Four American Jews Visit The Igbos In Abuja

Posted by Remy Ilona | 10 years ago | 6,237 times



Four American Jews Visit The Igbos In Abuja





Barrister Remy Ilona



For much of last month and this month groups of Igbos resident in Abuja played host to four American Jews; Lior David Shragg, an ethnomusicologist, working and studying at the University of Arizona, Shai Afsai, who is the Abuja/Nigeria representative of the U.S based Jewish non governmental organization Kulanu Inc’. Lawyer and Rabbi Barry Dolinger who heads a Jewish synagogue in Rhode Island, U.S.A, and his linguist wife Naomi.


Lior came to study the music of the Igbo Jewish communities in Abuja. The rabbi who is the bespectacled one and his wife came to return a visit paid to his community last year by two Igbos: Obadiah Agbai of Item, Abia State, a retired geologist who worked with the FCDA, and Pinchas Azuka Ogbukaa, a businessman from Abala Uno, Delta State. Shai, the hefty guy came as the Kulanu representative. Kulanu partly sponsored the trip by the rabbi, and his wife.


In Abuja this group visited many groups of the Igbo people such as the Jewish communities formed by Igbos, His Excellency former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu of Abia state, and others too numerous to mention.



The group interacted intensively with the Igbos. They wanted to know more about the famed connections between the Igbo people and the Jews. While talking with this writer who is the Kulanu Inc liaison in Nigeria and who published ‘The Igbos And Israel: An Inter-cultural Study of the Largest Jewish Diaspora’,in the U.S.A, the rabbi expressed that it would be necessary for a linguist to begin to study the connections between the Igbo and Hebrew languages which they found to be fascinating.



They and the Igbos who have started the ‘Plant For The Growth of Israel Synagogue’ took the photographs when they visited the community in Kuje Abuja.


The full story is on the way.


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