AFRICAN-AMERICANA.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

"Juifs noirs US" - The Commandment Keepers of Harlem. A strongly immersive group of images recording the activities of Rabbi Wentworth A. Matthew's Commandment Keepers, an African-American Jewish community in and around their synagogue at Mount Morris Park West. The photographs bear many stylistic similarities to those in Lawrence N. Shustak's rare portfolio Black Jews, but there are no direct matches. We have been able to trace just one reproduced online.Born in St Kitts, Wentworth Arthur Matthew (1892-1973) immigrated into the United States in 1913 and, deeply impressed by the Jewish communities he encountered, founded the Commandment Keepers Congregation of the Living God in Harlem. Based on the belief that the Ethiopian people represented one of the lost tribes of Israel, and that the biblical patriarchs were Black, Matthew established a form of worship based quite closely on Jewish law, including the strict observance of the rules of Shabbat and Kashrut, but with some concessions to Afro-Caribbean and African-American practices. At the Ethiopian Hebrew Rabbinical College which he established in 1925, now the Israelite Rabbinical Academy, he trained Black rabbis, many who set up similar communities across America. In 1962, he moved his headquarters to the former mansion of Arm and Hammer baking soda magnate John Dwight at 1 West 123rd St., Mount Morris Park. His attempts to gain acceptance from the Jewish religious establishment failed, and he twice attempted to become a

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.