August 1999
"Behold, I will save my people from the east country, and from the west country; And I will bring them, and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. And they shall be my people, and I will be their G-d, in truth and righteousness."
My interest was first ignited a few years ago, when I read an article of South Africa's "Black Jews". I knew very little except what most others in the Jewish community knew - that there were Black Bantu-speaking people in our country who "claimed" to be descended from Jews, lived as Jews and practised Judaism as remembered and passed down to them -orally through the ages.
Believe my surprise when I received a call from Professor Mothivha, resident of Louis Trichardt, last year. We had a mutual friend in Washington, Dr Jack Zeller , a pathologist who also happens to be President of Kulanu -"all of us" in Hebrew - a charity organization active in 22 countries, headquartered in Wahington, and for whom I had written a story about my personal life as "a child of the Anousim" ( forced converts )
This charming gentleman, president of the Lemba Cultural Association and former vice-prinicipal of the University of the North, professor Mothivha, told me how he identified with many (of the) things I had written about; the identity problems - the rejection and the pain I had experienced and felt growing up, without "belonging". This was the beginning.
Things snowballed after that; another mutual friend from New York, an ex- Pretoria medical doctor, Shmuel Wapnick, who had visited professor Mathivha and Mr Ephraim Selamolela last year, started including me and a friend Sylvia Magid, in emails; and a network grew and developed. A network of interested Jews, researchers, historians, and anthropologists, including Dr Tudor Parfitt , who was instrumental in the recent news-breaking discovery of the DNA results, proving the relation to Jews of this centuries old oral history.
Yesterday, Dr Shmuel Wapnick, on his way back to New York after spending four days in South Africa to attend his niece's wedding - found the time to host a little get together at a kosher restuarant. A get-together I was honoured to be a part of, together with my friend, Sylvia Magid. I feel it is (yet) another beginning
We met with a number of Lemba people, all identifying as Jews, one being Dr Rudo Mathivha, Paediatrian and US trained ICU specialist, daughter of Professor Mathivha, Mr Ephraim Selamolela the (very) successful businessman's two good-looking and successful sons, a niece, whose name means "great person", her mother, and the gentleman, who is president of the Lemba Burial Society . ( much like our Gevrah Kadisha )
I looked into Rudo's warm smiling eyes, enveloped by her acceptance - and felt humbled that these gracious and successful people were willing to accept me - part of the (white) Jewish community who had ignored their excistance and claims for years. They asked for nothing; they are successful, educated, and charming. All they had hoped for was (some form of ) acceptance.
Dr Shmuel Wapnick left, with the go- ahead to arrange for a shaliach, one of our little network of caring Jews from around the world, to come and start the Lemba Educational Center, in Louis Trichardt. Yaacov who will be arriving in Oct/November this year, will begin teaching Hebrew and Torah, the next step towards bridging the gap of centuries.
Regarding the results of the newsbreaking genetic testing recently, David B Goldstein, a population geneticist at Oxford University, took the discovery one step further; Goldstein's research showed that the proportion of Lemba men carrying the genetic signature of the priests were similar to those found among the major Jewish populations, strongly supporting the Lemba tradition of Jewish ancestry, the Times reported.
The DNA sequences were particularly common among Lemba men who belong to the Buba clan, the senior of their 12 groups. The Lemba, from South Africa and Zimbabwe, believe they were led out of Judea by a man named Buba.
In a separate study, Dr. Tudor Parfitt, director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, said he has discovered the route the Lemba say they used to emigrate, saying he was told they traveled from a place called Senna to Africa.
Parfitt, who has studied the Lemba for 10 years and described his work in a recent book, "Journey to the Vanished City," said he found a village called Senna in Hadramawt, a former site of Jewish communities in Yemen. He believes that is the "Senna" referred to in Lemba oral tradition. "It turned out what they are saying about themselves is substantially correct," he said.
Which leaves us, the SA Jewish Community with a moral dilemma; what is our responsibility as Jews, our future obligation towards helping those interested, back Halachicly to Judaism?. Now that we know, can we continue to pretend they do not exist?
Rufina Bernardetti Silva Mausenbaum,