A Sabbath service is underway at the
Ghihon Hebrew Research synagogue in the Jikwoyi suburb of Nigeria’s
federal capital territory.
Fourteen-year-old Kadmiel Izungu Abor
heads there with his family. They walk alongside stray goats on a
road
covered in red dust and potholes, lined with open sewages. They are
nearly 20 kilometers away from the modern multi-storied office buildings
and sprawling mansions in Nigeria’s capital city of Abuja.
About 50 people gather in the synagogue.
They pray from the Siddur, they read from the Torah and as they chant,
Abor’s mellow alto begins to rise.
But Abor wears his kippah and his identity with pride.
“I am a Jewish Igbo,” he says.
The Igbo are one of Nigeria’s largest
ethnic groups with population estimates ranging from 20 to 50 million.
Abor is convinced that the Igbo’s ancestors were Jews.
“The son of Yaakov, Jacob, [was] Gad and
I learned that he was among those people who went out of Israel to
exile,” Abor says. “So from there he had a son called Eri and a son gave
birth to a son called Aguleri and that’s how the Igbo race began.”
From generation to generation, some Igbo
have passed down various versions of a migration story framed around
Jacob, a patriarch of Judaism. A popular version of the narrative holds
that Gad, the seventh son of Jacob, had three sons who settled in
present-day southeastern Nigeria, which is predominantly inhabited by
the Igbo. Those sons, Eri, Arodi and Areli (as mentioned in the book of
Genesis), are said to have fathered clans, established kingdoms and
founded towns still in existence in southeastern Nigeria today,
including Owerri, Umuleri, Arochukwu and Aguleri.
Wearing a white shirt with the Star of
David stitched on the front, King Eri points to a calendar on the wall
of his palace that lists the names of his 33 predecessors. He has no
doubts that Eri is his ancestor. He has even acquired land to establish
an educational center for the study of Jewish culture.
“Israelites and Igbos are brothers,” he says with a broad smile.
King Eri, like many, claims that the
Igbo are the Jews of West Africa. They believe they are descendants of
at least one of Israel’s lost tribes. In the eighth century B.C. the
Assyrians invaded Israel’s northern kingdom forcing 10 tribes into
exile. Historians say it is not unlikely that these tribes migrated
westward to Africa.
When I grew up I heard, like virtually every Igbo here, that the Igbo people came from Israel.
Remy Llona, Niegrian author and lawyer
asserts that throughout history, large populations of dispersed Jews
also became “lost” through forced conversions and cultural assimilation.
“There is evidence that is scientific
that the Igbos descended from the people that evolved in Israel,” says
Remy Ilona. He began investigating the stories from his youth more than a
decade ago.
“When I grew up I heard, like virtually
every Igbo here, that the Igbo people came from Israel,” the Abuja-based
lawyer says. His field work in Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Mali led him to
conclude that Igbo and Jewish culture are not just similar, but
“identical.”
In his latest book, Ilona draws
parallels between Igbo rituals and customs and those practiced by Jews.
Shared traditional practices include circumcising male children eight
days after birth, refraining from eating “unclean” or tabooed foods,
mourning the dead for seven days, celebrating the New Moon and
conducting wedding ceremonies under a canopy. Some historians have noted
that the Igbo were practicing these customs before their exposure to
the Bible and missionaries.
Daniel Lis, from the Institute for
Jewish Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland, is one of the foremost
researchers on Jewish identification among the Igbo. He says there has
been a clear continuity of Jewish identity among the Igbo. “It’s not
just something that happened yesterday,” he says.
The Swiss-Israeli anthropologist says
that Igbo-Jewish identity can be traced back to the 18th century.
Cross-cultural comparisons have been documented by people ranging from
George Thomas Basden, the influential Anglican missionary and
ethnographer who proposed that the word “Igbo” evolved as a corruption
of the word “Hebrew,” to Olaudah Equiano, a freed Igbo slave living in
18th century British society.
The oral stories and historic notations
of cultural resemblances between the Igbo and the Jews have proven
compelling enough to lure a diverse array of people to southeastern
Nigeria.
Michael Freund, an American Jew based in
Israel, is planning his first trip to Nigeria to get a first-hand look
at the culture of the Igbo.
“I’ve read about them but of course there is nothing like actually hearing the stories of the people themselves,” he says.
Discovering “lost” Jewish communities around the world is what Freund does.
He is the founder and chairman of the
independent non-profit organization Shavei Israel. According to its
media spokesperson Arik Punder, Shavei Israel is the only organization
in Israel that focuses on finding descendants of the legendary lost
tribes.
He says the Israeli government does not
recognize ethnic communities in various countries claiming to be
descendants of lost tribes.
They cannot prove that they have a Jewish grandfather or grandmother, but they do have an interesting story.
“They cannot prove that they have a Jewish grandfather or grandmother,” Punder says. “But they do have an interesting story.”
Freund says he has received numerous
letters and emails from Nigerians trying to connect to Israel. But with a
rising number of groups around the world attempting to link their
ancestry to the ancient Israelites, he is aware that some of those
claims are “wishful thinking.” He hopes that the future will yield
strong genetic evidence to help the search for the lost tribes.
“As DNA technology improves there will
be a growing stock of scientific evidence which can perhaps buttress the
claims of an Israeli ancestry,” he says.
A 2012 documentary called “Re-Emerging: The Jews of Nigeria” featured the country’s Jewish community.
The film featured Rabbi Howard Gorin. He
retired from the congressional rabbinate in 2012 after 32 years as the
spiritual leader of a Jewish congregation in the U.S. state of Maryland.
Gorin has played a significant role in the rise of Judaism in Nigeria
since his first trip to the country in 2004.
“I embrace them and support them as brothers and sisters,” he says. He ships books on Judaism to synagogues in Nigeria.
More support comes from groups like
Kulanu, a New York-based non-profit group. Kulanu assists emerging
Jewish communities around the world, like the one in Nigeria. But most
of the Igbo who practice Judaism were not born to a Jewish mother and
have not converted according to halakhah, Jewish law, so many Orthodox
Jews would not recognize them.
Even among Igbo people, the claim to be
Jews elicits strong criticism. One critic, Catherine Acholonu,
attributes Jewish identification among the Igbo as a result of
Christianity brought by missionaries, since most Igbo people are
Christians.
Everybody is excited to say they belong to the people of the Bible because the Bible is reigning.
Catherine Acholonu posits that,
“Everybody is excited to say they belong to the people of the Bible
because the Bible is reigning -- it’s in,” Acholonu is a prominent
researcher on Igbo history and culture.
In her award-winning book “They Lived
Before Adam” Acholonu proposes that Igbo civilization is older than that
of the Israelites.
She feels that Igbo people are
whitewashing their history and diminishing the value of their own
culture by attempting to link their heritage to the Jews.
Peter Agbai, who says he is a “proud Igbo man,” strongly disagrees.
He started practicing Judaism in 1991
after leaving the Methodist church. He says that the more he followed
the commandments in the Torah, the more he realized that he was doing
what his parents had always done as followers of traditional Igbo
culture and spirituality.
“I have seen that the traditions of our
people are similar to those in the Bible,” says the 66-year-old, making
references to aspects like ritual bathing and polygamy.
Agbai is one of the founders of the
Ghihon synagogue. He plays an important role as a spiritual leader in
Abuja’s community of Igbo Jews. He attended Abor’s bar mitzvah last
year, an experience that Abor says made him feel like a man, and feel
closer to the Jewish culture.
He wants to go deeper into Orthodox Judaism and take a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
“I want to live in Israel,” Abor says. He hopes that there, he will get a better understanding of his forefathers.
No comments:
Post a Comment