Who wants to be a Jew?
The unlikely spread of Judaism in Africa

AS THE sun sets on a Friday in a smart new suburb of Lagos,
Harim Obidike dons his kippah and opens up a prayer book.
It is the start of shabbat, the Jewish holy day, and as he
croons through the psalms, a gaggle of youngsters sing
along. “We are Israelites,” he says after bread has been
broken and the candles lit.
Nigeria is a devout country split loosely between a Muslim
north and a Christian south: two halves which were brought
together by colonialists and still butt heads today. A couple
of decades ago, modern Judaism was almost unheard of.
But this household is one of a growing number that are
taking to the Torah. In Abuja, the capital, there are at least
four small communities of Igbo-speakers that have opened
synagogues. (Jews joke that every town needs at least two so
that members can hold a grudge, and refuse to attend one
of them.) In one, on the outskirts of the city, there is a
gospel lilt to the songs: members taught themselves to read
Hebrew and then had to make up the tunes, says one.
It might seem odd that people would sign up to join a small
faith whose members have suffered centuries of oppression.
Yet Uri Palti, Israel’s ambassador to Nigeria, reckons there
are more than 40 such communities across the country.
Daniel Lis, an academic, thinks there may be thousands of
Nigerians who practise Judaism. Millions more of the Igbo
tribe believe that they are descended from biblical Israelites.
Across Africa as a whole there may be thousands more self-
declared Jews. One community in eastern Uganda, the
Abayudaya, adopted the faith almost a century ago. Its rabbi
was recently elected the country’s first Jewish member of
parliament.
Yet the embrace by these communities of the laws of Moses
has not been warmly reciprocated by the Orthodox
establishment in Israel. Unlike proselytising religions such as
Christianity, the guardians of Orthodox Judaism go out of
their way to make conversion difficult, insisting on a two-
year programme of study and lifestyle changes.
Still, officialdom is shifting. Israel’s Jewish Agency last month
recognised the Abayudaya as Jews, meaning that they are
allowed to emigrate to Israel. There is a precedent. Since the
1980s more than 90,000 Ethiopian Jews (known to some as
Falashas) did so after Israel’s rabbis accepted them into the
fold.
Such a stamp of approval seems a little less likely in the case
of Nigeria. Some fear it would open Israel’s gates to
thousands of economic migrants. Yet this does not trouble
the likes of Mr Obidike. Nigeria’s Semites argue that they are
descended from one of Israel’s lost tribes and that cultural
similarities such as circumcision are proof of their pedigree.
Others at his synagogue do not worry much about
officialdom’s response. “We are Jewish,” says one old lady
who switched from Catholicism. “Whether you are
recognised or not is no matter.”



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