Free Republic

During the 1990s, Welsh professor Tudor Parfitt, known around the world as the “British Indiana Jones,” discovered evidence that the Lemba tribe in central Zimbabwe and northern South Africa has Jewish roots. He identified a genetic element in the male chromosomes of the tribe that comes from the Kohanim, the Jewish priestly line. This year, Dr. Parfitt published his latest of 25 books, Black Jews in Africa and the Americas. He also joined the faculty of Florida International University (FIU) and led an expedition to Papua New Guinea to visit the Gogodala tribe, which like the Lemba claims to be...

The Internet says the ruins of the First Temple are in the South Pacific. Matthew Fishbane went to find them.A little over a year ago, Tablet Magazine’s Matthew Fishbane was emailed a grainy video of Papua New Guinea’s Gogodala people—in grass skirts, their bodies decorated with body paint and feathers—singing the Shema, the holiest of Hebrew prayers. A few Google searches later, he’d uncovered claims that the Lost Temple of Israel is hidden someplace in the South Pacific. And so he went to investigate…