It might seem odd that people would sign up to join a small faith whose members have suffered centuries of oppression. Yet Uri Palti, Israel’s ambassador to Nigeria, reckons there are more than 40 such communities across the country. Daniel Lis, an academic, thinks there may be thousands of Nigerians who practise Judaism. Millions more of the Igbo tribe believe that they are descended from biblical Israelites. Across Africa as a whole there may be thousands more self-declared Jews. One community in eastern Uganda, the Abayudaya, adopted the faith almost a century ago. Its rabbi was recently elected the country’s first Jewish member of parliament.
Yet the embrace by these communities of the laws of Moses has not been warmly reciprocated by the Orthodox establishment in Israel. Unlike proselytising religions such as Christianity, the guardians of Orthodox Judaism go out of their way to make conversion difficult, insisting on a two-year programme of study and lifestyle changes.
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