As his voice took on the rolling rhythms of a Southern Baptist preacher, Capers Funnye stood and urged his tiny South Side congregation to pray.
In Hebrew.
The rabbi wore an African mudcloth kufi cap. A traditional Hebrew tallis, or fringed prayer shawl, was draped around his shoulders. At his side stood a menorah, the outline of Africa carved in its wood.
Each Saturday, inside the tiny rowhouse-turned-synagogue in Chicago`s battered Englewood neighborhood, members of the Beth Shalom Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation celebrate the merger they`ve formed between two disparate traditions: Judaism and African-American culture.
The 30 Beth Shalom families are not Falashas, or Ethiopian Jews, who have practiced an ancient form of Judaism for thousands of years. Nor are they members of the Hebrew Israelite sect, a more radical Chicago group that attracted media attention in the 1970s when members moved to Israel.
Most of the members of the 79-year-old congregation weren`t born Jews. And most have not ”converted” in the traditional Hebraic sense.
Instead, like the other 5,000 to 15,000 black Jews scattered throughout North America and the Caribbean, the members are Christian-born blacks who searched for religious fulfillment and found it in a temple.
These black Jews say they keep kosher, in much the way that orthodox Jews do. They don`t observe Christmas. Men and boys sit on one side of the temple. Women and girls sit on the other side. If they sing Negro spirituals, they do so in Hebrew.
They are, they claim, descendants of one of Israel`s ”lost tribes,”
Jews who were expelled from Asia Minor 2,800 years ago and immigrated to the African continent.
”When people ask me if I converted, I tell them `no,` ” said Beth Shalom member Candace Handy. ”Judaism has always been deep within me. I just wanted to be closer to the Creator.”
The Hebrew way of life has brought Handy peace. It has also brought her controversy.
”A little old lady asked me, `Isn`t being black enough?` Why do you want to be a Jew, too?` ” said Handy, who lives in Calumet Park. ”I told her that we believe that in the beginning the true Jew was black. Judaism was taken away from us. And now it`s becoming alive in us again.”
Still, considering the distrust that has festered between the blacks and Jews in recent years, there are those who are not so easily convinced of that. Some blacks view Jews as the enemy. Some members of the Jewish community say they`re not real Jews. And there are Christians who tell them that by turning their back on Jesus, they are destined for hell.
”When you hear the word Jewish, the first thing that comes to mind is white guys with long beards,” said Beth Shalom member Chuck Hickman, 32, who works as an outpatient account collector for the University of Chicago Hospitals.
”But adhering to the Torah is what makes you Hebraic, not nationality,” Hickman said. ”As everyone knows, Jews were scattered to all four corners of the earth. So how can one look in the mirror and say, `Oh, I must be Jewish?` ”
But mainstream Jews argue that is is not only adhering to the Torah that makes you Jewish. You must either be the child of a Jewish mother, or you must convert through a course of study and a ceremony.
All branches of Judaism agree on the ceremony, which includes full-body immersion in water while reciting blessings that must be heard by a Beit Din, a group of rabbis that make up a Jewish court of law.
The various branches of Judaism agree that a convert must complete studies including history, customs, ceremonies, holidays and Hebrew language. But they differ on how intensive and how long the course must be.
”I was compelled to go through the conversion process in 1985 as a show of kinship and brotherhood with European Jewry,” said Funnye, who studied at the Israelite Rabbinical Academy in New York and at the Spertus College of Judaica in Chicago.
”But for me it was a show of kinship, not, `I want to give me a stamp of approval.` ”
The New York academy that Funnye attended is not accepted as a rabbinical institute by the established denominations of Judaism, therefore Funnye is not recognized as a rabbi by those denominations, said Rabbi Mordecai Simon, executive vice president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis.
He said there are a few black rabbis in the U.S. who have been educated at rabbinical institutes and are fully recognized as rabbis.
Since Funnye embraced Judaism more than a dozen years ago, he has tried to bridge the yawning gap between his two communities. Currently, he is the administration director for the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, and has done guest rabbi stints in congregations from Northbrook to the south suburbs.
Today, although Funnye`s congregation has gained a modicum of respect within the Jewish establishment because of his activities, those in his and other sects who opt against conversion aren`t fully accepted as Jews.
”These groups of people have not accepted that discipline, that part of history,” Simon said. ”They say they just got lost somewhere and now they are found. We disagree with that interpretation, and we do not accept that. From our perspective, we do not consider them to be Jews.
”These individuals have merely declared themselves as descendants of lost tribes. But to all traditional branches of Judaism, whether Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or Reconstructionist, that is not enough.
”You cannot simply say, `I want to join your club, but I don`t want to follow your rules.` They are free to say they are black Jews or black Hebrews, but they`re not free to say to me that I have to accept them as Jews.”
Still, according to Funnye, many black Hebrews don`t convert because they believe that they are the descendants of biblical figures such as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
African slaves of Hebrew stock, they believe, were stripped of their heritage when they were shipped to the New World. Black Jews cropped up in the colonies as early as the 1790s, and the first formal congregation was formed in Kansas in the 1890s.
Though several books have been published tracing the Jews from the Nile to the River Niger, Jewish scholars dismiss such claims.
”We don`t deny them their claims to Judaism,” Funnye said. ”We want the same. We have the right to define ourselves.”
Not all African-American Hebrews subscribe to an Afrocentric version of Judaism.
For Henry Taylor, a 53-year-old Hyde Park resident, Judaism came as a rather unexpected surprise after years of dabbling in everything from the Pentecostal faith to Buddhism to the Nation of Islam.
More than 15 years ago, while hanging out in Hyde Park with a friend, Taylor passed by the Chicago Sinai Congregation on South Shore Drive. There he noticed an inscription that said, ”My House Shall Be a House of Prayer for All People.”
”I said, `Look at that hypocrisy. I bet if I went in there, I`d be arrested,` ” Taylor said. ”My friend said, No, you should go in there.”
When Taylor eventually ventured inside the synagogue, he wasn`t arrested. He later converted.
”I was lucky,” Taylor said. ”I learned a great deal and I found great peace.”
According to Taylor, African-Americans who claim to be the original Jews are missing the point.
”I never thought of it as a black thing or a white thing,” he said.
”Judaism is for everyone. There`s no restrictions. You don`t have to be a certain color. God is everywhere. And the mandate for Israel is to be an example for mankind.”
For others, such as Julius Lester, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, converting to Judaism meant taking on a new identity.
During the turbulent `60s, Lester was a controversial black nationalist and the author of ”Look Out Whitey, Black Power`s Gonna Get Your Mama.”
Ten years ago, Lester formally took on the faith of his great-grandfather, who he says was a German Jew. Today, he has moved from the Afro-American Studies department to the Judaic Studies department and is on the board of directors at his predominantly white synagogue.
”If I had just converted to Roman Catholicism or Buddhism, no one would say anything,” said Lester, who wrote ”Lovesong,” a book chronicling his conversion. ”But people have a hard time grasping this. By converting to Judaism, you`re not just joining a religion, you`re joining a people.”
Joining a new people has earned him some skepticism in the black community. Some have told him he`s no longer black. Others have told him he should move to Israel.
”But when I converted, I said, `I`m not going to stop being black,`
” Lester said. ”I have no problem relating to the Jewish history and suffering, because as a black person, I know that.”
