Africa’s children of Israel - The Jewish Chronicle

This summer, the Israeli government made a dramatic decision that was barely noticed by the rest of the world. They gave Jewish recognition to the 180,000-strong Bal Ej community in Ethiopia. Distinct from the Beta Israel, who now largely live in Israel, this community has for many centuries lived openly as Christians, but in secret, practised the Ethiopian form of ancient Hebrew ritual, including animal sacrifice and the reading of Torah — Orit in the sacred language of Ge’ez.

They are the Anusim of Africa who, like the Marranos, kept their faith despite persecution and maintained a form of religious practice that goes back thousands of years.

Ethiopians are not the only Jews in Africa. Professor Tudor Parfitt proved through DNA testing the genetic links of the Lemba tribe with Cohanim going back possibly to the time of Israel’s monarchy. They were an élite group, cultured and educated, the founders of Great Zimbabwe. Their place of privilege in southern Africa declined only when European colonialists arrived who could not tell one black face from another and treated them all as inferior.

That there are Jews in Africa that pre-date the European incursion makes sense. We know trade at the time of King Solomon went east as far as India. It is most likely that merchants sailing south through the Red Sea would continue down the coast of Africa — and if they ended up in Zimbabwe, where else could they have gone? Caravan routes were established through the Sahara desert.

Jews over the centuries, like other traders, would have used those land routes to find markets for their goods. Then of course, there were those fleeing persecution: first the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, then the Romans.

Indeed, indigenous African populations claim heritage from Israel in places as far apart as Mali, Ghana, Madagascar and Cape Verde. Israel heritage and Judaism are very different things. The traders far back in our history were not from “Judah”. They were not “Jews” but they were Israelites, they were Hebrews.

They would have set up trading posts, married local women, who in a religion that was then patrilineal, would have taken on the faith of their husbands and whose children would have followed the practice of their fathers. They stuck to their beliefs, adapting it to local customs and adopting local languages.

Hence the Igbo in Nigeria, who claim a linguistic link between the word igbo (pronouced ibo) with ivri — Hebrew. Indeed, they have always been treated as ivrim, strangers, suffering the same prejudices and violent persecutions as have Jews in the Western world.

They claim to be descended from tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel who fled south when the Assyrians conquered in 721 BCE. But there are others too in Nigeria, who argue a background from more recent traders — Jews from North Africa — and they have the DNA to prove it. Many have adopted Jewish practices and some are formally converting to Judaism, though for them it is less a conversion than a return to the religion of their ancestors.

Then there are the many African peoples who have “judaised”, jettisoning Christian belief and turning solely to the Hebrew Bible for inspiration. The way of life described there, of oxen and asses, of ploughshares and pruning hooks, mirrors their own in almost every detail.

Then, in the 1950s and 60s, the independence movements, throwing off the shackles of colonialism, saw in the struggle against the slavery of Egypt an end to their own struggle for freedom.

Most famous are the Abayudaya of Uganda. Inspired by Semei Kakungulu, who showed his opposition to British rule by rejecting the New Testament in favour of the Old a century ago, his followers practised biblical Judaism until a traveller taught them the practices of contemporary Israel. They converted as a group in 2002 and now have their own fully ordained, Ugandan rabbi.

The types of Judaism in Africa are as varied as anywhere in the world. Not all are halachically Jewish, but that is not the point. Rabbinic Judaism goes back 2,000 years. Some of these communities could be a thousand years older. It is not a matter of status, it is a matter of kinship.

The Board of Deputies’ report on religious diversity made it clear that our community is too limited in its assumptions of Jewish cultural and religious practice. It made a number of recommendations how to open up to diversity.

Judaism as a worldwide religion does not mean just European Judaism exported across the continents. It means including in our count those other cultural norms and forms of the faith that have developed and been practised independently for millennia.

Sybil Sheridan is a freelance rabbi currently working with the Newcastle Reform Synagogue