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August 15, 2003/Av 17 5763, Vol. 55, No. 51
Black Hebrews get Israeli residency
LOOLWA KHAZZOOM
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
TEL AVIV - There are 2,500 new permanent residents of the State of Israel, but not one of them is new to the Jewish state.
Israel's Black Hebrews, a group that traces its origins through Chicago and, they claim, all the way back to the biblical Jewish kingdoms, have been given a home in the Jewish state.
Though the Black Hebrews began immigrating to Israel from the United States in 1969, it was only last week that the community in southern Israel was granted permanent residency status.
It has been 34 years of bitter struggle, community members say.
"It seems that we are now at the doorstep of citi-zenship," says Atarah Yafah Kitanah, spokeswoman for the Black Hebrew community of Dimona.
Permanent resident status generally leads to full citizenship after an unspecified period of time, Interior Ministry spokeswoman Tova Ellinson said.
Many Black Hebrews say a Jewish past would help explain otherwise inscrutable aspects of their identity.
"My great-great-grand-mother had a Hebrew name, and there were certain practices that were passed down from generation to generation that nobody understood," Kitanah recalls.
"There were a lot of different things passed on, like my grandmother telling me our people came from the Holy Land, and we have a history there, and one day we will return," she said.
Black Hebrews say they are descendants of the Jews expelled by the Romans in 70 C.E. According to Black Hebrew legend, some of those Jews reached West Africa, and many generations later their descendants were among the slaves brought to the United States.
Few in the Jewish establishment accept the Black Hebrews' claims, however, and Israel's Rabbinate ruled that they are not halachically Jewish.
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