Noah Tamarkin will give a job talk entitled, "Genetic Ancestry and Indigenous Black Jewish Belonging in South Africa." Abstract: Lemba South Africans are internationally famous for having Jewish DNA, but their politics of belonging are geared less towards a Jewish diaspora than one might expect. As black South Africans, the Lemba have been subject to colonial and apartheid racial and ethnic definitions that dictated where they could live, under what conditions, and how they could identify. Now, as an unrecognized ethnic group in multicultural post-apartheid South Africa, they seek recognition as Africans while their international fame emphasizes their origins elsewhere. This talk examines the shifting politics of race, religion, and science in South Africa through analyses of Lemba genetic ancestry studies and Lemba participation in a post-apartheid reburial of thirteenth century remains at the World Heritage Site Mapungubwe in South Africa’s Limpopo Province. It poses the question: how could Lemba people view their blood as Jewish and their bones as African? This talk draws from my in-progress book manuscript Jewish Blood, African Bones: The Afterlives of Genetic Ancestry, which is based on sixteen months of ethnographic and archival research in South Africa conducted between 2004 and 2013.
