Tudor Parfitt examines a myth which is based on one of the world's oldest mysteries - what happened to the lost tribes of Israel? Christians and Jews alike have attached great importance to the legendary fate of these tribes which has had a remarkable impact on their ideologies throughout history. Each tribe of Israel claimed descent from one of the twelve sons of Jacob and the land of Israel was eventually divided up between them. Following a schism which formed after the death of Solomon, ten of the tribes set up an independent northern kingdom, whilst those of Judah and Levi set up a separate southern kingdom. In 721BC the ten northern tribes were ethnically cleansed by the Assyrians and the Bible states they were placed: 'in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan and in the city of Medes.' The Bible also foretold that one day they would be reunited with the southern tribes in the final redemption of the people of Israel. Their subsequent history became a tapestry of legend and hearsay. The belief persisted that they had been 'lost' in some remote part of the world and there were countless suggestions and claims as to where. At a lecture Parfitt gave some years ago in Cape Town he was approached by a group of Africans who claimed to be members of the Lemba tribe from a mysterious lost city of Sena, and of Jewish descent. The final chapter will attempt to reveal, using a combination of linguistics and genetics, what did become of these lost tribes.

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.

This is the first book to explore the effect of genetic research on the Lemba Judaising community of Southern Africa and the phenomenon of Israelite identity. The science of genetics as relayed by the media is perceived by laymen as being irreproachably objective 'hard science': its disinterested 'scientific' findings appear immensely impressive and may therefore act as a powerful catalyst for change. In this case, an oral tradition cherished by many of the Lemba that they are of Jewish origin appears to be supported by recent DNA testing, which has deeply affected the narrative and religious identity of the group and the way the tribe is perceived in the Western world. International in appeal, this topical text brings together cutting-edge research on the social, cultural and ethical implications of genetics and the study of Judaising movements across the world. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of Jewish history, genetic anthropology, race and ethnicity studies, and religious and cultural studies.

Yemen was ruled in the 20th century by imams from the extremist Zaydi Muslim sect. The Jews suffered from legal restrictions and persecutions. In 1910 the victorious Imam Yahya reinstated the "sharia" as the legal code in place of the Turkish civil code, and promulgated the law which imposed on the Jews the status of dhimmi in its most rigid form. In 1922, the reintroduction of forced conversion of Jewish orphans to Islam initiated a Jewish campaign to smuggle many of them to Aden. In the same year, the Imam Yahya virtually banned Jewish emigration from Yemen. Popular hatred of Jews was intense. The UN decision on the partition of Palestine in 1947 engendered a blood libel in San'a and anti-Jewish riots (aggravated by a civil war in Yemen), as well as pogroms in neighboring Aden and Shaykh Othman in which ca. 100 Jews were murdered. In 1948-50 most of the Jews left Yemen.