Black Jews in Africa and the Americas
Black Jews in Africa and the Americas

Author: Tudor Parfitt

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2013-02-04

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 0674071506

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Black Jews in Africa and the Americas tells the fascinating story of how the Ashanti, Tutsi, Igbo, Zulu, Beta Israel, Maasai, and many other African peoples came to think of themselves as descendants of the ancient tribes of Israel. Pursuing medieval and modern European race narratives over a millennium in which not only were Jews cast as black but black Africans were cast as Jews, Tudor Parfitt reveals a complex history of the interaction between religious and racial labels and their political uses. For centuries, colonialists, travelers, and missionaries, in an attempt to explain and understand the strange people they encountered on the colonial frontier, labeled an astonishing array of African tribes, languages, and cultures as Hebrew, Jewish, or Israelite. Africans themselves came to adopt these identities as their own, invoking their shared histories of oppression, imagined blood-lines, and common traditional practices as proof of a racial relationship to Jews. Beginning in the post-slavery era, contacts between black Jews in America and their counterparts in Africa created powerful and ever-growing networks of black Jews who struggled against racism and colonialism. A community whose claims are denied by many, black Jews have developed a strong sense of who they are as a unique people. In Parfitt’s telling, forces of prejudice and the desire for new racial, redemptive identities converge, illuminating Jewish and black history alike in novel and unexplored ways.

Urban Apologetics
Urban Apologetics

Author: Eric Mason

Publisher: Zondervan

Published: 2021-04-06

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 031010095X

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Urban Apologetics examines the legitimate issues that Black communities have with Western Christianity and shows how the gospel of Jesus Christ—rather than popular, socioreligious alternatives—restores our identity. African Americans have long confronted the challenge of dignity destruction caused by white supremacy. While many have found meaning and restoration of dignity in the black church, others have found it in ethnocentric socioreligious groups and philosophies. These ideologies have grown and developed deep traction in the black community and beyond. Revisionist history, conspiracy theories, and misinformation about Jesus and Christianity are the order of the day. Many young African Americans are disinterested in Christianity and others are leaving the church in search of what these false religious ideas appear to offer, a spirituality more indigenous to their history and ethnicity. Edited by Dr. Eric Mason and featuring a top-notch lineup of contributors, Urban Apologetics is the first book focused entirely on cults, religious groups, and ethnocentric ideologies prevalent in the black community. The book is divided into three main parts: Discussions on the unique context for urban apologetics so that you can better understand the cultural arguments against Christianity among the Black community. Detailed information on cults, religious groups, and ethnic identity groups that many urban evangelists encounter—such as the Nation of Islam, Kemetic spirituality, African mysticism, Hebrew Israelites, Black nationalism, and atheism. Specific tools for urban apologetics and community outreach. Ultimately, Urban Apologetics applies the gospel to black identity to show that Jesus is the only one who can restore it. This is an essential resource to equip those doing the work of ministry and apology in urban communities with the best available information.

The Soul of Judaism
The Soul of Judaism

Author: Bruce D. Haynes

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2018-08-14

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1479811238

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Explores the full diversity of Black Jews, including bi-racial Jews of both matrilineal and patrilineal descent; adoptees; black converts to Judaism; and Black Hebrews and Israelites, who trace their Jewish roots to Africa and challenge the dominant western paradigm of Jews as white and of European descent. The book showcases the lives of Black Jews, demonstrating that racial ascription has been shaping Jewish selfhood for centuries. It reassesses the boundaries between race and ethnicity, offering insight into how ethnicity can be understood only in relation to racialization and the one-drop rule. Within this context, Black Jewish individuals strive to assert their dual identities and find acceptance within their communities. Putting to rest the notion that Jews are white and the Black Jews are therefore a contradiction, the volume argues that we cannot pigeonhole Black Hebrews and Israelites as exotic, militant, and nationalistic sects outside the boundaries of mainstream Jewish thought and community life. it spurs us to consider the significance of the growing population of self-identified Black Jews and its implications for the future of American Jewry.

Genetic Afterlives
Genetic Afterlives

Author: Noah Tamarkin

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2020-09-11

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 1478012307

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In 1997, M. E. R. Mathivha, an elder of the black Jewish Lemba people of South Africa, announced to the Lemba Cultural Association that a recent DNA study substantiated their ancestral connections to Jews. Lemba people subsequently leveraged their genetic test results to seek recognition from the post-apartheid government as indigenous Africans with rights to traditional leadership and land, retheorizing genetic ancestry in the process. In Genetic Afterlives, Noah Tamarkin illustrates how Lemba people give their own meanings to the results of DNA tests and employ them to manage competing claims of Jewish ethnic and religious identity, African indigeneity, and South African citizenship. Tamarkin turns away from genetics researchers' results that defined a single story of Lemba peoples' “true” origins and toward Lemba understandings of their own genealogy as multivalent. Guided by Lemba people’s negotiations of their belonging as diasporic Jews, South African citizens, and indigenous Africans, Tamarkin considers new ways to think about belonging that can acknowledge the importance of historical and sacred ties to land without valorizing autochthony, borders, or other technologies of exclusion.

Barack Obama Vs the Black Hebrew Israelites: Introduction to the History & Beliefs of 1west Hebrew Israelism
Barack Obama Vs the Black Hebrew Israelites: Introduction to the History & Beliefs of 1west Hebrew Israelism

Author: Vocab Malone

Publisher: Independently Published

Published: 2017-09-27

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 9781973189589

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In 2016, NetFlix released 'Barry', a film chronicling young Barack Obama's stay at Columbia University in New York City. One scene shows the man who would later become the President of the United States debating a religious proselytizer on the street. This man was a "Black Hebrew Israelite". The "Hebrew Israelite" movement began in 1969 and was headquartered at 1 West 125th St. in Harlem (near Obama's apartment on W 109th between Amsterdam and Columbus). Christian apologist and researcher VOCAB MALONE creatively uses this mini-debate as a launching pad to explore this militant and mysterious sect. The timing is just right; this faith is been spreading like wildfire in most major city centers across the US. This book fills a void, as there are no major works on 1West Hebrew Israelism. Now a primer exists in 'BARACK OBAMA vs the BLACK HEBREW ISRAELITES' by Vocab Malone.

Black Zion
Black Zion

Author: Yvonne Patricia Chireau

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0195112571

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This is an exploration of the interaction between African American religions and Jewish traditions, beliefs, and spaces. The collection's argument is that religion is the missing piece of the cultural jigsaw, and black-Jewish relations need the religious roots of their problem illuminated.