In 2018, Yehudah Webster was accosted in Crown Heights for carrying a Torah scroll. “What are you doing?” his roommate shouted at the group of more than 20 screaming Chasidic men surrounding his car. “Would you do this if he weren’t black?”

“This has nothing to do with race,” one of the men shouted back. “I’m making sure the Torah is safe.”

Crown Heights is the Brooklyn neighbourhood that is the base for the Chabad-Lubavitch Chasidic movement. It is also home to more than 30,000 Caribbean immigrants. There is a history of tension between the two groups that exploded in 1991 during the Crown Heights riots, which left a Guyanese seven-year-old and a Jewish 29-year-old dead.

But there have also been many examples of the communities happily overlapping, with prominent black Jews growing up in the neighbourhood, popular multi-ethnic bands using their music to bring the communities together and Chabadnics marrying Jewish Jamaicans (who call themselves Jew-maicans), some of whom sell kosher jerk chicken on the side of the road during the Labor Day Parade.

Yet many in Crown Heights still cannot fathom a black man carrying a Torah.

This situation never would have occurred, Webster, now 31, tells the JC, if the mainstream Jewish community was better informed of diversity within the Jewish world. Born in Georgetown, Guyana, Webster is the son of a pastor, though his entire family “reverted” to Judaism when Webster was eight. After moving to South Orange, New Jersey in 2000, the family joined a Conservative congregation. Webster attended cheder, became co-chapter president of the United Synagogue Youth, and was a counsellor and director of Camp Ramah, the Conservative camp movement.

Since then he’s become a leader in the US Jewish world, advocating for equality within the Jewish community and within the wider US. He hopes to educate the Jewish community about the wealth of diversity within itself by building bridges with Jewish groups in the African diaspora.

To do this, Webster founded Teshuvah Across the Waters, a form of black Jewish Birthright trip, sponsored by charities Black Jewish Liberation Collective (BJLC) and the Jewish Multiracial Network (JMN). It offers black Jews the chance to explore their roots by visiting communities throughout the African and Jewish diaspora.

The programme launches in January with a visit to the Igbo Jews in Nigeria, a community who practise a form of Orthodox Judaism. Many of its members trace their lineage to Gad, the seventh son of Jacob.

Teshuvah literally means return and for many Jews a trip to Africa is returning home. Aisha Coleman, a West African Jew who will be part of the first Teshuvah Across the Waters cohort, tells the JC: “This is not just going to visit a new community. This is going to visit family. This is going to visit friends. This is going to a home that I left as a refugee when I was two.”

Webster made his first journey to Nigeria this January when he went to see his sister, who was finishing her doctoral studies in Lagos. The Igbo Jewish community welcomed him. Praying using mostly Sephardic Orthodox traditions, the Igbo Jews sing with their own melodies, though Webster recognised some, such as those for Yedid Nefesh. Young children belted out their songs, and on Shabbat they danced with the Torah for 20 minutes as though it were Simchat Torah. Webster was moved – but also sad, wondering why that fervour was lacking in US Jewish communities.

Webster’s mother said she often heard her father and grandfather discuss being a descendant of the Igbo, a tribe with more than 35 million members, who Webster says were forced to convert to Christianity under colonialism. Over the past 30 years the Jewish community in Nigeria, estimated at around 5,000 although some put the figure much higher, has worked hard to reconnect with the larger diaspora, with Igbo leaders visiting Jewish communities outside Nigeria to study and bring back what they learnt.

Today, there are more than 70 Igbo Jewish synagogues throughout Nigeria, yet still the Igbo Jews struggle to be recognised by the wider Jewish community.

Their Judaism has been stolen from them, Webster says. Black Jews have been attacked spiritually and psychically due to enslavement, colonialism and forced conversion to Christianity. Reconnecting to their African roots heals a “brokenness that has been forced upon us through centuries of oppression and degradation”.

The Igbo community, Webster learned, have retained many of their traditions without understanding where they come from. These include shmita, where a farmer lets their land rest every seven years.

Similarly, Webster’s family followed traditions including covering mirrors and portraits while mourning, a practice he now knows is done by both Igbo and Ashkenazi Jewish communities.

African Jews yearn to reconnect to the larger Jewish community, Coleman says. They want to share their culture, their recipes, their melodies and their joy. Many Orthodox Jews, such as those who confronted Webster, have much more in common in terms of religious practices and day-to-day lifestyle with African Jews, who are often more devout than other Jews in the diaspora, she says.

Learning about other Jewish communities will also provide a deeper respect for their own history, Coleman believes. It will inspire them to share their own family stories and connect them to the larger tapestry of Jewish culture.

Since October 7 there has been increased interest in the diversity of the Jewish community in response to accusations of Israel being a colonial entity. While Israel’s Jewish community is more than 50 per cent non-Ashkenazi, many in the diaspora view Jews as being white.

Black Jews themselves run the gamut of views on Israel and its relation to colonialism. Many black Jewish Zionists feel alienated by former allies within the black community who they feel don’t support their connections to Israel. Other black Jews connect strongly with the Palestinian struggle and are critical of Israel’s current leadership.

Coleman says it is exciting to see the mainstream Jewish community showing more interest in the diversity of the Jewish world, even though this diversity is nothing new.

Soon after the trip, participants will meet for a retreat to build curricula that can be integrated into “into the fabric of the Jewish community”, Webster says, putting the story of African Jews “in its rightful place in the global canon of Jewish history that is taught from early childhood to adult education, seminary, yeshivah level education in the US and major institutions around the world”.

Communities being considered for future trips include the Lemba in South Africa, House of Israel in Ghana and Abayudaya in Uganda.

“It’s exciting to say, ‘Wow, there are thousands to millions, potentially, more Jewish siblings that we haven’t had the opportunity to connect with yet,” Webster says. 

“And here is an effort to actually start solidifying these bridges, to connect with our African Jewish siblings and help to preserve and uplift African Jewish customs, histories and traditions.”