Leader of African Hebrew Israelites dies The spiritual leader of the African Hebrew Israelites died Saturday in the Israeli town where he brought his followers four decades ago, a spokeswoman for the polygamous vegan group said Sunday. Ben Ammi Ben Israel died of an undisclosed cause at age 75, the group said. He was born Ben Carter in Chicago in 1939. He maintained that some black Americans were descendants of the ancient biblical tribe of Judah. He said they migrated to West Africa after the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and were eventually sold as slaves to the U.S. In 1966, he had a vision that the angel Gabriel told him to return to the holy land, a spokeswoman said. So he gathered his few hundred followers and led them to Liberia, the West African republic settled by freed slaves in the 19th Century. They moved to Israel in 1969 and settled in Dimona, a town in the southern Negev desert. Israel didn’t know what to make of the group, which follows a lifestyle it says is based on the Torah and Ben Israel’s teachings. At first, they were met with skepticism, but over time, the 6,000 members, known in Israel as the “Black Hebrews,” became widely accepted.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 20:18:22 +0000
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