Digging for the Lemba

“The Lost Tribe of Israel” is an episode of the series “Digging for the Truth”, featuring Josh Bernstein. The “lost tribe” in question is the Lemba in South Africa and Zimbabwe. In terms of appearance, the Lemba are more or less indistinguishable from other Black South Africans. However, the Lemba claim to be descended from the Biblical Israelites. Their first diasporic homeland was “Senna”, probably a place in Yemen. After a long migration, the Lemba supposedly reached southern Africa and built the huge stone city of Great Zimbabwe. Some of them migrated across the Limpopo River after the city's fall. Today, the Limpopo is the border between the modern states of Zimbabwe and South Africa.

In his search for the truth, Bernstein meets and interviews a number of skeptics. The guide at Great Zimbabwe tells him that the Shona, the dominant ethnic group in modern Zimbabwe, built the ancient city, not the Lemba (a much smaller group). In Israel, at the site of “Armageddon” (Megiddo), Dr Israel Finkelstein states that the ten tribes are irretrievably lost to history and that claims such as those of the Lemba are just legends with no scientific backing. Back in South Africa, however, Bernstein finds out that there is some genetic evidence for the Lemba having Jewish ancestry. Their priestly clan has genes identical to those of Jews claiming descent from the Kohanim, the priestly Levites! Obviously, the Lemba's ancestors must have intermarried with Black Africans during their prolonged stay at the dark continent.

“The Lost Tribe of Israel” ends by claiming that the Lemba really are one of the lost tribes of the Northern Kingdom which was overrun by the Assyrians about 2,700 years ago. Here, I think sensationalism got the better of the producers. For starters, nobody seems to know when the “Kohanim gene” entered the Lemba bloodline. It could have been much later. Second, weren't the Kohens and the Levites based in Jerusalem? Logically, if the Lemba are descended from priests serving in the Jerusalem Temple, they can't have left "Palestine" at the time of the Assyrian attack on the Northern Kingdom. Jerusalem, of course, was in the Southern Kingdom!

We do know that Yemen's Arab rulers converted to Judaism during the period we call the Early Middle Ages, so from there the oral traditions of the Lemba make more sense. As for Great Zimbabwe, who really built it is probably anybody's guess at this time, but the idea that it may have been the Lemba is at least a serious contender.

To sum up, it seems as if the lost tribes really are lost somewhere beyond the Sabbath River (unless, of course, they really are in Kashmir!), but that the Lemba nevertheless may have a very fascinating history…