African Jews

Some Jewish communities in Africa are among the oldest in the world, dating back more than 2700 years. African Jews have ethnic and religious diversity and richness. African Jewish communities include:

• Sephardi Jews and Mizraḥi Jews living in North Africa, including Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Sudan and Egypt. Some were established early in the Diaspora; others after the expulsion from Iberia in the late 15th century. Since the early and middle decades of the twentieth century, the vast majority of them have emigrated, chiefly to Israel and France, with substantial numbers also emigrating to Brazil, Canada and the USA. Small but active communities remain in Morocco and Tunisia.
• The South African Jews, who are mostly Ashkenazi Jews descended from pre-and post-Holocaust immigrant Lithuanian Jews from Europe.
• Scattered African groups who have not maintained contact with the wider Jewish community from ancient times, but who assert descent from ancient Israel or other connections to Judaism. These include:
  • Groups who observe Jewish rituals, or rituals bearing recognizable resemblance to Judaism. Although there are a number of such groups, the majority of world Jewry recognize only the Beta Israel of Ethiopia as historically Jewish.
  • Groups such as the Lemba, many of whom practice Christianity but have preserved some rituals and customs believed to be Jewish in origin. This group has also been found to have genetic traits in common with other Jewish groups, bolstering their claims to ancient Jewish ancestry.

Although not all African Jews are religious, some of their practices are Orthodox.