CHUENE HAMESE and JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Pietersburg | Monday
SOUTHERN Africa’s tribe of black Jews, which is believed to have fled its Middle Eastern homeland and settled in Venda roughly 1000 years ago, has gathered in Venda to plan the revival of its unique culture.
Lemba Cultural Association president Professor Matshaya Razwimaisani Mathivha Seremane confirmed that Lemba royalty and other leaders from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Israel, the US and South Africa met in Venda to strategise about how to revive the tribe’s religion and cultural rites.
The tribe’s oral histories and legends about its epic trek were supported last year when detailed genetic and DNA testing by British scientists proved that male Lemba had undeniable and unique DNA links to Semitic Jews.
The set of genes are distinctive to Jewish hereditary priests of the Cohenim clan who claim decent from the biblical Aaron, brother of the Jewish prophet Moses.
Oxford University’s Dr David Goldstein said in his published study on the Lemba that the genes are not common among lay Jews and very rare among non-Jews.
The Lemba also still practise an Africanised form of Judaism, retain certain kosher dietary laws and claim they introduced the Jewish practice of circumcision to southern Africa.
Like Jews, the Lemba also do not eat pork or pig-like animals, keep Saturday as a holy day and discourage their women from marrying into other tribes.
The tribe’s oral histories claim they were led out of Judea and the Yemen by a man named Buda roughly 1 000 years ago after their villages in Senna were destroyed by a water holocaust.
Although recorded Jewish histories make no mention of Buda, Goldstein found that Lemba men from the tribe’s Buda clan displayed a particularly strong link with the Jewish Cohenim clan.
The conference this weekend also reviewed recent cultural exchanges with Israeli Jewish groups, which saw Jews visit the Lemba to deliver their holy Torah scrolls and other religious literature and histories. – African Eye News Service