African Jews

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Jews and Judaism
 
Who is a Jew? · Etymology · Culture

Since Biblical times, the Jewish people have had close ties with Africa, beginning with Abraham's sojourns in Egypt, and later the Israelite captivity under the Pharaohs. Some Jewish communities in Africa are among the oldest in the world, dating back more than 2700 years. African Jews have ethnic and religious diversity and richness. African Jewish communities include:

• Scattered African groups who have not maintained contact with the wider Jewish community from ancient times, but who assert descent from ancient Israel or other connections to Judaism. These include:
  • Groups who observe Jewish rituals, or rituals bearing recognizable resemblance to Judaism. Although there are a number of such groups, the majority of world Jewry recognize only the Beta Israel of Ethiopia as historically Jewish.
  • Groups such as the Lemba, many of whom practice Christianity but have preserved some rituals and customs believed to be Jewish in origin. This group has also been found to have genetic traits that other Jewish population groups possess, thereby bolstering their claims to Jewish ancestry.
• Sephardi Jews and Mizraḥi Jews living in North Africa, including Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt. The vast majority of them have emigrated, chiefly to Israel and France, with substantial numbers also emigrating to Brazil, Canada and the USA. Small but active communities remain in Morocco and Tunisia.
• The South African Jews, who are mostly Ashkenazi Jews, descended mostly from pre-and post-Holocaust immigrant Lithuanian Jews.

Although not all African Jews are religious, most of the practices found in African Jewish communities are Orthodox.

Ancient Jewish communities

The most ancient communities of African Jews known to the Western world are the Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews of North Africa.