#Nigeria
I gather that the Shavei Israel organisation is going through the process of identifying the 10 lost tribes who history pretty well recorded as being lost forever. And the Jewish people have always been very definitive about who can claim Jewish ancestry. They must be descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob through the maternal bloodline and are perfecting DNA-testing to determine that. It may not be long before Nigerian claims of Jewish descent can be proved or disproved with a simple blood test.
Some of the people I know who claim to be Jews are fervent Christians (Catholics and Pentecostals), others are traditionalists but the practice of Judaism is rare. Though there are reported cases and pockets of faithful who are converts, they are just a fraction in the sea of people who are nominal Christians.
I have brought this issue up before many people but there seems to be a general opposition among them about Nigerian claims. “If they are descendants of Jews, why hasn’t there been no call from Israel for Nigerian Jews to “come home” in the way Prime Minister Benjamin Nentayahu sparked a row when he asked the European Jews to come home after the Charlie Hebdo attack in France, a call which made President Hollande hot under the collar.
Or, in the same way, that Israel launched Operation Solomon to airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 1991 due to the war between the Ethiopian government of Mengistu Haile Mariam, Eritrean and Tigrean rebels, which the Israeli government considered threatening to the well-being of the Ethiopian Jews, but have not extended such courtesy to the Nigerian Jews if indeed they are kinfolks. Wasn’t there an operation Moses in the 1980s when Ethiopian Jews in Sudan were covertly airlifted to Israel due to the civil war then?
Was this a strategy to bolster the number of Jews in Israel? Have Nigerian Jews ever been considered?
It seems similarities in both Nigerian and Jewish cultures, are the thread many hold as proof of Jewish origin. It may be of help to the Nigerian identity cause if an interest is shown in the Nigerian Jews by the Jewish world.
Hannah Arendt repeatedly asserted a principle of claiming Jewish identity in the face of antisemitism. “If one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as a world-citizen, not as an upholder of the Rights of Man, or whatever.” “A man attacked as a Jew cannot defend himself as an Englishman or a Frenchman. The world can only conclude from this that he is simply not defending himself at all.”
I will take the issue of Nigerian Jews seriously when I see Nigerian Jews keep the Sabbath from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday. When I get an invitation to religious services spoken in Hebrew. When I go to homes and see that milk and meat are not consumed at the same meal. When meat can only be eaten from animals killed quickly and painlessly? In Nigeria? Go to a slaughter house and see the barbarity shown to animals before they are killed. Or are these Nigerian Jews reformed Jews where conservatism hasn’t yet gotten a foothold? I have never heard a Nigerian Jew mentioned a high holiday (Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur).
“Judaism is the essence of being Jewish” not symbolism and Jews are “unified by religion and tradition rather than national origins.”
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Nigeria today claims to be Jews. They were previously subscribers of Christian faith. With my little knowledge of Judaism I know that Judaism is a religion and a tradition, not a nationality.
It can be a Jew or a Jew, either by conversion or by the mother's bloodline. It is not nationality. Ethiopians are the only Negroid who are Jews by birth. There are Ethiopian Jews, (Negroid) who accepted the rabbi, as if they had Jewish mothers. The Jewish person is determined by the mother of that person. If the mother is Jewish, her children are Jewish even if her father is not. To be a Jew, your mother must be a Jew.
My friend told me: "Every reasonable person knows that we have lost Jews from Africa, and that it is not difficult to decipher our work ethic, like Jews, is first-rate." All investments can turn to the better. Despite persecution in Nigeria, we are economically empowered by any tribe in Nigeria.
We left from Israel. Our fair ten confirms this. Like the Jews, on the eighth day we offer our male children. Our grave ceremonies are being conducted in our homes of ancestors like Jews with so many ceremonies. Like Jews, we swear to eat pork. "
Historical books teach that the first group of Jewish immigrants who came to the United States were sepharian mainly from Spain and Portugal in the 1700s. They could do this because of the hostility towards the Jews because of Ferdinand and Isabelle's decision earlier that the Jews would turn into Christianity or be expelled. Most people pretended to turn into Christianity, while others fled to America where religious freedom existed. The Jews of Germany soon followed soon after the Sephardic Jews and grew from almost three thousand in the period of the American Revolution to almost 500,000 to 1880.
The third group that came to America was from Eastern Europe, mostly from Russia where the Jews were massacred during the pogrom. (They were the victims of Russia / peasants' massacre).
Some of the people I know who claim to be Jews are fervent Christians (Catholics and Pentecostals), others are traditionalists but the practice of Judaism is rare. Though there are reported cases and pockets of faithful who are converts, they are just a fraction in the sea of people who are nominal Christians.
I have brought this issue up before many people but there seems to be a general opposition among them about Nigerian claims. “If they are descendants of Jews, why hasn’t there been no call from Israel for Nigerian Jews to “come home” in the way Prime Minister Benjamin Nentayahu sparked a row when he asked the European Jews to come home after the Charlie Hebdo attack in France, a call which made President Hollande hot under the collar.
Or, in the same way, that Israel launched Operation Solomon to airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 1991 due to the war between the Ethiopian government of Mengistu Haile Mariam, Eritrean and Tigrean rebels, which the Israeli government considered threatening to the well-being of the Ethiopian Jews, but have not extended such courtesy to the Nigerian Jews if indeed they are kinfolks. Wasn’t there an operation Moses in the 1980s when Ethiopian Jews in Sudan were covertly airlifted to Israel due to the civil war then?
Was this a strategy to bolster the number of Jews in Israel? Have Nigerian Jews ever been considered?
It seems similarities in both Nigerian and Jewish cultures, are the thread many hold as proof of Jewish origin. It may be of help to the Nigerian identity cause if an interest is shown in the Nigerian Jews by the Jewish world.
Hannah Arendt repeatedly asserted a principle of claiming Jewish identity in the face of antisemitism. “If one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as a world-citizen, not as an upholder of the Rights of Man, or whatever.” “A man attacked as a Jew cannot defend himself as an Englishman or a Frenchman. The world can only conclude from this that he is simply not defending himself at all.”
I will take the issue of Nigerian Jews seriously when I see Nigerian Jews keep the Sabbath from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday. When I get an invitation to religious services spoken in Hebrew. When I go to homes and see that milk and meat are not consumed at the same meal. When meat can only be eaten from animals killed quickly and painlessly? In Nigeria? Go to a slaughter house and see the barbarity shown to animals before they are killed. Or are these Nigerian Jews reformed Jews where conservatism hasn’t yet gotten a foothold? I have never heard a Nigerian Jew mentioned a high holiday (Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur).
“Judaism is the essence of being Jewish” not symbolism and Jews are “unified by religion and tradition rather than national origins.”
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