The Original Jews and the Christians who came forward from them

Jah Faith...Judaism in Africa-Africans the First "Jews" and the First "Christians" directly evolving out of the Judaism Moses brought.
This does not state that Christianity was built by colonizers,...the truth is that Africans became Christian long before Christianity developed.

The Abayudaya of Uganda
Out in the green, rolling hills of eastern Uganda, near the city of Mbale in the shadow of Mount Elgon, the Abayudaya Jews live as Ugandans always have, supporting themselves through subsistence farming and struggling against the elements to bring in the next harvest. These rural Ugandans share much with their neighbors; the surrounding fields bursting with mango trees, sugar cane, banana trees and cassava, the frequent communal festivals to celebrate birth, marriage and death, the uncertainty of rapidly changing national politics and the exhaustion of poverty. A significant difference between the Abayudaya and their countrymen is that when they raise their heads to the heavens in prayer, their God is not Jesus, Allah or any tribal spirit, but the God of Israel. They set themselves apart through devout Judaism and their adherence to the belief that some day they will become an accepted part of the international Jewish community.

The Lemba of Southern Africa

"We came from Sena, we crossed Pusela, we rebuilt Sena. In Sena they died like flies. We came from Hundji, to Chilimani. From Chilimani to Wedza. The tribes went to Zimbabwe. They built the walls and lived on the hill. Mwali sent the star. From Zimbabwe to Mberengwe. From Mberengwe to Dumghe. We carried the drum. We came to Venda, Solomon led us. Baramina was our ancestor."
-- Ndinda Song

The Lemba are a paradoxical population of tens of thousands of self-proclaimed Jews who live in mostly in Malawi, Zimbabwe and the South African region of Venda. Their tribal lore, as told through the above "Ndinda song" which some Lemba sing during funerals and harvest festivals, is extensive, muddled and complex. "We came from Sena," they claim, though none of them can say exactly where Sena is. Is it a town in Israel north of Jericho, as some Lemba claim? Is it a region of Yemen, as some ethnographers suggest, or a village on the Zambesi River in Mozambique, as British explorer and Orientalist Tudor Parfitt, who lived with the Lemba for six months to try to determine their true origin, believes? According to tribal lore, the Lemba are descendants of attendants of the Israelite King Solomon who traveled to Ophir (Zimbabwe) in search of gold. The Lemba allege that when Solomon returned, some of his men remained, teaching the Africans to worship "Mwali," a single God and spreading their traditions throughout the region. Are the Lemba direct descendants of Jews from King Solomon’s court? Are they Africans who developed seemingly Judaic practices through contact with Muslim and Christian proselytizers?

What is certain is that the Lemba are emphatic about being Jewish. "I love my people," a Lemba woman told Parfitt, "we came from the Israelites, we came from Sena, we crossed the sea . . . We were so beautiful with beautiful long, Jewish noses and so proud of our facial structure. We no way wanted to spoil our structure by carelessness, eating pig or marrying non-Lemba gentiles." The Lemba maintain that their traditions are of Jewish origin. Their flag features a Star of David and the Elephant of Judah. They practice circumcision. They bury their dead in accordance with Jewish traditions. They hold the first day of the new moon sacred, shaving their heads to commemorate it. The Lemba do not eat meat from pigs; only circumcised men may sacrifice animals for food. Women must purify themselves ritually after menstruating or giving birth. Though non-Lemba women are allowed to marry into the tribe, Lemba men face expulsion if they marry gentiles.


The Beta Israel of Ethiopia

"I am black, but comely, O ye
daughters of Jerusalem, as
the tents of Kedar, as the
curtains of Solomon."
-- from "The Song of Songs"

The word, "Falasha," means "stranger" or "immigrant" in Ge’ez, the classical ecclesiastical tongue of Ethiopia. Though the Ethiopian Jews prefer to call themselves Beta Israel (the House of Israel), "Falasha" is an apt way to characterize their community’s role as an interminable outsider since its inception nearly two millennia ago. Only since the Israeli government accepted the Falashas as "official" Jews in 1975


Rusape, Zimbabwe

"We believe most African (Black) descendants are in fact the ancient Hebrews and in fact most Blacks are the descendants of the 12 children of Israel . . . . We believe the true faith of the African descendants is Judaism and not Islam, as Islam is a revelation for descendants of Ishmael."

-- Solomon Guwazah of the Rusape, Zimbabwe, community, in a letter to The African Sun

The community of self-proclaimed Jews centered in Rusape, about two hours from Harare, Zimbabwe, appreciates its unusual history. On one hand they claim to be spiritually, if not genetically, descended from a "Lost Tribe" of Jews who migrated from the North. On the other, they can trace their recent incarnation back to a 1903 meeting between a former American slave named William Saunders Crowdy who was also a former Baptist deacon, and a spiritually hungry man named Albert Christian who eventually brought Crowdy’s teachings to Southern Africa. Today’s Rusape Jewish community is a vibrant, exciting group that comes together often in song in prayer at their recently rebuilt tabernacle, located about seven kilometers out of town. They follow the same holidays as Western Jews, are learning Hebrew, and are deeply devoted to reviving the Jewish culture of the Old Testament, which they believe is greatly in tune with their own ancient local ways. The community is several thousand strong and growing.

Timbuktu, Mali
Only the most persistent travelers journey to Timbuktu. Though today one may catch a three hour flight from the Malian capital of Bamako, before the late 20th century the only way to reach the legendarily remote city was to take a lumbering five day boat ride up the Niger, or to travel hundreds of miles across the Sahara. The Jews were among the most persistent of ancient travelers, at least when they wished to trade in distant centers of commerce such as Timbuktu. All Jews in Timbuktu converted over the generations to Islam or Christianity, but recent historical research has led several families in the distant Malian city to reconnect with the religion of their ancestors.

Jay traveled to Timbuktu in November, 1999, when he took these photos of life in the ancient trading center, much of which has not changed for centuries. He plans to return this August to further document the Jewish presence there.

Sao Tome and Principe

One of the most tragic episodes in the history of African Jewry occurred on two small islands off the west coast of Africa called Sao Tome and Principe. The islands were not yet under Portuguese influence in 1496 when Portugal expelled its Jews in accordance with the Spanish Inquisition. When the Spanish had expelled the Jews who would not convert to Catholicism three years earlier many of them had fled to Portugal. King Manuel of Portugal had placed a huge head tax on the Jews there in order to finance his nation’s colonies. The king wished to colonize the small islands of Sao Tome and Principe but did not wish to risk too many Portuguese to do so. To punish the Jews who would not pay the head tax, King Manuel deported almost 2,000 of two to ten year old children to the islands. Only 600 were alive a year later.
Some of the surviving Jewish children retained some semblance of their parents’ religion. In the early 1600s the local bishop noted with disgust that there were still Jewish observances on the island and returned to Portugal because of his frustration with them. Observances had declined by the 18th century, but in the 19th and 20th centuries some Jewish traders arrived on the islands and seeded a new, small community. Today there are no known practicing Jews on the Islands but the descendants of the children, who distinguish themselves by skin that is slightly lighter than that of their neighbors, have expressed interest in learning more about the customs of their ancestors.

Cape Verde

"Monument of the grave, a pure and righteous man who made himself walk in his purity, modesty and virtue. He, by his donation, exists. With full funds he sought justice. He strengthens all support of the group of the Burial Society. The wise and important Mister Mordechai Auday who went to his rest 2 day in the month of Tibet 5761 of Creation. May his soul be bound in the bond of life."

– translation from Hebrew of inscription on a tombstone in Cape Verde

The story of the Jewish community in Cape Verde is one of greed, slavery and the Portuguese Inquisition. Since the 1460s, when the Portuguese discovered the array of fourteen islands that sit 450 kilometers off the West African coast, they used the archipelago as a fueling station for explorers on their way to conquer the New World, as a stopover terminal for the slave traders, where they could also refuel and "dispose of" weak or objectionable slaves, and as an outpost for Jews that the Inquisition forced to convert to Catholicism under threat of death.

Morocco

"The worst insult that a Moroccan could possibly offer was to treat someone as a Jew . . . ."

-- Moroccan writer Said Ghallab, 1965 in Les Temps Modernes

The Jews of Morocco have maintained their faith for more than two thousand years, surviving massacres, political and geographic segregation and continual legal status as second-class citizens. They have remained true to their religion through Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, Arab, Turkish and Vichy-French persecution. Even today, though much of the community has emigrated to Israel, Europe and the United States, its remaining members are confident, prepared to maintain their faith in the face of covert threats like assimilation, secularization and Westernization.

"Visiting this separate colony in an Arab country that not too long ago was home to the Palestine Liberation Organization, I felt like an alien on several levels. I was American, English-speaking and an Ashkenazi Jew, keenly aware of the overwhelmingly Muslim Arab population and unfamiliar with many of the rituals and customs of the local Jewish community. But I felt a kinship, too, with these observant, Hebrew-speaking people who have managed to preserve their traditions over centuries and whose affection for Israel is as deep-seated as it is unspoken, at least in public."
-- Garry Rosenblatt, Publisher and Editor of the New York Jewish Week, in The Jewish World Review July 20, 1998

Jews in Tunisia have always tread a precarious path between social acceptance and downright oppression. From their first documented appearance in 2nd century Carthage to their current status as a tolerated minority, Tunisian Jews have been subject to shifts in regional and international politics that have dictated the relative security of their community. As the Oslo Peace Process has eased tensions between Israel and the Arab world, the Jews of Tunisia are once again able to practice their religion in public and with pride.

Today, the island of Djerba, ten hours from Tunis off the southeast of the country, is a particular center of Jewish spiritualism, one of the few places where scribes still hand print the Torah and community elders chant the words of the Zohar, Judaism’s book of mysticism. Most of the Djerban Jews still live as they have for centuries, surviving by metalworking and jewelry-making, maintaining strict and spiritual Jewish practices. In Djerba some children still dress in a blusa under which they wear a small, mauve vest to protect them from the cold and belgha, goatskin slippers. Some women wear brightly colored jumpers in red, green or bronze – in public the young women wear futa, striped silk or cotton dresses. They keep their hair covered, in formal occasions, with a gold-embroidered coffia (headdress). In their long prayer robes and dark skullcaps, Djerban men appear to come from a time long past. Though contact with the secular West has begun to influence the younger generation’s dress and observances, the Djerban Jewish community is what some would describe as a living museum to the Judaism of their ancestors.