HISTORY: Igbos Are The Jewish Lost Tribe – The Israelite

Over a decade ago, the lawyer Remy C. Ilona traveled deep into rural Nigeria, on bus rides that lasted seven hours and through villages without electricity, just to hear stories. The folklore of origins and customs of his people, the Igbo, could be forgotten within a generation. So he came to document them. “These things are not recorded in books,” Ilona said. “I studied the tradition directly.”
   On treks to distant corners of his country, Ilona packed notepads, pens and a camera. But just as important to this work was a reference book: a Hebrew Bible. “I could understand the Tanach better because I understood the Igbos,” Ilona reflected. “And vice versa.”

Remy Ilona | Image Credit: Forward.com

There is an old belief among the Igbo population — at some 30 million people, one of Nigeria’s largest ethnic groups — that they are descended from the ancient Israelites. After a bloody civil war in the 1960s left more than 1 million Igbos dead, their identification with the Jews, who faced their own genocide, took on a new depth.
In recent decades, several thousand Igbos have taken their affinity for Israel, ancient and modern, further. Not only do these Nigerians identify with Jews, they have begun practicing Judaism. And Ilona has emerged as their spokesman.

Ilona is an articulate and gregarious man who sometimes dons a fez, the national headwear of the Igbo people. He was born in the southeastern town of Ozubulu as the Nigerian civil war was drawing to a close, and was baptized, along with his six siblings, as a Catholic. He went to university nearby, and in 1991 he studied law in the capital, Lagos. For years, Ilona had a small law practice and also taught. By outward appearances, all was well.
But something was off. He felt adrift.
“I was not happy,” he said. “I looked at the state of Igbos, and I was not satisfied. They had lost direction. What could have led them to lose their way?” He saw Igbo businesses collapsing and a lack of ethnic unity: “When Igbos were not Christians they had a more cohesive community,” he said. “They lived longer; they were happier.”
Ilona, like everyone else, had heard about the Igbos’ Israelite roots. As a child, he learned about the horrors of the Biafran War a decade earlier — “our Holocaust,” Ilona calls it — in which more than 1 million Igbos, including two of Ilona’s uncles, perished in a failed bid for national independence.
There were also stereotypical “Jewish characteristics” attributed to the Igbos. Leading up to the war, the Igbos were seen as socially privileged and politically powerful (the war was, in part, sparked by an Igbo-led coup). During the fighting, international media even referred to Igbos as the “Jews of West Africa.” In the United States, the American Jewish Congress published a report on the war, comparing the Igbo’s plight to earlier Jewish persecution. In Israel, Magen David Adom—the Israeli Red Cross—flew food and supplies to the Igbos, and the government may even have provided arms.
HERE IS THE PURE HISTORY OF WHERE IGBOS COMES FROM, THEY ARE THE LOST TRIBE OF JEWISH, THE ISRAELITE.
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