Journey to the Vanished City: The Search for a Lost Tribe of Israel

I so much enjoyed the paperback that I went back to the hardback - there are quite a few differences. Either way it is a wonderful book,

This has been one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. Parfitt traces the origin of the Lemba, a self-described Jewish tribe in South Africa. Although its oral tradition is vague some elements recur persistently: "Our forefathers came from Sena... They came from the North... they built Great Zimbabwe...". Tracing backwards the journey that the Lemba took over the course of many generations, Parfitt travels North from South Africa to Zimbabwe, Malawi and, ultimately all the way to Yemen. Along the way, he encounters proof of the Lemba's passage and demonstrates that their oral tradition is, indeed, correct and they originated in Yemen. Subsequent genetic testing brought further support to Parfitt's conclusion. This is detective work at its best, without the crime.

In 1967 while still a high school student my Sunday School class was shown a documentary about the Falashas of Ethiopia. While I can barely remember details of documentaries that I saw last week, I still vividly recall details from that documentary I saw in 1967. When I saw this book, saw that Parfitt had also written about the Falashas, and this was yet another group of people who believed they held onto an ancient Jewish tradition.To my surprise this book was even better than I expected; I couldn't put it down. Parfitt weaves the oral tradition of the Lemba people, historical scholarship parsed mostly from travel diaries, anthropological observation together into a travel monologue that both reveals a great deal about modern Africa while also tracing the Journey of the Lemba people. Eventually the journey he takes to find out about the Lemba becomes more interesting the the answers he may have found.

I am a great fan of travel adventure stories and rate this book as one of my favorites. Tudor Parfitt seems to be an unusual combination of intellectual and adventurer. Journey....is well written, entertaining and informative. I envy his students back in England as his classes must be the highlight of their college education. How exciting it must have been to be able to prove that the Lemba Tribe's oral tradition was correct. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Africa, travel, cultural anthropology or Jewish studies.

Parfitt starts with a simple question: why do the Lemba tribe of southern Africa believe they are Jews? His research reveals the limits on the transmission of self-knowledge through oral history. He also shows how diverse African culture really is. These are indispensible to understanding civilizations.Westerners tend to assume that our received wisdom scripture is infallible. But its written form must preserve the final state of an early oral tradition. By following the oral memory of the Lemba backwards in time and geography, Parfitt vivdly shows how their tribal memories merge and diverge under the influence of nearby cultures and events. All Lemba regard themselves as Jewish, and say the Hebrew "amen" at the conclusion of prayers, but many of them also recite Moslem formulas in Arabic. So, were they originally Islamic, with Jewish ideas introduced under the recent influence of Christian missionaries? Or the reverse? What do their memories have to tell us about our own traditions?Along the way, he meets chieftans, beaurocrats, and ordinary Africans, all of whom he reveals as distinct personalities. He patiently tracks down clues found in every version of the Lemba histories. As his collection of evidence grows, the mystery enlarges. This is detective anthropology, written stylishly, and with urgency. The Lemba are forgetting their myths and the traditions are vanishing.I highly recommend this book for revealing nuances of African culture and history in a matrix of travel, character, and discovery.