Nadene Goldfoot
Sammy Davis, Jr. (Dec. 8, 1925 Harlem, New York City-May 16, 1999 Beverly Hills, California) “I’m colored, Jewish, and Puerto Rican,” the legendary Sammy Davis, Jr. once said at a performance. “When I move into a neighborhood, I wipe it out.” He said his mother, Elvera Sanchez, an Afro-Cuban dancer, was Puerto Rican, because he was afraid anti-Cuban backlash would hurt his career.
We find that Jews are most likely born, not talked into becoming Jewish. If your mother was Jewish, you are Jewish. No argument. If only your father was Jewish, and if you were born in about 1391 BCE, you were definitely Jewish, but today, it's questionable because of facts that have become the norm. It's mothers who remind children that they are Jewish and keep a Jewish home atmosphere and cooking. Dads are out of the house away from the children and have no affect as to what the child is learning. That's the way it has been up to modern times, but now? Besides that, we KNOW who the mother is; it's a visual thing when you get right down to it. As for the father, we have only her word for it. That's been changing back to only dads can fit the bill with everyone but the strict adherents to the law. On top of that, we do have DNA for proof today if there's a question or adoption.
Who would select the religion who has been persecuted since its beginnings and hated so much? If it wasn't during Haman's attempt at killing all the Jews in the world to the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition, pogroms in Russia and the Holocaust that tried to wipe out all Jews, one wouldn't think that one would decide to convert to Judaism, but Sammy Davis, Jr. did. He isn't alone, either. Just wait till I tell you about this going on with the BLACKS, another group on the low end of the totem pole.
Color has never been an issue. It's tribal; if one is of the 12 tribes going way back or as for all others if born to a Jewish mother, or even if converted, what kind of conversion? Orthodox or what? Jews have walked the whole earth and found themselves with all colors of people, managing to carry on a normal life wherever and have children. Lately Israel has been finding Jews from all over who have come to live with them.
First Sammy Davis. He's amazing! Samuel George Davis Jr. was an American singer, dancer, actor, vaudevillian and comedian whom critic Randy Blaser called "the greatest entertainer ever to grace a stage in these United States." He does seem to fit the description of some Jews who have developed the reputation as actors and entertainers, singers and dancers, all right. Sammy hobnobbed with a lot of Jews being they were in the same industry, but Sammy CHOSE to become Jewish, and he was born a Catholic.. He had chutzpah, all right. He not only changed his religion but added more to his own culture as well. Not many people can juggle 2 cultures at the same time, 2 very distinctive cultures of Black and Jewish which includes learning a bit of Yiddish or Ladino as well as well as learning enough Hebrew. His autobiography is entitled, YES, I CAN.
Despite his success, he often had to stay at “Black Only” hotels, illustrating the extreme racism he faced.
In 1954, at the age of 29, he lost his left eye in a car accident. Several years later, he converted to Judaism, finding commonalities between the oppression experienced by African-American and Jewish communities. "In 1961, Davis converted to Judaism at a Las Vegas ceremony after studying with Rabbi Max Nussbaum at Temple Israel of Hollywood." It was a Reform conversion. While filming Porgy and Bess in 1959, he insisted on not working on Yom Kippur. Davis said Judaism felt natural: “After the accident I needed something desperately to hold onto. I found myself being more and more convinced that Judaism was it for me. I know there’s sort of a kinship between the plight of a Negro and the plight of a Jew: the oppression, the segregation, the constant trying to survive and trying to achieve dignity.”
Eddie Cantor, a good friend, talked to Davis in the hospital about the similarities between Jewish and Black cultures. Davis, who was born to a Catholic mother and Baptist father, began studying the history of Jews. He converted to Judaism several years later in 1961. One passage from his readings (from the book A History of the Jews by Abram L. Sachar), describing the endurance of the Jewish people, interested him in particular: "The Jews would not die. Three millennia of prophetic teaching had given them an unwavering spirit of resignation and had created in them a will to live which no disaster could crush." The accident marked a turning point in Davis's career, taking him from a well-known entertainer to a national celebrity.
Davis’s popularity helped break the race barrier of the segregated entertainment industry. He did however have a complex relationship with the black community and drew criticism after publicly supporting President Richard Nixon in 1972. One day on a golf course with Jack Benny, he was asked what his handicap was. "Handicap?" he asked. "Talk about handicap. I'm a one-eyed Negro who's Jewish."[ This was to become a signature comment, recounted in his autobiography and in many articles.
The IDF of Israel shows the blend of Israelis. Each man here is from a different culture and religion.
Several congregations in New York are composed of Blacks who observe most of the Orthodox Jewish ritual. They claim descent from the Ethiopian Jews. Some of them are believed to be descendants of Black converts to Judaism dating back to American and West Indian slavery days; but most adopted Judaism comparatively recently.
The main group was first organized as a congregation in 1930 by one of their members, Rabbi Wentworth A. Matthew. In addition, individual Blacks have converted to Judaism and are to be found in many parts of the US. One of my own students in a private Jewish school was the child of a Jewish man and converted Black mother.
A community from Chicago, after an unsuccessful experience in Liberia, that country populated by American ex-slaves, arrived in Israel claiming to be BLACK JEWS. they were allowed to remain and settled in Dimona where they numbered several hundreds as of 1973. As of now, they have become rather problematic, whose members believe they are descended from the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The community now numbers around 5,000. Their immigrant ancestors were African Americans, many from Chicago, Illinois, who migrated to Israel in the late 1960s. I have argued with several, who insisted that the real Jews-meaning the 12 tribes, were Blacks. They were rather nasty with me, saying that we Jews were not Jews at all. Yikes. (It seems like the old adage of a little education can be harmful is true, one has to check out the origin of that education, for sure.) It's what we learn of our religion that teaches us our ethics and mores that's important, not the color of one's skin that's all that important.
The Black Hebrews have alarmed the Israeli Government by declaring themselves the ''true'' Jews, by denouncing the Israelis as mere ''trustees'' of the land and by vowing to replace them with thousands of blacks returning to the Promised Land.
By any definition, the Black Hebrews are not ordinary Jews but, rather, a strange cult. The rule of their 41-year-old leader, Ben-Ami Carter, is absolute. He has created a closed society that the Israelis have found difficult to penetrate, much less fully understand. Defectors have told Israeli authorities that some followers are held against their will within the sect, even mistreated. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation believes that fugitives from the United States have taken refuge in the Dimona community after carrying out fraudulent schemes to raise money for the group.
UPDATE: Evidently in 2018, Israel was having a problem with illegal entry of surrounding Blacks from other nations. "HERZLIYA, Israel -- Thousands of African asylum seekers are protesting an Israeli plan to deport them. The mostly Eritrean and Sudanese who illegally entered Israel will be expelled under the new plans. The government has issued an ultimatum, telling them to leave the country by April 1 -- in exchange for $3,500 and a plane ticket -- or face indefinite incarceration. I saw a video on youtube about it with one fellow interviewed who broke out of a Sudanese jail and preferred to return to Israel even it it meant prison there as well. Wonder how they solved this problem. They were not interested in conversion, I'm sure. I seem to remember that as a time citizens were being accosted for money and such by some of them for their survival.
We came from 12 tribes originally, 12 brothers who all had the same father, Jacob. The catch was that 2 of the mothers were sisters and were relatives of Jacob, and the other 2 were these mothers' handmaidens, most likely from Egypt or thereabouts, giving us, hundreds of generations later, the color of skin that most Ashkenazis, Sephardis and Mizrachis have.
To those doubtful Thomases, may I suggest a DNA family finder test and transferring that to GEDmatch.com,genesis and do some deep deep ancestry evaluating with your DNA. You'll see where your ancient ancestors were . Science is great these days.
Sammy Davis singing: https://youtu.be/5Ys3yVu42ZI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWvHS-IoU3s
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Davis_Jr.
https://www.kveller.com/23-things-you-dont-know-about-jewish-icon-sammy-davis-jr/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Hebrew_Israelites_of_Jerusalem
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/22/magazine/strangers-in-the-holy-land.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joey_Bishop
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