The curious (and controversial) story of the “Nigerian Jews” who want Israel to recognize them

Swaying back and forth, Shlomo Ben Yaakov reads a Torah scroll in a synagogue on the outskirts of Abuja, the Nigerian capital.

Intermittently, his soft voice rises in Hebrew and is joined by dozens who recite after him.

Most do not fully understand the language, but this small Nigerian community claims that their Jewish ancestry dates back to hundreds of years, and are frustrated by the lack of recognition from Israel.

“I consider myself a Jew,” says Yaakov.

Outside the Gihon Hebrew Synagogue in the suburb of Jikwoyi, a table is set up inside a tent made of palm fronds to celebrate Sukkot, a festival that commemorates the years when Jews passed through the desert on their way to Earth. Fiancee.

“Just as we are doing this now, they are doing the same in Israel”Says Yaakov, as people share traditional cholla bread (baked in the synagogue) and wine from small glasses that are shared.

He is Igbo, one of the three dominant ethnic groups in Nigeria whose origin is in the south-east of the country. His Igbo name is Nnaemezuo Maduako.

Many Igbos believe that they have Jewish heritage and that they are one of the so-called 10 lost tribes of Israel, although most are not practicing Jews like Yaakov. They constitute less than 0.1% of the 35 million of igbos that it is estimated there are.

These tribes are said to have disappeared after being taken into captivity when the northern Israelite kingdom was conquered in the 8th century BC. C. The Ethiopian Jewish community, for example, is recognized as one of them.

Igbo customs such as male circumcision, mourning the dead for seven days, celebrating the new moon, and performing wedding ceremonies under a canopy have reinforced this belief about their Jewish heritage.

“No test”

But Chidi Ugwu, an Igbo who is an anthropologist at the University of Nigeria in Enugu, says that this identification with Judaism arose only after the civil war in Biafra.

The Igbos had been fighting for secession from Nigeria, but lost in what was a brutal conflict between 1967-1970.

Some people “were looking for some psychological impulse to hold on to,” so they began to make the Jewish connection, he says.

They saw themselves as persecuted people, just as Jews have been throughout history, especially during the Holocaust.

“It is an insult to call the Igbos anyone’s lost tribe, there is no historical or archaeological evidence to back that up,” he told the BBC.

He argues that since the evidence suggests that the Igbo were among those who emigrated from Egypt several thousand years ago, it is possible that the Jews learn Igbo customs when they went there.

Controversial efforts were made several years ago to test a genetic lineage, but a DNA test found no Jewish connection.

Rabbi Eliezer Simcha Weisz, chairman of the foreign affairs department of the Council of the Rabbinate of Israel, the body that investigates claims of Jewish ancestry, he also has no doubts.

“They claim to be one of the descendants of Gad, one of the sons of our ancestor Jacob, but they cannot prove that his grandparents were Jewish,” he told the BBC.

“And about the customs they talk about, you can find people all over the world who have Jewish practices.”

He said that unless Nigerian Jews converted to Judaism, a process that involves various rituals and appearing before a Jewish court (which is not available in Nigeria), they would not be recognized.

Yaakov considers the idea of ​​having to go through a conversion as an insult.

“As converts, we would be seen as second-class citizens,” he says.

Secessionist surge

Gihon’s parishioners take their beliefs seriously and they and the Nigerian community of practicing Jews, which is estimated at 12,000 people, they have the support of other groups of Orthodox Jews around the world, who make donations to them, make solidarity visits and campaign for their recognition.

A prominent supporter is Dani Limor, a former Mossad agent who once led an operation to secretly bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel via Sudan.

Limor has been visiting Jewish communities in Nigeria since the 1980s and argues that Jewish practice in the West African nation is pre-civil war.

Believe in a school of thought that says they came from Morocco 500 years agoThey first settled in Timbuktu before traveling further south, and he hopes they will eventually get the recognition they deserve.

“Judaism goes beyond the color of the skin, it is in the heart,” he told the BBC.

Gihon Synagogue, said to be the oldest in Nigeria, was founded in the 1980s by Ovadai Avichai and two other people who had been raised Christians.

The friends decided to turn to Judaism when they realized that the Old Testament of the Bible was the foundation of the Jewish religion.

He said it was as if the Jew in him had been revived and, given the similarities between Jewish customs and Igbo traditions, he was convinced that Judaism was the true way.

The Gihon Synagogue in Abuja now has a mix of different ethnic groups among the more than 40 families that attend.

In recent years, the number of people who have Jewish practices in southern Nigeria has increased dramatically, says Chiagozie Nwonwu, a BBC journalist who specializes in that region.

This is largely due to the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob), a group that restarted the Igbo campaign for secession in 2014.

It is run by Nnamdi Kanu, who has reminded his followers of their supposed Jewish heritage and encouraged them to embrace the faith.

“I cried in the synagogue”

On one occasion, the charismatic leader was allegedly photographed praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

But his followers they are not considered authentic Jews by the more established communities of Nigeria, as some combine elements of Judaism and Christianity in their worship, more associated with Messianic Judaism.

Kanu is in custody and faces a trial for treason and Ipob, who has recently taken up arms, has been banned because the authorities consider him a terrorist group.

“The first time Ipob appeared, I cried in the synagogue. I said, ‘This young man has come to cause us problems because what he is doing is unnecessary,’ ”says Avichai, a veteran of the Biafra war.

He fears that Ipob’s activities threaten the peaceful cult of the approximately 70 Jewish communities that declare themselves apolitical.

This happened earlier this year when a leader of the Jewish community in the southeast was jailed for a month after her congregation received three visitors from Israel.

They had come to film donating a Torah scroll, often too expensive for local groups to buy, but they were suspected of having Ipob connections and were deported.

A Gihon devotee told me that Kanu had influenced his decision to join the synagogue, but the recent evolution of the Ipob campaign towards armed struggle was against the principles of Judaism.

Yaakov is not interested in the politics of what it is to be Jewish; for him, the important thing is the spiritual aspect.

Official recognition by Israel as Jews of Igbos like him would help the religious community to become more organized in Nigeria.

For example, there is currently no head rabbi and finding kosher products can be challenging. They are usually only sold in some stores owned by Jewish expats; the community generally eats what is produced locally in order to follow kosher rules.

Yaakov would love to train to become on the first Nigerian rabbi, something that can only be done by studying in a rabbinical school or with an experienced rabbi.

“For those of us who know our roots, we have confidence in our identity,” he says.

“If Christians and Muslims can accept their own and support them, I think Jews should also give us a little encouragement.”

humanity.