2024-2025 Forum on Race and Religion

Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Noah Tamarkin, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Science & Technology Studies
Cornell University

Wednesday, April 30, 2025
3:30 PM
Location: Rocky 003
Free and open to all

Lecture title: Black Jewish Indigeneity and the Remapping of Jewish Histories and Futures

Abstract: This talk considers how Jewishness and race converge. It builds on my book, Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa (Duke University Press, 2020). The book traces how a group of black South Africans known as the Lemba gave new meanings to late 1980s and 1990s genetic studies that aimed to demonstrate their links to Jews. This talk shows how Lemba Jewishness, and the decision between geneticists and Lemba people to locate that Jewishness in Lemba bodies, provides new ways to think about Jews, race, place, and belonging. I argue that Lemba Jewishness provides openings through which to rethink and ultimately remap Jewish histories and futures.

 

See Also Focus on Race: Upcoming Religion Courses