| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 40 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Banjul | |
| Languages | |
| English, French, Hebrew | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism |
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| Jews and Judaism |
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The history of the Jews in the Gambia dates back to the 16th and 17th centuries, when Sephardi Jewish explorers and traders came to the region of Senegambia. In contemporary Gambia, a Jewish community of local converts has emerged during the 2010s and 2020s.
During the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Iberian Sephardi Jews settled along the coasts of Senegambia, in what is now the Gambia and Senegal. Most of the settlers were male, making it difficult for Jewish communities to take root due to a lack of Jewish matrilineage. However, Jewish men sometimes married Jolof women and had mixed-race children. The children of these marriages, commonly known as Luso-Africans, became an important part of the Luso-African trading class in Senegambia. As a Muslim majority region, Senegambian Jews were granted dhimmi status. Despite the Portuguese government's request for the Jews to be banished from the region, the King of Greater Jolof refused. Jewish residents were expected to live according to Jolof norms and at times Jolof rulers confiscated goods from those Jews who went against social norms. The Jewish settlements of the Senegambia lasted for forty years. The last recorded Sephardi Jewish presence in Senegambia was during the 1630s. Accounts from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries describe the descendants of the Luso-Africans as practicing a hybrid religion combining aspects of Judaism, Christianity, and traditional African religion. [1]
In 2011, the Israeli Ambassador to Senegal, Gideon Behar, reported that a small community of around 40 Gambian Evangelical Christians in the capital city of Banjul discovered an interest in Judaism, adopted certain Jewish practices, and built a synagogue complete with a Sefer Torah. The congregation is led by a Rabbi named Fernando and his wife, immigrants from Cameroon. Due to their isolation, the community found it difficult to deepen their connection to Judaism and Jewish customs. Unlike some Judaizing communities in West Africa and Central Africa who claim ancient Jewish or Israelite heritage, this community claims no Jewish ancestry. As of 2011, members of the community were not yet Jewish according to halakha. According to Gideon Behar, there is a trend across many communities in Africa of Evangelical Christians who have been drawn to Judaism and Zionism due to their study of the Bible, and that the Israeli government is largely unaware of the broad support for the State of Israel within African Evangelical Christian communities. [2] The community has no interest in making aliyah, but desires recognition from Israel. The community reached out to Gideon Behar to request assistance in visiting Eretz Yisrael and to request prayer books and other items of Judaica. [3]
According to a 2018 report from the U.S. Department of State, there was no Jewish community in the Gambia and there were no known acts of antisemitism. [4]
Sephardic or SephardiJews, also Sephardim or PeninsularJews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the Iberian Peninsula. The term, which is derived from the Hebrew Sepharad, can also refer to the Mizrahi Jews of Western Asia and North Africa, who were also influenced by Sephardic law and customs. Many Iberian Jewish exiles also later sought refuge in Mizrahi Jewish communities, resulting in integration with those communities.
The Senegambia is, in the narrow sense, a historical name for a geographical region in West Africa, which lies between the Senegal River in the north and the Gambia River in the south. However, there are also text sources which state that Senegambia is understood in a broader sense and equated with the term the Western region. This refers to the coastal areas between Senegal and Sierra Leone, where the inland border in the east was not further defined.
The Jewish diaspora or exile is the biblical dispersion of Israelites or Jews out of their ancient ancestral homeland and their subsequent settlement in other parts of the globe.
African Jewish communities include:
Mizrahi Jews, also known as Mizrahim (מִזְרָחִים) or Mizrachi (מִזְרָחִי) and alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews or Edot HaMizrach, are a grouping of Jewish communities comprising those who remained in the Land of Israel and those who existed in diaspora throughout and around the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) from biblical times into the modern era.
Jewish ethnic divisions refer to many distinctive communities within the world's ethnically Jewish population. Although considered a self-identifying ethnicity, there are distinct ethnic subdivisions among Jews, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, mixing with local communities, and subsequent independent evolutions.
The Petite Côte is a stretch of coast in Senegal, running south from the Cap-Vert peninsula to the Saloum Delta, near the border with the Gambia.
Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the few centuries following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. They should therefore be distinguished both from the descendants of those expelled in 1492 and from the present-day Jewish communities of Spain and Portugal.
The Wolof people are a West African ethnic group found in northwestern Senegal, the Gambia, and southwestern coastal Mauritania. In Senegal, the Wolof are the largest ethnic group (~43.3%), while elsewhere they are a minority. They refer to themselves as Wolof and speak the Wolof language, in the West Atlantic branch of the Niger–Congo family of languages.
Moroccan Jews are Jews who live in or are from Morocco. Moroccan Jews constitute an ancient community dating to Roman times. Jews began immigrating to the region as early as 70 CE. They were later met by a second wave of migrants from the Iberian peninsula in the period which immediately preceded and followed the issuing of the 1492 Alhambra Decree, when Jews were expelled from Spain, and soon afterward, from Portugal. This second wave of immigrants changed Moroccan Jewry, which largely embraced the Andalusian Sephardic liturgy, to switch to a mostly Sephardic identity.
Christians in the Gambia constitute approximately 3 percent (~136,400) of the country's population
Genetic studies on Jews are part of the population genetics discipline and are used to analyze the chronology of Jewish migration accompanied by research in other fields, such as history, linguistics, archaeology, and paleontology. These studies investigate the origins of various Jewish ethnic divisions. In particular, they examine whether there is a common genetic heritage among them. The medical genetics of Jews are studied for population-specific diseases.
Bani Israël is a village in the rural commune of Kataba I, in the Bignona Department of the Ziguinchor Region of southwestern Senegal. In 2002 it had a population of 74 people.
Sephardic Bnei Anusim is a modern term which is used to define the contemporary Christian descendants of an estimated quarter of a million 15th-century Sephardic Jews who were coerced or forced to convert to Catholicism during the 14th and 15th century in Spain and Portugal. The vast majority of conversos remained in Spain and Portugal, and their descendants, who number in the millions, live in both of these countries. The small minority of conversos who did emigrate normally chose to emigrate to destinations where Sephardic communities already existed, particularly to the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, but also to more tolerant cities in Europe, where many of them immediately reverted to Judaism. In theory, very few of them would have traveled to Latin America with colonial expeditions, as only those Spaniards who could certify that they had no recent Muslim or Jewish ancestry were supposed to be allowed to travel to the New World. Recent genetic studies suggest that the Sephardic ancestry present in Latin American populations arrived at the same time as the initial colonization, which suggests that significant numbers of recent converts were able to travel to the new world and contribute to the gene pool of modern Latin American populations despite an official prohibition on them doing so. In addition, later arriving Spanish immigrats would have themselves contributed additional converso ancestry in some parts of Latin America.
Musa Ngum was a singer and songwriter who was very popular in Senegal and Gambia. He was one of the pioneers of mbalax music, and "helped to define the mbalax style of popular music in the Senegambia" and "had a strong influence on Youssou N'Dour and other mbalax pioneers". He was "something of a cult icon back in the Senegambia region, and a pioneer of the mbalax fusion style". The mbalax, which originated from the Serer religious and ultra–conservative njuup music tradition sang during Ndut rites by circumcised boys was the foundation of Ngum's music career. He mastered many of the njuup classics and built a name for himself whilst at the same time developing his voice.
The history of the Jews in Senegal has its origins in the Jews of Bilad al-Sudan, those Jewish communities in West Africa dating to the 14th century. Today only a small number of Jews live in Senegal, mostly of foreign origin.
The history of the Jews in Gabon dates back to at least the 17th century, when Black Jewish communities existed along the Gabonese coastline. The contemporary Jewish community in Gabon is mostly composed of converts and foreign-born residents.
The history of the Jews in Sierra Leone date back at least to the 15th century, when Sephardi Jewish traders and explorers arrived in the region from Portugal.
The history of the Jews in Guinea-Bissau date back at least to the 15th century, when Sephardi Jewish traders and explorers arrived in the region from Portugal. Portuguese Sephardi Jews maintained a presence in colonial Guinea for centuries. The contemporary Jewish community in Guinea-Bissau is small.
The history of the Jews in Guinea date back at least to the 15th century, when Sephardi Jewish traders and explorers arrived in the region from Portugal. The contemporary Jewish community in Guinea-Bissau is very small.
