Three stories, recorded from my field notes, comprise this chapter. These encounters provide insights into how I formulated my work with, and study of religion among, different societies from the African continent. The first occurred in the early 1980s in Ethiopia, when I was studying Ethiopian Jews at the beginning of my academic training. The second took place in the late 1980s, when I was about to begin my PhD fieldwork in Kenya, and the third in Israel with African Christian labor migrants, nearly 20 years later.
For 30 years, I have studied Judaism, Christianity, and local religions, mainly through an anthropological and qualitative lens, in Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, South Sudan, Rwanda, Cameroon, and Eritrea. The three encounters served as milestones during these years, forcing me to critically reflect on my understanding of the belief systems I was studying, more specifically to re-think the relations between anthropology and religion, theory and praxis, researchers’ identities and informants’ identities, research missions and daily practicalities.
In this chapter, I discuss some major challenges I have faced over the years. Two main issues have kept appearing: (1) Can researchers such as myself, who belong, or are seen as belonging, to specific groups/identities study others who are, or who are seen as, different? And (2) How close is my understanding of the religions I studied, of their manifestations and meaning to the people who believe in these religions, and to those of other researchers? My starting point was that there are more commonalities than differences when conducting fieldwork anywhere in the world, and that the “right” combination of knowledge, research tools, curiosity, empathy, sensitivity, humility, and reflexivity would enable me to conduct scientifically-grounded research, even when the gaps appeared enormous between me and the people I was researching.
While writing this chapter, I kept hearing Talal Asad’s1 critique of anthropological work, in general, and anthropology that deals with other people’s
Since I always used the qualitative paradigm, the underlying principle was that there is always a multiplicity of understandings, and this is the best way to comprehend life situations. However, I wondered how distant my understandings of people’s religiosity were from theirs. Obviously, other related issues arose, such as my position as a researcher in the field, my own religious identity, my choice of interviewees, the power relations between us, and more. Below I elaborate on the dilemmas I faced and the ways I handled them by referring to my own research and relevant academic literature.
1 Encounter # 1: A Jew amongst Jews?
My first visit to the African continent was in 1983, when I was 20 years old, when I escorted North American Jewish leaders to Ethiopia. For the next two years, I entered Ethiopia a dozen times. I toured the entire country, but mainly remained in the north, where most Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel) lived. At the time, Ethiopia was under the dictatorship of Mengistu Halie Mariam. Millions were suffering from severe famine and violence due to the horrific civil war.2 Israel, supported by Canada and the US, was relentlessly and secretly trying to assist local Ethiopian Jews in coming to Israel.3 For months, I escorted many
We visited dozens of Beta Israel villages, talking to people about their daily lives, their religion, life in Israel, and their dreams of coming to Jerusalem and Zion. We participated in religious prayers, and in celebrations of the Shabbat and other holy days. We also visited houses and businesses run by Jews and distributed information and funds for their clandestine journey to Israel via Sudan. Over time, I established good relations with some people whom I often visited, and was given letters to family members who had left to come to Jerusalem. Each visit was emotionally loaded, and filled with moments in which I knew and felt that what I was told was only part of the story, and that my understanding was partial, if not altogether wrong. Every visit enabled me to expand my knowledge base, and at the same time made me realize that so many things remained incomprehensible to me. Questions about their kind of Judaism kept arising. Was it more Jewish or more Ethiopian? More Jewish or more Christian? What were their relations with their non-Jewish neighbors? I mainly reflected on my frames of reference for “Judaism” when observing Beta Israel.
In my diary, I wrote:
Tadda Village, Northern Ethiopia, February, 1983.
We left Gondar at 5am. The road was bumpy. Three times we were stopped by police…I think one of the barracks belonged to the liberation forces…We were well prepared with a cover story. We showed the humanitarian equipment we had…they let us continue…The destination was Tadda. We heard that most of the young men and women had left for Sudan and the remaining people were old and in great misery…Tadda looked like a deserted village…The fields were dry. No one was working, walking…somebody told me that the moment Beta Israel people left their homes, the local Christians came in, so the village is mixed now…Beta Israel Jews and local Christians…after some time…we began seeing some elders and kids…a young boy came over to me and told me that one woman wants to talk with me…I was taken into her hut. It was dark and smoky. She had a baby in her arms…there was practically nothing in the hut…She…told me that her entire family had left for Yerusalem…[Jerusalem in Amharinya] and I asked her why she had remained. She said she could not go since she was pregnant and sick. She cried. I cried…I had a feeling she was trying to say more, but I was not able to understand. She asked me to pray with her. I told her to pray and that I would repeat what she said. I asked: “Where is East? Where is Yerusalem?”“Why?” she said.
I said because we [Jews] always need to face Yerusalem when praying…She said: “Why? Yerusalem is here” [pointing to her heart]…The prayers were in Amharinya; I could catch a few words, here and there. Every time she said Yerusalem and Zion, I smiled…I repeated these words. I could see she was happy…Every few minutes she made the sign of the cross on her chest. I was surprised. I felt uncomfortable and didn’t want to ask her why she was doing that. At one point, the baby cried…She said he was hungry…She cried and gave him to me…I tried to sing to him, to stop his crying…After some time, he fell asleep…in my arms…she looked at me and said: “Take him…with you to Zion, to Yerusalem, I’m sick, I will not make it…they will not bring me to Yerusalem…You are from Yerusalem,” she said…“you are my sister…I have faith in you; I have faith in God…With you he will be safe.”
She repeated this to me and I could not stop crying. Two young Jewish women crying and praying together, yet there was a huge gulf between us. I had a stable home and a supportive family; I had no child to feed; I was safe. Moreover, there were additional elements beyond economic and family differences that separated us. While we were connected by our Jewish religion, she prayed in a way that I, and the Jews I knew, did not (crossing herself). While I felt connected to her, as one young Jewish woman to another, I felt that our religious identity and understandings of it were very different. During the hours there I kept thinking about her, about the way she prayed, about her request to take her son. I asked myself: How can she even suggest this to me? How could she trust me? Was it because I was white, or Jewish from Jerusalem? What is she not telling me about the reasons she was left behind. Was she that desperate? Or, alternatively, optimistic and full of trust? Before departing, we hugged and prayed together.
This visit remained ingrained in my soul. It made me constantly reflect about life, the power of faith, and diversity. I realized that although I knew about the Beta Israel history and their journey to Israel, and at least officially we shared the same religion, I had very few tools to comprehend this reality, let alone know what and how to be or behave. Based on the personal relations I made during my fieldwork, I began constructing a wave of informants among the Beta Israel in Israel. They helped me reread my notes from the field trips in Ethiopia.
Years later, I focused my research on African Independent Churches, in Israel, built by West African labor migrants. In 2004, when I visited one Pentecostal church, I met an Ethiopian woman. I asked her when and how she came to Israel, and she said: “In 1984…My family is Jewish, so we came.” “But you are
My early research focused on their situation in Ethiopia, under Mengistu, and on their struggles with the rabbinical institutions in Israel over questions concerning their Judaism and unique religiosity.4 Obviously, the latter topic also dealt with issues of race and ethnicity.
While there have been many studies of different aspects of the Beta Israel, little has been written on those who immigrated as Jews, but were practicing something else. Hardly anybody spoke about these people, and when one heard about them, it would usually be in the form of a rumor or a well-kept secret. In 2013 I began studying these Ethiopian migrants who came due to their Jewish heritage, but opted to practice Christianity in Israel. They did this in spite of vocal antagonism from the rabbinical and other Beta Israel institutions. After reading Talal Asad’s seminal work on secularization,5 I realized that in my work in the 1980s in Ethiopia, I had questioned my analytical categories, and frames of reference and comparison. Moreover, I realized that, regardless of my intensive and lengthy fieldwork, my academic training, and the keen will to learn, doubts would always remain concerning the relevance of my conceptions, questions, and understandings as they were less flexible than the realities I was studying.
Below I shed light on this unique phenomenon of Christian Jews in Israel. I begin with a short history of Jews in Ethiopia and then elaborate on those who are now practicing (Pentecostal) Christianity in Israel. To the best of my knowledge, there are very few articles on this group, mainly by Don Seeman.6
2 Religious and Historical Notes on the Beta Israel and Falash Mura (Converted Jews)
The controversy about the origin of Black Jews in Ethiopia remains unresolved. Modern scholars of Ethiopian history and Ethiopian Jews propose two conflicting hypotheses. The first claims that they are descendants of ancient Jewish origin (from Yemen or Egypt).7 The second postulates the ethno-genesis of the Beta Israel as occurring between the 14th and 16th centuries, from a sect of Ethiopian Christians who adopted Biblical Old Testament practices, and came to identify as Jews.8 However, many historians agree that because of their close proximity to Ethiopian Christians, the borders between the two religions were frequently blurred and crossed.9
In the mid-19th century, following missionary activities, between 1,500 and 2,000 Beta Israel Jews converted to Christianity.10 Over the years, the number of converts grew, and today they are known as “Falash Mura.”11 Protestant missionaries’ activities in Ethiopia brought the existence of Black Jews to the West’s attention. As a result, during the late 19th to early 20th century, several European rabbis recognized the Jewishness of the Beta Israel community, establishing several Jewish schools in Ethiopia.12
2.1 Migrating to Israel
While a few Beta Israel came to Israel between 1948 and the 1970s, most came after 1973, following Israeli Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s proclamation that the Beta Israel were descendants of the ten lost tribes – hence, Jews. This led to Israel’s official recognition of the Beta Israel as Jews who are entitled, under
Under Mengistu Haile Mariam’s despotic regime, the Beta Israel’s zeal to relocate to Israel had to overcome an official ban on Ethiopians’ exiting Ethiopia. Hence, from 1979, Beta Israel migration was carried out secretly, via Sudan. By 1984, approximately 10,000 came to Israel with the active assistance of Israeli agents. The unexpected halt of these missions, in April 1984, left thousands of Beta Israel stranded in Sudan or en route. Following Mengistu’s downfall, approximately 15,000 Beta Israel were brought by the State of Israel directly from Ethiopia to Israel.
At the end of 1991, the Israeli government declared the mission to rescue Ethiopian Jews complete. Nevertheless, thousands of Ethiopians began arriving in Addis Ababa declaring themselves to be Jewish converts to Christianity – Falash Mura – and asking to immigrate to Israel. Hence, in 1992, Falash Mura with relatives in Israel began migrating. The Falash Mura’s plea instigated a fierce debate in Israel tied to the potential limits of costly social, political, and economic forms of solidarity with people whose Jewishness was in question.15 Were the descendants of apostates still Jews, and how was the state to relate to them? Was their professed “penitence” necessary or efficacious, and how could it be measured in terms meaningful to state bureaucracy?
Following local and international pressure, the Israeli government allowed the Falash Mura to migrate to Israel. They were required to complete a “Return to Judaism” program as part of the process of gaining recognition as Jews in Israel.16 While the government hoped that admitting these Falash Mura would bring the migration from Ethiopia to an end, new waves continued to arrive in Addis Ababa demanding to join their families in Israel and restrictions were imposed on the number allowed to do so. Hence, since 2003, approximately 300 Falash Mura arrive in Israel every month after a conversion process is carried out in Addis Ababa. All gain Israeli citizenship upon arrival. In 2018, the
2.2 Ethiopian Religious Life in Israel: Jews versus “Pentecostal Jews”
Most of the Beta Israel who migrated to Israel before 1992 kept a rather religious Jewish way of life, including sending their children to religious Jewish schools. Most Falash Mura, for fear of being cast out from the Beta Israel communities or denied civil rights they were entitled to as Jews, also kept a rather strict Jewish life. However, a small minority opted to practice a form of religious life termed “Pentecostal Judaism,” or Beta Israel (Ethiopian) Pentecostalism.17 From a theological perspective, this group practices a unique amalgam of Ethiopian Pentecostalism and Messianic Judaism.
Among these Ethiopian Pentecostal Jews, we identified two groups: people who came in the 1980s and early 1990s, and people who came in the Falash Mura waves of migration in the 2000s. The first cohort was culturally fluent, economically secure, and self-confident in claiming their place as Israelis. The second was socially and economically marginalized in Israel. Notwithstanding these differences, all of them practiced the major Jewish rites of passage, for instance, male baby circumcision, alongside participation in Pentecostal church services. Since, in Judaism, circumcision is framed as the entrance of a child into the “covenant of Abraham” and is considered a paradigmatic performance of Jewish religious and social connectivity, the fact that the Ethiopian Pentecostal Jews perform it is a testimony to their bricolage religious identity. Seeman claims that these individuals do not perceive this bricolage as posing any internal conflict; they do not see themselves as having left Judaism, but rather as mediating their Judaism through Christ.18
Obviously, their theological perspective is rejected by all Jewish leaders, and they became outcasts in the eyes of the Ethiopian Jewish leaders. The Pentecostal Jews were seen as opportunists who put the Jewishness of the entire Beta Israel community into doubt, hence threatening the community. As a result, the Beta Israel Pentecostals and the Falash Mura Pentecostals, rather than seeking public recognition as a separate religious community, opted to keep a very low profile.
Ethiopian Pentecostals formed two groups in terms of forms of worship. The first established small prayer fellowships, meeting in members’ homes and celebrating life cycle events together. Their central prayer event was on Saturday mornings, like their Jewish relatives. The elders came to pray dressed in the traditional Ethiopian white attire. Men and women would sit separately, following codes of acceptable conduct in Ethiopia in Jewish and Christian communities. Prayers were conducted in Amharinya and Tigrinya, and the prayer books were in Geez, the ancient sacred language of Ethiopia. Religious texts from both the Old and the New Testament were used. Some of these prayer fellowships became formalized, hence renting spaces for their religious practice. One such church is the Eben Ezra Church in Southern Tel Aviv that has a membership of both Beta Israel Pentecostals and Ethiopian undocumented migrant laborers. Membership in the church has grown in the last decade; today it is estimated that they have 200–300 members. Over the years, Eben Ezra, as well as similar churches, also developed sporadic relations with local and American Messianic Jewish groups.19
The second group consisted of those who joined existing African Pentecostal churches, mainly in and around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Some joined churches established by West African labor migrants and some joined those established later by Eritrean asylum seekers. All the churches accepted these newcomers’ theology, which emphasized their Judaism, claiming it was mediated through Christ. Hence, the Ethiopians were seen as a blessed addition to their congregations and were presented to their members as an expansion of the work of Christ in the Holy Land.
Many of the Beta Israel Pentecostals celebrated Jewish-Israeli holidays together with other Beta Israel, not seeing anything unusual in this combination. When studying these Ethiopian Jewish-Pentecostals, I re-visited my field notes where I had recorded the young Jewish woman’s prayer in Ethiopia that included making the sign of the cross, and my short encounter with an Ethiopian woman in an African Pentecostal Church in Tel Aviv in the early 2000s, who told me she came in the 1980s since her family is Jewish. Both saw my questions about their religious identity and praxis as irrelevant. This was especially clear of the woman living in Israel. Since her male children were circumcised, her children attend Israeli-Jewish schools, she celebrates Jewish/Israeli holidays, and her children enlist in the Israeli Defense Forces – she (and others like her) are in a unique position in the Israeli-Jewish world. For her the fact that she simultaneously celebrated Judaism and Christianity was a clear and coherent version of this world and not conflictual in any way.
During my research, I followed the basic rule of “do no harm,” explicitly discussed by anthropologists,20 being extremely careful not to be seen as threatening these Ethiopians’ legal Israeli status, based on their Jewish identity. Unlike the openness that characterized my original research with Jewish-Ethiopian informants, the ability to collect reliable data for this new study was limited. In spite of my wide net of informants, this was probably the most difficult research I have undertaken, since I knew that if my publication was read by some state officials, it might be used against Ethiopian migrants’ plea for Israeli inclusion and citizenship, which was based on their Jewishness. Therefore, following Seeman,21 I emphasized that many Beta Israel who migrated to Israel did not compartmentalize religion, ethnicity, or national identity, because for them, each identity is highly contingent upon the others, in ways that render such distinctions artificial. Indeed, they all came from Ethiopia to Israel, and became Israeli citizens, and the Pentecostals considered themselves part of the Jewish world, but in a unique Christian way. Although there are only approximately 1,000 Beta Israel Pentecostals their numbers are growing. As I have illustrated, the challenge they pose to the State, to Jewish identity, to Pentecostalism and, moreover, to the study of religious boundaries and categorization, lies in the realm of ideas and cultural and religious taxonomies.
3 Encounter # 2 – Rethinking Borders between Church and Politics, between Theology and Praxis, and between Researcher and Researched
The second encounter happened in 1987 in Nairobi, Kenya. I was a PhD student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My research focused on the relationship between Church and State in Kenya, from the late 1950s till the early 1980s. After reading everything available at the time in Israel and in other university libraries in the West, I went to Kenya to conduct fieldwork that would include visiting churches, interviewing people, and working in local archives. Although I knew no local researcher in person, I had learned about Dr. B.E.22, a lecturer of theology at the University of Nairobi and a leading figure in the Catholic
I called Dr. B.E. and she kindly invited me to her house for dinner. I was warmly greeted by her and her son. After a few minutes, she excused herself so she could finish cooking, and left me with her son. I joyfully opened the colors I had brought for him and we engaged in painting. I noticed that dinner was set for four people. After some time, Dr. B.E. invited us to the table, but one person was missing. I asked: “Are we waiting for your husband?” She looked at me and said: “I’m an unmarried mother.” I felt embarrassed and stupid. After a few minutes of silence, Judith, introduced to me as a relative who helps in the house, joined us for dinner. Dr. B.E. and I became friends; she not only opened research doors for me, but also taught me much about Kenyan churches and Kenyan politics. However, her reply: “I’m an unmarried mother,” taught me more about Kenyan Catholicism than any academic source I read before or after. I realized that there are numerous types of Christianity and Catholicism and other forms of religious pluralism about which I was not aware, and that I needed to be open to learning about them if I wanted my research to make sense. My first visit to Kenya lasted one month.
A year later, I returned with my family, living there for almost five years, during my doctoral and post-doctoral work. My research, based on written sources, oral testimonies, and participant observation, focused on the Anglican Church and aimed to map and understand the complex relationship between Church and State. This, I thought, would be possible through identifying and analyzing the vast terrain of activities in which the churches were involved that were conducted beyond the church, that is, in education, economics, and welfare. Based on Western notions of separation between Church and State, between religious and secular realms, I assumed that the diverse church activities enabled them to expand their influence and to shape politics, although officially churches were not involved in politics.
The late 1980s were very turbulent years in Kenya. The struggles for multi-party elections, human rights, and democratization involved, among other elements, trade unions, church leaders, and women’s groups. However, these activities were illegal, and their participants were accused of seditious actions by President Moi and his party, kanu. At times, churches were one of the few venues in which people could discuss politics with relative safety, as political gatherings could be disguised as religious activities. The atmosphere in Kenya
As a foreign researcher, I had to obtain clearance for my research from the Office of the President. Since my topic was clearly sensitive, I knew my request would be denied and could jeopardize my husband’s work permit and our stay in the country. Moreover, I knew that if I openly discussed my research, I might endanger Kenyans who talked to me, since they could be labeled as conspiring with foreigners. As a result, I talked about my research in more religious and general terms. As a Jew, from Jerusalem, I stressed my keen interest in the local manifestations of Christian religious life. I asked the clerics, and laymen and women that I met, to tell me about their church, its activities, and its role in their lives. After a few months, I asked to join their prayers and any other church-related activities to which they agreed to invite me.
Being a practicing Reform Jew, I was well acquainted with religious rituals within the “House of God.” I regularly attended prayers, women’s league meetings, Bible classes, vocational training, Sunday school, and all the activities to which I was invited. After I introduced myself, almost every conversation started with the question: “Are you Christian?” “No,” I would say. “So what are you?” “I’m Jewish.” Some knew; others were not sure, so the next question would usually be: “Do you believe in Christ?” “No,” I would say, but immediately add, “but I believe in God.” From there the conversations developed in different ways, usually ending with a smile and a sentence expressing the joy they would feel if I accepted Christ. I tried to avoid debates over the differences between Judaism and Christianity, rather emphasizing the similarities and the idea that believers share many common things. However, there were times where my negative reply concerning accepting Christ would upset people and I had to be creative in order to overcome the differences between us.
Slowly, in a similar manner to the steps Agar23 describes in The Professional Stranger, people became used to my presence, to my different, and yet similar, religious affiliation. Hence, my request to access church archives, and speak with people connected to the church was seen as natural in my learning process. Since church seemed to be everywhere – in schools, in clinics, in the field, in the market – I could conduct my research anywhere, while my cover story protected me and my informants, making it possible to continue. Yet, from an ethical standpoint, I was not completely honest with the people I was researching. This issue, sometimes referred to as the “informing dilemma,” is extensively
I traveled the country, and spoke with hundreds of people, mostly women. Some became part of my life; they invited me to their homes and to meet their families and I invited them to my home and to meet mine. For over a year, I made daily visits to several churches, actively participating in religious celebrations of all types. Nearly a year was devoted to reading church documents kept in local rural churches and in the central archives in Nairobi. I read hundreds of church minutes, diocesan reports, and any other written texts I could find. I learned the history and theology of the churches, their financial status, relations with other local churches, and with “mother churches” in Europe. I read religious texts handed out by local clerics, followed TV and radio sermons delivered by leading clerics, and followed the heated debate between state officials and church leaders over contested political issues.
After learning that the clerics from the Central Province were vocally criticizing political policies, I focused my fieldwork in that geographical area. For months I had asked, indirectly and politely, for permission to take part in meetings organized by women in one of the Central Province’s Dioceses. I learned that under the guise of Bible reading meetings, heated – unlicensed – political debates were being conducted and that at some of those meetings, members of the illegal political opposition were present. All my requests were ignored/indirectly rejected.
One day, due to a misunderstanding at home, I had to take my two young children with me to the “field,” to the church in Mt. Kenya. Their presence aroused a joy that I had not experienced before. My request that one young woman watch them while I attended a Bible class was immediately fulfilled with a big smile. At the end of that meeting, while joining the other mothers with my own children for tea, the long-awaited invitation came through. One of them said that since I had trusted them with my children, this proved that
It’s not just those papers he gives out before the sermon. It is much more…how the church takes care of us as people, how it takes care of our children…How it looks into the future and wants it to be better for us, wananchi [common men and women in Kiswahili]…When Bishop speaks about Nabot, Achaab, and the vineyard, we all know who are the corrupt leaders he is thinking of…when he criticizes what is going on in Kenya, he speaks from the Bible…God is everywhere, even in politics.j. kimathi, Mt. Kenya East, June, 1989
The act of bringing my children enabled the women to trust me, to invite me to those secret meetings, to help me better understand things that were going on in deeper layers of existence. I trusted them with my children and they trusted me with their precious assets. Bringing my children to the field was not the outcome of an ethical position or an ideological stand; it was a technical issue. However, unconsciously, it was the result of a basic trust that had developed and had enormous academic and personal ramifications for me. At that moment, I gained the trust of my informants.
Many anthropologists, among them Abramovitz27 and Geertz,28 point to that elusive moment of acceptance, that unclear moment when the outsider gains credit that enables him/her to enter the informants’ previously blocked physical and emotional areas. Bringing my children into the field became a frequent event, creating a new arena of shared motherhood. That act, not described in any qualitative methodologies’ textbook, was a turning point in my research. Re-reading my notes from the field, I realized that bringing my children into the field was an act of breaking the boundaries between the professional and the personal. This, in turn, enabled the church women to break the boundaries between “religious activities” and “political activities,” and let me enter the expanded terrain of religion.
Several feminist researchers have stressed that women researchers should not blur their gender-related identities, including their motherhood, but rather use them, even celebrate them within fieldwork.29 This position challenges the idea of professional neutrality. They assert that when both men and women, anywhere, are visited by researchers, they are always aware of the researcher’s gender. Since both researchers and participants are well aware of gender issues, why should we try to disguise/ignore them? Therefore, exposing parts of the researchers’ identity should enhance trust and intimacy, so crucial for fieldwork. Acts of openness have also brought about negative responses, however, such as those painfully reported by Davis30 who met with anger from women whom she revisited years after researching them, since they perceived her decision not to marry or have children as making her less of a person.
As I studied the significance of belief systems for the believers, the newly exposed venues opened new doors of understanding. I read the religious texts delivered in the sermons in new ways, and I believe that these new readings were closer to the ways local church members comprehended the texts. I eventually published several articles and one book on the multi-dimensional role of the Anglican Church in Kenyan politics and society, discussing how the church was able to penetrate the political arena and challenge accepted boundaries between private and public spheres, between politics and religion.31
In 2009, I returned to the religious texts produced by the leading Anglican clergyman, Bishop Dr. David Gitari, centering my analysis on them. For months I re-read his sermons, posing Talal Asad’s question offered at the end of Genealogies of Religion:32 “Must our critical ethnographies of other traditions in modern nation-states adopt the categories offered by liberal theory? Or can they contribute to the formulation of very different political futures in which other traditions can thrive?” Dissatisfied with attempts to refine “liberal theory,”
In my analysis of Gitari’s work, I found similar modes of thought. Unlike those who claimed that modernity and democracy cannot go hand in hand with religiosity, or who positioned religiosity vis-à-vis secularism and claimed that the first is the mandate of the Church and celebrated within the private sphere and the latter is the mandate of the State and practiced in the public sphere, Gitari34 argued that the quest for modernity has different modalities. The call for democracy can have several manifestations and all can be advocated and constructed by devoted believers, religious leaders, and lay members alike, in different spaces of life.
Interestingly, Gitari, in his sermons, mainly accused the local Kenyan political leadership of adopting this narrow dichotomy understanding of politics versus religion, of public versus private space. Well aware of the political circumstances and narrow personal interest that led the Kenyan regime to adopt this dichotomy, Bishop Gitari called for a re-thinking of these boundaries. His call – echoed by other Kenyan and African intellectuals like Ngugi Wa Thiong’o35 and Achille Mbembe36 – should be understood not only as part of a local struggle for change, but also as part of a larger struggle to de-colonize the minds of his own people.
I tried to avoid constructing the Christianity I was learning and rituals I was observing as realms of merely symbolic activity, unrelated to the instrumental behavior of everyday life, including politics. Hence, the religious discourses I found and analyzed were a mixture of those normatively considered to be religious, that is, sermons, Bible reading, and the actual doings – considered secular – of the church, as part of the religious realm. The analysis was undertaken within the political-social context of Kenya and the post-colonial paradigm. This enabled me to claim that, in Kenya, some of the churches not only assumed leading political roles through a wide range of activities within public and private domains and offered innovative readings of biblical episodes, but also constructed a new language. This language was embedded in biblical
4 Encounter # 3: A White Jewish Citizen among Black, Christian, Illegal Migrant Workers in Israel
The third encounter happened in 2000, while studying churches in Tel Aviv built and run by West African Christian labor migrants. In 1997 I began research on undocumented African labor migrants in Israel, a new phenomenon at the time. My research concentrated on the social and political organizations these migrants had created for themselves and by themselves, focusing on the dozens of African Initiated Churches (aics) they created in the “Holy Land.” For three years, I sat in hundreds of religious sermons, ceremonies, and participated in personal and community celebrations including naming and dedication parties, weddings, and funerals. I was invited to special sessions dedicated to personal testimonies and spiritual healing. I interviewed hundreds of men and women, and had a good network of informants, some of whom became personal friends.
I made my way into the realm of local African migrants, and in particular, to their religious world, by chance. In August 1997, when walking in southern Tel Aviv, I noticed that the woman walking next to me was singing a gospel song to herself. She had an incredible voice. I stopped and said to her: “You have a great voice.” She smiled and thanked me. “Where do you sing?” “In the church.” I asked: “In Jaffa?” (where all the official established churches were located). She smiled and said no. “So where?” She pointed to a nearby building and said: “Here I sing.” And I said: “Where?” “In our church.” I said: “What? There is a church here? I thought that there were only small factories and warehouses.” “You are invited to come on Saturday and hear me sing,” she replied. I came. She was surprised and happy as were the other members of her church. This was the beginning of nearly two decades of research on African migration to Israel, a journey that started in the religious realm. Over time, I became involved with Israeli ngos that assisted migrants in need. The combination of coming through the invitation of a choir member and the fact that I was a local human-rights activist made my entry into the field relatively easy.
Here in Israel, I had to learn about a new Christian arena, outside of the mainstream Christianity of the Holy Land, that had established churches such as the Church of Pentecost, and other, newer ones, like the Resurrection and Living Bread Ministry International, the Charismatic Catholic Church of Tel
Following Bourdieu,37 Geertz,38 and Horton,39 who explored the origins of large cultural constructs – such as religion, race, or nationality – through studying what people do and think in their everyday lives, I too tried to engage in similar work through an intimate ongoing field study that lasted over a decade. I read hundreds of documents produced by church leaders and members of the different churches, participated in countless community and personal gatherings and celebrations, and interviewed hundreds of believers and churchgoers, as well as others.
I studied the Christian faith of my informants within the wider socio-political context of Israel. This period was marked by its strict laws and regulations regarding non-Jewish migration, deportation processes, two wars, and economic crises. The fact that the churches served as enclaves of sanity and islands of dignity and self-respect was evident to me.
4.1 Daily Realities of Labor Migrants in Israel
African labor migrants began arriving in Israel in the late 1980s, becoming part of a larger group of international migrant workers in Israel. However, unlike most of the others, none of the Africans had work permits, and were illegally in the country.40 Nevertheless, within a short time, they managed to build for themselves, and by themselves, an elaborate network of organizations that catered to their social, economic, emotional, religious, and political lives. Living
When I began my research on African migrants in Israel, most studies focused on push and pull factors of migration and issues related to their il/legal status.41 After years of researching African Christianities within Africa, I thought that what was happening in Israel, in the heart of Tel Aviv, was amazing. Within a few years, these Africans established over 60 churches. My first question addressed why they did not attend existing churches and, after that, dozens of others arose.
Day after day, I knocked on the doors of old warehouses in the rundown areas of Tel Aviv, trying to see what was going on there. Who are the people who come to these places and transform them into Houses of God? Within a short time, I was able to map this new African Christian arena. Some of the churches had a handful of members; others had several hundreds. All, however, rented halls, established a band and a choir, and offered Bible classes, women’s meetings, and other social and welfare services. Most migrants came to one of the churches at least once a week; most of them came more often. Keeping up the church was an expensive endeavor, since all expenses were covered by the members. To the best of my knowledge, hardly any church received external funding; on the contrary, many of them supported churches back home. Clearly, the members were emotionally, socially, and financially committed to this project. Once again, I understood the power of religious organizations as institutions that have the monopoly over faith, and offer hope in times of need and despair that are embedded in the ongoing experience of being an undocumented labor migrant.
The Christianity practiced by Africans in Israel was not a new invention, but it was flexible and sensitive to its members’ needs, as well as to local and international circumstances. This flexibility enabled the churches to flourish within a generally tolerant, but nonetheless alien and restrictive climate; to make themselves available and attractive to members of different national, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds and to a younger membership than was usual in
During my first years of research, I attended three to four church-related activities every week, including the main church service on Saturday (the main day of worship, so people would not lose a day of work), weekday prayers, Bible classes, choir rehearsals, mother’s group meetings, and so on. On weekdays, church activities started around 8 in the evening so that people could join after work. At times, these activities ended far past midnight and I knew that most participants had to wake up early to go to work.
I asked Rosie, one of the church leaders, how many times she came to church. “Many…Three, maybe four times.” “Where do you get the energy to come so many times?” I asked.
…I live in a small room, I share the apartment with four other ladies. Every day I clean houses, I go from one dirty place to another…I go on the side of the streets; I try not to attract any attention. I come home dead tired… But if it’s Sunday, we have a Women’s League meeting, if it’s Tuesday I have choir rehearsal…I collect my little energy and go. You know why? Because here I belong. This is mine. Here I pray and get the power to go on…I work, I save, I send back home. They need me…Here in church everybody knows my name, my full name. Some know my family; they know who I am and what I am…For them I’m not just Rosie the house cleaner.field diary Tel Aviv 2001
Rosie’s words reflected the importance of focusing on everyday practices and, at the same time, looking everywhere for different manifestations of their belief system: that is, in their work places, private spheres, and in their dreams, sense of worthiness, and aspirations. This raised crucial dilemmas concerning the boundaries and the power relations between me, the researcher, and the researched people. On the one hand, all my informants were illegal in Israel. Hence, letting me into their churches, homes, and gathering places could have been seen as a potential threat. Moreover, I was an Israeli citizen and could have been perceived as part of the mechanisms that prevented them from gaining legal status. The fact that they let me in was a testimony to my status as a trustworthy person that would not put them into jeopardy. Within the wider
After some time, some of the people I studied became close to me and my family. We visited one another in our homes; I went to their churches and celebrations and they came to mine. The Reform Synagogue in Tel Aviv, where I am an active member, became a hub for inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue between African labor migrants and Israelis. Our house became a place for church community meetings and, at times, a safe zone for members in need.
Following Silverman42 and Wooffitt and Widdicombe,43 to name but a few who stress the advantages embedded in flexible boundaries between the researcher and his/her researched people, I realized that this mode of conduct was one of my main assets in the field. It enabled me to become not only better informed, but less of a stranger and more of an empathic participant. Lerum44 claims that emotional involvement in anthropological research is essential for creating a wide, informed, and critical base of knowledge. Obviously, emotional involvement has its drawbacks, as Clark-Kazak45 points out, especially when the people one studies are marginalized and, perhaps, even illegals. The ethical danger lies in the researcher’s denial of the existing inherent power differences. Several feminist qualitative methodology researchers and others offer tools to minimize these differences and better understand the information gathered mainly by being aware of the gaps, talking openly about them with the interviewees, and constantly applying critical analysis tools and reflexivity.46
In my research, I was constantly trying to figure out what types of churches were built in Israel, and what type of Christianity was being performed. I invested much energy in mapping the churches, trying to put them into the “correct” theological categories. While it was easy to say what they were not, within the world of aics what were they? I used both Anderson’s typology47 and Pobee’s classification48 as my guidelines. Originally, I identified three types of churches within African Initiated Christianity:49 African-Ethiopian churches, Prophet Healing churches (also called Spiritual or Zionist churches), and New Pentecostal churches (sometimes called Charismatic churches). I found that, as in Africa and in other African diasporas, the distinctions between the churches in Israel were not always clear, and some churches did not quite fit any single category.
However, the more I observed and asked, the less I was sure that this typology was accurate, or even relevant. In my diary, I wrote:
Resurrection and Living Bread Ministries International, Tel Aviv, May 4th, 2000.
Morning service. 9:30 am. About 30 people. 20 women. 7 children. Pastor Ampadou is in charge. The choir started with only 5 people, 2 singers. Easy entry into the session. Two Philippine women joined. I don’t know them. They seem to know some people… Singing started… Anna was clearly in pain…She is crying all the time…Members are constantly surrounding her…The music is loud…People are in trance…Anna is spinning fast, she is getting into a trance….3 men and 1 woman are always around
her…She is speaking in tongues…. She is sitting on the floor; her hands are holding her head; she is shouting. Her eyes are closed…the music is very loud…most people have their eyes closed and are praying. Pastor Ampadou is speaking in tongues too (I think)…. He is now raising his hands… calling people to sit down. Anna is calming down… Her friend is helping her rise up…now she is being called by Pastor. She is going. (He’s speaking a mixture of Twi and English)… talking about demons in her body. “Tell them to go out, out, out,” he is shouting… Pastor: “Your family is calling on you to send them more and more money, they don’t know that there is no work here, there is war…Tell them to stop this”…All are shouting… Anna is crying. The pastor is standing near her and shouting: “Out, out, out.” I asked Elizabeth to explain. She told me that Anna’s family has used witchcraft against her because she is not sending money…I asked her to tell me more about it and she refused.
This sermon/prayer meeting was one among many that combined political issues raised during the sermon, trance phenomena, music sequences, healing time, and casting out of demons. I often saw similar events, but also participated in others that were very different in Pentecostal churches. Like New Pentecostal churches worldwide, especially those in Africa, they emphasized the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit and were concerned primarily with the experience of the Holy Spirit and the practice of spiritual gifts. They acknowledged the existence of witches and spirits (ancestral spirits, evil spirits, etc.), part of the traditional African belief system, while classifying them as demonic.
While talking with clergy, I asked for reading materials about their church and about the theological grounds for their work. I kept asking: What kind of church is this? To which line of Christianity do you belong? Is it the same as back home…? Why do you do this and not that? I was totally confused. In an article50 I wrote:
Most of the interviewees termed their church “Pentecostal” while maintaining that its theological affiliation was immaterial. Downplaying dogma, they emphasized narrative theology and proclaimed a pragmatic gospel that addressed practical concerns like sickness, poverty, unemployment, and loneliness. Healing and deliverance were key concepts and practices. The Gospel of Prosperity, which views wealth and material success as signs of God’s love, was both preached and believed.
I remained dissatisfied with my understandings. When I heard that a prominent bishop of one of the churches I was studying was coming to Israel, I asked to meet him. The bishop agreed. I invited him and leaders of the church in Israel to my home, and they happily accepted the invitation. Following some general questions about his church, its global spread, and his thoughts about the situation of his flock in Israel, I went into theology and typology. I asked many questions that had to do with who does what and why within his church. What theological school do they follow? Eventually the bishop banged his hand on the table, looked at me and said: “Galia stop these questions…we don’t read theology, we don’t write theology. We sing theology, we do theology.” At that moment, I realized (again) that so much of my formal training and theological understandings were insufficient, and that this sentence had wisdom and accuracy that went far beyond anything I had encountered before. For me, this encounter was a crucial moment of understanding.
5 Concluding Thoughts
These three encounters may seem to have little in common; they occurred at different times, in different places, religions, social and legal settings, and political contexts. Yet, notwithstanding the importance of specificity and singularity embodied in each encounter, all of them attest to the centrality of religion and religious organizations in people’s lives and to the importance of methodologies chosen for the research. My studies attest to the fact that a range of African Christianities and Judaisms is played out in Israel and in Africa, and that normative definitions of these religious practices do not cover the wide variety of such practices and beliefs. They exemplify how religious organizations fulfill a combination of spiritual and practical needs, serve as loci of warmth and friendship, and engage in a variety of activities within the social, economic, educational, and political spheres. The cases I presented show how the different religious manifestations occupy a particularly significant place in the lives of the believers, for it is through their faith and in their religious-based organizations that they seek and find the legitimacy they were denied in their country’s political/public sphere. In all cases, inherent conflicts and tensions were highlighted as well as the ability of believers to manage these conflicts and integrate them into their daily lives.
Notwithstanding the particularities of each case, in those of the Ethiopian Jewish-Pentecostals and the African Christian labor migrants, faith and religiously related activities function not as avenues to public legitimacy, but as
In all cases, the role of religion was vastly augmented because the people I studied had few alternative anchors of belonging and sources of social, economic, and political support. In all three cases, the religious institutions were careful not to make direct claims challenging the local political institutions, norms, or laws. All of them – except for the Anglican Church during some incidents – kept a low profile and avoided public disputes.
All the cases presented cultivate new understanding of politics through religion and vice versa. As Asad51 clearly showed, Western liberalism – within which most academic research is carried out – does not have the resources to address contemporary social needs, especially when it comes to matters of religious pluralism. In addition, my analysis attests to a complex reality where religion not only assumes leading political roles through a wide range of activities in public and private domains, and offers innovative readings of religious texts, but also constructs a new language: one that is embedded in biblical metaphors, rituals, myths and miracles, as well as within the history of resistance and modernity, and one that is both religious and secular. It uses the accepted divisions while being neither this nor that. It is new and innovative.
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The Law of Return (1950) entitles all Jews in the world to immigrate to Israel. The Law of Citizenship (1950) grants them automatic citizenship upon arrival. Non-Jews, however, have almost no legal avenues to citizenship or even to official temporary resident status.
Anteby-Yemini, “Promised Lands”; Kaplan and Rosen, “Ethiopian Jews.”
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Seeman, One people.
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Seeman, One people.
Sabar, “Challenging religious borders.”
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “Parts Unknown: Undercover Ethnography of the Organs-Trafficking Underworld,” Ethnography 5, no. 1 (2004): 29–73; Elizabeth Wood, “Field Research,” in The Handbook of Comparative Politics, eds. C. Boix and S. Stokes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) 123–129.
Seeman, “Coffee and the Moral Order.”
Since I did not ask permission to include her name, I will refer to her by her initials.
Michael Agar, The Professional Stranger: An Informal Introduction to Ethnography (London: Academic Press, 1996).
Kim V.L. England, “Getting Personal: Reflexivity, Positionality and Feminist Research,” The Professional Geographer 46, no. 1 (1994): 80–89.
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Arendell, “Reflections”; Pnina Mutzafi-Haller, “You have an Authentic Voice: Anthropological Research and the Politics of Representation,” Teoriyah U’bikoret 11 (1997): 81–99.
Dona L. Davis, “Unintended Consequences: My myth of ‘The Return’ in Anthropological Fieldwork,” in When They Read What We Write: The politics of Ethnography, ed. C.B. Brettell, 27–37 (Westport, CN – London: Bergin and Garvey, 1996).
Galia Sabar-Friedman “‘Politics’ and ‘Power’ in the Kenyan Public Discourse: Recent Events,” Canadian Journal ofAfrican Studies 29, no. 3 (1995): 429–453; Galia Sabar-Friedman, “The Power of The Familiar: Everyday Practice in the Anglican Church of Kenya,” Church and State 38 (1996): 377–397; Galia Sabar-Friedman, “Church and State in Kenya, 1986–1992: The Churches’ Involvement in the ‘Game of Change’,” African Affairs 96, no. 382 (1997): 25–52; Galia Sabar, Church , State, and Society in Kenya; From Mediation to Opposition, 1963–1993 (London: Frank Cass, 2002).
Asad, Formation, 306.
Asad, Formation.
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Galia Sabar, “African Christianity in the Jewish State: Adaptation, Accommodation and Legitimisation of Migrant Workers’ Churches: 1990–2003,” Journal of Religion in Africa 34, no. 4 (2004): 407–437.
Ronit Bar-Tzuri, “Foreign workers in Israel,“ in The World of Work in an Era of Economic Change, ed. R. Nathanson (Tel Aviv: Friedrich Ebert Foundation, 1996), 13–34; Adriana Kemp, Rebecca Raijma, Julia Resnik, and Silvina Schammah Gesser, “Contesting the Limits of Political Participation: Latinos and Black African Migrant Workers in Israel,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 23, no. 1 (2000): 94–119.
David Silverman, Doing Qualitative Research: A Practical Handbook (London: Sage, 2000).
Robin Wooffitt and Sue Widdicombe, “Interaction in Interviews,” in Talking and Interaction in Social Research Methods, eds. P. Drew, G. Raymond and D. Weinberg (London: sage, 2006), 28–49.
Kari Lerum, “Subjects of Desire: Academic Armor, Intimate Ethnography and the Production of Intimate Knowledge,” Qualitative Inquiry 7, no. 4 (2001): 481.
Christina Clark-Kazak, “Research as ‘Social Work’ in Kampala? Managing Expectations, Compensation and Relationships in Research with Unassisted, Urban refugees from the drc,” in Emotional and Ethical Challenges for Field Research in Africa: The Story Behind the Findings, eds. S. Thomson, A. Ansoms and J. Murison (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2006), 96–102.
Ruth Behar, “Introduction: Out of Exile,” in Women Writing Culture, eds. R. Behar and D.A. Gordon (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1995), 1–29; Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, “The Discipline and Practice of Qualitative Research,” in Handbook of Qualitative Research, eds. N.K Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publication: 2000); I. Dey, Qualitative Data Analysis: A User-Friendly Guide for Social Scientists (London: Routledge, 1993); Uwe Flick, An Introduction to Qualitative Research (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2006); Lisa Weems, “Unsettling Politics, Locating Ethics: Representations of Reciprocity in Postpositivist Inquiry,” Qualitative Inquiry 12, no. 5 (2006): 994–1011.
Allan Anderson, African Reformation: African Initiated Christianity in the 20th Century (Africa World Press, 2001)
John S. Pobee, Toward an African Theology (Abingdon Press, 1979).
The older terms “African Independent Church” and “African Indigenous Church” have been replaced with “African Initiated Church” or “African Instituted Church,” all using the familiar acronym “aic”, (see Anderson, African Reformation; Pobee, Toward an African Theology).
Sabar, “African Christianity,” 419.
Asad, Formation.