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The Igbo and Jewry
By Adeyinka
Makinde
The following is an adaptation of the
substantive aspects of a private response to Mr. Ozodi
Osunji's rejoinder to a lecture that I delivered to an
audience of the Jewish Museum in London. In it, I
attempted to pick up on a number of points and
observations of Mr. Osunji; many of which have added
alternate perspectives and further depth to my knowledge
and understanding of the topic.
I embarked on this topic fully
cognizant of the controversies and sensitivities
attendant to it. It was in anticipation of your query:
"Why do black men always want to be associated with
white folks when white folk do not want anything to do
with them?", that I took the trouble to highlight
genuine reservations that a black person would have
about the premise of proposing a consanguineous link
between a black African people and Jewry, which as I
specifically mentioned are a people who in modern times
are identified as white skinned Caucasians. Indeed, I
referred to one particular comment posted on the messageboard
of a website which I visited in the course of my
research. The poster referred to a fellow poster who had
postulated such a link as "indulging in a brazen
expression of inferiority complex and self devaluation."
And in the same vein, towards the end of the talk, I had
referred to the issue of the black descendants of Sally
Hemmings and their claim to be formally recognised as
part of the extended family of Thomas Jefferson.
I can't remember which side of the
fence Jefferson stood over the issue of the status of
Africans in America. Some delegates to the
constitutional convention felt their humanness should
not be acknowledged while others thought it should and
the compromise was the infamous declaration of blacks
as being three-fifths human. Yes, your experience at his
estate demonstrates the racism inherent in his treatment
of the slaves that he owned. But I thought it prudent to
put forward another view that the facts be put squarely
in the faces of the white descendants, and that this
should not be automatically referred to as kow-towing.
Otherwise we get into that emotionally satisfying but
not too helpful attitude of blacks describing themselves
as "Field Negroes" and "House Negroes": There should be
a penumbra of views.
I also recognised the fact that
there are Jews, probably a sizeable number of them who
would be hostile to the premise of a genetic link
between an African people and Jewry. There are no
particular records of salient episodes of disharmony
between Blacks and Jews in the United Kingdom, but this
is not the case in the United States where there was
rioting in the Crown Heights district of New York
between Blacks and their Orthodox Jewish neighbours
sometime back in the 1980s.
Louis Farrakhan's infamous comment
denouncing Judaism as being a "gutter religion," the
publication of a book by the Nation of Islam detailing
their claim of heavy Jewish involvement in the slave
trade, and Farrakhan’s perceived influence in the Black
community led to an examination of Black-Jewish
relations.
So while mutual antipathies
between U.K. based Black/ African and Jewish communities
have not been obviously played out, I prepared the talk
mindful of the fact that there are Jews with racist
attitudes towards blacks, and that there are blacks who
view Jews in an unfavourable light. It would not have
escaped your keen eye the post talk comment by a Jewish
lady in the audience who stressed that she felt that
many of her fellow Ashkenazi Jews are in denial about
the fact that they were "originally a people of Colour."
Of course, being a people of colour
does not mean that the Jews were originally black in the
sense of having being a Nubian people with Nubian
features, it is perhaps more likely that they were a
dark skinned Caucasian people. There is the school of
thought which believes that the Semitic peoples were an
admixture of Negroid and Caucasian strains. But if we
are accepting of the thesis that the Jews of ancient
times were 'non-white', then the premise of whether the
Igbos are a lost tribe of Israel takes on a whole
different meaning. Put another way, there would be less
unease among black skeptics if the link postulated was
between Igbos and say, the Ancient Egyptians who are
widely understood by blacks to have been of black
African origin, even though the image of the modern
Egyptian is that of a darker hued Caucasian.
Your elaboration on possible vistas
of Jewish migration into the hinterland of Alaigbo is
most welcome. I appreciate your reference to the
possibility of certain Hebrew sounding words as having
possibly come from avenues other than Trans-Saharan
migration such as from Jews who perhaps were of
Portuguese origin. The time scale of about 300 years for
certain words to become imbibed into the lexicon of the
language of a community is compelling. On the other
hand, one must question how a miniscule number of Jews
among a small population of Portuguese could have spread
certain words and customs which are seemingly congruent
to that of the Jews. Surely, there would have been a
similar or proportional acquisition of non-Jewish
Portuguese customs and elements of the language in
Alaigbo.
The interpretation of evidence,
even when there is universal agreement of evidence is a
crucial factor and I am in essence sympathetic to your
wariness about the interpretation that could be given to
a future consensus view which formally identifies the
Igbo with Jewry, and specifically one which would permit
the 'enemies' of the Igbo to maintain that the Igbo
would therefore constitute an 'alien' group in West
Africa.
You are right about persons
seizing upon a theory that the Igbos are Jews as a
weapon to incite say the masses of the Moslem North of
Nigeria—the 'Talakawa'— to take up arms and unleash
pogroms against the Igbo. This is why I categorically
stated in my lecture that one: The Igbo language is a
West African language belonging to the KWA linguistic
group, and two: The Igbo people are a West African
people who are of 'Bantu' stock. They have flat noses,
thick lips and woolly hair. Of course, Igbos have a high
rate of albinoism and in many instances appear to be
lighter hued than their Bini or Yoruba neighbours. This
tendency to light skin has also been a source of
supposed 'pride' on the part of the Igbos. Other than
instances of albinoism, is this a distant reminder of
intermarriage with Portuguese or Semitic elements or
even related to the texture of the earth on which they
reside? I also did speak of the dangers which political
or rabbinical "recognition" of Igbos as Jews would pose
in the political context of Nigeria.
So far as the reference you made to
my mention of the Khazar theory as giving the Arabs the
justification to overthrow a putatively 'alien' and
non-Semitic state of Israel (and by analogy, a
justification for the Igbos to be swept into the
Atlantic for being a non-authentic African people), I
would offer that the Arabs do not use the thesis of the
Jews being mainly of non-Abrahamic lineage as THE
justification of sweeping the state of Israel into the
sea. Remember that much of their antipathy stems from
the Mohammedan policy of hating Jews since the time when
they refused to offer the prophet aid in his time of
need. This level of hatred, enshrined within and
encouraged by the Koran is enough reason to oppose the
state of Israel and even if every single Jew in Israel
could account for the veracity of the Semitic origins of
their genes, it would make no difference.
I made references during the course
of my lecture to similarities between certain Hebrew
words and customs and that of the Igbo. I did not refer
to one Professor Alaezi's contention that the name of 'Eri',
a son of Gad, appears in as a suffix to certain words in
its original form or as a corruption in, for example,
Aguleri, Umuleri, Nri and Nkwerre. Neither did I refer
to the purported discovery by archaeologists of a stone
in the town of Aguleri which had the name 'Gad' etched
in the Hebrew language. Much of this need not be
accepted at face value and should be forensically
examined and corroborated by reference to empirical
standards. There perhaps is a whiff of desperation in
the references relied upon by some Igbos who subscribe
to the premise of their being a lost tribe of Israel.
For instance, the writings of early British travellers
whose referrals to 'Heeboes' is interpreted by that as
evidence that the word 'Igbo' is a corruption of
'Hebrew.'
There is something inherently
disturbing and dangerous when a people believe that
their fortunes and misfortunes are pre-ordained by
biblical injunctions and prophesies. It is apparent that
some Igbos believe that the Old Testament words,
attributed to a fearsome God that he would, "scatter"
the children of Israel among the nations and that their
neighbours and other tribes would "hate" them relates to
their experiences of being hated and of being targeted
for pogroms in Nigeria.
As a people who pride themselves as
been adaptive to modernity, it is crucial that they
resort, as has been the standard of
enlightened peoples, to the application of reason—as
opposed to emotion or metaphysical traditions—when
assessing the trends of their existence. If, for
instance, as you say that there is a commonly held
perception among their neighbours that the Igbos are an
'arrogant' people, then this must be cause for some
form of internal analysis of the patterns and traits
of the group culture. Nations and peoples have changed
over the course of time and such change can be effected
by the calibre of the intellectual leadership that they
possess.
The quotations by Nnamdi Azikiwe
and Chinua Achebe to which I referred as indicative of
the Igboman's belief in his special-ness was in essence
a form of a rebuke. As to your allusion to have been on
a life-long mission to "save the Igbos from themselves",
I would tend to interpret this as an implied critique of
a lack of leadership from the elites within the Igbo
society. Goethe was on a mission to save the German
people from themselves. He knew that they were an
aggressive sort of people prone to chauvinist thinking
and expansionist ideologies. And he spoke against such
tendencies to the extent that he did not support his
people in their quest to be freed of Napoleonic control
when the French were on the retreat from their
ill-advised attempt to subjugate the Russians.
The Germans—remember there was no
corporate entity at this time called Germany—vilified
him for thinking that way. Goethe foresaw the militarism
inherent in the Germans which was later bourne out by
the rise of Prussia and then of Hitlerism, which would
lead their people to disaster in the 20th century. His
advice to them was to "invest" their prodigious talents
into what he termed "The culture": in the arts, the
sciences, and in trading which would serve as a means of
pacifying those aggressive impulses which he was
convinced inhabited the German psyche.
This is what leadership entails—not
only in the obvious sphere of the political classes, but
from the intellectual elite of a people—people who while
they are the embodiment of the best of their people are
nevertheless understanding of the foibles and weaknesses
of their people and are not afraid to say so. The Igbos,
by implication, do not appear to have such persons. It
is arguably an indicator of an underdeveloped and
unenlightened pattern of leadership where a leader
indulges in superfluous aggrandizement of his ethnic
group at the expense of being a more imaginative
contributor to the development of an understanding of
the psyche of his people. The role of the novelist, poet
and. intellectual par excellence is to do just that.
This is the task for all African peoples, and not only
the Igbo. But this will surely change with the passage
of time as the political and intellectual culture
becomes more sophisticated.
I mentioned that one cultural
similarity between the Jews and the Igbos was their
sense of being special and that this has had widespread
ramifications in the fate of each people. One critique
of Jews—and one which has not been limited to what one
might refer to as the "racially conscious" extreme right
of the political penumbra—has been to accuse Jewry of a
form of racial supremacy and exclusiveness. The extreme
right claims that the Jews are hypocritical in their
stances as purveyors of liberal values and of being in
their view the main proponents of equality of races and
citizens in Western societies, when they practice this
sort of racial exclusiveness which finds a particular
ugly corollary in the neo-apartheid policies of the
state of Israel. They also claim that the Jew was at the
forefront of the American Civil Rights movement, or at
least providing sustenance and encouragement for the
movement as part of their grand scheme or
unconscious policy of undermining the culture of the
dominant populations were they live. To the racist
right, civil rights means integration and race mixing
which the Jew "forces down the throat" of the white
majority while he himself does not condone such race
mixing.
As you mention, there were those
historical injunctions not to marry non-Jews and today
there are these stipulations by conservative rabbinical
authorities on who should be considered a Jew. You will
note, as I explained in my lecture, that most Jews of
western and eastern European origin (Ashkenazim) would
fail the test. You will also note the stringent tests
for obtaining Israeli nationality contained in The Law
of Return which was covered during the question session
that followed my presentation. A member of the audience
referred to the case of an Igboman whose legal argument
that he be categorised as a returnee Jew by virtue of
his Igbo heritage, was dismissed by the Supreme Court of
Israel.
There are those who will argue that
the Talmud makes derogatory references to non-Jews, i.e.
Gentiles as been little more than "animals," while of
course there is the insistence that the book does not
denigrate Gentiles by refusing them the possibility of
salvation and condemning them to eternal damnation.
Those who are termed 'Ethical Monotheists' have souls
which are apparently salvageable. There are further
categorisations depending on which scholar you read,
but the fact that even those who receive a favourable
classification can never be accepted into the Jewish
community or society merely confirms for some the
'apartness' of Jews.
A straightforward comparison with
Igbos in this vein is not possible. There is no specific
canon of the traditional Igbo religious system, at least
of which I am aware, with commensurate
stipulations although it is worth noting the practice of
the Osu system; a system which mandates that Igbos
cannot marry certain people who are categorised by
reasons of descent as being of lower caste. One of the
core precepts pertaining to the age of enlightenment and
reason is that concerning the equality of human
beings. And given that a fundamental assumption of
today's world is that all humans are entitled to the
gamut of human rights, it amounts to a moral stain on
the cultural mores of the Igbo if they continue to
perpetuate a system which condones a practice which
categories groups within them as being virtually
sub-human.
One of the themes which I mentioned
in my lecture was the perception which the neighbours
and host communities had of the Igbos and the Jews and
it is fair to say that this perception has often been
unfavourable. Even today, and this is not confined to
the obviously racist far right, there are those who
believe that Jews are selfish and only interested in
promoting their own ends. I stress that I am not saying
I agree with such views but that they are a reality of
the perception of many in the Western world for
centuries. The Igbos too, have been viewed as selfish
and arrogant. Both peoples have suffered immensely from
violent uprisings during which they were targeted. As
with all sorts of phenomena it is a matter of cause and
effect.
But while it is easier to achieve
unanimity in assessing the effect of the destruction and
humiliation of human beings, it is harder to achieve
consensus on what the causes were. Should we merely stop
at a finding that Jews and Igbos have been attacked
solely because of the 'jealousies of their neighbours
and their neighbours needs to find a 'scapegoat' in
times of specific societal crisis? And if it is
postulated that other causes abound which relate to the
conduct of and the characteristics of Igbos and Jews,
does that bear the connotation of blaming the
victim, and further, of being anti-Semitic or anti-Igbo?
I believe not. Not if we are embarking on a genuinely
objective enquiry into the nature of man.
I, for instance, would
welcome 'genuinely objective' and purposeful enquiries
by black and African intellectuals into whether there is
a common thread existing within the black African psyche
which has contributed to the poverty and mistreatment of
his kind over the ages. An enquiry which does not
overwhelmingly keep blaming others for his misfortune,
but instead asks why black Africans sold their kind as
slaves, first to Arabs and then to Europeans, and
whether the destructive and self defeating tendencies of
that sort have contributed to the corrupt misrule of
African nations and the maladies suffered by African
descended communities in the Americas are related to
some transmitted cultural facet.
Such enquiries must be purposeful
and be active in presenting points of action which over
the course of time will eradicate what you, Mr. Osuji,
refer to as "negative" tendencies. It will involve the
conception of new philosophies and shared precepts aimed
at re-socializing African peoples with new values to
replace old ones while maintaining and promoting those
positive cultural traits.
You deduced from my lecture
an overt as well as a subtle insinuation that the "sense
of specialness and tendency to look down on other
people" has played a part in generating anti-Jewish and
anti-Igbo sentiments. The Igbo found themselves
friendless inside Nigeria during the turmoil of 1966.
They were the victims of large scale injustices. But is
it not ironic when you consider that the murderous acts
within the ranks of the military in 1966 could not have
taken place without the participation of Christian
soldiers of middle belt origin who formed the bulk of
the foot soldiers in the Nigerian Army? Is there
no truth in allegations that some Easterners in the
North including, but not limited to market traders were
openly and overbearingly triumphal in their attitudes
about the rise of Ironsi? Is there no truth to comments
made by certain Yorubas of some Igbos
indiscreetly asserting at the time of Ironsi’s
administration that they would obtain greater 'living
space' in the West and other parts of Nigeria?
You also mentioned my note on the
frequent accusation of Jews and Igbos being involved in
the unholy pursuit of money. The Igbo are often made the
face of Nigerian '419'; this, the art of swindling
foreigners, usually North Americans and Western
Europeans of large amounts of money. Igbo names such as
Ajudua and Nwude are referred to as being the most
successful of these 'scammers'. The backdrop to this of
course is that Nigeria presently is a very corrupt state
and society, and if a thesis of a preponderance of Igbos
in this form of financial crime is accepted, the
rationale could be based on the matter of the
marginalisation of Igbos from the corridors of political
power such that many of them have not been in a position
to steal from the Nigerian treasury as have the leaders
of other ethnic groups from the North, Middle Belt and
the West. So for many, the route to acquiring equivalent
massive forms of money is through executing these scams.
As for the Jews, there are those
who assert that the face of the Russian oligarch, who
epitomizes the wanton rape of the Russian treasury and
acquisition of state assets by crooked means, is
represented by that of a Jew. Berezovsky. Gusinsky.
Freidman. Khodorkovsky. These oligarchs were supposedly
aided by Jewish financial figures in the West in the
transfer of assets out of Russia in that chaotic period
following the fall of communism. So too is the face of
what is referred to as the 'Russian Mafia.' The Jewish
gangster Simone Mogilevich is often cited as
the quintessential Russian 'Don', although the fact is
that such 'mafia' is composed of a range of ethnic
groups.
While it is the
case that the first portion of my lecture dwelled
on certain similarities in terms of cultural traits and
experiences in history, at no point did I mention that
this was indicative of a lineage between Igbos and Jews.
In fact, I was at pains to refer to the other possible
comparisons such as the Armenians and the Chinese who
live outside of their homeland in other Far East Asian
countries. They, like the Japanese, are noted for their
industry. But let us face it, almost every group which
demonstrates traits of industry and resourcefulness are
likened to Jews. Love them or loathe them: they are the
standard. And what standards they have set. When one
considers their relatively miniscule population
and matches that against their achievements and their
influence it is obvious that all comparisons with other
peoples are in essence superficial—a description which I
used in my lecture.
The Jews have
played an important role in the constructing of Western
civilization. They can boast of numerous philosophers
such as Maimonides and Spinoza; of scientists like
Einstein and Oppenheimer, who was the lead scientist in
the Manhattan Project which oversaw the development of
the atom bomb; of bankers like the Rothschilds and so
on. They practically invented Capitalism—and because
Karl Marx was of Jewish origin, some would say they also
invented the idea of Communism.
There are recent
studies propounding the theory that Ashkenazi Jews are
the most intelligent form of the human species and have
attained such levels of intelligence by virtue of their
having to improvise and contrive the strategies which
were required to cope with the vicissitudes of societal
exclusion, pogroms and expulsions from various lands.
However, there are no available studies which would
permit a similar view in regard to the Intelligence
quotient of Igbos.
The Igbos are a
black African people, labouring under the accusation,
like other Africans and peoples of black African
descent, that they have not been significant
contributors to the development of civilizations. They,
like other African groups, had not developed a
comprehensive written system by the time of the arrival
of the Europeans and as with other Africans were
subjugated and pacified by European powers.
There are of course
two ways of looking at the level of social and political
development among the Igbo when the Europeans came
across them. One view tends towards that of them having
primitive, stateless underdeveloped polities, while the
other is to view them as ruling themselves in autonomous
enclaves. Where the Igbo sees the evidence of a
meritocratic, "republican" heritage, his critics see a
chaotic, malformed political heritage based on the fact
that they existed as a "stateless" people.
It is perhaps as
you argue that because of the achievements of the Jews,
that some Igbos will want to push all they can to become
associated with Jewry; analogous to the human
psychological condition whereby persons wish to be
associated with those who are successful. When I devised
my lecture on Igbos and Jews, I was wary of people
misconstruing it as an attempt of black people trying to
link themselves with a people perceived as white for the
purposes of obtaining a shaky, self esteem by
association. I am mindful of the fact that Africans and
African descended persons should preferably display the
qualities associated with being inspirational and not
merely being aspirational.
You do not copy or
imitate—you adapt knowledge, precepts and modes of
behaviour to suit your own cultural needs.
I devised the
lecture in a manner by which I presented evidence so
that a debate—with reference to cogent evidence—may
ensue and the theory can be proved or disproved. It was
conceived on basis that while the Igbos have discernible
traits and a history which can be adjudged as being
similar to that of the Jews, there is in existence
certain linguistic and cultural points of reference
which demanded further investigation. This is simply a
result of what I consider to be a natural and healthy
sense of intellectual curiosity.
One which finds,
say, the proposition that the Japanese language is
somewhat related to the Magyar and Finnish languages
fascinating in the extreme and worth exploring. I
would find it
abhorrent for anyone to dismiss a link between Jews and
Igbos for reasons other than those based on empirical
scrutiny. It would be abhorrent for a Jew to dismiss it
out of hand on the basis that he considers himself
"white" and "superior" to an African people just as I
would abhor the situation where an Igbo is accepting of
such a link merely to be associated with what he
perceives to be a successful white ethnic group.
Are the Igbos specifically
a "lost" tribe of Israel? A reading of the text of my
lecture clearly shows that I describe them as a black
African people who speak a black African language. If
Jewish elements migrated to what is now Igboland, they
would have been a miniscule amount and would have merged
with an indigenous people already existing there. That
much was alluded to in my talk.
I am fairly
agnostic about the whole thing, but enjoy the process of
forensic enquiry. What motivates others in terms of
their interest in the proof or disproof of the subject
at hand is another issue. One vista of enquiry which has
so far not been pursued is the undertaking of large
scale blood testing in the manner in which the Lemba
people of Southern Africa subjected themselves. If the
Igbo are related to Jewry, they will bear the traces of
Semitic chromosomes which with the passage of time and
intermarriage would doubtlessly have mutated, but would
be present.
The results might just settle this
matter.
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Ozodi Thomas
Osuji:
Igbos Are africans Not Jews and
Igbo and Jewry: Any Connection?—A
response to: Mr. Adeyinka Makinde
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Adeyinka Makinde,
Nigerian by birth and British by nationality, is a
barrister-at-law by training and has taught law at a
number of colleges and universities in the United
Kingdom. A student of boxing, he has written many
articles and match reports for a number of boxing sites
on the World Wide Web including cyberboxingzone.com and
eastsideboxing.com. His work has appeared in Le
Soliel, the premier Senegalese newspaper. He
has also contributed to African Renaissance; a
journal dedicated to the socio-political and economic
affairs of the continent and Black Star News; a
New York City-based investigative newspaper...... He is
the author of the biography
Dick Tiger: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal
published by Word Association Publishers in 2005.
His article, 'Pug
of Ages: Weep for Me' (2002), which explores the
economic, social and cultural aspects of boxing, is
reprinted alongside classic essays on boxing by William
Hazlitt and Joyce Carol Oates as source material in two
English language academic textbooks concerned with
developing critical thinking skills among pre-university
High School students in the United States. Writing:
The Synthesis Essay & English Language and Composition:
Analysis, Argument and Synthesis by John Brassil,
Sandra Coker and Carl W. Glover. (Peoples Education, New
Jersey, USA 2007). . . .
In 2006, he served
as both consultant and contributor to a BBC World
Service Radio produced documentary on the life of Dick
Tiger, and in 2007, he appeared on a Sky TV broadcast
entitled 'Deadly Rivals' in regard to which he
contributed expert opinion on the Michael Watson-Chris
Eubank and Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier boxing rivalries. .
. . He is currently working on his second book,
tentatively titled Jersey Boy: The Life and Mob
Slaying of Frankie DePaula which will be released in
2008.
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posted 7 December 2007 |
