african Jews, black Jews, jazz

A review of "The Black Jews of Africa" where I also comment on the methodological questions around ethnic claims of Israelite origins, attributed Judaic practices, and the standards of evidence for actual cultural links to Middle East Judaic practices and communities. At the end, I suggest we also extend this skepticism to Jews of European descent.

This book is the inaugural volume in a new series on Jewish Ethnography called “Jewish Cultures of the World,” edited by Matti Bunzl and Jeffrey Shandler.

Synopsis: “One People, One Blood” is an ethnographic study of Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity and are today clamoring for the right to ‘Return to Judaism’ and claim citizenship in the State Israel. It focuses on the lived experience of these refugees and on the complex moral and political controversy over their ongoing cultural and religious transformation. This is the first ethnography ever devoted to this group, or to the cultural politics of Ethiopian Judaism. I argue that epistemological limitations in the study of religious experience ought to be taken into account by Israeli policy makers who decide “who is a Jew” based on uncritical assumptions about the nature of religious conversion. I also use the ‘Feres Mura’ dilemma to raise broader questions about the nature of Jewishness and the political role of academic scholarship.

Press coverage of "rollout" of first-ever translation of 16th-century Lurianic Kabbalah (Rabbi Isaac Luria, the ARI's circle) text "Tikkun Leil Shavuoth"--all-night study/intentional prayer ceremony. Work on this and other parallel texts has been ongoing since 1991, and includes annotation of variant editions worldwide.