Angels of the Apocalypse
Angels of the Apocalypse is the second full-length album by Timo Tolkki's Finnish metal opera project Avalon, released on May 16, 2014 in Europe and four days later in North America.
It is the second part of the trilogy created by Tolkki, written as a prequel to the previous album "The Land of New Hope".
As with the previous effort, several heavy metal singers were invited to play the characters of the story of the album, with female vocalist Elize Ryd of Amaranthe reprising her role and Floor Jansen (Nightwish, ReVamp) playing the main character. The rest of the cast includes Fabio Lione (Rhapsody of Fire, Angra), David DeFeis (Virgin Steele), Simone Simons (Epica), Caterina Nix (solo Chilean singer who is having her debut album produced by Timo Tolkki) and Zachary Stevens (ex-Savatage, Circle II Circle).
Background and recording.
The album started to be composed in August 2013 in Greece, to where Timo travelled to seek inspiration.
In October 2013, Timo Tolkki launched a news website for the project in which he announced the album, which was provisionally titled "Avalon II". Tolkki also announced he would be working with former Stratovarius bandmates Tuomo Lassila (drums) and Antti Ikonen (keyboards).
In late January, Tolkki revealed the name of the album and the remaining singers. Timo also announced that there will be a contest for guitar and keyboard players, with the winners getting a chance to perform a solo with him in one of the songs.
Once again, the artwork was created by French artist Stanis W. Decker.
Timo stated he created some songs with a specific singer in mind. The title-track will clock around 10:00. He also described the music of the album as "darker and heavier" than its predecessor, which was necessary due to the "Apocalyptic scenes described in the lyrics".
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The Black Light Bacchanalia
The Black Light Bacchanalia is the twelfth album by New York power metal group Virgin Steele. It was released via SPV/Steamhammer on October 22, 2010 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, on October 25, 2010 in the rest of Europe, and on November 9, 2010 in the U.S.
The album is issued in CD format, limited edition digipak (with a bonus CD) and 3,000 copies worldwide boxset (with triple LP vinyl with a book, CD and extensive packaging).
With a duration of over 11 minutes, "To Crown Them with Halos (Parts 1 & 2)" was the longest track Virgin Steele had ever recorded until it was surpassed by the 13-minute "The Ritual of Descent" from their 2023 album "The Passion of Dionysus".
Track listing.
All music and lyrics by David DeFeis
Reception.
<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />It is a long album...close to 80 minutes. The album (to be really brief) concerns the reversal of all things. Once conquered by invading cultures, older Pagan deities become the demons from the new religion. The Black Light Bacchanalia is a reversal of the sacred sexual customs, and the final desecration of the 'Goddess Principle,' switching from matrilineal descent to patrilineal descent, with the rise of the idea of the Mountain-Fire God...And it also has to do with ancient fears such as the fear of the sun not rising...Lyrically it is a kind of continuation of the story I told on the last album...Musically it is quite something else...
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David DeFeis
American heavy metal singer
David DeFeis (born January 4, 1961) is an American singer, songwriter and producer. He is the main composer, leader and sole constant member of the heavy metal band Virgin Steele.
Biography.
DeFeis comes from a theatrical family: his father is a Shakespearian actor who runs the theatre company "The Arena Players Theatre" while his sister Doreen is a gifted opera singer who performs all over Europe.
A big fan of European classical music, at 9–10 years old he was introduced to rock music by hearing the band Stalk, with his brother Damon (on organ and piano) and his sister Danae (on vocals), playing in the basement beneath his room. Damon DeFeis was later in the band Creation with future Kiss drummer Eric Carr, and died in the Gulliver's nightclub fire in 1974.
He began piano lessons at the age of eight. By age eleven, he began his career with Long Island's local heavy metal band Phoenix.
At 16 years old, he met for the first time his future partner Edward Pursino when DeFeis's band at the time, Mountain Ash, was auditioning for a gig at the high school dance. Mountain Ash was mainly a Black Sabbath cover band and, after the performance of the song "War Pigs", Pursino came over and introduced himself to DeFeis.
At the beginning of the 1980s, together with Jack Starr and Joey Ayvazian, he started the first line-up of the band Virgin Steele. They debuted in 1982 with the song "Children of the Storm" included in the compilation "U.S. Metal Vol. II".
In 1985, the guitarist Edward Pursino replaced Starr. Among the years, in their longtime relationship in Virgin Steele, DeFeis and Pursino released a lot of heavy metal classics such as the albums: "Noble Savage", "Invictus", "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part I", "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part II".
DeFeis collects swords: his collection includes more than 20 items. In studio, sometimes he uses his swords to create particular effects for the Virgin Steele songs, and during the concerts he usually burns a sword on stage.
Voice and musical style.
DeFeis is a classically trained pianist, with a bachelor's degree in composition from S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook. As vocalist, he is self-taught, possessing around four octaves and a four notes: E2-B6. He said he was very much influenced by guitar players like Jimmy Page, Brian May and Eddie Van Halen, because he wanted to do with his voice what they did with their guitars. He is also influenced by rock singers like Freddie Mercury, Robert Plant, David Coverdale, Ronnie James Dio and Ian Gillan.
The major part of the lyrics DeFeis writes are mythological, dealing with subjects from especially Greek, Sumerian and Christian mythology. All of them are based on real life in some form or another.
Metal opera and theatre.
Between the end of the 1990s and the 2000s (decade), he wrote music for actors based on the Oresteia and the Greek myths related by Aeschylus. According with German artists Walter Weyers and Martina Krawulsky, with the name "Klytaimnestra": "The House of Atreus" Metal Opera (musically available on the Virgin Steele's albums "The House of Atreus Act I", "The House of Atreus Act II") was performed on stage in Germany theaters by Landestheater Production.
The premiere of "Klytaimnestra" in Memmingen, June 5, 1999, has been the first ever regular musical theatre show based on heavy metal concepts.
After "Klytaimnestra" success, David DeFeis & Landestheater Production extracted a second metal opera musical, named "The Rebels", from the previous Virgin Steele's albums of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell trilogy ("The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part I", "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part II", "Invictus").
In 2003, the same team released a third Metal Opera, named "Lilith", based on the material of album "Visions of Eden". "Visions of Eden" was later on published in CD in 2006.
Producer.
DeFeis owns his personal recording studio called: "The Hammer of Zeus" (sometimes also called "The Wrecking Ball Of Thor").
Virgin Steele's albums are produced by DeFeis.
He also produced albums released by other artists such as: "Out of the Darkness" and "No Turning Back" by Jack Starr, "Nightmare Theatre" by Exorcist, "Stay Ugly" by Piledriver, "The Sign of the Jackal" by Damien Thorn, "Sin Will Find You Out" by Original Sin.
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Bacchanalia
Roman cults of the wine god and seer Bacchus
The Bacchanalia were unofficial, privately funded popular Roman festivals of Bacchus, based on various ecstatic elements of the Greek Dionysia. They were almost certainly associated with Rome's native cult of Liber, and probably arrived in Rome itself around 200 BC. Like all mystery religions of the ancient world, very little is known of their rites. They seem to have been popular and well-organised throughout the central and southern Italian peninsula.
Livy, writing some 200 years after the event, offers a scandalized and extremely colourful account of the Bacchanalia, with frenzied rites, sexually violent initiations of both sexes, all ages and all social classes; he represents the cult as a murderous instrument of conspiracy against the state. Livy claims that seven thousand cult leaders and followers were arrested, and that most were executed. Livy believed the Bacchanalia scandal to be one of several indications of Rome's inexorable moral decay. Modern scholars take a skeptical approach to Livy's allegations.
The cult was not banned. Senatorial legislation to reform the Bacchanalia in 186 BC attempted to control their size, organisation, and priesthoods, under threat of the death penalty. This may have been motivated less by the kind of lurid and dramatic rumours that Livy describes than by the Senate's determination to assert its civil, moral and religious authority over Rome and its allies, after the prolonged social, political and military crisis of the Second Punic War (218–201 BC). The reformed Bacchanalia rites may have been merged with the Liberalia festival. Bacchus, Liber and Dionysus became virtually interchangeable from the late Republican era (133 BC and onward), and their mystery cults persisted well into the Principate of the Roman Imperial era.
Background and development.
The Bacchanalia were Roman festivals of Bacchus, the Greco-Roman god of wine, freedom, intoxication and ecstasy. They were based on the Greek Dionysia and the Dionysian Mysteries, and probably arrived in Rome c. 200 BC via the Greek colonies in southern Italy, and from Etruria, Rome's northern neighbour. Tenney Frank suggests that some form of Dionysian worship may have been introduced to Rome by captives from the formerly Greek city of Tarentum in southern Italy, captured from the Carthaginians in 209 BC. Like all mystery cults, the Bacchanalia were held in strict privacy, and initiates were bound to secrecy; what little is known of the cult and its rites derives from Greek and Roman literature, plays, statuary and paintings. One of the earliest sources is Greek playwright Euripides's "The Bacchae", which won the Athenian Dionysia competition in 405 BC. The Bacchanalia may have had mystery elements and public elements; religious dramas which were performed in public, and private rites performed by acolytes and priests of the deity.
Livy, the principal Roman literary source on the early Bacchanalia, names Paculla Annia, a Campanian priestess of Bacchus, as the founder of a private, unofficial Bacchanalia cult in Rome, based at the grove of Stimula, where the western slope of the Aventine Hill descends to the Tiber. The Aventine was an ethnically mixed district, strongly identified with Rome's plebeian class and the ingress of new and foreign cults. The wine and fertility god Liber Pater ("The Free Father"), divine patron of plebeian rights, freedoms and augury, had a long-established official cult in the nearby temple he shared with Ceres and Libera. Most Roman sources describe him as Rome's equivalent to Dionysus and Bacchus, both of whom were sometimes titled "Eleutherios" (liberator).
Bacchanalia scandal.
Livy claims the earliest version of the Bacchanalia was open to women only, and held on three days of the year, in daylight; while in nearby Etruria, north of Rome, a "Greek of humble origin, versed in sacrifices and soothsaying" had established a nocturnal version, added wine and feasting to the mix, and thus acquired an enthusiastic following of women and men. The nocturnal version of the Bacchanalia involved wine-drinking to excess drunkenness and the free mingling of the sexes and classes; the rites also involved loud music.
According to Livy's account, Publius Aebutius of the gens Aebutia was warned against the cult and its excesses by a courtesan, Hispala Faecenia. The Senate appointed Spurius Postumius Albinus and Quintus Marcius Philippus to investigate the cult. The inquiry claimed that under the cover of religion, priests and acolytes broke civil, moral and religious laws with impunity; weak-minded individuals could be persuaded to commit ritual or political murders undetected, at the behest of those who secretly controlled the cult, right in the heart of Rome. Livy claims that the cult held particular appeal to those of uneducated and fickle mind ("levitas animi"), such as the young, plebeians, women and "men most like women", and that most of the city's population was involved, even some members of Rome's highest class.
Reform.
The Legislation of 186 survives in the form of an inscription. Known as the "Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus", it brought the Bacchanalia under control of the Senate, and thus of the Roman pontifices. The existing cult chapters and colleges were dismantled. Congregations of mixed gender were permitted, but were limited to no more than two men and three women, and any Bacchanalia gathering must seek prior permission from the Senate. Men were forbidden Bacchus's priesthood.
Despite their official suppression, illicit Bacchanals persisted covertly for many years, particularly in Southern Italy, their likely place of origin. The reformed, officially approved Bacchic cults would have borne little resemblance to the earlier crowded, ecstatic and uninhibited Bacchanalia. Similar attrition may have been imposed on Liber's cults; his perceived or actual association with the Bacchanalia may be the reason that his Liberalia "ludi" of 17 March were temporarily moved to Ceres' Cerealia of 12–19 April. They were restored when the ferocity of reaction eased, but in approved, much modified form.
Interpretations.
Livy's account of the Bacchanalia has been described as "tendentious to say the least". As a political and social conservative, he had a deep mistrust of mystery religions, and probably understood any form of Bacchanalia as a sign of Roman degeneracy. Though most of his "dramatis personae" are known historical figures, their speeches are implausibly circumstantial, and his characters, tropes and plot developments draw more from Roman satyr plays than from the Bacchanalia themselves. Paculla Annia is unlikely to have introduced all the changes he attributes to her.
For Livy, the cult's greatest offences arose from indiscriminate mixing of freeborn Romans of both sexes and all ages at night, a time when passions are easily aroused, especially given wine and unrestricted opportunity. Women at these gatherings, he says, outnumbered men; and his account has the consul Postumius stress the overwhelmingly female nature and organization of the cult. Yet the "Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus" itself allows women to outnumber men, by three to two, at any permitted gathering; and it expressly forbids Bacchic priesthoods to men. Livy's own narrative names all but one of the offending cult leaders as male, which seems to eliminate any perceived "conspiracy of women". Gender seems to have motivated the Senate's response no more than any other cause.
Livy's consistent negative description of the cult's Greek origins and low moral character—not even Bacchus is exempt from this judgment—may have sought to justify its suppression as a sudden "infiltration of too many Greek elements into Roman worship". The cult had, however, been active in Rome for many years before its supposedly abrupt discovery, and Bacchic and Dionysiac cults had been part of life in Roman and allied, Greek-speaking Italy for many decades. Greek cults and Greek influences had been part of Rome's religious life since the 5th century BC, and Rome's acquisition of foreign cults—Greek or otherwise—through the alliance, treaty, capture or conquest was a cornerstone of its foreign policy, and an essential feature of its eventual hegemony. While the pace of such introductions had gathered rapidly during the 3rd century, contemporary evidence of the Bacchanalia reform betrays no anti-Greek or anti-foreign policy or sentiment.
Gruen interprets the "Senatus consultum" as a piece of "Realpolitik", a display of the Roman senate's authority to its Italian allies after the Second Punic War, and a reminder to any Roman politician, populist and would-be generalissimo that the Senate's collective authority trumped all personal ambition. Nevertheless, the extent and ferocity of the official response to the Bacchanalia was probably unprecedented, and betrays some form of moral panic on the part of Roman authorities; Burkert finds "nothing comparable in religious history before the persecutions of Christians".
Modern usage.
In modern usage, "bacchanalia" can mean any uninhibited or drunken revelry. The bacchanal in art describes any small group of revelers, often including satyrs and perhaps Bacchus or Silenus, usually in a landscape setting. The subject was popular from the Renaissance onwards, and usually included a large degree of nudity among the figures.
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African Hebrew Israelites in Israel
African-American claimants of Israelite descent
The African Hebrew Israelites in Israel comprise a new religious movement that is now mainly based in Dimona. Officially self-identifying as the African Hebrew Israelite Nation of Jerusalem, they originate from African American Ben Carter who later Renamed Himself to Ben Ammi Ben-Israel who immigrated to the State of Israel in the late 1960s (Around 1966). The community claims Israelite descent in line with the philosophy of the Black Hebrew Israelites, who believe that Black people in the United States are descended from the Twelve Tribes of Israel and thus rightfully belong to the Land of Israel. As of 2012[ [update]], their total population stood at about 5,000 people.
Believing that they were Jews by blood (i.e., through the Hebrews or Israelites), the community first settled in Liberia, where they were not welcomed by the Liberian government. Later moving to Israel, they were recognized as non-Jews by the Israeli government and by Israeli religious authorities. A number of the African Hebrew Israelites were illegal immigrants in Israel and were thus deported, prompting allegations from the community that the Israeli government's conduct against them was racist. Since 2004, however, some African Hebrew Israelites have been granted permanent residency and have enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces.
Many of the community's beliefs were developed on the basis of revelations experienced by African-American steel worker Ben Carter, who claimed that the angel Gabriel had called on him to return his people—the "true" Children of Israel—to what is often referred to as the Holy Land in the Abrahamic religions. Born a Baptist Christian, Carter later changed his name to Ben Ammi Ben-Israel () and began rallying other African Americans to his cause. He rejected Judaism and Christianity, but asserted that the Jewish Bible was still divine and claimed that Abraham and Moses were Black people, while also perceiving Jesus as one of many messiahs. Some of Carter's statements and the community's beliefs have led to accusations of antisemitism against them: he alleged that there was an international Jewish conspiracy through which the Israeli government maintained control over the Holy Land. Claiming that Black people were the "true inheritors of Israel" suffering under "Euro-gentile dominion" in the United States, Carter stated that Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the Holy Land had a false tradition of being descended from Isaac and Ishmael, respectively, and were instead descended from European Crusaders.
Origins.
The group was founded in Chicago by former steel worker Ben Carter (1939–2014, also known as Ben Ammi Ben-Israel). In his early twenties Carter was given the name Ben Ammi by Rabbi Reuben of the Chicago Congregation of Ethiopian Hebrews (Not Beta Israel). Ben Ammi was working in an airline factory when he first discovered the Black Hebrew movement and its philosophy. According to Ben Ammi, in 1966, at the age of 27, he had a vision in which the Archangel Gabriel called him to take his people, African Americans, back to the Holy Land of Israel.
Ammi and his followers draw on a long tradition in black American culture which is based on the belief that black Americans are the descendants of the Ancient Israelites (Ammi cites Charles Harrison Mason of Mississippi, William Saunders Crowdy of Virginia, Bishop William Boome of Tennessee, Charles Price Jones of Mississippi, and Elder Saint Samuel of Tennessee as early exponents of black descent from the Israelites).
They are also influenced by the teachings of the Jamaican proponent of Black nationalism, Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), and the black civil rights milieu in 1960s America, including figures such as the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. From these figures and their teachings, they have incorporated elements of black separatism as well as the doctrine which advocates the repatriation of the African Diaspora to its ancestral lands in a "return to Africa", of which they consider Israel to be a part. To them, Israel is located in Northeast Africa instead of West Asia.
The inspiration to move to Israel was born from several components. One component was the hardship which black community members faced within America as well as within American culture, especially in Chicago in the 1960s, at the height of the Civil rights movement. Another component was the community's willingness to form a confident and positive African identity, as opposed to the damaging identity which the group felt it carried in America. The last component was this spout of religious and spiritual connection to a long-standing culture, an ancient history and a Promised Land. An additional factor may have been the expectation of a coming apocalyptic war in which America would be destroyed.
Settlement in Liberia (1967–1969).
Ben Ammi and 350 of his followers first settled in Liberia in 1967. There, they built a community which adhered to the "laws of righteousness". Prince Rakhamim, who was a community leader at that time, described what living in Liberia did for the community:
We chose to stay there about two and a half years in order to get rid of the foolishness of America before making way to the land of Israel. To make a person born again. To die from the hell we came out of, to get rid of it—to learn to get rid of the hate... to get rid of our bitterness... Liberia was always conceived as the place where we would learn to be righteous. Those of us who wanted to do right shedded off the hate and came home to Israel.
Status in Israel.
It is unclear whether Israel was always the end-goal for the community, or whether Ben Ammi received another vision in 1969, when the community was in Liberia, telling him to take the community to its real promised land: Israel. The African Hebrew Israelite community believes that this ambiguity does not lessen its desire to establish a home in Israel. The group aimed to immigrate to Israel under the Israeli Law of Return, which states that all Jews who emigrate to Israel will be granted citizenship. However, in order to qualify for citizenship under the Law of Return, a person must be born a Jew, or he or she must be the child or grandchild of a Jew, or he or she must have converted to Judaism, and he or she must not be an active member of another religion.
Because Ben Ammi and his followers did not meet this requirement, they did not qualify for Israeli citizenship. This deterrent did not stop them from moving to Israel. In 1969, the group began to move to Israel by using temporary visas. Most Black Hebrews entered Israel on tourist visas and they overstayed their visas by living in Israel as illegal immigrants.
Initially, the African Hebrew Israelites asserted that they were the only rightful heirs of the Land of Israel. They refused to convert to Judaism and they also asserted that most Israeli Jews were not the descendants of the ancient Israelites. By the late 1980s, the group tempered their beliefs. They came to see Israel as a nation of many cultures, races, and religions.
Members of the group continued to arrive and settle in the desert town of Dimona. For two decades, their population continued to grow through natural increase and illegal immigration. Throughout the 1970s, tensions between the group and the government grew as the group faced low employment, inadequate housing, and attempted deportations, while the government considered its members illegal aliens. Ben Ammi accused the government of practicing racism and he also accused it of occupying the holy land, he did this by claiming that "The greatest conspiracy ever conceived in the minds of men was the creation of a National Homeland for Jewish People."
In 1973, the International League for the Rights of Man rejected the group's claims, stating that the group made no attempt to comply with the citizenship laws of Israel. In 1981, a six-person Black Americans to Support Israel Committee delegation assessed all aspects of the treatment of the community and concluded that racism was not the cause of its problems. Although the delegation's leader Bayard Rustin called Ben Ammi "a dictator" without "the same moral standards as democratic leaders", the other members of the delegation disassociated themselves from Rustin's accusation.
They are generally not considered Jews in Israel. The Israeli government especially in the past refused to grant the group citizenship, while occasionally pursuing deportation.
In May 1990, the group was granted tourist status and visas that permitted its members to work. In 1992, the Congressional Black Caucus of the United States Congress intervened, leading to the signing of an agreement which stated that the Black Hebrews would be granted temporary residency status if they did not receive new members. At the end of 2003, the group was granted permanent residency status by the Israeli Interior Ministry. It is believed that in 2009, Elyakim Ben-Israel became the first Black Hebrew to receive Israeli citizenship without converting to Judaism or marrying an Israeli. The Israeli government said that more Black Hebrews may be granted citizenship.
In 2004, Uriyahu Butler became the first member of the community to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces. The IDF agreed to accommodate some of the group's religious requirements, especially its dietary requirements.
Today, young men and to a lesser degree young women from the African Hebrew community of Jerusalem serve in the IDF, and they have entered international sporting events and academic competitions under the Israeli flag, as well as having represented Israel twice in the Eurovision song contest.
Way of life.
The group maintains a vegan diet, citing Genesis 1:29, "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." They appear to have become vegan in the early 1970s, although some members were vegetarian prior. While they value non-violence, the primary motive for their veganism appears to be health-based: mirroring a Rabbinic tradition, they argue that meat-eating is linked to humanity's fallen state, and must be overcome to attain righteousness. They practice abstinence from alcohol, other than the naturally fermented wine which they make themselves, as well as abstinence from both illegal and pharmaceutical drugs, so as to stay within the "cycles of life".
The group grows much of its own food and its members are authorized to be organic growers by the Israel Bio-Organic Agricultural Association.
Members wear only clothing made from natural fibers, which are sewn by members of the community, and all must bear blue thread and fringes as mandated in the Bible (Deut.22:11-12, Num.15:37–40). Men wear a form of kippah (head-covering) and beards.
The group practices "polygyny", meaning that a man can marry several wives (up to six). Within the community this is termed "Divine Marriage", being based on Biblical examples such as King David. Polygyny is not required, constituting approximately 37% of marriages in 1992.
Beliefs.
The group believes that the ancient Israelites are the ancestors of black Americans. It objects to the use of the term 'Jew' based on its belief that black Americans are descended from all 12 tribes, not just the Tribe of Judah. Even though they reject the religious forms of both Judaism and Christianity, the Black Hebrews maintain the belief in the divine inspiration of the Tanakh, and they also value the New Testament as a record of the words of Yeshuah, one man in an ongoing line of 'messiahs' who were sent by God to keep the people of Israel in the ways of righteousness.
The core of the group's lifestyle is the Tanakh. Ben Ammi claims that "the Law and the Prophets...are the light; they are the essence of what is required to set man on the path and show him the way back to his Maker." However, the group rejects the traditions of Rabbinic Judaism, including the Talmud, based on its belief that they are inauthentic as opposed to the Hebrew religion.
Ben Ammi claims that black Africans are the victims of "a cruel plot to control us, an international religious plot that came about as a result of Blacks disobeying the law and commandments of God." The enslavement of black Africans is seen as punishment for straying from the righteous path and he cites an "oral tradition that our people were cursed by God for violating His laws, statutes and commandments." He links this oral tradition to Deuteronomy 28:68, which speaks of a second captivity in a second Egypt which the Israelites would be carried to in ships. The "Euro-gentile" establishment hatched "a deliberate scheme to conceal the truth that ancient Hebrews were Black" and it also "perpetuated the white Jesus deception".
In an attempt to overcome the history of slavery in the United States, Ammi argues that it is essential to "reexamine and redefine all things...we must question every facet of existence under Euro-gentile dominion." The ability to name and classify the word and social concept which Ammi calls "The Power to Define", which is in the wrong hands, is "one of the greatest weapons that can be used to control men and nations," is the key to salvation from past oppression. Thus, Ammi claims that true freedom can never be found within a society that is intrinsically corrupt but can only be attained by establishing a new society based solely on the laws of God: "No government, no party or system can bring salvation unto the Children of God...Their salvation is only of God."
Based on the Hebrew word "eved" (עבד, meaning 'slave' or 'servant'), Ammi has argued that the distinction between work and worship is false – in fact, the activity we pursue with our lives is both our work and our worship. Therefore, "every job that does not enhance God as creator is the worship of the devil. There is no neutral position."
However, Ammi's concern is not solely for his own people but for the whole of humanity – the role of the Black Hebrew Israelite community is to serve as "a light unto the gentiles": "Black Americans...were initially chosen by God to guide the world out of its state of ignorance." Recently the group has also begun to claim that Hebrew status is not solely from genealogy, but can be conferred by spiritual behaviour.
Ammi does not believe in the existence of an afterlife; he prefers to focus on life on earth: "Heaven is the reality of the righteous as they live, not a place for spirits after death."
As well as claiming that Jews are not the descendants of the ancient Israelites, they also claim that the members of the Palestinian Arab population are not the descendants of Ishmael: "Our studies and experience have shown that the present-day inhabitants of this region are not the original people of the land. The majority of those today defined by modern historians as Arabs, are veritably the descendents of European Crusaders."
The group believes that the value system of a society is seen through its culture. According to one source, it is therefore "important that our clothing, music, food and language reflect the glory and the higher standards of Yah (God)."
Accusations of antisemitism.
On several occasions, Ben Ammi and the Black Hebrew community have been accused of anti-semitism. As well as denying the Israelite heritage of world Jewry and its claim to the land of Israel, the stalemate which existed between the Black Hebrew community and Israel in the late 1970s led to heightened tensions and according to "The Jerusalem Post", "Ben Ammi mounted a worldwide public relations offensive against the government that dripped with anti-semitism. Community newspapers compared the Israelis to Nazis and they also included images of money-grubbing Jews and other stereotypical images". However, relations improved during the 1990s as the Black Hebrew community distanced itself from the ineffective extremist stance which it had taken up in earlier years. Since then, the group has become a valuable part of both the Dimona community and the wider Israeli society and it has also pursued integration in ways such as volunteering to serve in the IDF.
In 2011, the Georgia General Assembly passed a resolution which "recognize(s) the Hebrew Israelite Community for its service to the nation of Israel and commends their 40 years of history." Citing the fact that the Dimona-based community is "one of the largest urban kibbutzim in Israel" and "has attracted visitors from around the world because of its healthy lifestyle and organic agriculture," the Assembly concluded and declared that "the culture and tradition of the Hebrew Israelite Community is a rich one, and the Community's numerous contributions are worthy of recognition."
In response to concerns about anti-Jewish prejudice and stereotyping that arose during its formative years in Israel, community leader Prince Immanuel Ben Yehuda simply states that they have "grown up." "As you look back over 30 years you realize that this has grown from the ground up. We've been here 30 years, that means we've grown up together... Our children have gone to schools (and) played in games together so there is another kind of relationship that has grown up."
In August 2008, the Village of Peace received a visit from Israel's president, Shimon Peres, who told the Hebrew Israelites "Your community is beloved in Israel...You give the country happiness and song and hope for a better world"
And in March, 2012, during the community's annual "New World Passover" celebration in honor of their historic "exodus" from America in 1967, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed appreciation for "the cooperative society that is working towards the inclusion of the Hebrew Israelite community in Israeli society at large," and he also declared that their experience in the land is "an integral part of the Israeli experience."
The Black Hebrews still express concerns as to the direction in which Israel is heading. During an interview with "Haaretz", a popular Israeli newspaper, Ben Ammi stated that "We must understand that peace will never come, and true freedom will never come, by way of politicians... There's a major difference between the peace that was promised by the Creator and the peace that is being sought after by politicians." "We do give advice to politicians; because these individuals who are seen as leaders, if they would hear a message based upon truth, then it would influence that which they say they seek after – and that is peace. But without truth, and without spirituality, there can never be any genuine peace achieved in those lands."
Institutions.
The AHIJ’s institutions include:
The School of the Prophets, a higher education academy, incorporating an international branch, The Institute of Regenerative