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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 Lemba people of Zimbabwe and South Africa may look like their compatriots, but they follow a very different set of customs and traditions. They do not eat pork, they practise male circumcision, they ritually slaughter their animals, some of their men wear skull caps and they put the Star of David on their gravestones. Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago. It may sound like another myth of a lost tribe of Israel, but British scientists have carried out DNA tests which have confirmed their Semitic origin. These...

The Lemba tribes in Zimbabwe have oral tradition that their ancestors were "Jews" who left Judea about 2,500 years ago and settled in a place called Senna, later migrating into East Africa. After 2,500 years of exile, British DNA tests have proven that the Lemba traces its linage to the Kohanim (Priests) of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, After entering Africa, the tribe is said to have split off into two groups, with one staying in Ethiopia, and the other traveling farther south, along the east coast. Some settled in Mozambique, and eventually migrated to South Africa and Zimbabwe. Most...

T h e L e m b a The Black Jews of Southern Africa Historical Introduction Over 2,700 years ago, the Assyrians exiled the ten tribes of the Kingdom of Israel. "In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and he carried them away to Assyria and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of Medes." In the years 722-721 BC (over 2700 years ago), the Ten Tribes who comprised the northern Kingdom of Israel disappeared. Conquered by the Assyrian King Shalmaneser V, they were exiled to...