By Jody Benjamin:-
New York (Tadias) – ON A WINTER NIGHT IN 1931, as many
Depression-era New Yorkers prepared for a lean Chanukah or Christmas, a room
inside a residential building at 29 W. 131st Street, was filled with an
expectant crowd.
 |
| Taamrat Emmanuel |
Those gathered in the modest
sanctuary of Harlem’s Commandment Keepers congregation were anticipating a
special visitor from Ethiopia.
Just before 9 p.m., Taamrat Emmanuel
walked into the room. A thin, bearded man in his early 40s, with eyes like deep
wells, Emmanuel was a European-educated Beta Israel originally from Jenda, near
Gondar Ethiopia. He had traveled far and wide advocating on behalf of his
ethnic minority, which had maintained their Judaic beliefs for centuries in
remote mountain areas. Now he found himself in the most important black
cultural center, and the largest city, of the United States. The
African-American and African-Caribbean congregation, led by rabbi Wentworth A
Matthew, rose to its feet. A cornetist played the solemn anthem: Ethiopia,
thou Land of Our Fathers. Its lyrics included lines like:
Ethiopia, thou land of our fathers
Thou land where the gods loved to be
As storm cloud at night suddenly gathers
Our armies come rushing to thee!
Thou land where the gods loved to be
As storm cloud at night suddenly gathers
Our armies come rushing to thee!
Although the song may have been
unfamiliar to Emmanuel, it would have had special resonance for those who had
come to see him. It was the anthem of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro
Improvement Association and was sung at the start of each meeting. Many of
Matthew’s congregation had also been members of the UNIA and held fast to its
principles. Also, the song was written by Arnold Ford, a rabbi and musician
well-known to the Hebrews, and Benjamin E. Burrell. Ford was a mentor to
Matthew, who in turn would go on to be an eminent leader and
institution-builder among black Hebrews, descendants of American and Caribbean
slaves who believed Judaism to be their true faith.
Emmanuel was escorted to a seat as
Matthew extended him the warmest of fraternal greetings.
It may be difficult to imagine, from
the perspective of the 21st century internet age, the magnitude of that moment
to those present. In today’s multi-culti United States, black people from
scattered parts of the world tend to wear their national or ethnic identities
as shields, like protective armor designed to keep away “strangers” while
scuffling toward the ever-elusive goal of the “American Dream.” Many regard the
concept of Pan-Africanism as hopeless, even misguided, idealism.
Back then, however, steadfast
Garveyites believed they were watching their dreams morph into reality before
their very eyes. Each week seemed to bring ever more hopeful news.
The coronation of Haile Selassie had
been widely covered in the United States, not only in publications such as Time
Magazine, where Selassie was pictured on the cover, but in newsreels that
were screened in movie houses nationwide as well as extensively in the black
press.
For many blacks in this country, it
was the first time they had ever heard an African country and leader spoken of
reverentially or seen such pageantry associated with a free black nation. And
because it was Ethiopia, a land with such a storied ancient past, they could
glimpse the evidence that the propaganda which had been drummed into them for
centuries – that Africa had no history worthy of respect – was simply not true.
The historian Rayford Logan
described the impact the coronation was having on Americans unaccustomed to
such images of Africa:
“When the pictures of the coronation…of
Ras Tafari as joint leader with his aunt, Empress Zawditu of Abyssinia, flashed
on the screen of a northern theater, one could distinctly sense the shock that
disoriented the audience,’’ Logan wrote in the The Southern Workman.(1)
“These coronation pictures…did not
conform to the usual behavior pattern. First of all, no white man was anywhere
in evidence. Then, the new emperor was brown; his aunt was Negroid; their
chiefs were Negroes; the army of 40,000 was black.”
At the very moment Emmanuel was in
Harlem, rabbi Ford was in Ethiopia. He had traveled there a year before, in
order to perform at the coronation of Haile Selassie. He also hoped to spot out
the possibility of his followers to emigrate to the African country, then one of
only two on the Continent not in the grasp of European colonial powers. After a
series of setbacks and delays, he had finally managed to secure an offer of
land and had sent back word for others from the Harlem community should join
him.
Leaving Ethiopia at a Young Age
AS A TEENAGER, TAAMRAT EMMANUEL HAD BEEN PLUCKED FROM ETHIOPIA TO EUROPE by the Polish-born rabbi and scholar Jacques Faitlovich. In the late 19th century, British missionaries had converted Emmanuel’s parents from Judaism to Christianity. Faitlovich met the family in Asmara in 1905, after he had been traveling in Ethiopia to investigate the fate of Ethiopian Jews, or “Falasha” as they were then called. Faitlovich wanted to return so-called “lost” Ethiopian Jews into the larger Jewish fold, and so he reconverted the family back to Judaism.
AS A TEENAGER, TAAMRAT EMMANUEL HAD BEEN PLUCKED FROM ETHIOPIA TO EUROPE by the Polish-born rabbi and scholar Jacques Faitlovich. In the late 19th century, British missionaries had converted Emmanuel’s parents from Judaism to Christianity. Faitlovich met the family in Asmara in 1905, after he had been traveling in Ethiopia to investigate the fate of Ethiopian Jews, or “Falasha” as they were then called. Faitlovich wanted to return so-called “lost” Ethiopian Jews into the larger Jewish fold, and so he reconverted the family back to Judaism.
Later, Faitlovich took two teenaged
Ethiopians back with him to Europe: one was Getie Jeremias, the other was
Emmanuel. Faitlovich’s aim was to educate the boys so that they might become
leaders among their people back home. Their presence in Europe would also help
to convince Western Jews to support their African brethren who had maintained a
very ancient form of the religion.
Emmanuel stood out as the more
promising of the two students.(2) He spent about two years in
Marseilles, France before being sent to study a number of years in Florence,
Italy, where he lived during the First World War.
After the war, Emmanuel returned to
Addis Ababa where Faitlovich appointed him headmaster of a school set up to
educate so-called “Falashas,” or Beta Israel. Emmanuel ran the school for a few
years, despite a number of difficulties. Facilities were poor and students had
to travel great distances to come to board there since most Beta Israel lived
in rural areas far from the capital. Emmanuel hoped to build a school closer to
a Beta Israel community near Gondar in northwestern Ethiopia. He was frustrated
by the meager funds he received from Westerners to support his aims.
By the late 1920s, Faitlovich had
begun to focus on getting help from Jews in the United States. He and Taamrat
came to New York with the help of the American Jewish Pro-Falasha Committee,
which had been arranging speaking engagements for them around town.
In New York, however, it was a time
of great cultural ferment. Among other issues, two agendas were competing at
the same time. Just as Faitlovich was trying to drum up interest among Jews to
help return so-called “lost” Ethiopian Jews into the larger Jewish fold, many
African descendants in this country were looking to the homeland of their
ancestors as a possible refuge from the entrenched racism and severely limited
opportunities they faced in the United States.
Once in New York, Emmanuel journeyed
to Harlem where he met rabbi Ford in 1928 or 1929.(3) It is not clear
whether Ford contributed financially to Emmanuel’s cause, but the encounter
proved timely for Ford, solidifying his apparently growing desire to build
concrete ties with Ethiopia.
That is because Emmanuel was but the
latest of a number of Ethiopians who had been traveling to the US to get
African descendants – especially skilled professionals — interested to help
modernize Ethiopia. Others included Malaku Bayen, a medical student at Howard
University, Kantiba Gabrou, a former mayor of Gondar and Warqnneh Martin, the
distinguished physician and diplomat. It is believed that Ford first met Gabrou
in Harlem in 1919, while Gabrou was visiting the US as part of an official
friendship diplomatic delegation sent by Selassie after the First World War.
A decade later, not long after his
encounter with Emmanuel, the Harlemite left for Africa.
Taamrat Emmanuel Addressed the
Audience in French and West Africans Assisted as Interpreters.
All of this would have been known to
many who came to listen to Emmanuel at the Commandment Keepers Congregation the
night of December 23, 1931. A press statement written after the event notes
that several native-born Africans, including some from French colonies, were in
the audience. They were needed, it turned out, as translators because Emmanuel
did not speak English. A bilingual man from French Guinea gave a short talk to
the congregation about Africa, then translated for Emmanuel who addressed the
audience in French.
“He assured [the audience] that he
was the same as they and was very proud to be,’’ according to the statement,
which is archived at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New
York.
Whether the Ethiopians and the black
New Yorkers actually shared a common heritage had been a point of considerable
controversy. This was true not only with regard to the Jewish question, but
also among the larger community. So much so that popular black historian J.A.
Rogers addressed the topic in his 1930 book, The Real Facts About Ethiopia,
by attempting to reassure his American readers, “Ethiopia has always shown her
friendliness to such Aframericans as have visited her.”
Among Matthew’s congregation, the
controversy heated up considerably in the weeks just before Emmanuel’s talk. On
December 2, The Amsterdam News ran a brief story that the local chairman
of the American Pro-Falasha committee had publicly “denounced for the second
time Harlem’s Negro adherents of the [Jewish] faith as fakes in a Jamaica [Long
Island] meeting.”
In the article, Rabbi Matthew
responded to the charge by Dr. Norman Salit with a challenge of his own saying
that he was willing to debate the matter publicly.
“His statement that Harlem’s temples
are a grotesque phenomena rising out of the mystic sensitivity of the Afro
American played upon by charlatans is absolutely false,” Matthew said.
After his talk, an audience member
asked Emmanuel about the issue. The controversy may have seemed strange to
Emmanuel, unaccustomed as he must have been to the intricacies of American
racial politics.
Under Faitlovich’s tutelage, he had
been counseled against the development of any race consciousness or nationalist
sentiment other than the brand of religious Zionism favored by Faitlovich,
according to Shlomo Levy, Assistant Professor of History at Northampton
Community College in Pennsylvania.
Yet Emmanuel, and Faitlovich’s other
Ethiopian students, had their own ideas on the matter.
“As they traveled and read, they
became aware of how the Western world viewed them and how their own leaders
treated them,” said Levy.
Striking a balance between his
identity as an Ethiopian and a Jew was an issue that would follow the Emmanuel
throughout his life.
According to Levy, “Emmanuel’s
struggle to find a balance between preserving a healthy respect for the
traditions of the Beta Israel, while at the same time trying to forge a
meaningful relationship with European Jewry, proved to be illusory.”
That night in 1931, however, the
prospect of expanding ties between two disparate, far flung branches of
Africa’s family might have seemed not only hopeful, but tangible. Emmanuel
tried to play peacemaker.
“Mr. Salit is a friend,” Emmanuel
said in response to the question, according to the press statement.
“But when [Salit] made the statement
[I] was indeed surprised because he is sufficiently educated to know that he
has neither historical nor biblical proof for his statement.”
The statement concluded by noting
that Emmanuel: “begged that we drop the matter and forget about it.”
About the Author:
Jody Benjamin is an Associate Editor of the African American National Biography, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2008. He is working on a non-fiction book about the black Hebrews.
–
Sources:
1. Logan, Rayford W., Abyssinia Breaks into the Movies, The Southern Workman, August, 1929
1. Logan, Rayford W., Abyssinia Breaks into the Movies, The Southern Workman, August, 1929
2. Trevisan Semi, Emanuela, La
correspondance de Taamrat Emmanuel: Intellectuel juif d’Ethiopie dans la
premiere moitie du XX siecle, Torino : Editrice L’Harmattan Italia, 2000
3. Scott, William Randolph. The
Sons of Sheba’s Race: African Americans and the Italo-Ethiopian War 1935-1941,
Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c1993
Cover photo: Trevisan Semi, Emanuela, La correspondance de
Taamrat Emmanuel: Intellectuel juif d’Ethiopie dans la premiere moitie du XX
siecle,
Source: Tadias Addis