Black Hebrew Israelites
Black Hebrew Israelites incorporate certain aspects of the religious beliefs and practices of both Christianity and Judaism, though they have created their own interpretation of the Bible,[3] and other influences include Freemasonry and New Thought, for example.
[5] Various sects of Black Hebrew Israelism have been criticized by academics for their promotion of their theology and historical revisionism due to the lack of evidence supporting their claims.
[8][9] The Black Hebrew Israelite movement originated at the end of the 19th century, when Frank Cherry and William Saunders Crowdy both claimed to have received visions that African Americans are descendants of the Hebrews in the Bible; Cherry established the Church of the Living God, the Pillar Ground of Truth for All Nations, in 1886, and Crowdy founded the Church of God and Saints of Christ in 1896.
[10][11][12][13] Subsequently, Black Hebrew groups were founded in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from Kansas to New York City, by both African Americans and West Indian immigrants.
"[24] The playing of the piano and the collection of tithes during Black Hebrew Israelite worship was forbidden by Cherry, who also taught the eastward direction of prayer and "denigrated white Jews as interlopers".
[24] After World War I, for example, Wentworth Arthur Matthew, an emigrant from Saint Kitts, founded another Black Hebrew congregation in Harlem, claiming descent from the ancient Israelites.
[14] Matthew incorporated his congregation in 1930 and moved it to Brooklyn, where he later founded the Israelite Rabbinical Seminary, where Black Hebrew rabbis have been educated and ordained.
[28][29][3] This primarily gained notice in the news through their street preaching that purportedly targeted students of Covington Catholic High School (Kentucky) in January 2019.
After Crowdy's death in 1908, the church continued to grow under the leadership of William Henry Plummer, who moved the organization's headquarters to its permanent location in Belleville, Virginia, in 1921.
[48] The Church of God and Saints of Christ describes itself as "the oldest African-American congregation in the United States that adheres to the tenets of Judaism".
Its Old Testament observances include the use of the Hebrew calendar, the celebration of Passover, the circumcision of infant males, the commemoration of the Sabbath on Saturday, and the wearing of yarmulkes.
[5] Matthew was influenced by the non-black Jews he met as well as by Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League.
[35] Members observe kashrut, circumcise newborn boys, and celebrate Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, and their synagogue has a mechitza to separate men and women during worship.
[67] Ben Ammi Ben-Israel established the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem in Chicago, Illinois, in 1966, a time when black nationalism was on the rise as a response to the civil rights movement.
[71] Men wear tzitzit on their African print shirts, women follow the niddah (biblical laws concerning menstruation),[69] and newborn boys are circumcised.
[72] The Israeli government ruled in 1973 that the group did not qualify for automatic citizenship because they could not prove Jewish descent and had not undergone Orthodox conversion.
[73] In 1981, a group of American civil rights activists led by Bayard Rustin investigated and concluded that racism was not the cause of the Black Hebrews' situation.
The Black Hebrews reclaimed their American citizenship and have received aid from the U.S. government, which helped them build a school and additional housing.
[75] Today, young men and some women from the African Hebrew community of Jerusalem serve in the IDF; they have entered international sporting events and academic competitions under the Israeli flag and have represented Israel twice in the Eurovision Song Contest.
[77][78][79] In 2006, Eddie Butler, a Black Hebrew, was chosen by the Israeli public to represent Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest.
[80] The camp is named after its first grouping, which was located at One West 125th Street in Harlem in New York City, then known as the 'Israeli School of Universal Practical Knowledge'.
[83][84] In late 2008, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) wrote that "the extremist fringe of the Hebrew Israelite movement" has a Black supremacist outlook.
It wrote that the members of such groups "believe that Jews are devilish impostors and ... openly condemn Whites as evil personified, deserving only death or slavery".
[22] A 1999 FBI terrorism risk assessment report stated that "violent radical fringe members" of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement hold "beliefs [that] bear a striking resemblance to the Christian Identity theology practiced by many white supremacists".
"[89] Alberta Williams King, the mother of Martin Luther King Jr., was shot and killed on June 30, 1974, at age 69, by Marcus Wayne Chenault, a 23-year-old Black man from Ohio, who had adopted the theology of a Black Hebrew Israelite preacher, Hananiah E. Israel of Cincinnati, and had shown interest in a group called the "Hebrew Pentecostal Church of the Living God".
[93] Capers Funnye, who had been the rabbi for 26 years of the 200-member Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation,[94][95] condemned the attack and said that his community was "gripped by sadness" over "the heinous actions of two disturbed individuals who cloaked themselves in anti-Semitism and hate-filled rhetoric".
Funnye stated that "we don't want to be seen as some radical fringe group with a false narrative because we are black and profess Judaism; we are Torah-oriented Jews.
[97] African American Christian apologetics organizations, such as the Jude 3 Project, have critiqued the theological and historical claims which have been presented by various Black Hebrew Israelite sects.
[3] Black Hebrew Israelites have been criticized for making historical revisionist claims that do not acknowledge the poverty that Jews experienced as immigrants in the United States.
