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How many Hebrew Israelites are there, and how worried should Jews be?
(JTA) — Dressed in matching purple hoodies and shirts, with gold fringes attached to the bottom in observance of Deuteronomy 22:12, hundreds of members of a controversial Hebrew Israelite group marched through the streets of Brooklyn on Sunday.
“Hey Jacob, it’s time to wake up,” they chanted, using a term for people of color who have yet to embrace their “true” identity as descendants of the Biblical Jacob, later called Israel. “We got good news for you: YOU are the real Jews.”
The march and a demonstration that followed at the Barclays Center were organized by Israel United in Christ in solidarity with Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving, who was suspended for eight games after he posted a link to an antisemitic film on social media last month and then was slow to apologize. But IUIC has also used the controversy to promote its incendiary ideology and recruit new followers into what it calls “God’s army.”
After the demonstration — the second held by IUIC outside of the Brooklyn arena this month — the group’s founder posted a message on his Twitter account. “We are not here for violence,” Bishop Nathanyel Ben Israel wrote, “we are here for the spiritual war.”
Before 2019, those American Jews who were even aware of the once-obscure Black Hebrew Israelite spiritual movement likely associated it with the loud but non-violent street preachers who would harangue pedestrians in city centers. In December of that year, however, extremists professing Israelite beliefs attacked a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey and a Hanukkah party in Monsey, New York. Two Jews were killed in Jersey City, and a 72-year-old rabbi who was stabbed in the head in Monsey died from his injuries three months later.
With the memory of those attacks still fresh, and against the backdrop of a surge this fall in public expressions of antisemitism combined with threats of violence against Jewish communities emanating from other extremist corners, the militant posturing of IUIC has alarmed many Jews already on edge.
Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone of Crown Heights observed on Twitter that the Israelites who regularly preach near his home on Shabbat have been “particularly aggressive” of late, heaping verbal abuse on both him and his children. On Sunday afternoon, Lightstone posted a video of IUIC members assembling for their march and rehearsing their chants in Grand Army Plaza.
“Terrifying,” commented Elisheva Rishon, a Black and Jewish fashion designer who blames Hebrew Israelites for inflaming tensions between the two communities to which she belongs. A few Twitter users compared the march to the 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, at which participants chanted “Jews will not replace us.”
The recent IUIC rallies give the impression that the radical wing of the Hebrew Israelite movement is large and riled up. Meanwhile, recent comments by Kanye West, the rapper who now goes by Ye, and Irving that align with elements of Hebrew Israelite doctrine suggest the movement has broad support among powerful Black celebrities.
But how big is the movement in reality? What percentage are extremists who assail Jews as impostors who stole their heritage from them? And if Black Israelism has entered the marketplace of mainstream religions in the United States, should Jews be concerned?
The numbers
The only available statistics on Israelite identification in the United States were collected as part of a small national survey conducted by an evangelical Christian research firm in 2019. For that survey, which sought to capture African-American attitudes toward the state of Israel, Lifeway Research asked 1,019 African Americans, “Which of the following best describes your opinion of Black Hebrew Israelite teachings?”
Most respondents (62%) said they are not familiar with the teachings, but 19% said they agree with “most of the core ideas taught by Black Hebrew Israelites,” and 4% said they consider themselves Hebrew Israelites. The remaining 15% said they either “firmly oppose” the teachings or disagree with most of them. (The survey did not specify what those teachings are.)
The 2020 U.S. Census put the Black population at 41.1 million, so extrapolating from the Lifeway data, there are approximately 1.6 million Hebrew Israelites in the U.S. — not counting the small numbers of Latinos and Native Americans who also belong to Israelite groups — and 7.8 million people who may not identify as Israelites but who agree with the spiritual movement’s main teachings.
For lots of these people, the attention that West and Irving have brought to their belief system has been validating.
“Israelism is becoming part of the plausibility structure of Black America,” Christian activist and author Vocab Malone told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, referring to a social context in which certain ideas are considered credible. “The suspicions that a lot of folks have toward the Jewish community, they think they’re vindicated now.”
Scott McConnell, Lifeway’s executive director, told JTA that the survey’s sponsor, the Christian Zionist organization Philos Project, supplied the question about Hebrew Israelite teachings. Asked if there are plans to include similar questions in future surveys, he replied, “I know there are some pastors at African-American churches that have concerns about some of their parishioners being led astray by the teachings of the Hebrew Israelites, so we’ll keep it on our radar.”
Malone, who uses an alias in keeping with hip-hop culture, is a close observer of the Israelite world. The Phoenix resident frequently engages in debates on the street and online with members of groups described as hateful by the Southern Poverty Law Center — including IUIC, Israelite School of Universal Practical Knowledge, Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, and The Sicarii — in hopes of convincing them to follow what he considers to be the true path of Christianity.
Founded in 2003, IUIC has proven the most adept at creating public spectacles and garnering media coverage. The group operates 71 U.S. chapters and 20 international ones, according to the Anti-Defamation League, and it holds men’s conferences each year that culminate in choreographed marches on city streets, like the one on Sunday in Brooklyn. Based on the size of those marches, Malone estimated that national membership has grown from around 5,000 in 2015 to around 10,000 today. Other radical groups likely have much smaller memberships but don’t share any figures, preferring to “play their cards close to their chest,” Malone said.
These estimates suggest that the extremists comprise a very small percentage of the 1.6 Hebrew Israelites living in the United States.
Ultimately, IUIC has a goal of recruiting 144,000 Black, Latino and Native American people who will be spared by God during the end time, as foretold in the book of Revelation. In order to achieve this goal, the group sends representatives to proselytize overseas, including in parts of Africa and the Caribbean. (IUIC did not respond to requests for comment from JTA.)
Both the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ADL monitor the activities of IUIC and other radical camps, as Israelites call their groups. However, spokespeople for both organizations told JTA they do not know how many people belong to these camps.
An online movement
What is clear is that the camps have greatly expanded their reach in recent years, taking their message from street corners to the entire globe thanks to the internet and social media. IUIC members run dozens of YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts where they post a constant stream of videos and memes, many containing antisemitic tropes. One recent Instagram post shows a startled-looking Hasidic Jewish man holding his hat above the words “The Synagogue of Satan.” (Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, uses similar language about Jews. A video he recorded this month defending West and Irving has been viewed millions of times.)
The main IUIC YouTube channel, @IUICintheClassRoom, has 126,000 subscribers and 29.4 million video views. A series of videos posted three years ago on the channels of local chapters provide some insight into how members hear about IUIC and why they join.
The most common way these members say they found their way to the camp was via videos they watched online. “Prior to actually coming to IUIC, I did do some Israelite window shopping,” recounts Officer Joshua of IUIC Tallahassee. “I always questioned myself, why is it that our people are at the bottom? How come we get the worst jobs and so forth? I knew Christianity wasn’t answering my questions, so what I did was I just started soul searching.”
As part of his quest, Joshua says he stumbled upon a video of Bishop Nathanyel and other IUIC leaders preaching on the street. “I was like man, these brothers really know what they’re doing, they really have our history,” he says. “That’s what actually made me do more research on IUIC and the truth.”
Sar (“Minister”) Ahmadiel Ben Yehuda speaks at the African Hebrew Israelites’ annual New World Passover celebration in Dimona, Israel, May 2013. (Andrew Esensten)
In another video, Sister Ezriella from the Concord, North Carolina, branch explains that as a young adult, she felt uncertain about her life’s purpose. Then her mother shared information with her about IUIC. “She was so happy it changed her life, I had to take notice and I had to come check it out for myself,” she says. “I fell in love with it. I fell in love with finding out who I am.”
A number of Black, male celebrities have also been drawn into the wider Israelite orbit in recent years, including rappers Kendrick Lamar and Kodak Black, TV host Nick Cannon, boxer Floyd Mayweather and retired NBA player Amar’e Stoudemire.
Some of these celebrities appear to have been exposed to Israelite teachings by relatives and other acquaintances. Lamar, who famously rapped “I’m a Israelite, don’t call me Black no mo’” on a 2017 song, learned about Israelism from a cousin who was involved with IUIC. Black began identifying as a Levite in 2017 after studying scripture with an Israelite priest while serving a jail sentence in Florida. Stoudemire has said his mother taught him he had “Hebraic roots.” (He officially converted to Judaism in 2020, a step most Israelites reject because it contradicts their claims of already being authentic Jews.)
Isabelle Williams, an analyst at ADL’s Center on Extremism who tracks radical Israelite camps, said celebrity endorsements of the ideology can have a big impact because they come from figures who are widely respected.
“If people came upon an extremist Black Hebrew Israelite group street preaching, it might be easier to dismiss it and recognize the extreme ideology behind it,” she said. “But when it’s being shared by these influential figures, people might be less likely to recognize the really insidious ideology and dangerous antisemitic conspiracy theories that are behind these statements.”
Williams added that a range of extremist groups have seized on comments made by West and Irving. “It’s not just BHI and NOI groups that are leveraging this moment,” Williams said. “We’ve seen white supremacists who are also using this recent attention and circulation of antisemitic conspiracy theories to promote their own agenda.”
Rabbi Capers Funnye is the most prominent Israelite leader in the U.S. He serves as chief rabbi of the International Israelite Board of Rabbis, an organization that provides spiritual guidance to about 2,500 people in the United States, along with tens of thousands of Israelites in southern and west Africa.
In an interview, Funnye condemned West, Irving and the radical Israelite camps that have rallied around them. “God is never about divisiveness,” Funnye said. “God is never about hatred. God is never about, ‘You ain’t.’ I don’t have to say what you aren’t to make me who I am.”
A member of the Chicago Board of Rabbis and the leader of a Chicago synagogue with a mixed membership of around 200 Jews and Israelites, Funnye was at pains to differentiate his community from IUIC and its ilk: His follows the Torah and supports the state of Israel, he said, while others follow both the Old and New Testaments, worship Jesus and reject Israel’s government as illegitimate.
“Whatever army that Kyrie is speaking about, we are not a part of his army,” he said, referring to a comment Irving made during an Oct. 29 press conference about how he has “a whole army” behind him.
But Funnye said another of Irving’s recent statements — “I cannot be antisemitic if I know where I come from” — resonated with him and his congregants.
“We are Semitic,” he said of Black people who identify as Israelites, “so now we really have to draw a line when antisemitism is only defined by one’s complexion or ethnicity. We were not the ones that racialized Judaism, and we will never racialize it because Jews are not a race.” (“Semitic” refers to people who speak Semitic languages, such as Hebrew and Arabic.)
Outside of the United States, the largest organized group of Hebrew Israelites is located in Israel. The African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem are a Dimona-based community of more than 3,000 African-American expatriates and their Israeli-born offspring.
African Hebrew Israelite youth serve in the army — not Kyrie Irving’s or IUIC’s army, but the Israel Defense Forces. After 53 years in Israel, the community has never been fully accepted, in part because they are not Jewish according to halacha, or Jewish law. Currently, some 100 community members are being threatened with deportation for living in the country illegally.
Ahmadiel Ben Yehuda, the African Hebrew Israelites’ minister of information, said he interpreted Irving’s remarks as a reference to “the global awakening of people of African ancestry to their Hebraic roots.” He said the backlash Irving has faced shows that the conversation around this awakening must involve qualified representatives of communities who can cite reputable sources — not documentaries such as the one Irving boosted — “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America” — in support of their claims of Israelite ancestry.
“What is certain is that Israel and Judaism must figure out a way to better accommodate these communities,” Ben Yehuda said. “This is not going to fade away, and it shouldn’t. It will intensify as the awakening continues.”
How this awakening will affect Jews and established Jewish communities remains to be seen.
In September, George Washington University’s Program on Extremism released a report titled “Contemporary Violent Extremism and the Black Hebrew Israelite Movement.” The report noted that the “predominant threat” today comes not from Israelite groups themselves but from “individuals loosely affiliated with or inspired by the movement.”
Malone, the Christian activist, cautioned that as the extremist wing of the Israelite movement grows, more violent lone wolves may emerge.
“There’s a big funnel with any movement, and the bigger the funnel is, you get certain things down at the bottom,” he said. “This is not Buddhism. This is a different kind of thing with a different kind of rhetoric.”
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The post How many Hebrew Israelites are there, and how worried should Jews be? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Antisemitism and ‘The End of History’ That Never Came to Pass
Roses are placed on a sculpture of Mikhail Gorbachev in memory of the final leader of the Soviet Union, at the “Fathers of Unity” memorial in Berlin, Germany August 31, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Lisi Niesner
In the summer of 1989, a few months before the Berlin Wall fell, a political scientist named Francis Fukuyama published an essay that came to define a new understanding in the West.
Titled simply “The End of History?”, the piece described the defeat of fascism in World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union and its socialist ideology. It appeared that Western liberal democracy and free-market capitalism had won the ultimate battle of ideas — at least for the moment.
Events in recent years have proven this thesis false. History didn’t end — and Fukuyama probably knew it never would. The battle of ideas will always return, and in many ways, it never went away.
During the last 40 years, Western civilization, capitalism, and nationalism have been under attack. Likewise, bigotry against Jewish people never went away. There is nothing new under the sun about Jew hatred except the delivery system. The traditional engines of antisemitism have largely been supplanted by a new engine: the social media algorithm.
The stark, un-sugar coated reality is that the Jewish people have been abandoned, and the illusion of modern safety is quickly eroding.
What stings the most is the profound sense of betrayal from communities that the Jewish people poured their hearts, souls, and resources into elevating.
Over the last century and a half, the Jewish community played an outsized, foundational role in championing civil rights, fighting alongside the African American community, the feminist movement, driving progress within academia and LGBTQ rights.
To watch significant factions of those exact same groups turn their backs, stay silent, or actively fuel hostility today is a heartbreaking reality to reckon with. It sends a crystal-clear message that must be internalized immediately: there ought to be a stricter balance between “fixing the world” and tending to the survival of one’s own community.
One cannot control what is outside one’s control, but one can focus on what is in their control.
The era of relying on the world’s collective conscience is officially over, and the path forward must be primarily inward, focused on self-reliance, self-defense, and resilience. It requires an unrelenting effort to tell our story and win the war for hearts and minds. We must unflinchingly call out the blatant hypocrisy of institutional and communal betrayal, as difficult as that may be.
It is no longer sufficient to excel exclusively in the boardroom or the classroom. True self-preservation demands a willingness to face physical reality. Security cannot be guaranteed by others, and protecting families and institutions means prioritizing physical fitness and the practical readiness to defend oneself on the streets, in schoolyards, and at the workplace.
With traditional institutions increasingly failing to offer protection, self-reliance becomes an absolute necessity. We must look at past fair-weather allies and actively seek new partners who offer mutual respect and reciprocal support. Survival and resilience demand that the Jewish community adapt, unite, and lead from a position of strength.
The peaceful illusion of “The End of History” never arrived; the battle of ideas has returned, and we must be ready for the fight.
Daniel M. Rosen is the chairman and Co-founder of IMPACT, a 501c3 dedicated to organizing, empowering and mobilizing individuals to combat Jew hatred on social media and beyond. He is a regular contributor to The Jerusalem Post, JNS, Times of Israel, Israel National News, The Algemeiner, and other publications. Follow us at @joinimpactnow
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Why Do We Read the Book of Ruth on Shavuot?
Shavuot. Ruth in Boaz’s Field by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, oil on canvas, 1828; National Gallery, London. Photo: Wikipedia.
All Biblical festivals and special days relate to time — whether it is daily, monthly, annually, or seasonally. Awareness of the natural world comes with awareness of oneself, our transience, and the ups and downs of life. Who are we? Where do we belong? All of this is the core of religious life, which helps us to live in the world in the best way that we can.
Shavuot started as a harvest festival. There are three. Pesach is the first, with the earliest barley crop. Shavuot celebrates the beginning of the wheat and fruit harvests. And Sukkot is the culmination of the agricultural year and the celebration of water and rain, which are essential for a successful agricultural year.
But as we became less and less of an agricultural society, other themes emerged to add to the message of Shavuot specifically. The rabbis added the theme of Torah. But why, then, did the rabbis choose the Book of Ruth to be read on Shavuot?
It is set against a background of harvests — and how unpredictable they can be. The failed harvest caused the emigration of Elimelech’s family from Israel. Then the cycle turned, and rich harvests in Israel enabled Naomi to come back. Ruth decides to stay with Naomi and become part of the Israelite people. In Ruth’s magnificent declaration “Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your people are my people, and your God, my God … only death will separate us.”
The Book of Ruth illustrates the choices people make and their consequences. To leave. To come back. To change one’s religion and nation. To act with love and care. To be charitable and kind. The goodness of a person rather than genealogy or status. It displays the redemptive powers of women. But it also recognizes the drawbacks of societies, class systems, levels of wealth, and the limitations of conventions and rules.
But Naomi and Ruth are destitute. Biblical laws required redemption. When a family fell on hard times, and sold their property, the relatives had a legal obligation to redeem the loss and try to reinstate them. The poor also had legal rights to glean fields as they were being harvested, and landowners had to leave corners of fields to the poor, all the poor, even foreigners.
The Torah set the tone for a just society, one that guaranteed that the weakest and most disadvantaged would be helped. If the Torah imposed commandments that connected humanity with God, it also required, just as much, that humans connect with each other. As the Prophet Yeshayah said repeatedly, God wants kindness more than sacrifices or hypocritical prayers.
The most popular explanation of the link between Shavuot and Ruth is that Ruth actually chose to live a life according to Naomi’s Israelite customs and ideals. She made the commitment that the Israelites made at Sinai. As Boaz said to her when he met her, “May the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to trust, reward you.”
It does not matter where you come from as much as who you are. And this challenges us to think about what our commitments are today, and what we value and spend our time on.
Ruth’s story is of how life is unpredictable and often tragic. And yet, through human kindness — which the Bible stresses — we can find redemption and build a better world.
That’s true no matter what is happening around us; the Torah’s messages for us and our people are as important today as ever.
Happy Shavuot and Chag Sameach.
The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.
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The Limits of Campus Solidarity: Why Are Some Issues Seemingly Ignored By Campus Activists ?
University of East Anglia in Norwich.. Photo Credit: .Martin./ Flickr
Student activism on university campuses often presents itself as part of a broader global struggle for human rights and liberation. Students organize campaigns and protests under the belief that they are standing on the side of justice. Universities themselves have also long been spaces where political movements grow, and where students engage with wider global issues.
But if campus activism is truly rooted in the goal of human rights, it is worth asking why some movements receive enormous attention while others receive little to none.
Activist movements often present themselves as universal movements for justice, but in practice they are shaped by ideology and institutional campaigns. This does not necessarily invalidate these movements, but it does challenge the idea that campus activism is merely a neutral response to injustice.
An example of this contrast can be seen through the differences between campus mobilization around Gaza, and the relative absence of sustained activism in support of issues like the situation in places like Sudan — and also in Iran, including supporting Iranian students who actively protest their own government.
At the University of East Anglia (UEA), as at campuses across the UK, the past number of years has brought visible and sustained pro-Palestine organizing with protests, encampments, and marches of more than 400 students calling for divestment. It also involves motions brought before the Students’ Union resulting in a longstanding institutional boycott policy against Israel.
Over the same period, Iranian students and civilians have protested against the political repression and government-sponsored violence in Iran, most noticeably during the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement. This past January, it’s reported that tens of thousands of innocent protestors were murdered by the regime, and many more were jailed.
Yet at UEA, as at most British universities, this did not translate into encampments, sustained protest weeks, or motions to the Students’ Union. The same is true for many other conflict areas around the world — and the contrast is difficult to ignore.
The point here is not that students should protest every global issue equally. That would be unrealistic. Student movements naturally focus on certain causes more than others. But this contrast does raise an important question: what determines which global issues become campus movements and which do not?
I believe part of the answer lies in activist infrastructure. Some causes already have established student organizations and national campaigns with clear institutional mechanisms. At UEA, campaigns related to Palestine, for example, often involve established movements such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which provide students with clear actions to take, such as lobbying student government and hosting annual protest weeks where official language is promoted. There are funding networks and experienced organizers behind the scenes who help translate political concerns into sustained campus activism.
By contrast, Iranian dissident movements do not have the same level of organized support. There are fewer established student campaigns, fewer institutional demands directed at universities and fewer organized networks translating concern into campus activism. A student at UEA who wanted to organize meaningfully around Iran would find considerably less infrastructure available to them than one organizing around the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Another factor may be related to how students interpret global politics more broadly. On many campuses, political activism tends to be framed through narrow ideas like decolonial theory and the history of Western imperialism. Within this framework student activists tend to focus on issues where Western powers are seen as solely responsible for global injustice. Whether this is introduced or sustained in classrooms or in college group meetings is a subject for another piece, but in this context it doesn’t really matter.
What this contrast suggests is that campus activism is not guided by moral principles alone, but is instead shaped in large part by the existing political frameworks.
Recognizing this does not require assuming bad intentions on the part of student activists. Many student movements are motivated by genuine concern. But like all political movements, individuals must be wary of manipulation and groupthink.
Individual action and anger become tools for someone else’s ideas, so it’s important that we are all responsible with what we choose to put our energy towards. If campus activists at UEA claim to stand for universal human rights, then they must also be willing to ask the difficult question of why some struggles seem more important than others.
Skye Phillips is a final year International Relations and Modern History student at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. She is a 2025/6 fellow for CAMERA. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CAMERA.