HOW POLITICIANS AND CELEBRITIES HELPED BLACK AMERICANS BUILD A SPIRITUAL HOME IN ISRAEL
The emergency exit rows on my plane to Israel in May of 2006 provided just enough space for several Orthodox Jewish men to stand in the aisles for morning prayers, bracing their hips and knees against plastic and metal seats in anchored readiness for any hints of turbulence, arms and heads wrapped with leathery black boxes housing Torah verses.
One of the strangers seated closest to me, an African American from Baltimore, wasn’t laying tefillin. He considered himself an Israelite, not a Jew, and this distinction was incredibly important to him. It was his first journey to the Promised Land, though he could chronicle more than a decade’s worth of trips he almost took, plans that fell through because of finances or family emergencies, because of health crises or the temporary persuasiveness of naysayers. We were both headed there for the same reason: To experience New World Passover, an annual holiday commemorating the relocation of several hundred African Americans from the South Side of Chicago in the late 1960s to the southern Israeli city of Dimona, where they now include thousands of members known as the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem.
The assortment of activities that make up New World Passover reveals just about every central theme and concern of this transnational spiritual community, a “kingdom” with its organizational hub lodged squarely in the Israeli desert but also composed of “saints,” as members are called, scattered across five different continents and dozens of countries, a truly global phenomenon with a social influence and historical significance that arguably outstrips its relatively obscured and muted place in most discussions of African American or Jewish life.
READ MORE: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-p...
One of the strangers seated closest to me, an African American from Baltimore, wasn’t laying tefillin. He considered himself an Israelite, not a Jew, and this distinction was incredibly important to him. It was his first journey to the Promised Land, though he could chronicle more than a decade’s worth of trips he almost took, plans that fell through because of finances or family emergencies, because of health crises or the temporary persuasiveness of naysayers. We were both headed there for the same reason: To experience New World Passover, an annual holiday commemorating the relocation of several hundred African Americans from the South Side of Chicago in the late 1960s to the southern Israeli city of Dimona, where they now include thousands of members known as the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem.
The assortment of activities that make up New World Passover reveals just about every central theme and concern of this transnational spiritual community, a “kingdom” with its organizational hub lodged squarely in the Israeli desert but also composed of “saints,” as members are called, scattered across five different continents and dozens of countries, a truly global phenomenon with a social influence and historical significance that arguably outstrips its relatively obscured and muted place in most discussions of African American or Jewish life.
READ MORE: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-p...
