The Soul of Judaism: Jews of African Descent in America

Haynes (Down the Up Staircase), professor of sociology at UC Davis, surveys an underreported aspect of contemporary American Judaism in an accessible book that occasionally lapses into academic jargon. Haynes provides detailed information about the origins, history, culture, and differences of discrete categories of black Jews. He considers three main strands: those recognized by mainstream Judaism (such as the Ethiopian Beta Israel), non-Jews who converted to Judaism, and those communities that claim that they are the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. . After light-skinned European Jews became more accepted in American society, in Haynes’ estimation, they were viewed by some African-Americans less as specific “others” than as just another subgroup of the white majority. He includes major points of tension between Ashkenazi and black Jews, such as the controversy over Louis Farrakhan and the Million Man March, which divided Jews of African descent; some boycotted it because of Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism and others supported it in spite of Farrakhan’s views. Haynes’s relegation of recent history to a brief concluding section—the product of his heavy reliance on interviews conducted 15–20 years earlier—is a glaring missed opportunity. Despite this, Haynes’s book is a good introduction to the subject and will be a worthy companion to Tudor Parfitt’s Black Jews in Africa and the Americas. (Aug.)