The island of Madagascar has a small Jewish population, but historically it has not been a significant center for Jewish settlement. Nevertheless, an enduring origin myth across numerous Malagasy ethnic groups suggests that the island's inhabitants descended from ancient Jews, and thus that the modern Malagasy and Jewish peoples share a racial affinity. This belief, termed the "Malagasy secret", is so widespread that some Malagasy refer to the island's people as the (Malagasy Jewish Diaspora). As a result, Jewish symbols, paraphernalia, and teachings have been integrated into the religious practices of certain Malagasy communities. The island's small rabbinic Jewish population is outnumbered by numerous mystical groups identifying as Jewish or Israelite and practicing syncretic combinations of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and traditional ancestor worship and animism. These include the roughly 2,000 members of the "approximate[ly]... dozens" of Messianic Jewish congregations in Madagascar, which incorporate Judaic elements into Christian belief.
Similar notions of Madagascar's supposed Israelite roots persisted in European accounts of the island until the early 20th century, and may have influenced a Nazi German plan to relocate European Jews to Madagascar.
Madagascar's small Jewish community faced challenges during the Vichy regime, which implemented antisemitic laws affecting the few Jews on the island. In the 21st century, some indigenous Malagasy communities informally identified with Jews and Judaism have adopted rabbinic Judaism, studying the Torah and Talmud across three small congregations and undergoing Orthodox conversion in the 2010s. The unified rabbinic Jewish community situated near Antananarivo practices a Sephardic liturgy and refers to its ethnic division within Judaism as Madagascar Sepharad.
Theories of Jewish origin of Malagasy people The "Malagasy secret"
There is a widespread, centuries-old belief in Madagascar that Malagasy people are descended from Jews, with "probably millions" of people in Madagascar claiming genealogical origins in ancient Israel. This belief is termed the "Malagasy secret", and is so common that some Malagasy refer to their people(s) as the (Malagasy Jewish Diaspora).Devir, Natan. "Origins and Motivations of Madagascar's Normative Jewish Movement." Becoming Jewish (2016): 49 The origin myths, which vary across clans, often include ancestors arriving at the shores of Madagascar wearing white and bearing "red zebu", a localized adaptation of the biblical red heifer tradition. Katherine Quanbeck records an oral testimony from a man of the Tavaratra clan, from Sandravinany, of his people's ancestors who...
Further belief holds that Madagascar has been settled by Jews since ancient times, and that the island was associated with ancient Ophir.Parfitt, Tudor (2002) The Lost Tribes of Israel: the History of a Myth. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson p.203. These same legends assert that the rosewood used in the construction of the Temple of Solomon came from the lowland forests of Madagascar.
Descent from members of this Solomonic fleet is prominently claimed by the Merina and Betsileo peoples. Betsileo legend associated with a site called Ivolamena describes two Betsileo ancestors, Antos and Cathy, sent by Solomon to Madagascar to look for gold and precious stones.
The Merina royal line has often claimed to descend from an ancient wave of Israelite migration that arrived via Asia in Madagascar, after being exiled by the Neo-Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar. Antemoro people claim Moses as their forebearer. Sakalava and Antandroy people explain certain taboos within their respective cultures as originating with ancient Israelite ancestors. Some Malagasy theories of Jewish provenance suggest ancestral origin in one or more of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, most commonly Gad, Issachar, Dan, and Asher. Another narrative linking ancient Hebrews to Madagascar asserts that Madagascar was the site of the Garden of Eden (with various island rivers around the Malagasy settlement of Mananzara cited as the true Biblical Pishon), and that Noah's Ark departed from Madagascar at the time of the flood. One Antemoro legend recounts that the Islamic prophet Mahomet had five sons who all became kings in Arabia: Abraham, Noah, Joseph, Moses, and Jesus, the last four of them having fathered Tsimeto, Kazimambo, Anakara, and Raminia.
Edith Bruder describes an oral testimony from the archives of Katherine Quanbeck, in which, "after several meetings," a young Sevohitse man "cautiously mentioned the existence of a place from where he came, , which means 'the headquarters of the Jews,' near Ambovombe, Madagascar. He commented, 'We marry only within our clan. No one likes to come to our town. People do not like us. We have to hide the fact that we are Jewish.'"
Similar "crypto-Jewish" legends exist in neighboring Comoros and Mozambique.
Alakamisy Ambohimaha A site called Ivolamena in Alakamisy Ambohimaha contains cliffs that were studied in the 1950s by a team of French researchers following "rumors in the region of Fianarantsoa about the existence of letters carved in stone", discovered by local stonemason Edouard Randrianasolo."Sensationnelle découverte d'inscriptions rupestres," Tana Journal July 17, 1953. The French researchers described an inscription on the cliff-face "imputable to characters derived from the Phoenician alphabet with a high probability that the [glyphs] emanate from the family of southern-Arabic [glyphs] called Sabaean." The team also hypothesized, based on commonalities between Sabaean and Malagasy irrigation techniques, that "Hamito-Semites" may have been the first to bring zebu cattle to Madagascar. Another nearby site, Vohisoratra (meaning 'the mountain with writings'), was reported to bear "an inscription calling to mind Hebrew characters." The researchers had received tips from a Malagasy informant, who suggested that the Vohisoratra inscriptions might be dated "to the time of king Solomon, who sent the Israelites across the world to seek precious stones for the building of Jerusalem". In 1962, Pierre Vérin summarized scientific opinions of the inscriptions as "divided", and asserted that geologists consider the supposed inscriptions to be the products of "natural erosion".
The Ivolamena and Vohisoratra sites are today revered as a supernatural holy site by Betsileo claimants of ancient Israelite ancestry, who believe that both cliffs' inscriptions were left by their forebearers during a voyage to gather materials for Solomon's Temple during which they married the locals of a legendary "Zafindrandoto" tribe and settled to found the earliest Betsileo communities. A January 1989 speech by then-president of Madagascar Didier Ratsiraka made reference to the local beliefs surrounding the Ambohimaha cliff, which he claimed bore "proto-Hebraïc" writings. Ratsiraka also reportedly requested that teams of Malagasy archaeologists investigate the question of Madagascar's Jewish roots and conduct digs in the Betsileo region to search for the biblical Queen of Sheba's treasure. In 2009, residents of Alakamisy Ambohimaha threatened adherents of "Hebraic Judaism" who had come to the cliffs and sacrificed two lambs, one black and one white, despite the local fady (taboo) against slaughtering sheep. The Betsileo locals called for the government to recognize the commune as a sacred site of historical heritage, and protect it accordingly.
The "Jewish thesis" The theory that Malagasy people can trace their ancestry to ancient Jews—termed the "Jewish thesis"—is asserted in the earliest writings on the question of Malagasy origins, and by the late 19th and early 20th centuries had become a "conviction" of the many European chroniclers of the island. Common substantiations for the thesis included observations of "linguistic similarities [between Hebrew and Malagasy]; common physiognomic traits; alimentary and hygiene taboos; some sort of monotheism [with the Malagasy naming Zanahary as their one, un-picturable God]; observance of a lunar calendar; and life-cycle events resembling those in the Jewish tradition, circumcision in particular". A similar "Arab thesis" was also prevalent, though less persistent and popular than its Jewish counterpart.
The British merchant Richard Boothby of the East India Company posited in 1646 that the people of Madagascar are descended from the Hebrew patriarch Abraham and his wife Keturah, and were sent away by Abraham to "inhabit the East". The introduction (credited to Captain William Mackett) of Robert Drury's 1729 memoir suggests that "the Jew derived a great deal from [the Malagasy], instead of they from the Jews... their religion is more ancient". Samuel Copland wrote in 1822 that "The origin of the [Malagasy], is, by the generality of writers, ascribed to the Jews." The naturalist Alfred Grandider affirmed supposed evidence of two waves of ancient Israelite migration to Madagascar in 1901, concluding: "The fleets sent by King Solomon towards the Southeast coast of Africa [to procure materials for his Temple] had probably some of their ships lost on the coasts of Madagascar and it is not unlikely that, in ancient times, some Jewish colonies had been founded, voluntarily or not, in this island." Grandider also compared the cultural practices of the Malagasy to those of the ancient Israelites, finding in common thirty-five features including animal sacrifice, scapegoating, similar funerary conventions, and practices comparable to metzitzah b'peh and the ordeal of the bitter water.Grandidier, Histoire, vol. 4, part 1, 96–103 That same year, Irish anthropologist Augustus Henry Keane published The Gold of Ophir: Whence Brought and by Whom?, in which he proposed that Ophir's gold was brought from Madagascar. In 1946, Arthur Leib wrote that Malagasy practice of numerology is the product of Jewish influence on the people. Also in 1946, Joseph Briant published L'hebreu à Madagascar, an influential comparative study of the Malagasy and Hebrew languages that purported to find substantial commonalities between the two.
Lars Dahle wrote critically on the comparative arguments for the thesis in 1833: "The truth is, I think, that similarity of customs is nearly worthless as a sign of relationship, if not supported and borne out by other proofs of more importance". The British explorer Samuel Copeland argued in 1847 that Malagasy people have "neither customs, traditions, rites, nor ceremonies sufficiently analogous to justify us in assigning their origin to that [Jewish] people."Samuel Copeland, A History of the Island of Madagascar, Comprising a Political Account of the Island, the Religion, Manners, and Customs of Its Inhabitants, and Its Natural Productions (London: Burton and Smith, 1822), 56 In 1924, Chase Osborn protested at the Jewish thesis that "not one of the [Malagasy] tribes have the great Jewish nose which has followed that people during all time and is a sign of strength."
Contemporary analyses of colonial European theories of Jewish Malagasy origin have noted that "the identification of Levitical customs was an obsession of the missionaries and early European anthropologists," and that "squaring the Bible's assertion of universality and shared descent from Noah's three sons with the realities of global diversity was [...] a central preoccupation of generations of ecclesiasts and Christian voyagers." Eric T. Jennings argues that the discourses about Jewish roots in Madagascar led to the selection of the island by Nazi Germany for the Madagascar Plan, a proposed forcible relocation of Europe's Jews to Madagascar.
Later investigations