the village of Kothareddypalem. At the moment this group accounts for about 40 nuclear families, who attend the synagogue on a regular basis and strive to observe Sabbath, kashrut and a number of Jewish festivals. The congregation is led by Shmuel’s brother

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Sadok Yacobi, who has become the social” leader of the group in charge of its everyday running. Shahid Perwez and I observed during our stay in Kothareddypalem that despite Shmuel’s insistence on the Lost Tribes descent of the Bene Ephraim and their difference from conventionally Jewish groups, in practice the community appears to be moving in the direction of greater conformity with mainstream Judaism. Like his brother Shmuel, Sadok wants the Bene Ephraim to be recognized as an Israelite group by the Jewish communities and organizations outside of India. However, unlike Shmuel, he is prepared to accept formal conversion if this is going to ensure this recognition and subsequent aliyah to the Jewish State, which he finds imperative both for the social liberation and the spiritual development of the Bene Ephraim. Sadok told us on a number of occasions that he would like to have an opportunity to send several young Bene Ephraim to study in a yeshivah in Israel or the USA.57 One of these young people who is seen as a possible future leader of the Bene Ephraim told me in an interview that he would like to acquire formal rabbinical education: “My goal is to go to Israel”, he said. “I want to do rabbinical training there, come back to Kothareddypalem and teach the community. People here are not educated. They very much need a rabbi.”58 At the moment, Shmuel’s son Yehoshua, who attended an Orthodox yeshivah in Israel in the 1990s and eventually obtained Israeli citizenship and settled there, is working on a Telugu translation of a Hebrew textbook outlining the basic principles of Judaism. It is Sadok’s hope that once the translation is finished, the book will be distributed among the Bene Ephraim to help them bring their practice in line with that of recognized Jewish groups. In recent years Sadok has actively sought out the involvement of American and Israeli organizations, as well as of other foreign donors who support “emerging” Jewish communities. Sadok Yacobi is very much appreciative of this help and frames it in terms of its emancipatory potential for the community. He stressed to us that due to the low social status of the Madiga and their poor material conditions, not all community members were in a strong position to follow Judaism. Due to the demands of wage labour, many of them had to work on Saturdays, and could not attend the synagogue when required, or had to seek work outside of Kothareddypalem, where they did not have access to kosher food. Finding means of subsistence which would make them independent of the local landlords would therefore help them to maintain the very existence of the Bene Ephraim as an Israelite group. Like his brother Shmuel, Sadok wants his community to (re)claim the Jewish tradition as a means of social

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liberation. However, unlike Shmuel, he considers this liberation impossible without closer contact with recognized Judaism. During one of my visits to Kothareddypalem in 2009 Sadok took us to the Madiga cemetery, where individual Jewish graves marked with Stars of David, symbols of Menorah and Hebrew signs stand side by side with Christian tombstones. Sadok noted that some Bene Ephraim graves, as well as the graves of other Madiga, were not signed at all because the families of the deceased could not afford to put a tombstone on them. He than went on to say that a lot of the Bene Ephraim did not know what their origin was. Their ancestors descended into poverty and could not afford to maintain Jewish practices, just like now many Bene Ephraim cannot afford to put a tombstone on the graves of their kin to demarcate them from Christian graves. In Sadok’s view, true liberation from this ignorance and an opportunity to re-claim the tradition that rightfully belongs to the Bene Ephraim could only be expected to come from foreign Jewish donors and the State of Israel. “When you educate the Bene Ephraim, they suddenly realise who they are, but otherwise they would not know better,” he said. “[My brother] Shmuel has done a lot to open their eyes to it, but there is a lot more to do. That’s why I am happy I have established contacts in Israel and with Rabbis elsewhere”.

Kulanu In the mid 1990s the Bene Ephraim were noticed by Kulanu (Hebrew ‘All of us’), a New York based non-profit non-governmental charity established in 1994 to support “isolated and emerging Jewish communities around the world”. Kulanu’s web-site describes the organization as “a network of people with a variety of backgrounds and religious practices.” “We do not proselytize”, Kulanu members say, “groups and individuals ask for our help; we do not seek them out”.59 The help that Kulanu provide for the communities includes mainly educational and economic support. The former is rendered through rabbis and other volunteers who visit Judaising groups and teach them about the Jewish tradition. Economic support most of the time includes attempts at providing communities with new sources of income and making them economically independent through projects in agricultural development and microfinance. Another aim of Kulanu is making “new” Jewish communities better known to the outside world. To achieve this goal Kulanu publish quarterly newsletters with updates on the life of different groups they work with and organize tours of these communities for outside visitors.

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The case of the Bene Ephraim both illustrates communication processes between Kulanu and the groups they sponsor, and problematises conventional understandings of the relationship between particularist and universalist tendencies in Judaism. Kulanu members assert that they try to address the economic and the cultural needs of the people they work with, without imposing any particular way of “being Jewish” on them. Harriet Bograd, the current President of Kulanu, feels very strongly that this is the only way such an organization should work. As she mentioned in an interview with me, it is not Kulanu’s objective to convert the community into any particular branch of Judaism, and this is the position not just of the secular and Reform supporters of her organization, but of its Conservative and Orthodox members as well.60 In 2007 Kulanu responded to Sadok’s request to send a rabbi who would teach his congregation Jewish practices. They arranged for a rabbinical couple, Bonita and Gerald Sussman, to work with them in Kothareddypalem for three weeks in July-August 2007.61 Meeting the Sussmans provided the Bene Ephraim with the first opportunity to be ‘taught’ contemporary Judaism by practitioners from abroad. This encounter points to a whole range of issues in the study of contemporary Jewish diversity. What kind of Judaism would such an encounter produce? Who has the final say in determining the trajectory of community’s development as a Jewish group? How are the boundaries between different Judaisms are negotiated in such an encounter on the day-to-day basis? As Conservative rabbis, the Sussmans found the Bene Ephraim practice to be rather different from that of their own, but thought that the community was very sincere in their belief. Bonita and Gerald tried to teach them as much as they could, always making sure they were following the wishes of the Bene Ephraim. For instance, once they were asked by Sadok’s wife Miriam and other ladies in the community to teach them how to prepare matzot. In the past the Bene Ephraim had chapatis, and realised that that was not good enough for a Jewish community. The Sussmans did not know how to make matzot from scratch, because they would normally just buy them from a shop. However, to make sure the ladies were not disappointed, Bonita went to a small internet cafe behind the hotel where they were staying and found a Youtube video of how to make matzot. She showed it to Miriam, who quickly learnt how to do it.62 In the opinion of the Sussmans, the Bene Ephraim are a “new” community, but it does not matter for them what their origins are. “The important thing is that they want to live like Jews”, Bonita Sussman said to me during a meeting in New York. “If you follow the Jewish life cycle and observe festivals, that is all there is to it.” The Sussmans kept stressing

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in their interview with me that there was a wide rage of denominations in Judaism. They said that they tried their best not to affect the development of the Bene Ephraim religion, and not to teach them “New York Jewish”. For instance, they noted that in Kothareddypalem girls were called to read from the Torah on Sabbath. When the Yacobis asked them if this was all right, they said that it depended upon whom you asked and that they should feel free to continue this practice. As Jonathan Webber observed, “Right from its origins in Biblical antiquity, Jewish identity has oscillated between two contradictory premises: an underlying belief in the unity and continuity of the Jewish people, despite an awareness of the existence of considerable ethnographic diversity; and a feeling that the Jewish community of one’s own village or town constituted the only true Jewish identity, despite the knowledge that other Jewish communities existed, even in very faraway lands”.63 The Sussmans, like other rabbis working for Kulanu, are very aware of the diversity of Jewish communities worldwide. They believe in the unity of the Jewish people, but for them it is the cultural and spiritual aspects of this unity that are more important than its genealogical or historical dimensions. They are ready to recognize the Bene Ephraim as Jewish and to respect not just their claim, but also their version of Judaism. However, as much as they tried to avoid teaching the Bene Ephraim “New York Jewish”, they could not help but introducing them to a particular type of the Jewish tradition. Moreover, in coming to Kothareddypalem, they responded to Sadok’s request to teach them “proper” Judaism, the full knowledge of which, in the perception of Sadok and his immediate family, the community was lacking. Some practices (such as how to make matzot) were taught on request, while others were introduced in response to the community’s general desire to learn as much as they possibly could about Judaism.64 In Kothareddypalem we saw a lot of examples of the Bene Ephraim embracing this knowledge and practices. For instance, in December 2009 Shahid Perwez observed the celebration of Hanukah, which also involved the ceremony of Torah scroll dedication. The scroll was a replica brought by the Sussmans and was installed in the synagogue in a moving and emotionally charged ceremony which involved the entire congregation. Shmuel later told us that he was not entirely supportive of Hanukah celebrations, as this festival did not belong to the Lost Tribes tradition. However, he attended it and made a speech about the meaning of Hanukah in Jewish history, realizing the importance that this festival had already acquired for the Bene Ephraim. Later, he admitted in an interview with me that for the Bene Ephraim children growing up in the village, the tradition introduced by Sadok, which is becoming to resemble mainstream

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Judaism more and more, is the tradition that they know best.You can definitely call them Jewish!” he told me.65 The founder of the Bene Ephraim movement Shmuel Yacobi had a vision of his community’s development that challenged ‘conventional’ understandings about what it means to be Jewish and resonated with the discourses of Ben Ammi and leaders of other African American Judaising groups. This is a message of spiritual advancement and social liberation through anti-establishment protest and search for affiliation with the Jewish State, which does not involve formal conversion into Judaism—a prerequisite for acquiring Israeli citizenship for groups who cannot be described as halakhically Jewish. At the same time, it appears that irrespective of Shmuel Yacobi’s position on formal conversion and the way his community should engage with conventional Jewish practices, in Kothareddypalem the Bene Ephraim tradition started acquiring important aspects of recognized Judaism due to the efforts of Sadok Yacobi and other group members, who consider establishing a connection with “proper” Jewish cultures imperative for the social and spiritual advancement of their congregation, and are open to the idea of formal conversion. I propose that both ways of relating to the Jewish tradition could be described as community’s search for “soul citizenship”. To draw on Markowitz et al’s analysis of Hebrew Israelites’ immigration to Israel, one could suggest that both Shmuel and Sadok Yacobi developed “alternate discourses of belonging” asserting their selfhood and group identification by choosing affiliation to a state which in their view matches the spiritual and cultural needs of their community better than their homeland, and can provide a safer and more nurturing environment. Both Shmuel and Sadok frame their differing paths for engaging with universal Judaism in terms of liberation. For Shmuel this liberation is going to come through developing a tradition independent of rabbinic Judaism. For Sadok and his followers it is associated with establishing contacts with Jewish educational organizations, embracing mainstream Judaism, and possibly even undergoing a conversion ceremony. While on one level the Bene Ephraim in the village appear to assert the primacy of the mainstream tradition, on another level their case challenges the very idea of dividing Jewish groups into “recognized” and “self-proclaimed”. The Bene Ephraim emerged as an Israelite community without any involvement of “external” cultural and religious actors from overseas Jewish groups or organizations. Soon the community started seeking recognition from these groups, and their subsequent involvement reshaped the practice of the Kothareddypalem congregation. Though

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individuals who worked with the Bene Ephraim were far from trying to impose on them any particular “brand” of Judaism and were carefully following community’s wishes, they unavoidably introduced it to what Charles Leibman has described as “cultural elements that are shared by all or most Jewish people.”66 An analysis of interactions between “Western” Jews and the Bene Ephraim reveals that such encounters further problematize the divide between the “recognized” and the “new” Jewish traditions. The perception of Kulanu supporters working with “emerging” Jewish communities is not a one-way process. As one Kulanu member noted at a meeting in London, visiting Judaising groups in Africa was a moving experience for him, because irrespective of the extent to which their practice resembled mainstream Judaism, they appeared to be more devoted to Jewish culture than many Western Jews were. “Jews in the West could learn a lot from them”, he said.67 Similarly, Bonita Sussman observed in her journal that baking matzot with the Bene Ephraim women was one of the most meaningful experiences in her life: “Just to watch all this happen for the first time in the community. Mrs Yacobi will teach all the women how to do this and they will have real matza this year, not chapati as they were used to”.68 Bonita was touched by the Bene Ephraim asking her to introduce them to her tradition and to help them change their practice, and what in her view was particularly moving about it was that they had asked her themselves to teach them her practice. She told me that it made her appreciate how much harder practicing Judaism was for them than it was for herȄmatzot had to be baked from scratch rather than bought from a local shopȄand yet the Bene Ephraim ladies were determined to do it.69 Both commentators thus engage with discourses of authenticity in the Jewish tradition. The comment made by the Kulanu supporter in London implies a belief in the existence of some quintessential Jewish culture that “emerging” Jewish communities seem to be more devoted to than Western Jews are. Bonita Sussman is pleased that the Bene Ephraim will now have “real” matzot in the village, as opposed to the (non-Jewish) chapatis that they used to have for Passover. Both commentators clearly distinguish between “conventional”, “real” Judaism of their own communities and the “self-styled” traditions of Judaising groups they have worked with, and yet they consider the latter to be imbued with a potential to enrich “mainstream” Jewish cultures. Finally, to return to the example of Hebrew Israelites with which we started this chapter, their history appears to demonstrate a similar type of engagement with recognized Jewish groups and organisations. In Israel their community’s narrative underwent a shift. The Black Hebrews

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continued to assert their special place in Jewish history, but interpreted “Jews” more widely to include everyone with a “soulful connection” to Israel. Following this discursive change, by 1993 they acquired de facto citizenship.70 Thus, while on the one hand, it appears that the Hebrew Israelites made a step towards embracing a more conventional version of Jewish history, on the other hand, their continuing presence in Israel and negotiations with the authorities of the state have diversified Israeli perspectives on the nature of Jewish people’s connection to the Promised Land. The same is true for the Bene Menashe of the North-East of India, who in 2005 were recognized as a Lost Tribe of Israel by the Sephardi Chief Rabbi, and some of whom relocated to the Jewish State. Like Sadok Yacobi’s group in Kothareddypalem, the Bene Menashe were ready to undergo formal conversion into Orthodox Judaism, which allowed them to obtain Israeli citizenship. They therefore managed to satisfy the formal requirement of the Law of Return, but, at the same time, their example opened a new direction in Israeli debates about what it means to be Jewish.71 It remains to be seen whether the Bene Ephraim will succeed in making an aliyah, but their case has already indexed new ways for making conventional understandings of Jewishness more nuanced and multifaceted.

Notes  1 Janice Fernheimer, “The Rhetoric of the Black Jewish Identity Construction in America and Israel, 1964-1972” (PhD diss., The University of Texas at Austin, 2006), 3. 2 Merill Singer “Symbolic identity formation in an African American Religious Sect: The Black Hebrew Israelites”, in Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism, ed. Yvonne Chireau and Nathaniel Deutsch (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). John Jackson, Real Black: adventures in racial sincerity (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 3 Fran Markowitz et al., “Soul Citizenship: the Black Hebrews and the State of Israel,” American Anthropologist 105 (2003): 302-312. 4 Singer, “Symbolic identity formation”, Markowitz et al., “Soul Citizenship”. 5 Markowitz et al., “Soul citizenship,” 302. 6 According to the 1950 formulation of the Law of Return, “every Jew has the right to come to this country [Israel] as an oleh”. The Law uses the halakhic definition of what it means to be Jewish—you are Jewish if your mother is Jewish. In 1970 the Law of Return was amended to include those who have at least one Jewish grandparent—maternal or paternal—and their spouses. The new formulation of the Law also excluded those who were born Jewish, but then voluntarily changed their religion. The text of the Law of Return is available on the web-site of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, www.mfa.gov.il.

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 7 Markowitz et al., “Soul citizenship,” 305; Janice Fernheimer, “Black Jewish identity conflict: a divided universal audience and the impact of dissociative disruption,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 39 (2009): 47-48. 8 Richard Jenkins R., Social Identity (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008). 9 Scheduled castes is the constitutional term for the untouchables. This category was created in 1935 when socially disadvantaged groups were listed on a schedule to obtain access to reserved seats (Eva-Maria Hardtmann, The Dalit movement in India: local practices, global connections (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009), 1. Untouchables are also known by the term Dalits, which is a Marathi word for the oppressed. It was coined in the nineteenth century by the social activist Jyotirao Phule to stress the unfairness and the imposed nature of the condition of untouchability, see Eleonor Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit (New Delhi: Manohar, 1999), 267. 10 Tulja R. Singh, The Madiga: a study in social structure and change (Lucknow: Ethnographic and Folk Culture Society, 1969), 1. 11 P. Muthaiah, “Dandora: the Madiga movement for equal identity and social justice in A.P.,” Social Action 54 (2004). 12 H.V. Nanjundayya, The Ethnographic Survey of Mysore. V.18. Madiga Caste (Bangalore: The Government Press, 1909), 20-21. 13 Hugo Gorringe, Untouchable Citizens: Dalit movements and democratisation in Tamil Nadu (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005), 20-21, 26. 14 Clarinda Still, “Gender, Education and Status in a Dalit community in Andhra Pradesh, South India” (PhD diss., London School of Economics, 2007), 5-6. 15 Ibid., 5. 16 Ibid.,13. 17 Nanjundayya, The Ethnographic Survey, 3; Emma Rauschenbusch-Clough, While sewing sandals: tales of a Telugu Paraiah tribe (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 2000 [1899]). 18 Singh, The Madiga, 5-6. 19 Rauschenbusch-Clough, While sewing sandals, 53-55. 20 Singh, The Madiga, 7-9. 21 Puranas are Hindu, Buddhist and Jain religious stories narrating the history of the universe. Simon Charsley, “Interpreting untouchability: the performance of caste in Andhra Pradesh, South India,” Asian Folklore Studies 63 (2004): 267-290. 22 Still, “Gender, Education and Status.” 23 Shmuel Yacobi, The History of Telugu Jewish Community of A.P. India, (a typescript, 2001). Shmuel Yacobi, The Cultural Hermeneutics: An introduction to the cultural transactions of the Hebrew Bible among the ancient nations of the Thalmudic Telugu empire of India (Vijayawada: Hebrew Open University Publications, 2002). 24 For a detailed discussion of the Lost Tribes tradition see Tudor Parfitt, The Lost Tribes of Israel (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2002) and Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, The Ten Lost Tribes: a world history, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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 25 Telugu is a Dravidian language, which is the official language of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. 26 Yvonne Chireau, “Black Culture and Black Zion: African American religious encounters with Judaism, 1790-1930, overview,” in Chireau and Deutsch, Black Zion. Edith Bruder, The Black Jews of Africa: History, Religion, Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 27 Bruder, The Black Jews of Africa, chapters 9 and 10. 28 Yacobi, Cultural Hermeneutics, 157; Fernheimer, “The rhetoric of the Black Jewish identity construction,” 3. 29 Yacobi, Cultural Hermeneutics, 157. 30 Ibid., 135. 31 Bruder, The Black Jews, 134. 32 Yacobi, Cultural Hermeneutics, 260-261. 33 Ibid., 20. 34 Ibid.,78. 35 Ibid.,133. 36 Gauri Viswanathan, Outside the Fold: conversion, modernity, and belief (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 212-213. 37 Ibid., 232. 38 Ibid., 232. 39 Chireau, “Black Culture and Black Zion,” 24. 40 Kancha Ilaiah, Why I am not a Hindu (Calcutta: Samya, 1996), xi. 41 For a detailed discussion see Vijay Prashad, “Afro-Dalits of the Earth, Unite!” African Studies Review 43 (2000): 189-201 and Deepa Reddy, ‘The Ethnicity of Caste’, Anthropological Quarterly 78 (2005): 543-584. 42 Sharjeel Sabir, “Chimeral Categories: Caste, Race and Genetics,” Developing World Bioethics 2 (2003): 170-177 and Hardtmann, The Dalit movement in India. 43 Singer, “Symbolic identity formation,” 62-63. 44 Personal communication, April 2009. 45 Personal communication, April 2009. 46 Yacobi, Cultural Hermeneutics, 133. 47 Personal communication, April 2009. 48 Shmuel Yacobi’s interview with Shahid Perwez, 8 August 2009. 49 Fernheimer, “The rhetoric of the Black Jewish identity construction,” 4. 50 Michael Satlow, Creating Judaism: history, tradition, practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 10. 51 Jonathan Webber, “Modern Jewish Identities,” in Jewish Identities in the New Europe, ed. Jonathan Webber (London, Washington: Littman Library of Jewish Civilisation, 1994), 74. 52 Tudor Parfitt and Emanuela Trevisan Semi, Judaising Movements: Studies in the Margins of Judaism (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), vii. 53 Satlow, Creating Judaism, 4. 54 Ibid., 4-5. 55 Ibid., 6-7. 56 Nicholas De Lange, Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 6.

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 57

Yeshivah (Hebrew for “sitting”) is a Jewish religious educational institution. Interview, Kothareddypalem, 3 January 2010. 59 www.kulanu.org 60 Personal communication, New York, 23 March 2010, London, 11 January 2011. 61 Bonita Sussman and Gerald Sussman, “India Journal,” Kulanu Newsletter, 2007, 3&4. 62 Personal communication, New York, March 2010. 63 Webber, “Modern Jewish Identities,” 74. 64 Sussman and Sussman, “India Journal”. 65 Personal communication, Machilipatnam, January 2010. 66 Charles Liebman, “Jewish identity in transition: transformation or attenuation,” in New Jewish Identities: contemporary Europe and beyond, ed. Zvi Gitelman, Barry Kosmin and Andras Kovacs (Budapest, New York: Central European University Press), 345-346. 67 This observation was made at a meeting of the UK members of Kulanu, 11 January 2011. 68 Sussman and Sussman, “India Journal”. 69 Personal communication, New York, March 2010. 70 Markowitz et al., “Soul citizenship,” 306. 71 For more information about the Bene Menashe community, see Myer Samra, “Judaism in Manipur and Mizoram: By-Product of Christian Mission’, The Australian Journal of Jewish Studies, 6 (1992): 7-23, Myer Samra, “Buallawn Israel: The Emergence of a Judaising Movement in Mizoram, Northeast India,” in Religious Change, Conversion and Culture, ed. Lynette Olson (Sydney: Association for Studies in Society and Culture), Shalva Weil, “Dual conversion among the Shinlung in North-East India,” Studies in Tribes and Tribals, 1: 43-57. For the relationship between the Bene Ephraim and Bene Menashe movements see Yulia Egorova and Shahid Perwez, “Old memories, new histories: (re)discovering the past of Jewish Dalits, ” History and Anthropology, 23 (2012). 58

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CONTRIBUTORS

Marla Brettschneider is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire with a joint appointment in Political Science and Women’s Studies where she is Coordinator of WS. Among her books are the award winners The Family Flamboyant: Race Politics, Queer Families, Jewish Lives and The Narrow Bridge: Jewish Views on Multiculturalism as well as Democratic Theorizing from the Margins and Cornerstones of Peace: Jewish Identity Politics and Democratic Theory. Edith Bruder Ph.D is a Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a Research Fellow at the North-West University, South Africa. She is the founding President of the International Society for the Study of African Jewry - ISSAJ (www.issaj.com). Her research interests include African Judaism in Africa and the United States, religious Diasporas, globalization of religions, socio-cultural implications of genomics. Recent publications include The Black Jews of Africa, History, Identity, Religion (Oxford University Press: New York, 2008) and articles and chapters in various books. Jacob S. Dorman is an Assistant Professor of History and American Studies at the University of Kansas. He is the author of: "Chosen People: The Rise of Black Judaism" forthcoming in 2012 from Oxford University Press. He graduated from Stanford University and received his Ph.D. from UCLA. He is the recipient of a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship from Wesleyan University and a National Endowment of the Humanities fellowship from the Newberry Library, Chicago. Yulia Egorova is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Durham University. Her research interests include studies in Jewish identity, particularly in the context of India and Judaising movements, and anthropology of scientific knowledge. She is the author of Jews and India: Perceptions and Image and a co-author of Genetics, Mass Media and Identity: a case study of the genetic research on the Lemba and the Bene Israel.

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Janice W. Fernheimer is Assistant Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Media at the University of Kentucky where she teaches courses in rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy; digital writing; and Jewish rhetorical studies. Her research focuses on questions of identity, invention, and cross-audience communication. She is completing a monograph on Hatzaad Harishon, Rhetoric, Race, and Religion: Hatzaad Harishon and Black Jewish Identity from Civil Rights to Black Power and co-editing the collection Jewish Rhetorics. Johannes Harnischfeger, University of Frankfurt, studied Literature, Philosophy, Political Science and Social Anthropology. He taught at universities in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. While living in Igboland, 1993-96, he did research on spirit possession and witchcraft. John L. Jackson, Jr, is the Richard Perry University Professor of Communication and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness (Basic Books, 2008); Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (University of Chicago Press, 2005); and Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America (University of Chicago Press, 2001). His current book project, to be published by Harvard University Press, focuses on African Hebrew Israelites in the US and Israel. Dierk Lange is a Professor Emeritus and chargé de cours at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He is a specialist in the history of the West African empires and has done field research in Borno, Hausaland, and Yorubaland. His research presently focuses on the consequences in West African history of mass migrations from the Near East after the fall of the Assyrian empire in 612 BCE. Recent publications on this topic include: “An Assyrian successor state in West Africa: the ancestral kings of Kebbi as ancient Near Eastern rulers.” Anthropos 105 (2009); The Founding of Kanem by Assyrian Refugees ca. 600 BC: Documentary, Linguistic, and Archaeological Evidence. Boston: African Studies Centre, 2011. Magdel Le Roux, is Professor at the Department of Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies. She was born and bred in Pretoria, South Africa. She obtained her doctoral degree at the University of South Africa (Unisa) in 1999, entitled: In search of the understanding of the Old Testament in Africa: The case of the Lemba. Her book: The Lemba. A Lost Tribe of Israel in southern Africa? ( 2003) was also translated into Venda.

360

Contributors

Janice R. Levi received a MA in African Studies from Indiana University (USA) and a BA in History from the University of Oklahoma (USA). Her Master’s thesis focused on West African Jewish history and identity. Daniel Lis is a research fellow at the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Basel and a recent visiting research fellow at the S. Daniel Abraham Centre for International and Regional Relations at Tel Aviv University. His historical and anthropological doctoral research focused on processes of Judaisation in the Igbo ethnic group from Nigeria and on the politics of “Who is a Jew in the State of Israel”. He is currently working in the Swiss National Foundation research project: “Basel and the Beta Israel 18301865. Protestant Mission and Jewish Identity in Ethiopia”. Tudor Parfitt is President Navon Professor of Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies and Research Professor in the School of International and Political Affairs, Florida International University. Emeritus Professor of Modern Jewish Studies School of Oriental and African Studies, London. His Black Jews in Africa and the Americas is published by Harvard University Press (2012). He is a non-resident Fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University Emanuela Trevisan Semi is Professor of Modern Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Venice. She has published on contemporary Jews on the margins: Karaites, Jews of Ethiopia, Jews of Morocco. She has recently published (with Hanane Sekkat Hatimi), Mémoire et représentations des Juifs au Maroc (Paris: Publisud, 2011); Jacques Faitlovitch and the Jews of Ethiopia, (Edgware, Vallentine Mitchell 2007) and (with Tudor Parfitt) Judaizing Movements (London, RoutledgeCurzon 2002). Shalva Weil received her D. Phil degree in Anthropology from Sussex University, UK. She is Senior Researcher at the Research Institute for Innovation in Education at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where she conducts research into migration, ethnicity, religion and gender. She has been the recipient of several awards for applied educational work among Ethiopian Jews in Israel and is the President of SOSTEJE (Society for the Study of Ethiopian Jewry. She has published over 60 articles in scientific journals and books on Ethiopian Jewry. She is co-editor of Beta Israel: the Jews of Ethiopia and Beyond: History, Identity and Borders (Venice: Cafoscarina, 2011) and editor of Ethiopian Jews in the Limelight (Jerusalem, 1997).

INDEX

Abraham, 138, 144-5, 150 Afigbo, A. E., 42 Afrocentricism, 263-268, 281 Ammi, Ben 268-269, 271-273, 275278, 281-82, 285 Archaeology, 177-180 Ark of the Covenant, 178, 183, 184 Asantahene, 15 Asherah, 145, 152, 161 Authochtonous (Jew), 192,194,199,201 Azikiwe Nnamdi, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 92, 93, 95, 99, 107, 108, 109 Baal, 141, 145, 150, 165 Bayajidda legend, 139-142 Ben Zvi Yitzhak, 94, 96, 97, 110, 111 Bene Ephraim, 302-324 Beta Israel 14, 204-215 Biafra, 65, 97, 98, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 116 Bible, 71, 72, 83 Black Jews, 51-52, 235, 236, 238, 239, 252-256 Block, Irving J., 227-228. Canaanite, 192.195, 196, 199 Caribbean, 287, 295, 301 Caste, 302, 304-311, 321-23 Circumcision, 178, 185 Colonial discourse, 16, 37-39, 4-42 Colonialism, 287-301 Comparative religion176, 179 Conversion, 120-121, 131-132, 134 Dalits, 302-311, 322-324 Diaspora theory, 287-301 Dimona, 271, 275, 276-277

DNA 127-129, 135 Divine Eating, 278-279 Ethiopia, 193,194,197,198,199, 220 - 226, 228 Ethiopian Jews, 204-215 Faitlovitch Jacques, 206-207 Falashas, 205, 208 Florence Dore, 243-248 Ford, Arnold Josiah, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 228, 230 n1. Genetics, 12, 25 Genocide, 67, 74, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82 Germaw Mengistu, 215-217 Ghana, 112-123, 125, 127-132, 133 Gronich Shlomo, 207 Hagar, 145, 168 Ham and slavery, 1 Hamitic Hypothesis, 14-15, 40, 42, 44 Hatzaad Harishon, 53, 54, 235-240, 243, 245, 248, 249, 257 Hebrew Israelites, 302-3, 307, 309, 311, 319-321 Hebrewisms, 122, 129, 134-135 Home Place, 292-297 Igbo identity formation, 38-41, 4546 Igbo-Israel diplomatic relations, 89, 108, 111, 111-116 Igbo Jewish crystallization, 44, 47 Igbo-Jewish identification, 87, 88, 96, 100, 107 Igbo nationalism, 48-50 Immortality, 285

362 India, 302-313, 305-312, 315, 321324 Indigenous (Jew), 192,193,198,199,200 Ishmael, 145-6, 158, 162-3, 165 Islam, 265, 267, 270, 276, 281-283, 285 Israel (State of), 302-304, 311-2, 314-6, 319-321 Jerusalem, 207-215, 289, 293 Jewishness, 65, 73, 74 Jews, Ashkenazi, 221-230. Jihad, 69, 71, 74, 79 Kaufman, Sybil, 236, 243-248, 252, 255-258 Kemet, 266-267, 270, 282-283 Kincaid, 287-301 Kohol Beth B’nai Yisrael 222-224. Kulanu, 316-18, 320-24 Lemba, 21-22 Liberia, 268-270 Listening rhetoric, 241-244, 246, 249, 254-258 London Society for the Promoting of Christianity amongst the Jews, 18 Lost Tribes, 193,196, 303, 306, 310, 315, 318, 323 Mali, 119-120, 128-129, 133 MASSOB, 66, 75, 76, 78 Matthew, Wentworth Arthur, 220230, 230-233 notes Meir Golda, 89, 90, 91, 93, 96, 102, 108, 109, 110, 113 Methodology, Kincaid’s political, 289-291 Mosaic Law, 122, 126, 133 New York, 220-230 Nigeria-Israel diplomatic relations,

Index 91, 92, 93, 97, 98, 99, 101-116 Normative Judaism, 118, 125-126, 129, 131-133 Northernization Policy, 50 Nri civilization, 41-43 Ocean Hill-Brownsville, 234-239 Old Testament, 175, 177, 180, 181, 185, 186 Onitsha Market Literature, 47 Onwuejeogwu, M. A., 42 Onyeulo Chima, 100, 101, 101, 103, 105, 112, 114 Operation Moses, 207-208, 211, 213-215 Operation Solomon, 204, 207, 211, 213 Oppression, 296-300 Oral world, oral traditions, 174-179, 181-185 Paris, Hailu Moshe, 222-224 Persecution, 130 Rabbi Wentworth Matthew, 52, 236-243, 248, 251 Race, 12, 192, 193,198,199, 200, 201 Regeneration/regenerate, 193, 200 Sabbath/New Moon, 178, 182, 183 Sarah, 138, 144-5, 165 Secession, 11-13, 65, 66, 67, 73, 76, 78, 79 Segd, 212-213 Synagogues in Nigeria, 34, 35 Territorialism, 192, 192, 193, 194, 197 Yaakov Gladstone, 236, 240, 241, 241, 248, 251 Yahweh, 161, 165