The desire to rediscover a certain specificity in the African Jew is branded today as an alienated dialectic of the search for recognition by the Other.
Here, it is as if the word Judaism automatically changes its meaning as soon as it ceases to apply to Europe or America and also to Africa. On this monism of Jewish essence escaping space and time there is a supposed unanimity in the production of this “mens africana”.
The Jewish subject therefore lazily takes refuge behind the group’s thinking in the face of the concept of African Judaism. However, this Judeo-African project enters into a highly humanizing perspective because the affirmation of ourselves corroborates the openness to our own cultural traditions, coupled with openness to the other because of its close kinship with Jewish thought.
Although we must distinguish between the appropriation of these Western Jewish forces and the use necessarily adapted to African realities that is imposed on us.
Ownership does not work as a magic “recipe” that you just have to have and all of a sudden everything changes. It is important not only to master the “recipe” but also the mechanisms of constitution of this recipe and its applicability to Negro-African realities.
There is no question of blind submission and / or assimilation of our “Jewish Being” through the use of these copy and paste for ends neither intended nor thought. On the contrary, it is an original appropriation, by means of an active consciousness; which is a sign of freedom.
This therefore requires an active Jewish identity that is put to the test in a search for self as part of a project aimed at transcending the diversity of Jewish customs.
Mens Judea Africana
