The House of Israel is a Jewish community located in southwestern
Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
, in the towns of
Sefwi Wiawso and
Sefwi Sui. This group of people, of the Sefwi tribe, built a synagogue in 1998. Many of the men and children read English, but no one knows Hebrew.
History of Jews in Ghana
The people of Sefwi Wiawso trace a call for a "return" to normative Judaism by Aaron Ahomtre Toakyirafa, a community leader who, in 1976, is said to have had a
vision
Vision, Visions, or The Vision may refer to:
Perception Optical perception
* Visual perception, the sense of sight
* Visual system, the physical mechanism of eyesight
* Computer vision, a field dealing with how computers can be made to gain und ...
. In 2012, Gabrielle Zilkha, a Toronto-based filmmaker, visited Sefwe Wiawso to do research for a documentary about the House of Israel she is making. According to Zilkha, about 200 people--mostly children--live in the community. She states that the lack of a historical record makes it difficult to verify the group's claims, but that there is an oral tradition dating back 200 years.
In the 1990s, the House of Israel began to reach out to the wider Jewish world. The community worked with Jewish organizations such as
Kulanu and Be’chol Lashon.
A smaller community of Jews from the House of Israel lives in Sefwi Sui, a small farming community located twenty miles from Sefwi Wiawso.
Jewish facilities
The leader of the House of Israel since 1993, David Ahenkorah received his own vision in taking up the mantle.
He has been granted a 40-acre plot of land to build a Jewish school for the community, but they have not yet been able to raise funds for construction. Children currently attend a local school, run by Christians. They built a synagogue in 1998 in New Adiembra, a Jewish neighborhood in
Sefwi Wiawso. Recently, they painted it blue and white, the colors of Israel.
There are several family compounds nearby and about 200 people belong to the synagogue.
It is a single-room synagogue with a miniature
Sefer Torah. There is no
mechitza
A ''mechitza'' ( he, מחיצה, partition or division, pl.: , ) in Judaism, is a partition, particularly one that is used to separate men and women.
The rationale in halakha (Jewish law) for a partition dividing men and women is derived from ...
.
See also
*
Beta Israel
*
History of ancient Israel and Judah
The history of ancient Israel and Judah begins in the Southern Levant during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. "Israel" as a people or tribal confederation (see Israelites) appears for the first time in the Merneptah Stele, an inscri ...
*
Jews of Bilad el-Sudan
Jews of the Bilad al-Sudan (Judeo-Arabic: ) describes West African Jewish communities which were connected to known Jewish communities which were expelled from the Middle East, North Africa, or Spain and Portugal and migrated to West Africa. ...
*
Kingdom of Israel
References
External links
Ghana Kulanu
{{Africa in topic, History of the Jews in
Ethnic groups in Ghana
Groups claiming Jewish descent
Sefwi people