We have been to many emerging Jewish-identifying communities around the globe, but we never imagined we’d find dozens of these “kehillos” in the remotest parts of Nigeria
Could the 30 million Igbos who populate the country really have their roots in the lost tribe of Gad? We headed off to the Dark Continent to see for ourselves
T
he scene was surreal. We were sitting in Port Harcourt Nigeria in a torrential equatorial downpour. Within minutes the dirt courtyard became a swamp and the roads were ankle-deep in water. The clouds were so thick that the sky turned the color of post-shkiah before Shabbos ends. But the rain and mud didn’t seem to distract the boys who crowded around us many with peyos braided out of their afros.
They peppered us with questions in halachah and philosophy all of this after an hour-long Shacharis recited in near-flawless Hebrew with leining from a paper Torah scroll. Their skin is the rich dark black of West Africans and they are not considered halachically Jewish but in all of our travels we’ve yet to find such a dynamic and serious group of people looking for the truth and learning Torah. We have been to some of the world’s most unusual and remote emerging Jewish-identifying communities but nothing prepared us for what we found in Nigeria.
It’s a huge country the most populous in Africa with over 180 million people and the world’s 20th-largest economy. Despite being rich in minerals and being awash with oil and natural gas (gasoline at the pump is cheap) most of its people are extremely poor. Only half the population has access to potable water and life expectancy is just 53 years. The infrastructure is in terrible shape — the roads are full of huge potholes that can overturn a truck and the electricity supply is wholly unreliable.
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