Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

February is Black History Month. Last year same time I wrote an entry about our books on African-American Jewish relations and another one the book titled Glimpses by Reverend Ann Gray Byrd, who visited our synagogue that month.

This year I would like to recommend two books that relate to the topic in different ways. A patron just inquired about one of them today. (Thank you Susan for pointing me to this item we had and I was not familiar with.) “The flying camel; Essays on identity by women of North African and Mid. Eastern Jewish heritage“  , edited by Loolwa Khazzoom, contains 16 essays. Here is the description from the back cover:

Expanding the very definition of what is Jewish, this collection reveals and explores the often-hidden experiences and identities of Jewish women descended from, two rich and varied regions: North Africa and the Middle East. Writing from their unique perspectives, contributors bridge divisions between East and West, “foreign” and “familiar”, and discuss the impact of historical and contemporary tensions between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity have had on them and their families. Essays include a harrowing and desperate flight from persecution in Libya; an exploration of the category “Arab Jew”; discrimination in the Ivy League; and a light-skinned, Moroccan-born woman’s attempts to pass in order to gain acceptance among European Jews in Israel. A tender, honest, and above all, brave collection, “The flying camel” offers a new, critical perspective on the interplay of Arab and Jew and the complexities of people.

The other book also puts Jews and Africa together but in a different way and period. Gary Greenberg‘s “The Moses mystery: The African origins of the Jewish people” asks the question ” Why does the archaeological record show no evidence for the origins of biblical Israel? ” Here is an excerpt from the author’s website with the framework of the answer he gives

According to Greenberg, Moses served as Chief Priest to Pharaoh Akhenaten, whose religious changes provoked a major social and governmental crisis in Egypt. Shortly after Akhenaten’s death, the religious establishment regained control over the government and under Pharaoh Horemheb the government launched a full scale effort to purge the Egyptian record of any reference to Akhenaten’s existence, an effort that included the persecution of Akhenaten’s associates and followers. Moses fled Egypt at this time but returned on Horemheb’s death, claiming the throne as the only legitimate blood heir. This resulted in a civil war between the allies of Moses and Ramesses I, Horemheb’s co-regent at the time. Moses lost and led his followers out of Egypt, an event remembered in the bible as the Exodus.