Jews and Judaism in the African diaspora

The Jewish people have had a long history in Africa, dating to the Biblical era. As the African diaspora grew, because of the movement of Africans and their descendants throughout the world, African Jews were part of that diaspora. In addition, Judaism has spread through the African diaspora, largely through conversion. While many adhere to traditional Jewish movements, there are a number of Jewish organizations unique to the African diaspora.

Jews and Judaism in Africa

Since Biblical times, the Jewish people have had close ties with Africa, beginning with Abraham's sojourns in Ancient Egypt and later the Israelite captivity under the Pharaohs. Some Jewish communities in Africa are among the oldest in the world, dating back more than 2,700 years. African Jews have ethnic and religious diversity and richness. African Jewish communities include:

*Scattered African groups who have not maintained contact with the wider Jewish community since ancient times, but who assert descent from the ancient Israelites or other connections to Judaism. These include:
**Groups who observe Jewish rituals, or rituals bearing recognizable resemblance to Judaism. Although there are a number of such groups, the majority of the world's Jews recognize only the Beta Israel of Ethiopia as historically Jewish.
**Groups who do not observe Jewish rituals (such as the Lemba, who practice Christianity), but who exhibit genetic traits regarded as linking them to the main body of the Jewish people.
*Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews living in North Africa, including Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt. Many have emigrated, chiefly to Israel and France, with substantial numbers also emigrating to Brazil, Canada, and the United States. Small communities remain in Morocco and Tunisia.
*The South African Jews, who are mostly Ashkenazi Jews, descended chiefly from pre- and post-Holocaust Lithuanian Jewish immigrants.

Definitions of Jews and Judaism

Mainstream Judaism

Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation, an ethnicity, a religion, and a culture, making the definition of who is a Jew vary slightly depending on whether a religious or national approach to identity is used. While there is much debate about the details, by most definitions, Jews include those who have a Jewish ethnic background and those without Jewish parents who have converted to Judaism.

Other Jewish groups

Some Jewish groups in the African diaspora with no connection to mainstream Judaism consider themselves the true descendants of the Israelites of the Torah and do not consider Semitic Jews to be true Jews.

North America

Mainstream Judaism

The American Jewish community includes African-American Jews and other Jews of African descent. Black Jews belong to each of the major American Jewish denominations — Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist — and to the smaller movements as well. Like their white Jewish counterparts, there are also Black Jewish atheists and Black ethnic Jews who may rarely or never take part in religious practices.

Estimates of the number of Black Jews in the United States range from 20,000 [cite web |url=http://philanthropy.com/jobs/2003/05/15/20030515-359473.htm |title=A Fledgling Grant Maker Nurtures Young Jewish 'Social Entrepreneurs' |accessdate=2007-12-17 |author=David Whelan |date=2003-05-08 |publisher="The Chronicle of Philanthropy" ] to 200,000. [cite web |url=http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/8426/ |title=Organization for black Jews claims 200,000 in U.S. |accessdate=2007-07-21 |author=Michael Gelbwasser |date=1998-04-10 |work=j. ]

Black Hebrews and Black Hebrew Israelites

The term "Black Jews" is sometimes used by those who do not consider Jews of European descent to be true Jews, and who claim to be the true descendants of the Israelites of the Torah. Although cordial relationships exist between some of these groups and the mainstream Jewish community, they are generally not considered to be members of that community, since they have not formally converted nor do they have Jewish parents. However, The African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem is one group that was granted permanent residency status in Israel.

The term "Black Hebrews" or "Black Jews" is also sometimes used to refer to African American religious movements started in the 1800s; the first being the Church of God and Saints of Christ, which was started by William Saunders Crowdy in 1896. To many of these groups, claiming a Jewish identity was a way to reject one of the most influential social institutions of their white oppressors, Christianity (similar to the later Faradian Islam movement). Black Hebrews generally do not practice mainstream Judaism, but rather a religion incorporating elements of different religious traditions.

Latin America

Europe

Asia

Israel

The emergence of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century led growing numbers of European Jews to make "aliyah" (immigrate) to the Land of Israel, the traditional homeland of the Jewish people. In the 20th century, the rise of Nazism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust accelerated the trend.

Jews from Arab states in North Africa

The creation of the modern State of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent expulsion and emigration of Jews from the neighboring Arab states led to growing numbers of non-European Jews settling in Israel, among them Jews from North Africa — chiefly Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. For these African Jews, emigration to Israel was the end of the Jewish diaspora and the beginning of the African diaspora.

Many North African Jews emigrated to Europe, utilizing citizenship granted in the colonial period. Thus some Libyan Jews immigrated to Italy while some Algerian, Tunisian, and Moroccan Jews immigrated to France.

Subsequent events, such as the Algerian War for Independence, the 1956 Suez Crisis, and the Six-Day War in 1967, led to the almost complete emigration of the Jews still remaining in Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco.

Today the only viable Jewish communities in North Africa are in the island of Djerba and in Morocco.

Beta Israel

During the 1970s, members of the Beta Israel, a community of Ethiopian Jews, began to immigrate to Israel after Ovadia Yosef, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, ruled that they were descendents of the Biblical Israelites and that they should be eligible for citizenship under Israel's Law of Return. As famine gripped Ethiopia during the 1980s, several thousand Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel, but political instability in Ethiopia and Sudan made further immigration impossible. In 1991, when circumstances changed, more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews were flown to Israel.

Absorption of the Ethiopian Jews into Israeli society has been difficult. During the 1980s, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate initially required the new arrivals to undergo certain conversion procedures, which many of the Ethiopian Jews considered an insult. In 1996, the Magen David Adom destroyed all blood that had been donated by Ethiopian Jews.

A 2006 study found that unemployment among Ethiopian Jews in Israel is nearly twice that of the general Israeli population. The poverty rate among Ethiopian Jewish families is 51.7%, compared with 15.8% among all Israeli families.

ee also

*List of Jews in the African diaspora
*Alliance of Black Jews
*Commandment Keepers
*Groups claiming an affiliation with the ancient Israelites
*Jewish diaspora
*Jewish ethnic divisions
*Lewis Gordon
*Islam in the African diaspora

References

Further reading

*cite book |last=Chireau |first=Yvonne |coauthors=Nathaniel Deutsch (eds.) |title=Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism |year=1999 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |isbn=0195112571
*cite book |last=Kaye/Kantrowitz |first=Melanie |authorlink=Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz |title=The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism |year=2007 |publisher=Indiana University Press |location=Bloomington |isbn=0253349028
*cite book |last=Khanga |first=Yelena |authorlink=Yelena Khanga |coauthors=Susan Jacoby |title=Soul to Soul: A Black Russian Jewish Woman's Search for Her Roots |year=1994 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |location=New York |isbn=0393311554
*cite book |last=Lester |first=Julius |authorlink=Julius Lester |title=Lovesong: Becoming a Jew |origyear=1988 |year=1995 |publisher=Arcade Publishing |location=New York |isbn=1559703164
*cite book |last=Tobin |first=Diane |coauthors=Gary A. Tobin, Scott Rubin |title=In Every Tongue: The Racial and Ethnic Diversity of the Jewish People |year=2005 |publisher=Institute for Jewish & Community Research |location=San Francisco |isbn=1893671011
*cite book |last=Walker |first=Rebecca |authorlink=Rebecca Walker |title=Black, White & Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self |year=2000 |publisher=Riverhead Books |location=New York |isbn=1573221694

External links

News and articles

*cite web |url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZEDr8Hl6-Q |title=Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation |accessdate=2007-10-28 |date=2007-03-29 |format=Video |work=Chicago Tonight |publisher=WTTW
*cite web |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,771958,00.html |title=Black Jews |accessdate=2007-10-28 |date=1937-09-27 |work=Time
*cite web |url=http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/blackjews.html |title=Black Jews |accessdate=2008-09-18 |author=Kay Holzinger |year=1998 |work=The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions |publisher=Religious Movements Homepage Project at the University of Virginia |archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20060408152951/religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/blackjews.html |archivedate=2006-04-08
*cite web |url=http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jewishsociety/Minority_within_a_Minority.asp |title=Minority with a Minority |accessdate=2008-09-18 |author=Ita Yankovich |date=2008-01-13 |publisher=Aish HaTorah

Other sites of interest

*cite web |url=http://www.riseisrael.com |title=12 Tribes of Israel , a site "teaching all those whose forefathers are of so-called Negro, Native American Indian, and Hispanic descent ... their true Biblical heritage as the children of Israel".
*cite web |url=http://www.authenticjews.com |title=Authentic Jews , a site that asserts that the vast majority of authentic Jews "were and are Black" and that "99% of all so-called Black Americans are Jews".
*cite web |url=http://www.ayecha.org |title=Ayecha Resource Organization , an organization whose mission is to "increase awareness of Jewish Diversity through training, curricula, and programming" and to "support, strengthen, and advocate for Jews of Color and multi-racial families in the U.S."
*cite web |url=http://www.blackandjewish.com/bajpages/bajindex.html |title=Black & Jewish, A Community for Jews of Color , a site for "Black American Jews and their friends to communicate".
*cite web |url=http://www.angelfire.com/ca/dorseydon/index.html |title=Black and Jewish Web Page , a site for people "interested in learning about the diversity which exists within Judaism".
*cite web |url=http://www.blackjews.org |title=BlackJews.org, a Project of the International Israelite Board of Rabbis , a site maintained by the Commandment Keepers.
*cite web |url=http://www.temple.edu/isrst/Affiliates/CAJS.asp |title=Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University, a "research and learning institution dedicated to scholarship on Afro-Jewish peoples and developing awareness of the historical, political, religious, and philosophical issues that arise from the convergence of the African and Jewish diasporas".