Lesson 20 of 27 The Black Jews

Photo: Rabi Jehu A. Crowdy Jr. -
Church of God and Saints of Christ

The Black Jews (from wikipedia)
1) 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.

2) Beta Isreal - 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.

3) Hebrew Israelites - The Black Hebrew Israelites, or Black Hebrews, are groups of people of African Americans situated mostly in the United States who claim to be descendants of the ancient Israelites. They claim that they and many Africans, and blacks in places like Brazil, Madagascar, and the Caribbean are also descended from the Israelites.

4)The Lemba: The Black Jews of South Africa.


* Genesis 12:16 – Not only Hagar, but many of Abraham’s servants were gifts from Pharaoh and in this period it is fairly likely that many were Nubians. (approx. 1921 BC)


* Genesis 13: 6-8 – Abraham had a large number of herdsmen and 318 male servants who were born into his house.


* Genesis 25 – Isaac, Abraham’s son and then Jacob inherited everything.


* Genesis41:50 – Joseph fathered two tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh, by an Egyptian wife, automatically making Israel nearly 10 percent Egyptian. Joshua was from one of these half-African tribes, Ephraim; in later years this tribe became so dominant that the northern tribes of Israel were sometimes simply called “Ephraim”. When the Israelites were subjected to slavery under the Egyptians, they and their former servants were now all defined as Israel together; this means that much intermarriage must have taken place.


* Exodus 12:38 – After 400 years, a “mixed multitude” left Egypt during the Exodus.

5) The BlackJews.Org:
"My background and most of my information comes from working with those congregations that derive from the late Chief Rabbi Wentworth Arthur Matthew (1892-1973). Rabbi Matthew founded the Commandment Keepers Congregation in Harlem, New York in 1919. He trained and ordained many of the rabbis who later founded synagogues in various places of the United States and the Caribbean. Rabbi Matthew, it turns out, was a close associate of Rabbi Arnold J. Ford who was the musical director of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) which was organized by Marcus Garvey in 1911.
The emergence of Judaism among people of African descent in the first half of this century was made possible by a combination of the following factors: (1) A strong religious tradition in the background of the person who became Jewish that embodied Jewish practices from an early but unclear source. When interviewed, many of the older members of this community recall memories of their parents observing certain dietary laws, such as abstaining from pork or salting their meat. Others recall traditions related to observing the Sabbath or festivals such as Passover and Sukkot. In most cases these practices were fragmentary and observed by people who simultaneously practiced Christianity.
The possible origins of these Hebraic traditions could be traced to West Africa were a number of tribes have customs so similar to Judaism that an ancient connection or maybe even descent from one of the "ten lost tribes" is believed. Other possibilities for these well-documented practices are through association with Jewish slave owners and merchants in the Caribbean and North America. In this case, the number of Jewish slave owners is known to have been small, yet it has been shown that Jewish masters, particularly in the Caribbean, attempted to proselytize their slaves just as their Christian counterparts had. Therefore, the three main sources of Judaism for African Africans today are: (1) Indigenous African Ancestry, (2) Conversion during or after slavery, (3) Intermarriage between white Jews and people of African descent, and (4) Shuvah, the conscious reclaiming of Judaism by people of African descent whose ancestors were forced into Christianity.
Many African Americans who practice Judaism today maintain that they have always had a close affinity with the Hebrews of the Old Testament. This is true whether or not they recall particular rites that remind them of the Jewish traditions they now follow. Scholars such as Albert Raboteau have described in books such as Slave Religion that the biblical struggles of the Hebrew people—particularly their slavery and exodus from Egypt—bore a strong similarity to the conditions of African slaves and was therefore of special importance to them. This close identification with the biblical Hebrews is clearly seen in the lyrics of gospel songs such as "Go Down Moses" and remains a favorite theme in the sermons of black clergy today.
What all this proves is that there was a foundation, be it psychological, spiritual, or historical, that made some black people receptive to the direct appeal to Judaism that Rabbi Matthew and others made to them in this century. If black people were fertile ground for the harbingers of Judaism, then the philosophy of Marcus Garvey was the seed that helped to bring it to fruition. Put most simply, Garvey's message was one of Black Nationalism and Pan Africanism. His goal was to instill pride in a people who were being humiliated through institutionalized racism and cultural bigotry. Garvey and Matthew attempted to challenge old stereotypes that either minimized a black presence in history or the bible, or, that completely excised black people from these texts. They argued that such distortions and omissions were harmful to the self-image that many black people had of themselves. They debunked these myths by extolling the contributions that black people made to the development of human civilization. To some extent this meant focusing on the achievements of African societies such as Egypt and Ethiopia in highly rhetorical and romantic way. It also meant attacking the false image that all the people in the bible looked like Europeans. They pointed out that by normative standards the dark hues of the ancient Hebrews would cause them to be classified as black in today's world. This was a revelation to thousands of black people who had previously accepted the all white depictions without question.
Rabbi Ford and Rabbi Matthew took Garvey's philosophy one step further. They reasoned that if many of the ancient Hebrews were black, then Judaism was as much a part of their cultural and religious heritage as is Christianity. In their hearts and minds they were not converting to Judaism, they were reclaiming part of their legacy. This fit very neatly with the biblical prophecies that spoke of the Israelites being scattered all over the world, being carried in slave ships to distant lands, and of being forced to worship alien gods (Deuteronomy 28).
Rabbi Matthew found himself in the peculiar position of having to both justify his small following of black Jews in Harlem, and also to explain the presence of so many white Jews. His position on this subject went through various stages. He always maintained that the "original Jews" were black people-or at least not European; however, he did not deny the existence or legitimacy of white Jews. In fact, as his services, synagogues, and attire show, he deferred to orthodox conventions on many matters. For example, he maintained separate setting for men and women, he used a standard Orthodox siddur (prayer book) to conduct his services, worshippers wore tallitzim and kippot (prayer shawls and yarmulkes), they affixed mezuzot, wore tefillin, used standard texts in their Hebrew and rabbinic schools and read from a Sefer Torah.
Rabbi Matthew believed that although the "original Jews" were black people, white Jews had kept and preserved Judaism over the centuries. Since we, black Jews, were just "returning" to Judaism it was necessary for us to look to white Jews on certain matters—particularly on post-biblical and rabbinic holidays such as Hanukkah which could not be found in the Torah. However, it is important to note that Rabbi Matthew felt free to disagree on matters where he had a strong objection. He also recognized that since many customs, songs, and foods were of European origin, that he had the right to introduce some African, Caribbean, and American traditions into his community. Of course, his right to do this was often challenged, sometimes by Jews who had “Europeanized” Judaism in the past or who were "Americanizing" Judaism in the present. Rabbi Matthew was constantly aware of apparent double standards within Judaism. After decades of trying to find common ground with white Jews by speaking at white synagogues around the county and at B'nai Brith lodges internationally, and after repeated attempts to join the New York Board of Rabbis, Rabbi Matthew concluded that black Jews would never be fully accepted by white Jews and certainly not if they insisted on maintaining a black identity and independent congregations. Since his death in 1973, there has been very little dialog between white and black Jews in America." - Rabbi Sholom Levy from http://www.blackjews.org/Essays/WhoAreWe.html

6) Church of God and Saints of Christ
The story of Prophet Williams S. Crowdy:
http://www.cogasoc.org/leaders/wscrowdy.html
Judaism is a system of religious beliefs that governs the life of the individual who chooses to practice it. Thus, anyone, regardless of race, nationality, or ethnicity, can embrace the religion. According to the Census, there are millions of people worldwide who profess to Judaism. Among these are people of African descent. Thousands of African-Americans in the United States professed to Judaism. There is growing evidence that the ancient Hebrews of the Bible were an Afro/Asiatic people. Many Egyptologists and biblical scholars, including Yosef Ben-Jochannan, Charles Copher, Cheikh Anta Diop, Cain Hope Felder, Ivan Van Sertima, and Rudolf Windsor have asserted that the people of the ancient biblical world were an African people. Today, many people of African descent around the world practice Judaism and trace their lineage to ancient times. For example, the "Beta Israel" of Ethiopia believes that they are descendents of Menelik, son of Solomon, and the Lemba Tribe of South Africa believes that they are the descendents of the tribe of Levi.

More: The Black Jews


Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOSJVfbgxdo