This research paper was written for a Race and Labor course.
The Labor of Finding Place: African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem
Professor Kim Cameron- Dominguez
Fall 2017
Through the argument of John L. Jackson, it is evident that despite the movement of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem (AHIJ), through their intersecting diasporic identities of being Black, American and Israelite, identity- specific labors are placed on them in all three of their settlements. In Chicago, in 1966, Jackson provides evidence that AHIJ labors specifically over their black identities in combat with racism in Jim Crow America. In their move to Monrovia, Liberia in 1967, Jackson posits that the AHIJ members, called Saints labor due to their American identities, as they are not equipped to handle the difficulties of living in Liberia. Lastly, in Dimona, Israel from 1969 to present time, Jackson explains that Saints are laboring over their Black, American and Israelite identities. This is shown in the racism present in Israel, and their inability to gain citizenship due to their refusal to convert to Judaism. Their goal of finding place is challenged by the hegemonic structures in the United States and Israel and the multifaceted identities of AHIJ members. Ruth Simms Hamilton provides her interpretation of the African Diaspora and varying relationships to Africa as a homeland, aiding in the understanding of AHIJ’s gravitation towards Liberia and Israel. Uri Ben- Eliezer’s work on racism against Ethiopian Jews in Israel provides a conversation of race hierarchy within Israel’s Ashkenazi- dominated society.
Framing this Paper
It is important to note the controversial stance history of AHIJ that Jackson mentions, including their history of having what Jackson mentions as Anti- Black and Anti-Semitic statements. However, for the purpose of discussing their various diasporic labors, this paper will not focus on the criticisms AHIJ has received for being Anti- Black and Anti- Semitic. This is due to Jackson’s claim that this does not negate the racism that they do face in the United States and Israel. Jackson explains that when understanding racism, “For the AHIJ, transatlantic slavery, contemporary global white supremacy, and Africana cultural dysfunctions are all a function of Yah’s plan, punishments enacted as a consequence of the ancient Israelites’ disobedience” he continues: “But once His people disavow their foolish and disobedient ways, once they relearn His Holy commands, Yah will redeem them and restore them to their rightful place as His ambassadors and leaders on Earth.” and finishes, stating their belief that: “Most of Yah’s people (Africans throughout the Diaspora) have yet to realize their exceptional status,” (Jackson 2013, 73). Jackson explains that their belief system “hinges on appreciating and denunciating black culture at the same time.” (Jackson 2013, 7). Jackson also explains that Jews have found issue with AHIJ’s ideology that African Americans are “the original Jews” (42).
However, Saints were not simply for the advancement of Black Americans. Jackson explains: “The Israelites weren’t just running into the outstretched arms of a mythical African homeland; they were also running away, and decidedly so, from what black people were doing in the United States. But if this was a ‘culture of poverty’ it wasn’t based on black exceptionalism.” (72).
Introduction to African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem
John L. Jackson, in his ethnography, “Thin Description”, discusses the religious group African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem (AHIJ). His studies took place where the group was formed in Chicago, and lived with them in their community, “The Village of Peace”, located in the Southern town Dimona, in the Negev desert of Israel. In his work, he discusses the various practices of the AHIJ Saints. Through interviews and field work, he portrays the group’s leadership, religious practices and religious views. The Saints practice strict veganism, with the belief that eating exclusively living plants will allow them to be immortal. They also practice polygamy, explaining the women in the village of peace outnumber the men. Jackson also portrays their difficult relationship with Israel, as most of them are not able to become Israeli citizens. However, most of the young people fight in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The AHIJ has many similarities to Jews, as they are focused on the old testament, speak Hebrew and sing many of the same Hebrew prayers. However, AHIJ members do not identify as Jewish, but as Israelites, and consider themselves to be the “true” descendants of the biblical Israelites. (Jackson 2013, 1-9).
Diasporic Relationships to Africa
In conversation with Jackson’s writing on AHIJ is Ruth Simms Hamilton, in her piece: “Rethinking the African Diaspora: Global Dynamics”. Her writing discusses the numerous relationships that those within the African diaspora have to Africa. She explains that, “For many of the diaspora, the African homeland is an emotional attachment, for others it is a distant past, and for yet others a concrete present” (Hamilton 2007, 18). Hamilton uses the following definition of “diaspora”: “a mode of analysis” that is “rooted in the historical experiences of a socially identifiable global aggregate of dispersed and interconnected network of peoples.” (Hamilton 2007, 4). As an explanation for AHIJ’s role in the African Diaspora, Hamilton explains: “Global Africa, the geographically and socio-culturally diverse peoples of Africa and its diaspora, is linked through complex networks of social relationships and processes.” (Hamilton 2007, 1). Continuing this point, Hamilton explains: “In this way, Africa, and what it is imagined to be, becomes the place of origin or a point of departure for people in the African diaspora.” (Hamilton 2007, 2). Jackson contributes to the current conception of the African Diaspora, discussing “The changing location of African and diaspora blacks in the world economic, political, social and cultural division of labor” (Jackson 2013, 21). Both Hamilton and Jackson discuss the various changing forces within the African Diaspora, that can all contribute to the understanding of AHIJ’s relationship to the diaspora from the 1960s to now.
Location I: Chicago, Illinois 1966
Battling American Racism
The AHIJ began in Chicago amid Jim Crow America, during the Civil Rights Movement. Their leader, Ben Carter, renamed Ben Ammi, had a vision that African Americans were the original Israelites. AHIJ was one of many Black Israelite groups but they were careful to distinguish themselves from other groups. Hamilton states: “What people do to assert themselves, what they create, and how they remember their past contribute to the formation of communities of consciousness that arise out of the very particular experiences based on structural inequalities.” (Hamilton 2007, 3). As Black Americans living in Jim Crow America, members of the AHIJ were constantly expending the emotional labor of the oppression of American racism.
Uri Ben-Eliezer’s piece “Multicultural society and everyday cultural racism: second generation of Ethiopian Jews in Israel’s ‘crisis of modernization’” gives a definition for racism, explaining that: “Racism takes the form of exclusionary and discriminatory practices, deriving from an attitude taken towards certain people, who are Multicultural society and everyday cultural racism perceived to belong to an inferior inclusive category based on biological or phenotypical traits, be they real or imaginary” (Ben-Eliezer 2008, 936). This definition can be applied to both Jackson and Hamilton’s discussions of racism in America and Israel.
On the creation of AHIJ in Chicago, Hamilton explains that: “Those who have a strong connection to– and a sense of– Africa as a homeland form networks with others who share in this, building alliances” (Hamilton 2007, 936-937). This explains the closeness and intensity that AHIJ members feel, as they share a similar connection to Africa as a homeland. Jackson’s standing is that life in the United States was so difficult that “their only chance for survival required finding a new and more appropriate home beyond the belly of the beast, someplace without the same white-sheeted and Jim-Crowed versions of Justice” (Jackson 2013, 144). Here, Jackson explains their motivation to mobilize and immigrate back to their African “homeland”. He continues, stating that, “they knew that their lives could be different. Like almost everyone else at the time, they were also talking a lot about politics, even revolution, making a case for drastic changes to the structure of American society” (41). Jackson provides evidence from an AHIJ Saint who said that the leader Ben Ammi “gave her the confidence to leave American racism behind” (81). Hamilton and Jackson’s words explain the way that the labor of living amongst American racism instigated the collective wish to move, and “Return to Africa”.
Jackson describes the effect of the civil rights movement, a time when African Americans were focused on social mobility and advancement. “To Africans on the Southside, or even the Northside, closer to where Carter was born, it meant an urban context informed by an ethos of change, of more or less radical machinations in the ripeness of the political moment– all plotted along a continuum from Civil Rights to Black Power.” (41). He continued, stating: “Many Chicagoans”, “who found their place in some version of the black Israelite community in the 1950s and 1960s were part of a larger zeitgeist, participating in ongoing public debates about varying proscriptions for the ultimate advancement of African Americans.” (41).
With their goal of “saving” other African Americans, the Saints also spent their physical labor, doing what they thought to be the most valuable: proselytizing. Jackson writes: “they continued to bring their message to nonaffiliated black Chicagoans, slowly increasing their ranks, fulfilling a biblical charge to wake up Yah’s chosen people.” (44).
However, with the ultimate message of “Return”, Jackson explains that their concept of homeland was not unanimously received, explaining that some black Americans “scoffed at their timing. It was the middle of the civil rights movement, and many African Americans were digging in their heels to fight for inclusion and equality, in the streets and in the courts, not hightailing it out of the country” (121). While the Saints wished for freedom and repose from American racism, others shunned them for their wish to leave the structures of American white supremacy.
In their work in Chicago, Jackson explains that one Saint, Equiano, “references several specific scholars and theologians who argue for African descent from ancient Israelite stock, a clear attack on the fundamental premise of polygenesis, the idea that Africans were not children of Adam and Eve and, therefore could be justifiably enslaved guilt-free.” (62). Here, Jackson explains that part of their spiritual work was involved in the research that their religious beliefs could discount a justification for slavery; if Africans are Edenic people, as AHIJ believes, that racist justification would be void.
Location II: Monrovia, Liberia 1967
Settling in a Foreign Land
Concurrent with American civil rights, colonial revolutions were occurring in Africa, birthing many new states within the continent. While Hamilton focuses on the importance of these new states in the “Return to Africa” movement, Jackson focuses on the influence of civil rights and its message that African Americans deserved a better quality of life. One of the new African countries was Liberia, who opened their doors to black Americas to resettle, part of the “Return to Africa” movement. Hamilton explains that: “the idea of returning to Africa exists and is realized, mythologized, or even discarded as people contemplate their relationship with Africa in terms of what it represents and means to them.” (Hamilton 2007, 2).
With the agenda of a return to the Homeland, Saints decided that they had had enough talk and “It was time for action, and some of them started to research methods for actual emigration” (Jackson 2013, 45). In relation to this, Hamilton explains: “The emergence of independent African states in the 1960s, for example, inaugurated new levels of interaction with and symbolic links to the diaspora” (Hamilton 2007, 2).
In conversation with Jackson’s assertions about the improving standards of living, Hamilton writes: “Growing out of colonization movements between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for African returnees colonization largely meant the quest for the decent society” (Hamilton 2007, 19).
Although life free from American racism was promising, Jackson explains the struggles that AHIJ faced in Liberia. He compares AHIJ’s labor in America with their labor in their settlement in Liberia, explaining that their lives were equally challenging, but in different ways. Jackson writes: “Liberia was envisioned as an escape” “from the humiliations and brutalities of American racism. It was supposed to be a glorious new start. Instead, they had exchanged a metaphorical wilderness for a literal one, and it wasn’t necessarily clear that they had traded up” (Jackson 2013, 233). Adding, “Everyday brought new challenges, unforeseen emergencies, life-and-death decisions. Migrants continued to battle diseases. They staggered from debilitating snakebites, succumbed to bizarre accidents.” “One child fell down a well, careening to her tragic death” (315). Felt they were on the verge of dying “fatigued, feverish, nervous, frail”. In addition to the danger and deaths, their immigrant identities disallowed them the ability to sustain their new lives. Jackson explains that, “Despite all of their inventive entrepreneurial efforts, the community rarely had any excess funds” continuing to explain that “They still couldn’t always grow quite enough food” (316).
Jackson traces AHIJ’s diasporic movement, citing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final speech, the night before his death as the catalyst of their move from Liberia to Israel. MLK stated: “I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.” (317). Continuing, Jackson explains: “He may not have known the truth, but he was clearly chosen to help liberate God’s people” (317). Jackson concludes, explaining that King “resonated with this small community of American ex-pats barely surviving in Liberia” (317).
Location III: Dimona, Israel 1969- Present
Life as African American Israelites
In their conception of Africa, Israel described as “Northeastern Africa” (Jackson 2013, 368). Jackson believes that this is due to their “elastic” perception of Africa. He writes: “but AHIJ’s work in Africa might actually go a long way toward bringing other Israelite groups into the fold, an elastic Africa that expands and contracts to fit varying definitions of diasporic and racial collectivity” (Jackson 2013,117). In reaction to this “elastic Africa”, Hamilton explains: “Myths and realities of homeland relations focus on the networks, connections, and social construction of homelands– both real and mythical– that people in the African diaspora have with Africa as a symbolic place or homeland.” (Hamilton 2007, 21).
Racism in Israel
AHIJ arrived in Dimona, Israel, which they call “The New Jerusalem” in 1969, after leaving their difficult life in Liberia (Jackson 2013, 47). However, Jackson, through his research, asserts that, “Saints rail against various forms of racism in America and Israel” (308). Contributing to this discussion of racism, Hamilton asserts: “These colonization movements, on the one hand, symbolize positive aspects of black consciousness– the constructive attempts among diaspora peoples to extricate themselves from the bonds of oppression. On the other hand, they point to structural inequalities and negative aspects of the relationship between the diaspora and its homeland” (Hamilton 2007, 19).
Ben- Eliezer’s piece provides a comparison of the respective experiences of Ethiopian Jews to the AHIJ. Between these two groups, their identities are much different, as Ethiopian Jews identify as Jewish, while AHIJ identifies as Israelites. Despite this difference, these groups can be compared based on their membership of the African Diaspora and the racism they both face within Ashkenazi- dominated Israel. Ethiopian Jews, Ben-Eliezer explains, had a conception of Israel as their homeland, similar to the AHIJ. He writes: “like other Jews, they developed the idea of the return to Zion.” (Ben- Eliezer 2008, 936). Writing from 2008, he writes, “About 100,000 Jews of Ethiopian origin now live in Israel.” (Ben- Eliezer 2008, 936). However, similar to the Israeli experience of AHIJ members: “Within a short time the Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia were shunted to the bottom rung on the class ladder and to the fringes of the Israeli society, suffering from neglect, unemployment, poverty, crime and alienation in hostile surroundings.” (Ben- Eliezer 2008, 938).
AJIH believes that most Israeli Jews are not the descendants of ancient Israelites. Due to this, Jackson explains, they refused to convert to Judaism: “Judaism couldn’t work for them, Ben Ammi made clear. It recognizes none of the Kingdom’s claims, starting with the very anointing of Ben Ammi.” (Jackson 2013, 224). Their explanation, Jackson states is that, “Jews, including black Jews, they argued, practiced a religion. Black Israelites embraced their true nationality, their actual heritage” (227).
At the start of Israeli life, AHIJ members struggled in Israel, due to their identities as “illegal” settlers. They came into the country with visas and then stayed, participating in illegal work. During the 1970s and 80s Jackson explains: “These were lives rife with elaborate and sometimes illegal schemes for financing members’ clandestine return to Israel whenever some of them were periodically rounded up and deported, sent back to the United States by the Israeli government, which was an everyday fear within the kfar (village)” (265). During this time, AHIJ members felt that Israel was “bitterly racist” (130). After the move from Chicago to Liberia and ending in Israel, AHIJ members found their new life to bring new challenges, surrounding their race and non- Jewish identity. Ben- Eliezer on the racial dynamics in Israel: “Most explanations given so far of the failure of Ethiopian integration within Israeli society have been related to a number of factors or to their amalgamation: the failure of the melting-pot assimilation process that was used by the absorbing institutions; the low scale of human and material capital of the immigrants from Ethiopia; doubts concerning their Jewishness; cultural distance from Israeli society; a very high rate of single-parent families; and instant visibility (through skin colour)” (Ben- Eliezer 2008, 948). Many of these listed issues are applicable to the visibility of Saints.
Fighting in the IDF
Currently, many young Saints voluntarily fight in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), although most of them are not Israeli citizens. Jackson, through his research, claims that AHIJ members are “Committed to the integrity of the Israeli state”, “but they also identified with the Palestinian cause”, “at times comparing it not only to their previous second-class citizenship in the US” (Jackson 2013, 130). However, they also speak of “the generosity and acceptance that they have often felt from the Israeli people.” (Jackson 2013, 130). In relation to the war in Israel, Jackson asserts that they feel that religion is the issue, the battle of Islam versus Judaism. They state that they are anti- religion and they choose to call their practices a “way of life” (Jackson 2012, 131).
In conversation with this, Ben- Eliezer describes the experiences of Ethiopian Jews in the IDF. He writes: “When they first arrived in Israel, their greatest desire was to stand out in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Army service, they hoped and believed, was their entry ticket to become definitive Israelis”, “However, finding that the army too was rife with racism (for example, they were constantly referred to as ‘Niggers’), and that the army no longer promises social capital that can be transferred to civil life, many reached the conclusion that military service might actually be aggravating their problem rather than resolving it” (Ben- Eliezer 2008, 946). Jackson fails to elaborate on the lives of young AHIJ soldiers, so Ben- Eliezer’s research can illuminate racism within the IDF.
Bibliography:
Ben-Eliezer, Uri. 2008. “Multicultural society and everyday cultural racism: second generation of Ethiopian Jews in Israel’s ‘crisis of modernization.’” Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 31 No. 5 (July): 935- 961. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/01419870701568866.
Jackson, John. 2013. Thin Description. Boston: Harvard University Press.
Hamilton, Ruth Simms. 2007. Routes of Passage: Rethinking the African Diaspora. Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
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