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 Igbo Jewish Community presented with a plaque. |
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Igbo Jews are members of the Igbo people of Nigeria who practice Judaism, most who claim descent from ancient Mediterranean Israelite migrants into Nigeria.
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Migration theory [link]
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This section may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (May 2011) |
Igbo Jews are said to have originated from Syrian, Portuguese and Libyan Israelite migrants into West Africa.
Certain Nigerian communities with Judaic practices have been receiving help from individual Israelis and American Jews who work in Nigeria, out-reach organizations like Kulanu, and African-American Jewish communities in America. Jews from outside Nigeria founded two synagogues in Nigeria, which are attended and maintained by Igbos. Because no formal census has been taken in the region, the number of Igbos in Nigeria who identify as either Israelites or Jews is not known. There are currently 26 synagogues of various sizes. Some researchers estimate there may be as many as 30,000 Igbos practicing some form of Judaism.
Historical scrutiny [link]
Stories affirming relationships between peoples now widely separated in spatial, historical, and cultural terms persist today, not only in Igboland but throughout Nigeria, in other parts of Africa, and in Europe, the United States, and beyond. Their roots in the example under consideration here lie in the assumption of a Judeo-Christian (and Islamic) Biblical framework as applicable to all of human history. In reference to West Africa, this has taken the form of assuming the putative descent of Africans from Noah's progeny, a model which firmly centered the beginning of West African history in the Near East rather than in West Africa itself.
Remarkably, for the Igbo, a very early (and widely influential) statement of this point of view came from an Igbo man, Olaudah Equiano, a Christian-educated freed slave who remarked in his autobiography of 1789 on "the strong analogy which... appears to prevail in the manners and customs of my countrymen and those of the Jews, before they reached the Land of Promise, and particularly the patriarchs while they were yet in that pastoral state which is described in Genesis — an analogy, which alone would induce me to think that the one people had sprung from the other." For authoritative support, he gives reference to "Dr. Gill, who, in his commentary on Genesis, very ably deduces the pedigree of the Africans from Afer and Afra, the descendants of Abraham....[1]
This essay has been roundly discarded as speculation, just one of many related perspectives that were proposed in the historical literature on West Africa during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. These materials have been carefully analyzed by critical historians, who have clarified the diverse functions (quite aside from questions of validity) these histories have served for the writers who have proposed them at various times in the colonial and post-colonial past. [2][3]
Knowledge from sources broader and more self-critical than the Biblical — from contemporary historians, archaeologists, historical linguists, and other scientifically based disciplines — have argued against these claims. There is no doubt that Jews were present in Saharan trade centers during the first millenium CE,[4] the proposition that Jews were directly involved with Igbo-speaking people in prehistoric times is controversial. In any case, every version of these proposed historical analysis of distant relationships, of migrations of people and the like, should be researched extendedly past the sources the information comes from, and the examples you see presented on this page should be no exception to that rule.
Contemporary outreach [link]
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Outreach to Nigerian Jews by the wider Jewish world community gained official status in 1995–97, when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin sent a team to Nigeria in search of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.[5] Western rabbis and educators such as Rabbi Howard Gorin have visited the community at times[6] and Jewish communities in the West support those in Nigeria by sending books, computers, and religious articles.[7] However, the State of Israel has not officially recognized the Igbo as one of the Lost Tribes.
Religious practices [link]
Religious practices of the Igbo Jews include circumcision eight days after the birth of a male child, observance of kosher dietary laws, separation of men and women during menstruation, wearing of the tallit and kippah, and the celebration of holidays such as Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. In recent times, the communities have also adopted holidays such as Hanukkah and Purim, which were instituted only after many of the tribes of Israel had already dispersed.
See also [link]
- Jews and Judaism in Africa
- Lost Tribes of Israel
- Jews of the Bilad el-Sudan (West Africa)
- House of Israel (Ghana) - Jews of Ghana
References [link]
- ^ Equiano, Olaudah (2005). "1". The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, the African Written By Himself. EBook #15399.
- ^ Sanders, Edith (1963). "The Hamitic Hypothesis: Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective". Journal of African History 10 (4): 521–532. JSTOR 179896.
- ^ Zachernuk, Philip (1994). "Of Origins and Colonial Order: Southern Nigerians and the 'Hamitic Hypothesis' c. 1870-1970". Journal of African History 35 (3): 427–55. JSTOR 182643.
- ^ Hunwick, John (1985). "Al-Mahili and the Jews of Tuwat: The Demise of a Community". Studia Islamica 61: 155–183. JSTOR 1595412.
- ^ Ajukwu, Adeze. "Interview with Sir Nat Okafor-Ogbaji", Kwenu, 8 June 2004.
- ^ "Rabbi Returns to Nigeria for 3-Week Mission", Tikvat Israel Congregation (Rockville, Maryland), 13 February 2006.
- ^ "Tikvat Israel ships scripture to Nigeria", Tikvat Israel Congregation (Rockville, Maryland), 11 January 2006.
External links [link]
- Hebrew Karaite Community Igbo Bene Israel
- Re-Emerging: The Jews of Nigeria
- Jews of Nigeria and Uganda
- Kulanu
- Packing for Nigeria
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Jews
The Jews (/dʒuːz/;Hebrew: יְהוּדִים ISO 259-3 Yehudim, Israeli pronunciation [jehuˈdim]), also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jewish ethnicity, nationhood and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation, while its observance varies from strict observance to complete nonobservance.
The Jews trace their ethnogenesis to the part of the Levant known as the Land of Israel. The discovery of the Merneptah Stele confirms the existence of the people of Israel in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. Since then, while maintaining rule over their homeland during certain periods—such as under the Kingdom of Israel, the Kingdom of Judah, the Hasmonean Dynasty, and the Herodian Kingdom—Jews also suffered various exiles and occupations from their homeland—from Ancient Egyptian Occupation of the Levant, to Assyrian Captivity and Exile, to Babylonian Captivity and Exile, to Greek Occupation and Exile, to the Roman Occupation and Exile. These events subjected Jews to slavery, pogroms, cultural assimilation, forced expulsions, genocide, and more, scattering Jews all around the world, in what is known today as the Jewish diaspora.
