It is so good to learn that Dr. Bryan Griffith is still with us. David, my responds to this is not going to be so sophisticated like is always the case in an academic gym. I am going to respond to it by simply telling a simple story of what happened. The coming of the Christian missionary enterprise saw the conflict between the Lemba and the Europeans. It is common knowledge that Christian missionaries would always make sure that if anyone says I do not eat pork, they will force that person to eat saying that everything created by God is clean. It was natural that the Lemba would simply say no to this. They had practices and those practices are still there, that were unique as compared to the lifestyles of their hosts. It is an obvious situation that if such things happen, one is always seen as being strange.
In the then Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe), and South Africa, every individual was supposed to have an identity document. In this ID book, there was a portion that required mention of one's tribe. It was automatic to all Lembas that they simply said they were Lembas (Shona - MuRemba/MuMwenye). They did not explain exactly what this meant to those who demanded answers from them. I am of the view that the Lemba people, like many Jewsish persons, were secretive about their identity as some form of security from anti-semitism. As I read in many articles on anti-semitism, it is interesting that it dates back to time immemorial. Some Greek writers said the ancestor of the Jewish people was magician. This similar sentiment or expression is found in the neighbourhood of the Lemba people. A similar idea is present among the hosts of the Lemba people. In that way they tried to disguise their identity for survival. Hence they married among the people they stayed with but would always tell their sons not to marry the daughters of the vasenzi (translitereation of zenj - gentile). All these indicators led to questions such as, "Who are the Lemba people?" And the Lemba people responded, "We are descendence of the Jewish merchants who came to Africa from Sena". As time went on Sena was no longer identifiable in terms of modern geography.
The first reaction they got was from the Christian church. They were forced, deceived even nicely lured into being members. Once they were in, they were told to that everything God created was clean and they cornered them to eat pork and unkoshered food. This was happening to individuals. The governments ot the day had Christianity as their state religion. Lembas could not make it to live in isolation at the wake of modernization/urbanization. Schools were built, that meant Lemba children were supposed to go and learn at these schools. While at these schools children refused to eat meat because it was not bled by a circumcised male of their tribe. This was trouble for the Lemba people. The second reaction was from the social scientists, especially those from the Europas. By then Europe was obsessed by the idea of colour-bar, and even now. The explanation of the Lemba people fell on deaf ears because many of them looked like their hosts as a result of intermarriage. I remember the skepticism of my lecturers in Social Anthropology in the 1992-7. The third reaction was from the natural scientists who were hunting for the genetic markers and somehow got stuck with their own findings versus their own convictions. All these reactions were an attempt to see whether it was true that the Lemba people were descendants of a Jewish ancestry.
The question of whether the Lemba people are Jews or not leads us to the question of religion and descendency (or cultural or customary). For us the Lemba people, like the early Israelites, their identity is traced patrileneally, their religion is understood as the religion of the fathers, their ethics, is understood as the ethics of the fathers. Our answers to those who qestioned our identity were never intented to prove our religion but our identity or origions. We believe that a person is a Lemba because his father is a Lemba. The whole idea was to simply mention a reclaim of our historical, religious, and cultural heritage that some people wanted to rob us of while our eyes are open to see what is happening. This was simply to reclaim our portion of the history that belongs to us.
Are Lemba people Christians? Let me reiterate our answer to this question again as we did in the last article that appear in the Kulanu Newsletter some few years ago. Without mincing our words, we always say that we are descendants of the Jewish forefathers who came from Israel via Sena some years ago. With passage of time and new generations coming, also isolated from the fatherland, many of us became Christians because that was the only route available to skills and academic development. Some (just like many of those who are of Jewish descend) became Christians on their own because life was just hopeless in many respects. Our desire and ambition is to regain that which was lost from us and is found among our brothers and sisters in diaspora. For me the lifestyle of Lemba people is not essentially Christian. Christians do not live like Lemba people they live like Christians. The thing is that there is no way a Christian can say he is a Christian and he still observing the rules of the Lemba lifestyles.
As for Dan Leeson, he is entitled to hold his own view. He mustn't make a blanket conclusion if not confusion that the Lemba are essentially Christian because not all Lemba people are Christians. I know many Lemba people who never happened to be in a Christian place of worship. The only thing that I can say to Dan our answer to those who demanded it was simply to tell them who we are not to which religion do we belong. Yes it is not enough to Rabbinic Judaism, but if he were to understand our historical wandering, we came out of Israel before Rabbinical Judaism. If Dan's knowledge of history shares a common denominator with mine, he should remember that many Jews of African diaspora were not practicing teachings of Rabbinic Judaism but claim the historical heritage that some people want to deny them. If Dan want to communicate with me directly, I am open to any discussion.
Shalom uvracha,
Rabson