This week, Career-Israel trekked South to the Negev. On our last day, we visited a community of "Black Hebrews." They claim they are Jewish and have Jewish backgrounds. Our speaker told us that when the Romans were invading and destroyed the Second Temple, natural instinct says to go South as they were coming from the North. So while some tribes moved East, they moved South to Africa. During the British Empire and the Slave Trade, many tribes in the African villages were split up and those who were taken did not have time to bring symbolic materials with them and only carried on the oral tradition. In the Americas, the speaker said, the slaves talked about their Jewish heritage through songs. The songs were about the Jordan River, not the Ganges or the Euphrates River, as well as about the Messiah not Christ.
In 1966, a priest in Chicago had a 45 second vision (even the speaker seemed a little skeptical about that) to bring the Black Hebrews back to their homeland the next year. So in 1967, when J. Edgar Hoover and Martin Luther King were making the mark in history, 400 Black Hebrews left America for Liberia. The visionary said that they were to return via the same route they took. Liberia welcomed them with open arms, but after a few years they knew this was not the place they were supposed to be because of the disease, death, and economy. And so they trekked onward to Israel.
In Israel, they were granted citizenship under the Law of Return, which gives any Jew the right to citizenship. They established a community where diet and health are regulated. They follow an organic vegan diet and exercise three times a week. These laws are mandated by the community. The leader of the community said that no one has ever been sick and all the diseases that "they" say African-Americans are predisposed to do not appear on any charts.
Why do they claim they are Jewish? First of all, they say "Judaism" means from the tribe of Judah and if they can claim this then they are Jewish. In addition, they follow the laws of the Torah. Not the Talmud or any other interpretation. They supposedly follow exactly what the Torah says. Besides the fact that the Torah specifically says not to do this, there are a few inconsistencies. They wear fringes on their garments in the interpretive manner, but they shave the four corners of their face and not everyone wears a kippah. They observe Shabbat, but they fast when the Torah clearly says not to do this.
Up until this point, I could understand their interpretations on religion even if I did not agree. I do not think they are Jewish, but I can see where they are coming from. It was when we took a tour of the community that my doubts began to simmer. They still believe in polygamy, but do not practice it because "Israel still don't think it be cool." (Side note: Since most of them are Black and from the US, the little kids speak like they are from the Block) In addition, everything is based on the conscience of an individual. There are no locks on the doors because if someone does steal from them, the individual has pay the price. If they do not exercise three times a week, it's the individual that has to pay the price. There are no consequences. We spoke to the Doctor who essentially believes that beings can live forever. At first I thought that he meant if we eat right and exercise right, then we can live the same amount of years as the biblical characters. However, someone directly asked him if he thought that humans could live forever and he said yes. I asked him about deterioration of the brain and his answer was that the community is only 40 years old, you can't see the results yet.
The Black Hebrews are definitely something I will be thinking about in the future.
In addition to this community, we hiked through Mitzpe Ramon and Maktesh Gadol, which is actually smaller than Mitzpe Ramon since they discovered Ramon after, and saw some beautiful views in Ein Avdat. Now that I am back in Jerusalem, I can appreciate the desert and can safely say I will not live there, despite the propaganda we were given, and I am so thankful for indoor plumbing.
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