The lost sheep of the house of Israel “If you’ve seen the - TopicsExpress



          

The lost sheep of the house of Israel “If you’ve seen the slave ships you’ll know that we literally arrived in America butt naked. No artifacts, no writings, no scrolls, not even a change of clothes. But we did carry with us an oral tradition, and our songs in the field of America when we were forbidden to write or preach were not songs of Mali or Timbuktu,” Ahmadiel says. “We sang about the river Jordan. We sang about Jericho, Jerusalem and Canaan.” The African Hebrew Israelites have lived in Dimona for three generations, claiming their history brought them back to this land. Members of the tribe? Israel is not convinced IMONA — If you ask Ahmadiel Ben Yehuda where in the world Israel is located, he will give you a mega-watt smile and tell you that without a doubt it sits in Northern Africa, that the Middle East is actually geographically on the African continent and that he and you and everyone else around you are, in fact, African. It’s just one of the many paradigm shifts that marks Ahmadiel’s community, and has allowed its members, for three generations, to embrace life as descendants of the Jewish people despite their ancestors having hailed from the same African towns and villages as those of America’s black community. Ad Info Ahmadiel serves as minister of information for the Village of Peace, an urban kibbutz in the city of Dimona composed almost entirely of African-Americans and their descendants, all of whom who believe themselves to be linked to the Jewish people and the lost tribe of Judah. It’s a place that feels almost too good to be true – a collective of some 1,800 smiling men, women and children, dressed in rainbow-colored homespun fabrics and fed on Zionism and organic vegan food. Here in the city otherwise known only for its hush-hush nuclear reactor and its fueling stations on the road down to Eilat, this community has built its own schools, trained its own midwives and raised three generations of children who speak both Hebrew and fluent American English, all in the name of a Jewish god, or as they prefer: Yahweh. “We connect to being Hebrew Israelites. Our history brings us back to this land,” says Ahmadiel, who shares his last name with the majority of other members of the community. “We are the lost sheep of the house of Israel, or at least part of that family.” The first African Hebrew Israelites, as they call themselves, made their way from Chicago to Israel during the throes of the American civil rights movement. Guided by a spiritual leader named Ben Ammi Ben-Israel, who was born Ben Carter in Chicago and is believed to have received a visit from the angel Gabriel in 1966, they traveled in a group of 350 first to Liberia, a deliberate if odd decision that was designed, Ahmadiel says, to erase a kind of cultural group think that black Americans had absorbed thanks to the slave trade. “We wanted to unlearn what we had learned as slaves. As slaves you’re dehumanized, and when you don’t love yourself you couldn’t possibly love others,” he says. “We had to unlearn that behavior.” Ahmadiel, tall and slender and dressed in a bright orange print tunic, was not part of that group; he came to Israel on his own in the 1970s and joined the community then. But he describes the wayward trek of those God-seeking African-Americans, who arrived in Liberia armed only with Sears and Roebuck tents and a deep hunger to connect the Biblical slave songs of their ancestors with a modern, idyllic reality, as if he was there himself. “If you’ve seen the slave ships you’ll know that we literally arrived in America butt naked. No artifacts, no writings, no scrolls, not even a change of clothes. But we did carry with us an oral tradition, and our songs in the field of America when we were forbidden to write or preach were not songs of Mali or Timbuktu,” Ahmadiel says. “We sang about the river Jordan. We sang about Jericho, Jerusalem and Canaan.” Devorah Bahti Yisrael came to Dimona from Cleveland 40 years ago. Now she works in the organic farms. (photo credit: Debra Kamin/Times of Israel) Life in Liberia, Ahmadiel says, was a shock to those city-bred pioneers. Monsoon rains soon rotted most of the tents, and those that stayed dry were swarmed with driver ants and black and green mamba snakes. Several members of the group died. Others gave up and returned to the 24-hour supermarkets and paved streets of Chicago. But in 1969, the first handful of African Hebrews decided their education in Liberia was complete and it was time to go to Israel. Others soon followed, invoking the Law of Return and­ their identification as Jews in order to gain citizenship. In 1970, however, when the Law of Return was amended to include the requirement of one Jewish grandparent in order for an immigrant to claim status as a Jew, the group saw their rights vanish. Today, the number of African Hebrew Israelites in Israel stands at around 3,000, with 1,800 living together in the Village of Peace. Some have successfully petitioned for and received Israeli citizenship, others live as permanent residents, and some – especially the youngest generation, whose parents were born in Israel and therefore cannot pass on their American citizenship to their children – have no passport at all. They could have fought for DNA testing, or attempted to trace their genetic lines to offer concrete proof of their stake in the Jewish story. But they refused, Ahmadiel says, because they believe Judaism exists in the brain, not the body. ~ Debra Kamin, Times of Israel (Photo: Ahmadiel Ben Yehuda, left, with Prince Immanuel Ben Yehuda, a Holy Council Member and director of international affairs for the community. -- Photo credit: Debra Kamin/Times of Israel) (Read more: The Times of Israel | News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World timesofisrael/#ixzz2yCzi3gDY)
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 14:04:44 +0000

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