Black Jews in Africa and the Americas

Bibliographic Data

ID19912652
AuthorsTudor Parfitt (0000-0002-9892-7861, corresponding author)
Year2012
Pages220
Publication date2012-04-12
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueBlack Jews in Africa and the Americas (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherHarvard University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.4159/harvard.9780674067905
OpenAlexW2496194699
Open LibraryOL25317097M
ISBN9780674067905
LanguageEN
Citations received16

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

Colonialism · Diaspora · Ethnology · Genealogy · Judaism · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Prejudice (legal term) · Racism · Sociology · Zulu · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society · Religious studies · Africa · African American Jews · African americans · Colonial influence · Colonization · ethnic relations · Jews · Relations with Jews · united states

Tools

Open DOILibgen