News Archive: March 2009

March 6, 2009: JBFCS Program Director Quoted in the Atlanta Jewish Times

Deborah Langosch, director of the JBFCS New York Kinship Care program, is quoted in the March 6th cover article, By Grand Design. Deborah recently presented at a symposium in Atlanta conducted by the National Center on Grandparents Raising Grandchildren.

March 5, 2009: JBFCS Works Towards Ethnic and Cultural Inclusiveness

JBFCS recently co-sponsored a talk at the Jewish Community Center titled "Black Jews of Africa."

Professor Lewis Gordon, founder of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University, introduced his audience to an unexpected group of spiritual brothers and sisters. Gordon told an enthralled audience about many sub-Saharan communities of Jews. A few groups, like the Lemba of South Africa and Zimbabwe, and the Ibo Jews of Nigeria believe their roots go back to ancient Israel.

Professor Lewis Gordon

Other Jewish groups identify with the Lost Tribes myth. Gordon said the ancestry of some communities in East and West Africa can perhaps be traced to Jews who settled along established African trade routes and married locals. Though evidence of a Jewish presence in Africa is scant so far, tradition and oral history are strong.

Most Jewish communities have emerged recently. The Abayudaya ("People of Judah") in Uganda have considered themselves Jews for about a century. Jewish groups in Ghana, Kenya, and elsewhere emerged in the past 30 years. Though their rituals differ from those of their Western counterparts, and vary from group to group, they have in common a firm belief in their Jewish roots and a strong sense of their Jewish identity.

American and Israeli organizations and individuals are stepping forward to welcome emerging groups, providing help with education and construction of temples. The preconception of the Jew as a white European is a modern one, Gordon said: Jewish history is filled with interracial and intercultural mixing. Jews of color were once the norm.

Gordon also said that race and color are fluid, cultural concepts. For example, European Jews who migrated to America were once considered to be non-white. "I’m used to people disbelieving that I am a Jew, " said Gordon, who is black.

"The whiter you are," Gordon told his mostly white audience, "the more likely that you are Jewish by conversion." The line, playfully delivered, drew a big laugh.