Black Rabbis Past and Present

Rabbi Arnold J. Ford
Rabbi Levi Ben Levy
Rabbi W.A. Matthew
Rabbi Yisrael

Rabbi Yirmeyahu Yisrael (June 23rd1892 - December 3rd 1973), Rabbi and educator, is believed to have been born in St. Mary's, St. Kitts, in the British West Indies, the son of Joseph Matthew and Frances M. Cornelius. Matthew gave seemingly contradictory accounts of his ancestry that put his place of birth in such places as Ethiopia, Ghana, and Lagos, Nigeria. Some of those lingering discrepancies were partially clarified when Matthew explained that his father, a cobbler from Lagos, was the son of an Ethiopian Jew, a cantor who sang their traditional liturgies near the ancient Ethiopian capital of Gondar. Matthew's father then married a Christian woman in Lagos and they gave their son, Wentworth, the Hebrew name Yoseh ben Moshe ben Yehuda, also given as Moshea Ben David. His father died when he was a small boy and his mother took him to live in St. Kitts, where she had relatives who had been slaves on the island (Ottley, 143).

Rabbi Yisrael graduated from the Ethiopian Rabbinical College, a private rabbinic institution founded by Rabbi Matthew in 1925, and was ordained in 1940. According to Rabbi Hailu Paris, Rabbi Yisrael was very intelligent, energetic, and ambitious. Within a few year of his ordination, he felt that he was ready to start his own congregation, one where he could implement changes to the community's Judaic tradition that would bring its liturgy further inline with those of white Orthodox Jews while maintaining the strongly held belief that the original Jews were black people. For several months individuals met in his home on seventh avenue before acquiring space for their new congregation, Kohol Beth B'nai Yisroel, Inc., in the fall of 1945. Their synagogue was first located above a tailor shop and below a meeting hall for the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) at 204 Lenox Avenue, just a few blocks from Matthew's similarly situated congregation. The fact that approximately fifty members of Commandment Keepers eventually left to join Kohol or actively supported it further added to the tension and sense of rivalry that slowly estranged Matthew from his most dynamic student of that period. The following invitation to the dedication ceremonies of Kohol on 25 November 1945 was addressed to the UNIA Division 100 and was found in the UNIA collection at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

The program for the dedication ceremonies indicates that they opened with Rabbi Ford's original composition "Sine on Eternal Light," they then sang Psalm 122. Bro. Philip Evelyn presented the key to the synagogue to Rabbi Wilkins followed by Pslam 84. Other notable features include the singing of "They that trust in the Lord," "Now Thank We All Our God" and "Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken." They marched around the synagogue seven times with the Torah which had been donated by Eudora Paris and had a ceremonial lighting of the "Perpetual Light / Nir Tamed." The prayers that were said included the Kaddish by Rabbi L. Samuels, the Shema, and the evening liturgy. An address was given by Rabbi E.J. McCleod, who would later vie with Yisrael for control of the congregation. It is also significant that the ceremonies included the singing of the national anthems of >America and that of Ethiopia.

For almost ten years the new congregation grew steadily but a rift gradually developed between the old guard, best represented by Rabbi McLeod and the new guard, represented by Rabbi Yisrael. The minutes of a meeting that took place on 1 July 1951, which is located in the Kohol Beth B'nai Yisrael Collection SCM95-27 /MG 575, reveals that a primary area of contention related to the content of their liturgy, particularly concerning songs that were popular in the black Christian traditions of America and the Caribbean and the nationalistic songs composed by Rabbi Ford. Rabbi Wilkins is quoted as referring to the "unfitness for our service of some of the numbers we sing." It seems that Rabbi Yisrael and a large core of supports were becoming uncomfortable singing songs that were strongly identified with the black Church, even though none of the songs they used referred to Jesus and most were drawn from the Old Testament Bible images that characterize Negro spirituals. It is also likely that many of Rabbi Ford's nationalistic songs—particularly those that referred to Ethiopia—were becoming passé by the 1950s; even members of the Paris and Piper families who attempted to emigrate to Ethiopia in the 1930s had become somewhat disillusioned. The songs, prayers, and customs that Rabbi Yisrael wanted to replace aspects of the older tradition were often chants, hymns, and practices that were popular in white Orthodox synagogues.

A split occurred shortly before 2 May 1954 because on that date a meeting was called. The minutes from this meeting refer to "cruel actions" taken by Rabbi Wilkins that were "out of place." It also indicates that Rabbi Wilkins "has discontinued his service as Rabbi; he is demanding $2,000 and 2 Torahs and 50% of the Temple books." The congregation continued under the leadership of Rabbi McLeod for several more years. In January 1957 overtures were made by Rabbi Abel Respes who founded Temple Adat Beyt Moshe in Philadelphia in 1951 (the congregation later moved to Elwood, New Jersey in 1962, chose to live communally, and underwent a formal conversion to Judaism in 1971).² Rabbi Respes attempted to get Kohol to pursue new efforts to integrate with white Jews. Rabbi C. Moses, who founded Mt. Horeb congregation in the Bronx 1945, was present at this meeting and was troubled by Rabbi Respes reputation for soliciting white Jews for financial support and Moses expressed grave concerns about how receptive white Jews would be to them. Sister Paris cautioned the group that "white Jewry has controversy within itself;" this remark most likely refers to the deep theological division between the Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative branches of American Judaism. Joining white Jews would require taking sides with one of the main divisions.³

Rabbi Yisrael's second congregation, B'nai Adath Kol Beth Yisroel, was located in Harlem at 4 West 121^st Street and was incorporated on 1 May 1954. Mrs. Myrtle Pilgrim was elected Secretary of the congregation and Victor A. George was among the first ten charter members. Unlike Kohol, B'nai Adath would attract newer, younger followers who did not have prior affiliations with older black Jewish congregations. Later in the year, the congregation moved to modest accommodations at 131 Patchen Avenue. The congregation experienced rapid growth during the 1960s, growing to several hundred members. Many of the new adherents were attracted to Judaism because of the new wave of black consciousness that, like the Garveyment of the 1930s, stressed discovering the true identity of black people. Around the mid 1960s, B'nai Adath took possession of a huge synagogue building at 1006 Green Avenue after the dwindling Orthodox community that built the edifice around the turn of the century could no longer sustain it. With the capacity of seating several hundred worshipers, B'nai Adath became the largest congregation founded by one of Rabbi Matthew's students.

During the 1970s, B'nai Adath served as the principal meeting place for a group of black rabbis that included Rabbi Yisrael's peers in Rabbi Woods and Moses, but also a third generation of Rabbi Matthew's students that included Rabbi Y. Yahonatan (J. Williams), Rabbi Levi Ben Levy (L. McKethan), and Rabbi Paris, who had, in fact, been Bar Mitzvahed by Rabbi Yisrael in 1947. In 1971 this group organized themselves into the Israelite Board of Rabbis (IBR) and in 1973, the same year in which Rabbi Matthew died, the IBR renamed their alma mater, the Ethiopian Hebrew Rabbinical College, to become the Israelite Rabbinical Academy. Rabbi Yisrael was undoubtedly surprised and disappointed when the body elected him to the post of vice president and chose the much younger Rabbi Levy to be their president. Rabbi Levy has recently acquired a large synagogue at 730 Willoughby Avenue in Brooklyn to become the home of Beth Shalom. For the remainder of the decade, Rabbi Yisrael remained a supporter of the IBR and encouraged the men who would later succeed him at B'nai Adath to enroll in the Israelite Rabbinical Academy. They were: Rabbi K.Z. Yeshurun, Rabbi Amasiah Yehudah, Rabbi Betzallel Ben Yehudah, and Rabbi Cadmiel Ben Levy.⁵ Rabbi Yisrael was a world traveler who sought out black Jews in Israel, Ethiopia, and various countries in West Africa. Rabbi Gershom, leader of the Abayudaya, reports that Rabbi Yisrael left a lasting impression on the black Jews or Uganda during one of his early trips. Following Rabbi Yisrael's retirement in the early 1980s, Rabbi Yeshurun become the spiritual leader of B'nai Adath. Rabbi Yisrael and his wife Cora retired and spent most of their remaining years in the 1980s traveling and living abroad in the Virgin Islands.

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