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.

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

Get Book Here

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.

Eight Years in Asia and Africa from 1846 to 1855

Eight Years in Asia and Africa from 1846 to 1855 PDF Author: Israel Joseph Benjamin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Africa, North
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description


The Jews of Africa and Asia: Contemporary Anti-Semitism and other pressures

The Jews of Africa and Asia: Contemporary Anti-Semitism and other pressures PDF Author: Tudor Parfitt
Publisher: Minority Rights Group
ISBN: 0946690561
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 11

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Book Description
'The archetypal oppressed minority' For centuries, Jews have lived in Africa and Asia, including the Middle East. Over recent decades, however, their numbers have declined dramatically and in countries like Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt and Morocco have been reduced sometimes to only a few hundred people. Within a few generations, these and other communities are likely to disappear altogether, either because of the attraction that Israel provides or because of overt anti-Semitic animosity. For many, there is a precarious balance between survival and persecution. Persecution of Jews by a variety of host societies permeates history and continents. In Europe, anti-Jewish prejudice existed in Greek and Roman times and later the Christian church waged ideological warfare for centuries against the synagogue. Wide-scale and violent destruction of Jewish lives and property erupted periodically, especially in troubled times when people looked for scapegoats. Waves of European Christian anti-Semitism spread to many countries, chiefly to areas of the Islamic world where traditional social and religious attitudes towards Jews provided fertile soil for discrimination. Under Islam, the State was required to protect Jews, but they were nearly always reduced to second class citizens. Alarmingly, anti-Semitic hostility has recently spread to countries where Jews have never lived and are virtually unknown, such as in Japan. By contrast, there are a few countries in which small and less historic Jewish communities continue without discrimination. The Jews of Africa and Asia, the new Minority Rights Group Report, provides an historical analysis of European and Islamic experiences of anti-Jewish prejudice and persecution and the rise of contemporary anti-Zionism. The Report gives a graphic detailed picture of the current situations of Jewish communities remaining in Africa and Asia in a country by country survey. It is essential reading for all those concerned with racism and history.

The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times

The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times PDF Author: Reeva Spector Simon
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231507593
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
Despite considerable research on the Jewish diaspora in the Middle East and North Africa since 1800, there has until now been no comprehensive synthesis that illuminates both the differences and commonalities in Jewish experience across a range of countries and cultures. This lacuna in both Jewish and Middle Eastern studies is due partly to the fact that in general histories of the region, Jews have been omitted from the standard narrative. As part of the religious and ethnic mosaic that was traditional Islamic society, Jews were but one among numerous minorities and so have lacked a systematic treatment. Addressing this important oversight, this volume documents the variety and diversity of Jewish life in the region over the last two hundred years. It explains the changes that affected the communities under Islamic rule during its "golden age" and describes the processes of modernization that enabled the Jews to play a pivotal role in their respective countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first half of the book is thematic, covering topics ranging from languages to economic life and from religion and music to the world of women. The second half is a country-by-country survey that covers Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, the Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.

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.

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.

The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 2, The Hellenistic Age

The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 2, The Hellenistic Age PDF Author: William David Davies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521219297
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 766

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Book Description
Vol. 4 covers the late Roman period to the rise of Islam. Focuses especially on the growth and development of rabbinic Judaism and of the major classical rabbinic sources such as the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and various Midrashic collections.

The Forgotten Diaspora

The Forgotten Diaspora PDF Author: Peter Mark
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107667461
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
This book traces the history of early seventeenth-century Portuguese Sephardic traders who settled in two communities on Senegal's Petite Côte. There, they lived as public Jews, under the spiritual guidance of a rabbi sent to them by the newly established Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam. In Senegal, the Jews were protected from agents of the Inquisition by local Muslim rulers. The Petite Côte communities included several Jews of mixed Portuguese-African heritage as well as African wives, offspring, and servants. The blade weapons trade was an important part of their commercial activities. These merchants participated marginally in the slave trade but fully in the arms trade, illegally supplying West African markets with swords. This blade weapons trade depended on artisans and merchants based in Morocco, Lisbon, and northern Europe and affected warfare in the Sahel and along the Upper Guinea Coast. After members of these communities moved to the United Provinces around 1620, they had a profound influence on relations between black and white Jews in Amsterdam. The study not only discovers previously unknown Jewish communities but by doing so offers a reinterpretation of the dynamics and processes of identity construction throughout the Atlantic world.

Essential Outsiders

Essential Outsiders PDF Author: Daniel Chirot
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295800267
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia, like Jews in Central Europe until the Holocaust, have been remarkably successful as an entrepreneurial and professional minority. Whole regimes have sometimes relied on the financial underpinnings of Chinese business to maintain themselves in power, and recently Chinese businesses have led the drive to economic modernization in Southeast Asia. But at the same time, they remain, as the Jews were, the quintessential “outsiders.” In some Southeast Asian countries they are targets of majority nationalist prejudices and suffer from discrimination, even when they are formally integrated into the nation. The essays in this book explore the reasons why the Jews in Central Europe and the Chinese in Southeast Asia have been both successful and stigmatized. Their careful scholarship and measured tone contribute to a balanced view of the subject and introduce a historical depth and comparative perspective that have generally been lacking in past discussions. Those who want to understand contemporary Southeast Asian and the legacy of the Jewish experience in Central Europe will gain new insights from the book.

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.