2022: Recognition of Igbo as Descendants of Ancient Israelites (jan 1, 2022 – jan 1, 2023)

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The Obadyah Alliance, a Sephardic Jewish organization, formed a Beit Din (Jewish Rabbinical court) and declared the Igbo of Nigeria (West Africa) to be descendants of the ancient Israelites.

“Moreover, the historiographical data written during the time of the Songhai Empire, reveals that Portuguese and Moroccan Jews traded in the region of Igboland. Records also evidence the union between Portuguese Jews and West Africans in the region, whereby local women underwent halakhic conversions to the Jewish People. Such was the case in Senegal, Gambia, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, and Angola. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, some Portuguese Jews took their African wives with them to the port cities of Antwerp and Amsterdam, where they were integrated into the respective communities.

“The presence of Israelites along the Niger River had been known by Jewish authorities in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Suriname. Rabbinic letters addressed to the Igbos by Chief rabbis: Dr. Solomon Hershel Lewin, David Meldola, and the Gaon of Vilna (Eli-jan Zalman), support the idea that there was contact between European Jewish communities and Igbo Israelites. All of the correspondence from the aforementioned rabbinic authorities address the Igbos as “brethren of the Children of Israel.” Accordingly, there is no doubt of their origins, nor of their halakhic status as Israelites.”


Source:
Elazar-DeMota, Dr. Dayan Yehonatan. 2022. Igbo Israelites: Coerced To Christianity and Their Return. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a98cbc3b40b9da93f7c5126/t/61f35b8ad59d991291cab3fa/1643338634761/Teshubah-on-Igbo-Israelites.pdf ↩︎

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