Ben Ammi Ben-Israel

Born Ben Carter in Chicago, Ben Ammi Ben-Israel grew up in a Baptist household in the city’s public-housing projects.[3] His grandparents told him that the family’s roots were in Israel, helping awaken his interest in African American Hebrew traditions.[3] A coworker also introduced him to the idea that he descended from the biblical Israelites.[4] Before becoming a religious leader, he worked as a bus driver and foundry worker and, at times, as a truck driver.[3][5]

Carter studied Old Testament scriptures while working and spent time at Chicago’s Abeta Israel Hebrew Cultural Center.[3] He began attending meetings of the Original Hebrew Israelite Nation in 1960 and established himself as a leader during the decade.[5] In 1962, he received ordination within the group he had joined and took the name Ben Ami Carter.[5] He subsequently separated from that circle and organized the Original African Hebrew Israelite Nation of Jerusalem in Chicago.[5] His congregation taught that the biblical Hebrews were Black and that Israel was their homeland.[6]

His accounts of revelation became central to his religious authority.[2][3] While employed at a Chicago foundry, he experienced the realization that he was the Messiah, a conviction he later expressed directly in recounting his spiritual development.[2] He also reported that, after many evenings spent praying about the future of Black Americans, an angel appeared to him in February 1966 and told him that he would lead Black people back to the Promised Land by 1977.[3] He identified the angel as Gabriel and understood the message as an instruction to bring his community to the Land of Israel.[1]

Ben-Israel recalled initially doubting that he was the right person for that responsibility, saying that he thought “the angel did not have the right address” and that others were more qualified.[3] Nevertheless, the vision supplied a direction for the migration he subsequently organized.[3] He appointed 30 disciples, and by 1967 his leadership had produced a community prepared to leave Chicago for a new life abroad.[7]

In 1967, Ben-Israel persuaded several hundred relatives and followers to leave the United States for Liberia, the first stage of a migration ultimately directed toward Israel.[2][3] Estimates place the original group at approximately 350 to 400 people.[3][8] Followers sold their belongings before departing, committing themselves to a project understood as spiritual purification after centuries of slavery and racism.[2] Ben-Israel’s outlook linked departure from America with religious renewal; he described the United States as “a land of chastisement” for his people.[3]

The Liberian settlement consisted of a village built in the jungle, with followers living in makeshift huts and tents.[2][3] The group remained there for roughly two to two and a half years under difficult conditions.[3][9] Some members died, while many others abandoned the undertaking and returned to the United States.[9] Nearly two-thirds of the original migrants returned, leaving a smaller body committed to continuing to Israel.[3] By 1969, one account places the remaining community at 138 people.[9]

The decision to continue also drew encouragement from words spoken by Martin Luther King Jr. shortly before his assassination.[2] Ben-Israel visited Israel in 1968, preceding the community’s settlement there.[5] On December 21, 1969, a group of 39 members arrived at Lydda Airport, seeking immigrant status under the Law of Return and land on which to settle.[5] Initially admitted as tourists, they established themselves in Dimona in the Negev.[5] The first settlers occupied an abandoned absorption center.[3]

Ben-Israel remained temporarily in Liberia to attend to outstanding matters and arrived with another group in March 1970, joining his family and followers in Dimona.[2] He said that after reaching Israel he received the additional name Nasi Hashalom, meaning “The Prince of Peace.”[2] His followers also knew him as Abba Gadol, or “Great Father,” and regarded him as a messianic leader.[10] The community became officially known as the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem and was also widely called the Black Hebrews.[2]

Shortly after arriving, Ben-Israel expressed his hopes for relations with the surrounding society: “We only really want one thing: that you will understand that we love the Land, want to be good citizens, to be the friends of all people.”[2] The early reception included warm interactions with Dimona’s Indian and North African Jewish residents, alongside suspicion and opposition toward the newcomers’ origins and religious practices.[2][5] Authorities initially supplied an unusual combination of tourist visas and benefits normally available to immigrants, including education, public housing, employment assistance, and medical coverage.[2]

Ben-Israel headed the World African Hebrew Israelite Community and taught that Black people in the Western Hemisphere descended from the original Hebrews and were heirs and stewards of Israel.[3] He traced the community’s history from ancient Israel through West Africa and the transatlantic slave trade to the United States.[1] His program of “repatriating” to Israel and Africa joined a religious account of ancestry to a practical project of collective relocation and communal development.[3]

Within the community’s own understanding, its members descended from the tribe of Judah, whose spiritual responsibility included gathering the other tribes.[8] Ben-Israel promoted Torah observance and described a righteous life in terms of love of God and fellow human beings, adherence to the Old Testament and Ten Commandments, and rejection of some traditions associated with the Mishnah and Gemara.[3][5] His teachings therefore extended beyond a claim of ancestry to prescriptions for everyday behavior, work, food, and social relationships.[8]

In his book God the Black Man and Truth, he wrote: “The true worship of God is an entire way of life, a continuous action, from the meal you eat in the morning, to the job you work on.”[8] He advocated abstention from meat, alcohol, and drugs, while emphasizing health and communal self-sufficiency.[3][1] The community developed a strictly vegan diet, which members connected to a verse in Genesis, and adopted clothing made from natural fabrics.[1] Ben-Israel also set standards concerning fasting, food, and regular exercise.[10]

Religious authority and daily administration were organized through several layers of leadership.[8][4] Ben-Israel chaired the Holy Council, a spiritual leadership body composed of 12 men known as princes.[8] A further group of 12 ministers oversaw daily operations.[8] Another description of the organization at the time of his death identifies 12 advisers called princes, 13 priests with religious and spiritual responsibilities, ministers responsible for management and logistics, and members supervising day-to-day activities.[4]

The center of community life in Dimona became known as the Village of Peace, or Neve Shalom, an urban kibbutz where most members lived.[2][11] Its institutions gave practical expression to Ben-Israel’s emphasis on a comprehensive religious way of life.[2][8] Members developed vegan restaurants and factories producing vegan food and natural-fiber clothing.[2] By the time of his death, the community operated vegan restaurants in both Tel Aviv and Dimona, and its observances included fasting every Saturday.[4]

Ben-Israel led a decades-long effort to obtain recognition and secure residence for his followers in Israel.[1] Many members had entered on tourist visas and remained after those visas expired, while their requests for status under the Law of Return encountered opposition.[1][11] As the community grew, authorities barred further entry and examined whether its members qualified for citizenship under that law.[11] The resulting uncertainty affected both people already living in Dimona and additional followers attempting to join them.[2]

During the 1970s and 1980s, some arriving members were deported.[2] In 1977, three people tore up their airline tickets and United States passports in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent their removal.[2] An Egyptian official offered to settle the community in Egypt, which was then officially at war with Israel, but Ben-Israel did not intend to continue the migration there or elsewhere.[2] He urged his followers to remain patient through the bureaucratic and cultural difficulties they faced in Israel.[2]

A confrontation in 1986 followed the arrest of community members working as migrant laborers who faced deportation.[10] Rather than proceed with a planned march on Jerusalem, Ben-Israel announced that the community would fast; members continued the fast for five days.[10] A community spokesman subsequently remembered the episode as a turning point in relations with the government and media.[10] Ben-Israel later characterized earlier difficulties with the authorities as “simply a case of failure to communicate.”[3]

A series of arrangements subsequently moved the community toward more secure residence.[1][2] In 1990, Interior Minister Aryeh Deri established guidelines that ultimately enabled the vast majority of members to remain in Israel permanently.[2] An agreement that year provided longer visas after members agreed to restore their United States citizenship, with future Israeli citizenship to be considered individually.[3] Advocacy by Black organizations and Jewish groups also contributed to the search for a solution.[11]

Temporary residency followed in the early 1990s.[8] Accounts differ on when permanent-resident status was secured: one profile says Ben-Israel and his followers had received it by 1994, while later accounts place the community-wide grant in 2003.[3][8] The first community member received Israeli citizenship in 2009.[8] Ben-Israel himself became an Israeli citizen in 2013, roughly a year and a half before his death, at a special ceremony involving Gideon Sa’ar.[4] These developments enabled the community’s continued presence in Dimona while its members increasingly participated in Israeli society.[2]

Ben-Israel died in December 2014 at the age of 75, after receiving treatment for an illness at Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva.[12][4] A community spokeswoman did not disclose the cause of his death.[1] The community declared a day of mourning and canceled school, marking the loss of the leader whom followers had called their Great Father.[4] At the time, the community numbered approximately 2,700 people, most of whom lived in Dimona.[4]

His memorial service demonstrated the respect the community had acquired locally after its difficult early years.[12] Dimona’s Orthodox chief rabbi delivered a eulogy, and the mayor promised to advance plans for a neighborhood bearing Ben-Israel’s name.[12] Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein called the community a meaningful addition to Israel’s diversity.[12] The participation of local religious and civic leaders contrasted with the suspicion encountered by the first settlers.[12]

Ben-Israel’s teachings continued in the Village of Peace after his death, with veganism, communal institutions, and an emphasis on healthy living remaining prominent features of the community.[2] Its food businesses and clothing production sustained practices that he had linked to religious commitment and self-sufficiency.[2][1] The community remained concentrated in Dimona while becoming increasingly integrated into Israeli society and culture.[2]

Most current community members were born in Israel, although aspects of 1960s Black American culture remained evident in their English speech, music, and dance.[2] Their cultural life thus retained elements of the Chicago environment from which Ben-Israel’s movement emerged while developing through generations raised in Israel.[2] Community members represented Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1999, when Eden performed “Yom Huledet/Happy Birthday,” and again in 2006, when Eddie Butler performed “Together We Are One.”[2]

Some members also entered the Israel Defense Forces.[2] Their service incorporated accommodations for the community’s religious practices: members wore boots made of synthetic materials to observe its prohibition on leather.[2] Together with participation in national cultural events and the establishment of community businesses, military service became part of the community’s increasing integration without abandoning the distinctive way of life Ben-Israel had promoted.[2]

The principal disputes surrounding Ben-Israel concerned religious identity, eligibility under the Law of Return, and the community’s early relationship with Israel.[1][5] Its account of biblical ancestry was presented as part of the community’s religious self-understanding.[8] Sources have also described that ancestry claim differently: a community-linked account identifies the tribe of Judah and rejects the commonly reported ten-lost-tribes attribution.[8] The Chief Rabbinate did not recognize members as Jewish, while members refused conversion on the grounds that they were already Jewish.[3][5] Rabbinical authorities rejected eligibility under the Law of Return, and a court rejected the community’s immigration claim under that law while recommending that those already present be allowed to remain.[5]

Opposition sometimes became sharply public.[2] In 1971, Meir Kahane made his first public appearance in Israel in Dimona and accused the community of insulting the honor of the Jewish people.[2] The American Jewish Committee characterizes the community’s 1977 campaign as antisemitic and reports that it included accusations against Jews in American publications and calls to halt United States aid to Israel and boycott Jewish-owned businesses and Jewish political candidates.[11] Those confrontations formed part of the strained relationship that preceded later agreements on residence and the community’s growing integration.[11][12]

The implications of that accommodation have also attracted scholarly criticism.[13] A 2021 peer-reviewed chapter argues that granting residence as an exception to the Law of Return did little to broaden Jewish inclusiveness or alter prevailing Israeli attitudes toward blackness.[13] This interpretation distinguishes the practical achievement of residence rights from broader questions about recognition and belonging raised by the community’s decades-long struggle.[13]