Shai Afsai

Jews and Poland

We Were Neighbors (Jewish Culture Festival — Poland)

Feasts, Fairs, and Fiestas: Celebrations Around the World (Red Penguin Books, 2024), pp. 148–155


Dreamlike and Hallucinatory

JewTh!nk, July 28, 2023

On reading Bruno Schulz

See also Reflections on Reading Bruno Schulz, The Wisdom Daily, March 17, 2022

 



Jewish Culture in Kraków

JewTh!nk, January 3, 2023

A reflection on a pre-pandemic Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków

See also Reflections on the Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków, The Wisdom Daily, September 9, 2022

Dominika Kolodziej (left) and Polish novelist Joanna Chojnacka (right) at the Hevre restaurant in Kraków. Photo — Shai Afsai

 

Mariusz Matera and Preserving the Memory of Jewish Life in Chelm

written with Ariela Alush

New English Review, April 2020

An interview with Polish artist, activist, and musician Mariusz Matera

Mariusz Matera (left) and Czeslaw Uszyński (right) at Kraków’s Tempel Synagogue. Photo — Shai Afsai

 

The “Lucky Jew” of Poland

Jewish Rhode Island, September 2019

Among the memorabilia sold in Kazimierz’s Plac Nowy, or New Square — as well as in other parts of Kraków and throughout Poland — are pictures and figurines of the “Lucky Jew.”

Michael Rubenfeld and Adam Schorin discuss their “Lucky Jew” portraits with Polish passersby at Plac Nowy in Kraków. Photo — Shai Afsai

 

African Judaism

See also: The Sigd Holiday and the Qessotch

Dinah Anugwa, Sarah Ezenwa, and Hadassah Agbai outside Gihon Synagogue in Abuja, Nigeria. Photo — Shai Afsai

 


Experiencing Judaism in the Giant of Africa (Purim — Nigeria)

Feasts, Fairs, and Fiestas: Celebrations Around the World (Red Penguin Books, 2024), pp. 85–90


Review of In the Shadow of Moses

Atlanta Jewish Connector, June 16, 2023

Though geared toward students and specialists on Africa, this volume is also of interest to anyone seeking material on Jewish identity among Black Africans.



Founder and leader of Cameroon synagogue visits Rhode Island

Jewish Rhode Island, October 2, 2019

Betsalel Laurent Elouna and Professor William F. S. Miles during a visit to Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. Photo — Shai Afsai

 

NIGERIA’S IGBO JEWS

Between images of the Star of David and menorah, Habakkuk Nwafor’s front door in Nigeria’s capital bears the proud notice, ‘I AM A JEW’. The leader of Abuja’s Tikvat Israel Synagogue, Nwafor is an Igbo, a member of Nigeria’s third largest ethnic group, numbering over 30 million people. Seated outside his Abuja home, he holds a copy of William Miles’s Jews of Nigeria: An Afro-Judaic odyssey (2013), a book about Nwafor’s family and religious community. On its cover is a photograph of his son becoming a bar mitzvah. For at least a decade prior to its publication, Igbo Jews offered their own written religio-historical narratives, but Miles’s was the first book about Igbo Jewry composed by a Western academic.

From 2,000 and 5,000 people, most of whom are Igbo, practice Judaism throughout Nigeria, though a much larger number self-identify as Jews even while practising Christianity. Igbo self-identification with and as Jews dates back to the 18th century, but concretized during and after the Nigerian civil war (19671970), in which at least one million Igbo died in the failed bid for Biafran independence. The civil war and its disastrous consequences initiated a still-ongoing period of intense questioning among the Igbo concerning their history, present predicaments, and future prospects.

Igbo Jewish identity presents a challenge. Igbo Jews consider themselves part of world Jewry, but are not yet integrated with, nor represented in and by, Jewish institutions/associations around the world. Igbo Jewish identity also poses the truth question, as Igbo oral religio-historical claims are examined and questioned by researchers and scholars using academic lenses.

Nigeria’s Igbo Jews: Jewish identity and practice in Abuja

Anthropology Today 32:2 (April 2016), pp. 14–17 and back cover

The now widespread Igbo belief in a Jewish ancestry goes back to the 18th century. However, it was during and after the Nigerian civil war (1967–1970), in which at least one million Igbo died in the failed bid for Biafran independence, that Igbo identification with and as Jews concretized. Igbo saw themselves as sufferers of genocide, like the Jews of World War II in Europe, and as inhabitants of a beleaguered plot of land surrounded by hostile forces, similar to the state of Israel. The civil war and its disastrous consequences initiated a still ongoing period of intense questioning among the Igbo concerning their history, present predicaments, and future prospects. A small number of Igbo began to question why, if they were in fact Jews, they should continue practising Christianity.

The significance of Biafra, the centrality of the state of Israel, pride in Jewish ancestry and practice, and questions surrounding the range of Jewish skin colour predominate in Igbo Jews' discussions of their identity. In contrast to the vast majority of Igbo who, if they maintain a sense of Jewish identity, do so while practising Christianity, Igbo Jews have severed themselves from the now dominant religion. Understanding themselves to be part of the global Jewish community of the diaspora and the state of Israel, the Igbo practising Judaism in Nigeria are eager for religious and political recognition from world Jewry and the Jewish state. However, self‐identifying Jewish groups without documented historical connections to more established Jewish communities face considerable challenges in gaining such recognition, particularly as genealogical Jews.

Songs of a Lost Tribe

written with Lior Shragg

SEM (Society for Ethnomusicology) Student News 10 (Spring/Summer 2015), p.14

On Nigerian Claims to Jewish and Judaic Traditions: A Reply to Fatai Ayisa Olasupo

OIDA International Journal of Sustainable Development 7:12 (2014), pp. 33–38

For those with an interest in Nigerian claims to Jewish and Judaic traditions, Professor Fatai Ayisa Olasupo’s “Black African Jews, the Nigerian Question and the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel: A Comparison of Igbo and Yoruba Claims to Jewish and Judaic Traditions” (Vol. 7, No. 4, 2014, pp. 4962) is intriguing. As it is possible scholars attentive to the topic of Yoruba, Igbo, and smaller Nigerian ethnic groups tracing their roots or origins to the people of Israel may make use of Professor Olasupo’s article, it is useful here to address three errors and misconceptions contained therein, as well as offer some additional comments particularly related to Igbo Jewry.

The first of these misconceptions has to do with the relevance of the Queen of Sheba/Bilikisu Sungbo to Nigerian Jewish identity. It would be a grave misconstruction to interpret the state of Israel’s lack of interest in her supposed burial places as a “bias against blacks.” It is simply that she and the myth of Ethiopia’s Solomonic dynasty are largely outside the purview of Judaism and Jewish national identity. In fact, when the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, Ovadia Yosef, declared in 1973 that the Jews of Ethiopia (the Beta Israel/House of Israel) should be brought to the state of Israel — thus paving the way for the community’s mass immigration to the Jewish state — he did so without any reference to King Solomon or the Queen of Sheba. Rather, the Chief Rabbi affirmed that the Beta Israel were “from the Tribe of Dan.”

A second error surrounds Professor Olasupo’s claim that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin sent a team to Nigeria to search for the “Lost Tribes” in 1995, but that the outcome of the search has not been made public. In fact, no past or present Israeli governments have undertaken a search for the “Lost Tribes” in Nigeria and there is no search outcome to be made public by Israel’s government.

A third misconception in Professor Olasupo’s article concerns literature produced by Igbo Jews, which actually extends far beyond only one book on Igbo Jewish identity.

In such discussions there is good reason to be wary of “Lost Tribes” fetishists, and there is danger in politicizing Jewish identify. Mutual honesty — between Nigerians and World Jewry — is most important in this matter.

R.I. rabbi’s visit to Nigeria helps lessen its Jewish community’s isolation

Providence Journal, November 16, 2014 

This I Believe Rhode Island — Across Continents

Rhode Island Public Radio, January 21, 2014

The text of this broadcast is also available here.

The Igbo Jews who came to Providence

The Times of Israel — The Blogs, December 26, 2013

An earlier version, “R.I. visit builds bridge with Nigeria’s Igbo Jews,” was publised in the Providence Journal on December 15, 2013.

On Having a New English Review Article Plagiarized in the Nigerian Leadership

New English Review, August 2013

How the article Igbo Jews of Nigeria Strive to Study and Practice (published in New English Review, going online July 4, 2013, accompanied by three photographs), was plagiarized in the Nigerian Leadership on July 17, 2013

Providence writer visits small group of Nigerian Jews, struggling to keep their faith alive

Providence Journal, July 28, 2013

Onyeka Ibeh and her baby, Yishai, in Abuja, Nigeria. Photo — Shai Afsai

 

Hanging Haman with the Igbo Jews of Abuja

The Times of Israel, April 30, 2013


The Irish and the Jews

A review of Gerry McDonnell’s Lost and Found

Atlanta Jewish Connector, January 4, 2024

In addition to his other writings, Dublin author Gerry Mc Donnell (McDonnell) has produced a unique series of poems, plays, novellas, and essays concerning Irish Jewry. His Lost and Found (Lapwing Publications, 2003), a narrative poem published two decades ago and centering on Mono, a homeless Jewish man living in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, is part of that lifework.

Review — Life is a Funny Business: A Very Personal Story

Atlanta Jewish Connector, August 29, 2022

Alan Shatter offers insight into Irish society from the 1950s through the 1970s and recounts how being Jewish influenced him personally and politically.

A Review of Simon Lewis’s Jewtown

JewishBoston, April 28, 2022

A collection of poems chronicles the rise and decline of Cork’s Jewish community

A Transcript of Rabbi Theodore Lewis’s 1959 TV Appearance

The Times of Israel — The Blogs, December 15, 2019

Among other events in his storied life, Rabbi Theodore Lewis appeared as a guest on an episode of the popular American television game show To Tell the Truth. Sponsored by the cigarette manufacturer Marlboro and hosted by Bud Collyer, the episode aired on the evening of June 30, 1959.

A Persistent Interest in the Other: Gerry Mc Donnell’s Writings on Irish Jews

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 108:431 (Autumn 2019), pp. 298–312

Dublin author Gerry Mc Donnell explores Irish Jewry in prose and poetry.

For an earlier article on Mc Donnell, see A Literary Outsider, Gerry McDonnell Continues to Find Inspiration in Irish Jewry, New English Review, November 2018

Irish writer Gerry Mc Donnell in Dublin. Photo — Shai Afsai

 

When the Rabbi Told the Truth

Tablet Magazine, June 29, 2018

Fifty-nine years ago, Rabbi Theodore Lewis of Newport went on one of TV’s most popular game shows. Hilarity and profundity ensued.


The Sigd Holiday

and

the Qessotch

At his home in Karmiel in northern Israel, Qes Efraim Zion-Lawi examines a Jewish book from Ethiopia that his parents concealed while in Sudan. Photo — Shai Afsai

 

Can Ethiopian Jewry’s Sigd become a holiday for all Jews?

The Wisdom Daily, December 8, 2022

Jewish religious and communal leaders of all ethnicities and denominations would do well to embrace the qessotch and Beta Israel rabbis’ dream for the month of Ḥeshvan, fifty days after Yom Kippur: a “worthy and honorable” pan-Judaic holiday of fasting, prayer, Torah study, and collective repentance; of renewing the Jewish covenant with God; of commemorating the return from the Babylonian exile to Jerusalem; and of yearning for the full ingathering of Jews into the land of Israel and the rebuilding of the Holy Temple.

An earlier version of this article was first published in The Jerusalem Post on November 9, 2014.

Ethiopian Jewish Religious Leader Visits US

The Jerusalem Post, April 22, 2021

First published in The Jerusalem Post on April 14, 2014

“The traditions of Ethiopian Jewry have formed my personality and allowed me to come all the way to Rhode Island to make a connection between Jews.”

A Small Window Between Two Distant Worlds: Qes Efraim’s Visit to Rhode Island

Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes 17:1 (2015), pp. 118–129

What is Sigd?

The Times of Israel — The Blogs, November 12, 2014

The Sigd: From Ethiopia to Israel

CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly 61:4 (Fall 2014), pp. 149–168

Discovering America: A Journey to a Jewish Community in the US

(401)j, June 26, 2014

written by Efraim Zion-Lawi, qes of the Beta Yisrael community of Karmiel, Israel, and translated from Hebrew at his request for publication in Rhode Island

The Gift of Sigd

with photographs by Ilene Perlman and Gidon Agaza

CJ: Voices of Conservative/Masorti Judaism 7:1 (Autumn 2013), pp. 30–33

The Jews of Ethiopia would like all Jews to observe the Sigd, a celebration of Jewish unity, reflection and prayer.

Ethiopian Zion

Jewish Quarterly 59:4 (Winter 2012), pp. 10–12

A dispatch on the 2012 celebration of Ethiopian Jewry’s Sigd holiday in Jerusalem


Northern

Ireland

The Reverend of Belfast’s Jewish Community

The Wisdom Daily, December 28, 2020

An interview with David Kale, the religious leader of Northern Ireland’s only remaining synagogue

An earlier article about Reverend Kale may be found here:

Belfast’s reverend/Keeping Northern Ireland’s last synagogue alive

The Jerusalem Report/The Jerusalem Post, July 22/29, 2020

PDF of the article from The Jerusalem Report print magazine, August 3, 2020, pp. 25–27

Reverend David Kale at his Belfast home. Photo — Shai Afsai

 

Pilgrimage to Uman, Ukraine

Rabbi Gil Bashe (front left, with satchel) leading pilgrims through Uman in 2019. Photo — Shai Afsai

 

Breslov Comes to Providence!

Jewish Rhode Island, February 13, 2020

Two Pilgrimages to Uman for Rosh Hashanah

Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes 17:4 (2018), pp. 800–815

 Breslov scholar from Israel to speak at Congregation Beth Sholom

The Jewish Voice, March 4, 2018

Uman: Pilgrimage and Prayer

CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly 65:3 (Summer 2017), pp. 162–170

Pilgrims pray and recite psalms inside the tomb of Rebbe Nachman in Uman. Photo — Shai Afsai

 

Siyum HaShas

Rhode Island Jews join in joyous celebration of the 13th Global Siyum HaShas of Daf Yomi

The Times of Israel — The Blogs, February 7, 2020

In the narrative of Agudath Israel’s Siyum HaShas, the fact that Judaism flourishes today signifies the defeat of the Jewish nation’s enemies. “The celebration of Torah as life, in a poignant way, represents the perseverance of the Jewish people and its ultimate victory over the Nazis and over all those over the course of history who have wished to destroy the Jewish faith and people,” according to Rabbi Shafran.


West Virginian Encounters

Jewish encounters in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle

written with David Cedor

The Jewish Voice, August 10, 2018


Aliyah from Rhode Island

Yagil Tsaidi (left) and Binyamin Beiser (right) at Yeshivat Mevaseret Zion in Israel. Photo – Shai Afsai

Yagil Tsaidi (left) and Binyamin Beiser (right) at Yeshivat Mevaseret Zion in Israel. Photo — Shai Afsai

 

Large audience turns out for exhibit and panel on aliyah from Rhode Island

written with Adam Myers

The Jewish Voice, November 23, 2017

Rhode Islanders make a new life in Israel/ Exhibit spotlights Rhode Islanders who move to Israel

Providence Journal, November 23, 2017

Two homes: Thirteen Rhode Islanders who have made aliyah

The Times of Israel — The Blogs, February 28, 2017