Oh, How They Multiply! How many more Jews are hiding among the other nations?
Bani Israel, Senegal — He will welcome
you into his earthen-floor home, introduce you to his three wives, and
let you sample their cooking. But Dougoutigo Fadiga does not want
foreigners to come near the sacred tree of his village deep in the
Senegalese bush.
“The tree is holy grounds,” says Fadiga, president of
this remote settlement of 4,000 souls. “Our Jewish ancestor, Jacob,
planted it when his people first settled here 1,000 years ago.”
The lush kapok tree towers over the parched shrubbery
at the edge of Bani Israel, a dusty community in eastern Senegal near
the border with Mali. The residents, all Muslims, are members of a tribe
whose name means “sons of Israel,” and they trace their lineage to two
clans — Sylla and Drame — they say are descended from Egyptian Jews.
“We are all practicing Muslims and we don’t want to
become Jewish,” Fadiga says. “In fact, we don’t like to talk too much
about our Jewish background, but we don’t hide it either. We know our
people came from Egypt to Somalia, and from there to Nigeria, where they
split about 1,000 years ago. One branch of the two families went to
Mali, another to Guinea, and we settled here.”
The truth of such claims is difficult to establish, but
West Africa has had a documented Jewish presence since at least the
14th century, when several Jewish merchants set up shop in Timbuktu, in
western Mali. Jews kept trickling in from Spain and Portugal during the
Inquisition of the 15th and 16th centuries, and later from Morocco.
Gideon Behar, Israel’s former ambassador to Senegal,
says Jews maintained a constant presence in the area until 1943, when
the last Jewish settlement was uprooted from Guinea-Bissau, Senegal’s
southern neighbor, then a Portuguese colony under the rule of
pro-fascist dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar.
“Bani Israel is a striking example because of its name,
but there are many, many other ways in which this area’s little-known
but rich Jewish presence has influenced it,” says Behar, one of the few
Westerners to have visited Bani Israel.
Behar believes the historic presence is responsible for
some of the faint Jewish traces still visible in the region. West
African musicians often decorate the traditional, 21-string bridge-harp
known as kora with Jewish symbols, including the Star of David. And some
words in Wolof, a widely spoken language in Senegal, bear more
resemblance to Hebrew pronunciation than Arabic, which is spoken in
neighboring countries.
The Wolof word for cheek is pronounced “lekhi,” as in Hebrew. One of
Wolof’s words for wise is pronounced the same as the Hebrew word
“chacham.” A weaver or fabric merchant is called “rab,” similar to
rabbi.
The Bani Israel also have a cultural trait in common
with Jews: an aversion to intermarriage. According to Fadiga, the
community tries not to assimilate, preferring to wed with members of the
tribe who live in neighboring villages.
“I believe there is an element of truth to the
tradition of the Bani Israel, especially since they have nothing to gain
from pretending,” says Behar, who returned from Senegal in 2011.
“They’re not seeking Israeli citizenship, nor are they claiming to be
Jewish. In fact, their Jewish ancestry and name can only give them
problems.”
Though their Jewish association is potentially
problematic in a Muslim country — according to Behar, some residents
have sought to change the village name in their passports to permit
travel to Mecca — the story of Bani Israel’s origin is not universally
accepted in Senegal. Abdoul Kader Taslimanka, a Senegalese writer who
published a book last year about the community, “Bani Israel of
Senegal,” says the name has nothing to do with Jews and in fact is taken
from the title of a chapter of the Koran.
Some accounts do, however, support the last leg of the
journey that Fadiga describes. Bani Israel are speakers of the Jahanke
dialect, the language of the Diakhanke tribe, which the International
Journal of African Historical Studies says migrated down the Niger
River, settling in Mali, Guinea, Gambia and Senegal.
In his village, Fadiga is known as the marabou, the
local equivalent of a shaman or bush doctor. Samba Diop, a villager in
his 40s, says Fadiga has special healing powers that allow him to cure
snake and scorpion bites with his hands. Children who suffer from
epilepsy are encouraged to bite on amulets made by Fadiga’s younger
wives from goat skin.
“When a snake bites one of us, we go to him and then the snake dies,” Diop says.
Unlike most villages in the area, the Bani Israel live
in houses made of brick instead of mud and thatch huts. It also was the
first village in the area to have a clinic and electrical generators,
according to Fadiga.
The school in Bani Israel is surrounded by a tall brick
wall. Inside, teachers give lessons in French, math and science. The
school day begins at 5:30 a.m. and finishes by noon, when the
asbestos-roofed classrooms become as hot as ovens.
Such relative luxuries are financed by about 1,000 Bani
Israel who live in the Senegalese capital of Dakar or in France,
sending monthly donations back to the village. Unusually for the region,
the money is not sent directly to relatives but is placed in a communal
trust that pays for health services and schools, which in turn service
not only the village but the entire remote region.
“This place is blessed and its people are chosen,”
Fadiga says. “But some people resent us for it, so it’s best not to talk
too much about it.”
http://forward.com/articles/177400/deep-in-african-bush-senegalese-tribe-claims-jewis/?p=1
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