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Jews and Judaism in African History. By Richard Hull Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2009. Pp. xxi, 282; maps, photographs, bibliography, index. $68.95 cloth, $26.95 paper.
Evidence of trade with ancient Egypt shows that Jews have been actively engaged in Africa for more than 5,000 years. Given this long and multifarious involvement, the fact that the book under review is the first overview of the topic is both shocking and exciting. The volume developed from a course the author teaches regularly at New York University on "Jews and Judaism in Africa since Antiquity," and consolidates a wealth of historical information concerning Jews' involvements across the continent. The broad scope of Hull's gaze in both time and space is one great strength of the book. Few historians nowadays would contemplate tackling 5,000 years of history across a vast continent- but the underdeveloped scholarship on Jews in Africa invites such an ambitious undertaking. As such, the book should quickly find its way to both scholars and students seeking an overview of the topic.
The six chapters organize around crosscutting regions and time periods: Jews in North Africa (5,000 BCE-7th century; 7'"-I?* centuries; 18""-2O* centuries), West and Central Africa (15MS"1 centuries), South Africa (lS^O"1 centuries), and Central and Eastern Africa (19""-2O111 centuries). As the sweep of these chapters imply, Hull has read widely on diverse places and eras, thus he includes a plethora of intriguing and stereotypechallenging data. For example, Hull documents Jews proselytizing others (contra the popular image that Jews have tended to keep to themselves and have avoided missionizing); he records Jews as effective soldiers, even mercenaries (contra the popular image of Jews as intellectuals and traders); unlike most histories of Africa, Hull gives the two tiny but historically significant islands of Sao Tomé and Principe their due; and he writes of Jews serving as advisors to African rulers at key points in their mutual encounters. Sephardim (Jews with known ancestry in Iberia) occupy center stage in much of Hull's narrative, providing a welcome corrective to the Ashkenazi-centric perspective (emphasizing northern and eastern European origins) taken by many U.S. and European scholars of Jewish history; Hull also explores ties between these two Jewish groups that reveal them as less distinct than many assume.
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