Posted by:
anybody
(
)
Date: April 04, 2019 03:36PM
https://jewishjournal.com/opinion/170393/The Lemba people is a tribe of about 100,000 scattered across Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mozambique. We and they believe that they are descendants of one of the Lost Tribes. They have an oral tradition of having come down Africa through Yemen after being exiled from Israel after the Second Temple.
If you ask even the most assimilated of the village elders in their own language, they will hit their chest and exclaim “Jew.” They have always identified as Jews, as their African tribal name, Maremba MaJudah, implies. They have even suffered forms of consistent anti-Semitism by other tribes and colonialists throughout their history in the African Diaspora.
With only a handful of exceptions, the majority of the Lemba laymen in Zimbabwe have very little-to-no knowledge about modern-day Judaism and its practices, but their own Lemba traditions are strong and strikingly similar to many Torah practices (as will be elaborated on shortly).
On the other hand, there are a select few leaders that have come back into the fold and even undergone conversion. They are dynamic and thirsting to learn more about modern Judaism with the hopes of both giving over all of their new knowledge to the greater community and seeing an eventual mass return to their Jewish roots.
Some of the Lemba traditions include dietary laws such as not eating pork, seafood or insects, except for one type of locust that has special identification requirements. They don't mix milk and meat, appointing special butchers that must kill only the appropriate animals with special knives and in the most pain-free and quick ways, and not eating out or anyone's' house who is not a Lemba.
They also strictly perform and advocate for brit milah. For thousands of years they performed brit milah on the eigth day, but when missionaries began to come through their territories they declared a tribal-wide change of practice to performing brit milah on the eight year so that no one could persecute them or force them to convert.
The Lemba have traditionally watched for and declared the new moon with a horn, and made sure to have a new moon celebration. The celebration was encouraged and celebrated primarily by women. Our host told us stories of remembering how his grandmother used to go around telling all the children it was the new moon! For those readers that may not know, all of these traditions parallel the customs of the Torah.
Additionally, they have always had a traditional day of rest, and forms of celebration of Pesach, the new year, the day of self-affliction, and day of 'first fruit' offerings. They also have a seven day period of mourning, laws concerning the woman in her time of menstruation, and various gender separation and modesty customs.
We found out that many of them and their grandparents have names like Sukkot, Mishkan, Hillel, Miriam, Aviv, Shlomo, and my favorite… our host Modreck's given second name is Mordechai, and he has a tradition that his first born son should be (and is) named Yehudah, and that that name sequence should repeat. This discovery blew my mind because my Syrian brother-in-law Marcus' second name is Mordechai and he has a tradition that his first born son should be (and is) named Yehudah, and that that name sequence should repeat. Whoa!
Finally and almost unbelievably, genetic studies performed in the 90's show that a large percentage of the Lemba leadership do in fact have the “Cohen Gene.” Still, the purpose of our visit and this article were not to prove anything or deal with the issues in Halacha, lineage, intermarriage, or assimilation issues, etc.