Bani Israël (Children of Israel)

The name Israel originates in the biblical account of the patriarch Jacob. In the encounter described in Genesis 32, Jacob wrestled through the night and received the name Israel, which his descendants would bear.[1] A Jewish educational account gives Israel three interrelated meanings: a people descended from the patriarchs and matriarchs, a people bound by a covenant with God first established with Abraham and renewed at Sinai, and a people connected to the land of Israel.[2]

Jacob's twelve sons — fathered with Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah — are regarded in the biblical tradition as the progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel, collectively called the "children of Israel."[3] The Exodus account records seventy persons descended from Jacob entering Egypt, with Joseph already there.[1] Lists of the twelve tribes vary by context: one set names Jacob's twelve sons, while lists related to land allocation may omit Levi and instead count Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh separately.[4]

The Hebrew phrase benei Yisraʾel — "children of Israel" or "Israelites" — remained a preferred designation for the Jewish people in Jewish religious literature even after the term Yehudi ("Jew") came into use.[5] The word "Jew" itself derives from Judah, one of the twelve tribes.[5] Rabbi Jonathan Sacks links the later generic use of Yehudim to the division of the kingdom and the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom, after which the surviving southern population was associated with Judah.[6] The term "Israelite" is traditionally distinguished from "Israeli," which identifies a citizen or native of the modern State of Israel.[5]

Banī Isrāʾīl is the Qur'an's most frequent designation for Jews.[7] Muslim exegesis understands "Israel" as Jacob, and the expression as recalling Jacob's descendants across the generations.[7] The term lends its name to the 17th chapter of the Qur'an, which the Library of Congress also records under the alternative title "al-Isrāʾ" (The Night Journey).[8] That chapter opens with a reference to God carrying His servant by night from the Holy Mosque to the Further Mosque, a verse that early commentators developed into the account of the Prophet Muhammad's night journey to Jerusalem and his ascent through the seven heavens.[9]

The Qur'an describes the Torah as containing guidance and addresses both wrongdoing and good deeds among the community of Moses.[10] Among the affirming passages is Qur'an 7:159: "Of the people of Moses there is a section who guide and do justice in the light of truth."[10] Qur'an 5:20–21 quotes Moses recalling God's favor to his people and urging them to enter the Holy Land.[10] Sura 2:40 recalls divine favor and a covenant, while Sura 5:12 describes a covenant and twelve chieftains.[11]

The Qur'an employs several distinct expressions where modern readers might expect a single word for "Jews." Banī Isrāʾīl is the most frequent; yahūd, the common modern Arabic word for Jews, appears relatively rarely; al-llaḏīna hādū is sometimes rendered "those who return to God" and sometimes "Jews"; and yahūdiyya, the modern Arabic word for Judaism, does not appear in the Qur'an at all.[7] One analysis notes a hypothesis linking the terms yahūd and al-llaḏīna hādū to the historical rupture between Muhammad and the Jewish communities of Yathrib, but explicitly cautions that any positive-versus-negative valence between these terms and Banī Isrāʾīl does not hold consistently, citing Qur'an 5:70 as a counterexample.[7]

The Qur'anic portrayal is ambivalent: the text affirms belief in God, acknowledges earlier revelations and the Torah, and describes some scriptural communities as righteous, while also criticizing certain beliefs and conduct.[7] Some passages address Jews directly and remind them of a promise to accept God's messages; the verses should also be read in light of the political and social circumstances to which they responded in Medina.[12]

The scope of Banū Isrāʾīl in Islamic usage is not uniform across sources. One reference entry describes the term as generally referring to ancient Israelites from the time of the patriarchs and the Exodus through Jesus and the destruction of the Second Temple, while noting significant exceptions in the Qur'an and its commentaries where it refers to Muhammad's Jewish contemporaries.[13] That same entry observes that Banū Isrāʾīl can sometimes include Christians within its historical scope, and contrasts it with Yahūd, which generally refers to Jews of Muhammad's time or later.[13]

A separate account of Qur'anic terminology cautions that translating the various expressions as a generic "Jews" can blur meaningful distinctions between them.[10] Translations may not render the original language precisely, and some passages require surrounding context to be understood accurately.[11]

A distinct community bearing a cognate name is the Bene Israel of India — "Sons of Israel" — historically concentrated around Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Karachi.[14] The community adopted Marathi and local customs while maintaining Jewish practices.[14] Its communal tradition traces its origin to Jewish shipwreck survivors who reached the Indian coast, a story preserved for up to two thousand years but presented as tradition rather than established historical fact.[14][15]

The community was formerly known by outsiders as Shanvar Telis ("Saturday Oil-Pressers"), a reference to its oil-pressing trade and Sabbath observance, but its members preferred the name Bene Israel — a preference the Jewish Encyclopedia attributes in part to the favorable use of the corresponding term in the Qur'an.[16] A 2016 Tel Aviv University genomic study examined eighteen Bene Israel community members and found both Jewish and Indian ancestry, with participants resembling local Indian populations while forming a genetically distinct group.[15]

A remote settlement in eastern Senegal near the Mali border also bears the name Bani Israel. Reports describe it as a Muslim community of approximately 4,000 residents.[17][18] Village president Dougoutigo Fadiga has described the community as descended from two clans, Sylla and Drame, whose ancestors were Egyptian Jews.[17] He recounted a migration tradition in which the ancestors left Egypt to escape persecution, traveled through Somalia and Nigeria — where the two families separated roughly 1,000 years ago — and eventually established branches in West Africa, including Senegal.[17] Fadiga also said that an ancestor named Jacob planted a kapok tree when the community first settled there.[17] Knowledge of the claimed Jewish origins has reportedly been passed down orally.[18]

Fadiga has stated that residents practice Islam and do not seek to become Jewish, while also saying they do not conceal what they describe as their background.[17] He suggested that earlier ancestors may have concealed Jewish heritage from their children to avoid pressure to practice Judaism in a Muslim environment.[19] Residents have been reported to prefer marrying within the community and with members of related villages.[17]

Former Israeli ambassador Gideon Behar visited the settlement and told Israel's Foreign Ministry that residents had reportedly removed "Israel" from their village name on passports to avoid difficulties during the hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.[19] Behar thought there might be an element of truth in the community's tradition, but noted that residents were not seeking Israeli citizenship or claiming Jewish identity.[17] A Ynetnews report stated that villagers did not cooperate when Behar asked about their origins.[19]

The ancestry claims of the Senegalese Bani Israel community are not established by independent evidence, and the Times of Israel describes them as difficult to verify.[17] Senegalese writer Abdoul Kader Taslimanka, author of a book about the community, has argued that the name Bani Israel has nothing to do with Jews and instead derives from the title of the corresponding Qur'anic chapter.[17] An Israeli government advisory committee report records the view of former Israeli ambassador Professor Moshe Liba that a broader popular Senegalese theory of Jewish descent has "no basis in facts," though his assessment addressed a general theory rather than this specific settlement.[20] The community's Jewish-origin account has also not been universally accepted within Senegal itself.[17]

Published accounts of the community's migration tradition differ in detail: one report describes a route from Egypt through Somalia and Nigeria, while another gives a briefer account of westward movement from the Horn of Africa.[17][19] Broader West African Jewish history provides context: Jewish merchants had established businesses in Timbuktu by at least the fourteenth century, with later arrivals from Spain, Portugal, and Morocco, and a continuous Jewish presence in the region reportedly lasted until 1943.[17] That regional context, however, does not establish the specific ancestry the community claims.