Black Jews in Africa and the Americas

Main description: Tudor explains how many African peoples came to think of themselves as descendants of the ancient tribes of Israel. Pursuing medieval and modern race narratives over a millennium in which Jews were cast as black and black Africans were cast as Jews, he reveals a complex interaction...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Parfitt, Tudor 1944- (Author)
Format: Electronic Book
Language:English
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Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press 2013
Berlin De Gruyter
In:Year: 2013
Series/Journal:The Nathan I. Huggins Lectures
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Blacks / Jews / USA / Africa
Further subjects:B Jews
B Colonial influence
B Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie, Anthropologie
B African Americans Relations with Jews
B African American Jews
B Jews (Africa) History
B Ethnic Relations
B SOCIAL SCIENCE / Jewish Studies
B African American Jews History
B Bibliography
Online Access: Cover
Cover (Verlag)
Volltext (Verlag)
Parallel Edition:Druckausg.: 978-0-674-06698-4
Description
Summary:Main description: Tudor explains how many African peoples came to think of themselves as descendants of the ancient tribes of Israel. Pursuing medieval and modern race narratives over a millennium in which Jews were cast as black and black Africans were cast as Jews, he reveals a complex interaction between religious and racial labels and their political uses.
Tudor explains how many African peoples came to think of themselves as descendants of the ancient tribes of Israel. Pursuing medieval and modern race narratives over a millennium in which Jews were cast as black and black Africans were cast as Jews, he reveals a complex interaction between religious and racial labels and their political uses.
Main description: 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.
ISBN:0674066987
Access:Restricted Access
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674067905