Nusach Afriki

There is a time for everything: a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to destroy and a time to build; a time to suffer and a time to rejoice.

We have suffered greatly.

If suffering is, as many believe, the outward sign of divine election and the mark of a people’s birthright, then we, the Bantu people, have been humanity’s atoning sacrifice.

As Rabbi Nehounia ben HaKana wrote, the tribulations endured by the Bantus — the Cushites — on their own land are nothing less than a means of atoning for the false doctrines, held to be “wisdom,” that arise in the world. This sordid history of tribulations includes the eradication and usurpation of our history; the missionary incursions; the forced conversions; slavery; colonization; neo‑colonialism; genocides; expropriations; murders; famines — many of which persist to this very day. This list will be worth nothing if we do not elevate our Torah to a standard of excellence and moral integrity — in thought, in speech, and in action — befitting the status of an “Elder” or a “Chosen People.” To those who claim that the “Afriki” mentioned in the Talmud does not refer to the African continent but rather to regions near Georgia, I remind you of your own classics: the African campaigns of Alexander the Great, mentioned in Tractate Tamid 32a, did not in fact take place in Georgia. Such bad faith lies at the root of far too much African suffering. We have suffered too long in our attempts to make the world understand that Judaism is not a matter of skin color but of the quality of the soul. This melanin has prevented many of us from following a natural path of discovery or reconnection to Judaism. Being labeled the “Black,” the “Negro,” and “the Schvartze“ of history has prevented many from being taken seriously, despite sociological, anthropological, cultural, and historical evidence attesting to an ancient and authentic Judaism on African soil. We have suffered too long trying to explain — and to convince — that Africa too has been rich in wisdom and in great Sages. Since antiquity, Africa has cultivated scientific inquiry, pedagogy, and scholarship, which remain insufficiently understood even today. This lack of understanding has greatly contributed to the alienation of Africans from their ancestral and traditional values, while foreign cultures caricatured their ancestors as buffoons, sorcerers, or satanists.

We have suffered too much for having conceded to “the Other” — to the foreigner — the right to define who we were and who we were not.

Our delay in formulating our own racial and civilisational identity, worsened by historical revisionism and falsification, has made us the first victims of an identity schizophrenia — driving us to believe that “the best” could not be found in our own lands. We have suffered too long to accept a copy‑and‑paste of Western lifestyles upon our soil — lifestyles that lead the wise and the eminent to forget their prerogative to safeguard the People and the land, and that generate a blind, frantic pursuit of power and money. Our halakhic principles (normative laws) stand in continuity with Rabbi Nehounia ben HaKana, Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Shim‘on bar Yo‘haï, Rabbi Meir, the Ari HaKadosh, Rabbi Ḥaim Vital, the Rashash, and the Ben Ish Ḥai. We recognize their teachings in the pure, ancestral, and original African traditions — which are nothing less than an elevated way of life rooted in the Mishnah and its six orders.

Our stance is in no way belligerent toward our Sephardic and Ashkenazic brothers.

Affirming our identity as Bantus Israelites — by establishing an International Federation, which on the 17th of Tammuz, 2023, saw its 120 member associations elect my Committee for a ten‑year term — in no way negates their legitimacy, nor does it diminish the honor due to their centuries‑long struggle to keep Judaism alive. For that, we owe them eternal gratitude — and I say, wholeheartedly: THANK YOU, AND WE LOVE YOU.