Noah Feldman, Columnist

The Black Hebrews and Israel

Ben Ammi Ben-Israel's story offers a remarkable commentary on race, diaspora and the return to Zion.

January 7, 2015 at 2:01 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Ben Ammi Ben-Israel dances during festivities marking the Shavuot harvest festival.
Photographer: David Silverman/Getty Images

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I was a small boy when I first heard the name Ben Ammi Carter, more properly Ben Ammi Ben-Israel, the leader and prophet of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, known as the Black Hebrews. Ben Ammi, who died Dec. 27, never had as many followers as William Miller, Joseph Smith or Elijah Muhammad, who respectively led the Seventh-day Adventists, the Mormons and the Black Muslims. But his American religious genius was akin to theirs.

In the late 1960s, Ben Ammi -- "the son of my people" -- led his followers on an extraordinary journey from the South Side of Chicago to Liberia to the Negev desert in Israel, where the community flourishes. His story, and that of the African Hebrew Israelites, offers a remarkable commentary on race, diaspora and the return to Zion.