@article{1479179,
      recid = {1479179},
      author = {Parfitt, Tudor, },
      title = {Black Jews in Africa and the Americas /},
      pages = {1 online resource (220 p.)},
      abstract = {Black Jews in Africa and the Americas tells the  fascinating story of how the Ashanti, Tutsi, Igbo, Zulu,  Beta Israel, Maasai, and many other African peoples came to  think of themselves as descendants of the ancient tribes of  Israel. Pursuing medieval and modern European race  narratives over a millennium in which not only were Jews  cast as black but black Africans were cast as Jews, Tudor  Parfitt reveals a complex history of the interaction  between religious and racial labels and their political  uses. For centuries, colonialists, travelers, and  missionaries, in an attempt to explain and understand the  strange people they encountered on the colonial frontier,  labeled an astonishing array of African tribes, languages,  and cultures as Hebrew, Jewish, or Israelite. Africans  themselves came to adopt these identities as their own,  invoking their shared histories of oppression, imagined  blood-lines, and common traditional practices as proof of a  racial relationship to Jews. Beginning in the post-slavery  era, contacts between black Jews in America and their  counterparts in Africa created powerful and ever-growing  networks of black Jews who struggled against racism and  colonialism. A community whose claims are denied by many,  black Jews have developed a strong sense of who they are as  a unique people. In Parfitt's telling, forces of prejudice  and the desire for new racial, redemptive identities  converge, illuminating Jewish and black history alike in  novel and unexplored ways.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1479179},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674067905},
}