In the Shadow of Moses: New Jewish Movements in Africa and the Diaspora presents original research by an international group of twelve scholars who have been conducting fieldwork on historic and emerging Jewish communities in Africa as well as on the interaction of Jews and Africans (and their descendants) in precolonial Africa and modern day Israel.  These “New Jewish Movements” are an addition to the “New Religious Movements” that have intrigued sociologists and historians of religion for some time; now, the book argues, the phenomenon contains a global Jewish component as well. Case studies include Cameroon, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, France, Gabon, Ghana, Jamaica, Madagascar, Nigeria, Uganda, and African immigrants in Israel. Illustrated by original drawings by graphic-novel artist Jérémie Dres, the volume will appeal to scholars and general readers in African as well as Jewish studies.  In the Shadow of Moses is dedicated to the late Professor Ali Mazuri, an early proponent of scholarly synergies between the study of Africa and the study of the Jews.

Preface

Chapter 1. African Judaism and New Religious Movements: Repainting the “White House” of Judaism by William F.S. Miles

PART I:EURO-AFRICAN ENCOUNTERS

2. Race and History: The Black Jews of Loango 1500- 2016 by Tudor Parfitt

3. “They were looking for Christians and what they got were Jews”: The Basel Missionary Factor in the 19^th century and Jewish identity constructions in Ethiopia, Ghana and Nigeria by Daniel Lis

4. The Color of Judaism: Black Jews in France by Aurélien Mokoko Gampiot and Cécile Coquet-Mokoko

PART II:NEW AND RENEWED JEWS AND JUDAISM

5. Making Visible the Invisible: Evoking Memory and Constructing Identity in Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana by Janice Levi

6. The “Internet Jews” of Cameroon: Inside the Digital Matrix of Globalized Judaism by Nathan P. Devir

7. Judaism in Uganda: A Tale of Two Communities by Isabella Soi

8.  A Matrix of Jewish Phenomena in Sub-Saharan Africa: Cote D'lvoire and Gabon by Marla Brettschneider

PART III :NEWLY INVENTED DIASPORAS

9.  “Ye Shall not Oppress the Stranger”: Sudanese and Eritrean Asylum Seekers in Israel by Sheldon Gellar

10.  Building Bridges: Ethiopian Israelis Take a Second Look at Ethiopia by Len Lyons

11. Who opened the Seven Seals? Rastafarians and African Hebrew Israelites by Martina Könighofer

Index

In the Shadow of Moses is an eye-opening and often startling read. The book takes a currently popular topic, namely the globalization of faiths, and shows how essential the Jewish presence is to understanding this story worldwide.

—Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History, Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University

This is a remarkable book which deals with some entirely unexpected transformations in Judaism, particularly on the African continent. The book demonstrates that Judaism is becoming a globalised religion whose power to attract is based as much on its spiritual content as on historical and ethno-genealogical discourses.

—Emanuela Trevisan Semi, Associate Professor, Modern Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Ca’ Foscari University

William Miles is Professor of Political Science and the former Stotsky Professor of Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. He is the author of Jews of Nigeria: An Afro-Judaic Odyssey; Afro-Jewish Encounters from Timbuktu to the Indian Ocean and Beyond; and Zion in the Desert.

Tudor Parfitt is Distinguished Professor in the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University.  He has presented seven documentaries and authored or edited 26 books of which the most recent is Memory and Ethnicity: Ethnic Museums in Israel and the Diaspora (edited with D. Miccolli and E. Trevisan-Semi.)

Daniel Lis is a Swiss-Israeli social anthropologist and historian of Judaic studies. He is a recent research fellow at the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Basel and the Abraham Centre for International and Regional Relations at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of Jewish Identity among the Igbo of Nigeria.