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  1. must be able to speak Yiddish to be a Jewish.

    They speak “Swahidish” Yiddish /Swahili dialect.

    I don’t speak Yiddish so guess I’m not Jewish either…!! You had some weird Jews in Texas.

  2. BethesdaDog Said:

    I’ve known about thi group for a long time

    But do they speak Yiddish ??? I was told in Saturday School , as a child, I must be able to speak Yiddish to be a Jewish.

  3. I have deleted the comments by Honeybee and Yamit as they were not germane to the article. A day or two ago, I sent them emails asking that they cut the chit chat. Maybe now they will.

  4. Go to Kulanu.org for more on this group and other Jewish communities around the world. I’ve known about thi group for a long time. Saw a documentary years ago on the Lemba. The fellow from the U of London wrote a book on them. Forgot his name. Lot of interesting stories about the possible migrations of ancient Jews into Africa.

  5. Who knew? The story of Israel’s foreign policy in East Africa, including Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda (including that of the Abayudaya community), Tanzania, and South Sudan is told in my 2012 book: “From Jerusalem to the Lion of Judah and Beyond.” The information is out there, one just has to know where to look. At Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/Jerusalem-Lion-Judah-Beyond-Israels/dp/1469761297/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415926822&sr=1-1&keywords=From+Jerusalem+to+the+Lion+of+Judah+and+Beyond
    or contact me at drhistory@cox.net.

  6. yamit82 Said:

    Got news for you buddy it’s not the numbers that are determinative for ultimate survival of the Jewish people.

    You are wrong Yamit. For one thing, let’s start with the obvious number – zero. If the number of Jews fall to zero (which is the goal of the Muslims, Europeans and the International left) then there is no survival, correct?

    If Jews were to fall below a critical number – maybe 2-3 million, then they would soon perish basically like the Zoroastrians have.

    As for all those Spaniards and Sicilians and Brazilians with Jewish blood – I thought the Jewish world WAS looking to get the anousim back to Judaism. Isn’t that what they did with the B’nai Menasseh and the Falash Mura? Haven’t they done that with some long lost Jews in Portugal and in Majorca?

    Now, I suspect your real concern is that they would not all fit inside Israel, even if J & S is retained.

    That is probably true, Yamit, but my answer to that is “We should only have that problem!”

  7. @ Eric R.:

    You are nuts stark raving nuts!!!!!

    30% of the Spanish have some Jewish genes Arab too. Jews were once the majority in Sicily and there must be a wealth of some Jewish genes floating around there too.

    Brazil have maybe 2 million with some Jewish genetic material. The Jews were the bees of the ancient up to the modern era the most prolific genetic pollinators of the world.

    Got news for you buddy it’s not the numbers that are determinative for ultimate survival of the Jewish people.

  8. There is strenght in numbers, and perhaps combining this thread with the past one about Shmuely Boteach trying to increase the numbers of Jews in the world — there are several groups in Africa that could bolster Jewish numbers, with these Ugandans being the smallest.

    The Lemba of Zimbabwe have been shown by mitochodrial RNA to have a genetic connection to the lost tribes, and while I do not know if a genetic link has been proven, there are many Igbos in Nigeria and Cameroon who claim the same (Yaphet Kotto, the late black American actor who ironically played the Afro-Nazi Idi Amin in a TV movie about the Entebbe raid, was one such Igbo Jew.)

    And although it escapes me at the moment, there is a community in Ghana, that like the Abayudaya converted and has been devoted to Judaism for about 100 years (somebody can look it up).