Jews and Judaism in African History

Jews and Judaism in African History PDF Author: Richard Hull
Publisher: Markus Wiener Pub
ISBN: 9781558764958
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
This is a narrative about Jews and Judaism in Africa, from antiquity to the present. Jews have often been a marginalized minority, yet they have played a role in the history of the continent hugely disproportionate to their numbers. They have enriched Africa culturally and economically, serving as innovators and middlemen, government servants and educators. Along the way, they have been victims and victimizers, mercenaries and proxies for others as well as adjuvants in long-distance trade and sustainable development. While some have converted to other religions and been assimilated into indigenous society, most have retained their Jewish identity in various forms. Jews and Judaism have practically disappeared from Africa today but their legacy will surely endure.This book covers topics such as Jews in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt; Jews in the western Mediterranean through the Inquisition; 'New Christians' and the making of the Atlantic world, including the early phases of the modern sugar economy and the slave trade; Jews in Ethiopia from antiquity to the 20th century; Jewish communities in the Muslim world; Morocco and West Africa; Sudanic civilizations from the 11th to the 21st century; Jewish communities in North Africa; Jews in the making of modern South Africa; and, the relationship between modern Israel and Africa.

Jews and Judaism in African History

Jews and Judaism in African History PDF Author: Richard Hull
Publisher: Markus Wiener Pub
ISBN: 9781558764958
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is a narrative about Jews and Judaism in Africa, from antiquity to the present. Jews have often been a marginalized minority, yet they have played a role in the history of the continent hugely disproportionate to their numbers. They have enriched Africa culturally and economically, serving as innovators and middlemen, government servants and educators. Along the way, they have been victims and victimizers, mercenaries and proxies for others as well as adjuvants in long-distance trade and sustainable development. While some have converted to other religions and been assimilated into indigenous society, most have retained their Jewish identity in various forms. Jews and Judaism have practically disappeared from Africa today but their legacy will surely endure.This book covers topics such as Jews in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt; Jews in the western Mediterranean through the Inquisition; 'New Christians' and the making of the Atlantic world, including the early phases of the modern sugar economy and the slave trade; Jews in Ethiopia from antiquity to the 20th century; Jewish communities in the Muslim world; Morocco and West Africa; Sudanic civilizations from the 11th to the 21st century; Jewish communities in North Africa; Jews in the making of modern South Africa; and, the relationship between modern Israel and Africa.

The Soul of Judaism

The Soul of Judaism PDF Author: Bruce D. Haynes
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479811238
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
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.

The Black Jews of Africa

The Black Jews of Africa PDF Author: Edith Bruder
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019533356X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
"This book presents, one by one, the different groups of Black Jews in Western central, eastern, and southern Africa and the ways in which they have used and imagined their oral history and traditional customs to construct a distinct Jewish identity. It explores the ways in which Africans have interacted with the ancient mythological sub-strata of both western and African ideas of Judaism."--Résumé de l'éditeur.

Black Jews in Africa and the Americas

Black Jews in Africa and the Americas PDF Author: Tudor Parfitt
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674071506
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
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.

The Columbia History of Jews and Judaism in America

The Columbia History of Jews and Judaism in America PDF Author: Marc Lee Raphael
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231132220
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description
This collection focuses on a variety of important themes in the American Jewish and Judaic experience. It opens with essays on early Jewish settlers (1654-1820), the expansion of Jewish life in America (1820-1901), the great wave of eastern European Jewish immigrants (1880-1924), the character of American Judaism between the two world wars, American Jewish life from the end of World War II to the Six-Day War, and the growth of Jews' influence and affluence. The second half of the volume includes essays on Orthodox Jews, the history of Jewish education in America, the rise of Jewish social clubs at the turn of the century, the history of southern and western Jewry, Jewish responses to Nazism and the Holocaust, feminism's confrontation with Judaism, and the eternal question of what defines American Jewish culture. Original and elegantly crafted, The Columbia History of Jews and Judaism in America not only introduces the student to a thrilling history, but also provides the scholar with new perspectives and insights.

Jews and the American Slave Trade

Jews and the American Slave Trade PDF Author: Saul S. Friedman
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412826938
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
The Nation of Islam's Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews has been called one of the most serious anti-Semetic manuscripts published in years. As Saul Friedman definitively documents in Jews and the American Slave Trade, historical evidence suggests that Jews played a minimal role in the transatlantic, South American, Caribbean, and antebellum slave trades. Friedman elucidates the role of American Jews toward the great nineteenth-century moral debate, the positions they took, and explains what shattered the alliance between these two vulnerable minority groups in America. Saul S. Friedman is a professor of Jewish and Middle Eastern history at Youngstown State. He has written five award-winning documentaries and many articles and books on Jewish history, including: Holocaust Literature, The Oberammergau Passion Play, Terein Diary of Gonda Redlich, and Without Future: The Plight of Syrian Jewry.

From Babylon to Timbuktu

From Babylon to Timbuktu PDF Author: Rudolph Windsor
Publisher: Windsor Golden Series Publication
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description


Black Judaism

Black Judaism PDF Author: James E. Landing
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
Throughout most black societies today, there are Jews who are not accepted by the worldwide community of Rabbinic Jews. They are known as Black Jews, and the movement they represent is known as Black Judaism. Originating in the post-Civil War southern states, the early leaders of this movement were motivated by oppression and racism to migrate north. They came into contact with Rabbinic Jews and the Judaism they represented, but Black Jews and Black Judaism were rejected. Black Judaism continued to spread and reached the continent of Africa where it became an integral part of the Independent Black Church Movement and an active component of the various struggles for independence. From New York it spread to Latin America, especially the West Indies, and is known there in its most varied form as "Rastafarianism." During the turbulent days of the Civil Rights era, an uneasy alliance developed between some Black Jews and Rabbinic Jews, but again rejection soon followed. Black Judaism has never been a large movement in numbers of adherents, but its influence far exceeds its numbers, making it recognizable, as Landing shows in this book, as one of the most important social movements in African-American history. "There is limited existing literature on the topic and Landing's book offers a much needed analysis of this little known religious phenomenon. The work includes an extensive annotated bibliography and photographic supplement. Recommended for academic and research libraries." -- Association of Jewish Libraries, September/October 2004

Colonialism and the Jews

Colonialism and the Jews PDF Author: Ethan B. Katz
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253024625
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
The lively essays collected here explore colonial history, culture, and thought as it intersects with Jewish studies. Connecting the Jewish experience with colonialism to mobility and exchange, diaspora, internationalism, racial discrimination, and Zionism, the volume presents the work of Jewish historians who recognize the challenge that colonialism brings to their work and sheds light on the diverse topics that reflect the myriad ways that Jews engaged with empire in modern times. Taken together, these essays reveal the interpretive power of the "Imperial Turn" and present a rethinking of the history of Jews in colonial societies in light of postcolonial critiques and destabilized categories of analysis. A provocative discussion forum about Zionism as colonialism is also included.

Africana Jewish Journeys

Africana Jewish Journeys PDF Author: Edith Bruder
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527523454
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
The contemporary phenomenon of people’s attraction to Judaism around the world is remarkable. Additionally, millions of people who are not of Jewish descent are increasingly identifying themselves as Jews or are converting. In this volume, scholars and practitioners from a wide variety of disciplines explore multiple sources and meanings of this new shaping of modern Jewish identities in Africa, the United States, and India.