Origins of the Lemba—the “Black Jews of Southern Africa” they are Cohens, page 1

The Lemba are a traditionally endogamous group speaking a variety of Bantu languages who live in a number of locations in southern Africa. They claim descent from Jews who came to Africa from “Sena.” “Sena” is variously identified by them as Sanaa in Yemen, Judea, Egypt, or Ethiopia. A previous study using Y-chromosome markers suggested both a Bantu and a Semitic contribution to the Lemba gene pool, a suggestion that is not inconsistent with Lemba oral tradition.

To provide a more detailed picture of the Lemba paternal genetic heritage, we analyzed 399 Y chromosomes for six microsatellites and six biallelic markers in six populations (Lemba, Bantu, Yemeni-Hadramaut, Yemeni-Sena, Sephardic Jews, and Ashkenazic Jews). The high resolution afforded by the markers shows that Lemba Y chromosomes are clearly divided into Semitic and Bantu clades. Interestingly, one of the Lemba clans carries, at a very high frequency, a particular Y-chromosome type termed the “Cohen modal haplotype,” which is known to be characteristic of the paternally inherited Jewish priesthood and is thought, more generally, to be a potential signature haplotype of Judaic origin. The Bantu Y-chromosome samples are predominantly (>80%) YAP+ and include a modal haplotype at high frequency. Assuming a rapid expansion of the eastern Bantu, we used variation in microsatellite alleles in YAP+ sY81-G Bantu Y chromosomes to calculate a rough date, 3,000–5,000 years before the present, for the start of their expansion.

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Lemba Jewish elders

The diverse Lemba people of south Africa and the Falasha Jews of East Africa proves that Judaism is not a race but a religion that relied upon missionary traditions and converts in the past. While the research clearly identifies the Lemba as having direct lineage to the Cohens, the ancient priest classes, the European Askenazim refuse to accept it emphatically insist that their lineage is through their father's side so they are not Jews. While the Lemba can prove dozens of ancient Jewish fathers genetically linked to them, they can also recite the lineage to particular men according to their oral traditions. Meanwhile, all the Ashkenzim can offer are several unknown women that lined the Chinese Silk Road traced through the mitochondrial DNA they have found in modern decedents.

There is also a Chinese Jewish community in China claiming lineage to the ancient Jews and they are denied their heritage by the Ashkenazim.

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As Shlomo Sands, an Israeli academic, claimed in his book "‘The Invention of the Jewish People,’ in an attack on the official Zionist narative, that the Jewish People never existed as a national group with a common origin in the Land of Israel/Palestine. He says that the Jews should be seen as a religious community made up of a hodgepodge of individuals and groups that had converted to the ancient monotheistic religion but do not have any right to establish a Jewish state in the Holy Land. The Jewish "people", according to Sand, are not really a “people” but the descendants of converts who intermarried. Sands also says that Jews do not have a political claim over the territory that today consists of Israel,the occupied Palestinian territories and Jerusalem.

It is worth noting that 1 in 10 human beings can be genetically linked to Genghis Khan, but this does not mean that six hundred million people are Mongolian.

edit on 6-1-2011 by Ilovecatbinlady because: typo