In the past century, Jews have often been the most sympathetic to the oppression of Blacks in the United States of America, and they have often worked together at critical points in their history.

W.E.B. Dubois, Henry Malkewitz, Julius Rosenthal, Lillian Wald, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch and Stephen Wise formed the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). Jewish and Black leaders formed the Urban League. Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington improved the educational system for Blacks in the Southern states of the USA. Black leaders like Canada Lee, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Paul Robeson, helped raise funds for Peter Bergson's work to Save the Jewish People of Europe and to support the founding of modern Israel.

Several Jewish professors who arrived in America from Europe in the 1930s and '40s taught in the Southern Black Colleges. During the Civil Rights movement in America, the Jewish Press was often in support of the Black community and many Jews marched with the Black protesters. Around half of the civil rights lawyers in the Southern United States during the 1960s were Jews, and of the Whites who went to Mississippi in 1964 to challenge the Jim Crow Laws, over 50 percent were Jews. The Jewish commun

In my last article, I wrote about the new and growing friendship between Black Churches and Israel, even as the centre of gravity of Christianity shifts from the Northern to the Southern hemispheres. We also promised to write next about some of the ancient African Jewish communities and that is our topic today.

Some ancient African Jewish communities are well known, such those across Mediterranean North Africa as well as some of the Lemba in Ethiopia. Some recent scholarship has claimed Jewish Ancestry for several different groups of the Lemba, even as far further south as Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. These scholars believe that the traditions of people like the Lemba are pre-Second Temple Israelite and have a Southern Arabian (Yemeni) and Ethiopian origin.

Historically several other Jewish groups also existed in the Bilad el-Sudan of West Africa, as well as along the coast and islands of that region. Researchers have claimed the possibility that groups of the Igbo, Ibibio and Annang of South Eastern Nigeria, as well as several clusters in the Cameroon might also have Jewish ancestry. However whether or not this is the case, most of these groups have certainly become non-halachic over the centuries and many are now Christian or Muslim. Even where they have provable Jewish cultural practices, they have often had no access to the Talmud and no knowledge of the later feasts such as Purim and Chan

The relationship between Blacks of African Heritage and Jews has been sometimes difficult and often beautiful, but since the Exodus from Egypt, has rarely suffered the same level of difficulty of the Jewish Communities in Europe.

People of African Heritage have more often been positively informed and frequently inspired by Jewish history, particularly in the religious and political spheres.

It is easy to draw some parallels in the systematic oppression that both peoples have experienced. Many Jews have continued to live in Africa over the centuries. Historically, there are records of many more Jewish communities in Africa than has been recently recognised. That will be the topic for another, future newsletter... so please check back with us here for that story of the unknown African Jews, very soon.

In 2009 my first visit to the Holy Land, was attending a training course for British Clergy at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. Judaism is the tap root of Christianity. Everywhere you go in Israel, the Bible comes alive.

I feel strangely at home in Israel; a young, modern and vibrant nation thriving in this ancient landscape. There are Jews from every continent, of very different skin tones and cultural backgrounds. I noticed that in Israel it's OK to wave your hands when you talk! Almost everyone has an opinion here! This is a democratic country; where there are three Israelis, there are at least five different points of view.

The Holocaust Memorial is important to our understanding of the true evil of