Lemba
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The Lemba or Lembaa are a tribe of people in southern Africa. Although they speak Bantu languages similar to their neighbours, they have specific religious practices similar to those in Judaism, and a tradition of being a migrant people with clues pointing to an origin in the Middle East or North Africa.
They have restrictions on intermarriage with non-Lemba, with it being particularly difficult for male non-Lemba to become part of the tribe. The presence of a disproportionate number of particular polymorphisms on the Y chromosome known as the Cohen modal haplotype suggests an ancestral link to the Kohanim or priests, a distinct subsection of Jews. Also they have a large percent of genes often found in non-Arab Semites. For example, in one of the Lemba clans fifty-two percent of the members had the Cohen modal haplotype.
See also
External links
- "Y chromosomes traveling south" (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10677325&dopt=Abstract) (abstract of a genetic paper on relationship between Jews and Lemba)
- "Webpage discussing the Lemba" (http://www.haruth.com/JewsLemba.html)(Shows the route the Lemba believe they took from Israel.)de:Lemba