Jewish Identity, Genetics, and Indigeneity: Remapping Jewish Histories and Futures

This talk explores questions about Jewish identity through ethnographic research with Lemba people, a group of Black South Africans who in the 1980s and 1990s participated in genetic studies that aimed to demonstrate their Jewishness. The studies sparked international interest among Jewish people about the possibilities of connecting with Lemba people based on a shared Jewishness. At the same time, the studies offered Lemba people new ways to frame their Jewish identity that instead centered their simultaneous identities as Black indigenous South Africans. This talk shows how Lemba Black Jewish indigenous identity can provide openings through which we might rethink and ultimately remap Jewish histories and futures.

Noah Tamarkin is an associate professor of Anthropology and Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University and a research associate at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) at University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. His book Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa (Duke University Press, 2020) received the 2022 Jordan Schnitzer Prize in Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore from the Association for Jewish Studies.

Cosponsors: Department of Anthropology , Department of History, Institute for Global Studies, Department of Sociology, Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies at the University of St. Thomas