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The Igbo were dispersed to colonies such as Jamaica,[9] Cuba,[9] Haiti,[9] Barbados,[82] the United States,[2] Belize[83] and Trinidad and Tobago,[84] among others.
Elements of Igbo culture can still be found in these places. For example, in Jamaican Patois the Igbo word unu, meaning "you" plural, is still used.[85] Red Ibo" (or "red eboe") describes a black person with fair or "yellowish" skin. This term had originated from the reported prevalence of these skin tones among the Igbo but eastern Nigerian influences may not be strictly Igbo.[17][86] The word Bim, a colloquial term for Barbados, was commonly used among enslaved Barbadians (Bajans). This word is said to have derived from bi mu in the Igbo language (or bem, Ndi bem, Nwanyi ibem or Nwoke ibem, which means "My people"), but may have other origins (see: Barbados etymology).[87][88] A section of Belize City was named Eboe Town after its Igbo inhabitants.[89] In the United States the Igbo were found most commonly in the states of Maryland and Virginia, where they remained the largest single group of Africans.[90][91] Recent Igbo-speaking immigrants have also settled in Maryland, attracted to its strong professional job ma
I still believe the IGBO-JEW angle is hollow. Our best bet is the original Hebrew. Maybe it was Queen Sheba; maybe the Hebrew took some of our tradition; maybe our Ndiichie could not stand the slavery in Egypt and branched off... southwards.
>While anyone is at it, (I am sure an Igbo--netter is at work) someone told me tonight at our "Obi Igbo" joint in Orange, NJ, that the similarities are even deeper. Consider these (I am a messenger here):
Circumcision before the eight day (usually seventh day)
Washing of hands first thing in the morning
Dusting off your leg on leaving a hostile host’s house
Genesis = Jee n’isi isi (Start from the beginning)
Deuteronomy = Detuoro nu mu ya. (Write it down for me.)
Bar Mitzvah = Ïba mmanwu — in Agbaja area (Udi) of Enugu State, it is compulsory male rites of passage.
Machocentric religious practices and practical polygamy (for wealthy men who could really afford it, and to sire an heir in a patrilineal setup).
>When you tie the link to Judaism, you mix apples and oranges. Introduce Euro-Christianity, and you are drifting.<
Amidst the hallelujahs and further inquiries, Korieh Chima, an Igbo historian, threw in his academic muscle on July 18:
>Fundamental in Igbo history has been the issue of the antiquity of Igbo settlement. Even more fundamental than this issue of settlement is the question of the original homeland. This problem has excited many minds. Until recently, notes Afigbo, professor of history at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and a well known Igbo scholar, most of those who tackled the issue fell easy victims to what has been described as “Oriental Mirage”—that is the tendency in West Africa for ethnic nationalities to trace their origin to the East especially to either Egypt, Yemen or the Holy Land.
>G. T. Basden, for instance, advanced early in this century the view that the Igbo were a branch of the Hebrew nation or at least that their culture and history could satisfactorily be explained in terms of Jewish impact. In his view, the fact that the Igbo are deeply religious, practice circumcision and mummification and have sentence structures commonly found in Hebrew construction are as such that “the investigator cannot help being struck with the similarities between them and some of the ideas and practices of the Levitical code.”
>Even before Basden, the Igbo ex-slave, Olaudah Equiano, had on similar ethnographic and cultural grounds advanced the thesis of Jewish origin for the Igbo. Later still in the century, some Igbo scholars have argued that their ancestors were Jews and that the words Uburu (the name of a number of Igbo towns) and Igbo are a corruption of the word Hebrew.<
Now, what did Olaudah Equiano say in his The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavius Vassa, the African (written by himself and published in 1792)? On the Igbo-Hebrew connection, he wrote:
And here I cannot forebear suggesting what has long struck me forcibly, namely, the strong analogy, which even when by this sketch, imperfect as it is, appears to prevail in the manners and customs of my countrymen and those of the Jews, before they reached the Land of Promise, and particularly the Patriarchs, while they were yet in that pastoral state which is described in Genesis— an analogy which alone would induce me to think that that one people had sprung from the other.
But Olaudah Equiano went on to follow the Hebrew-to-Igbo line of thought. To him, “Eboan Africans” [Ndiigbo] were the offspring of Afer or Afra, “the descendants of Abraham by Ketrah his wife.” An Igbo-to-Hebrew line has not been truly pursued. Starting with circumcision, a very important Igbo male rites of passage, no one has attempted to investigate who borrowed from whom.
Read Ichie Olaudah Equiano again:
We practised circumcision like the Jews [Never the Hebrew practiced circumcision like the Igbo!], and made offerings and feasts on that occasion in the same manner as they did. Like them also [not like us, Ndiigbo].....
I closed the book and went back to the Internet.
“This is getting juicier and juicier,” Maazi ’Meke Ifejika of Washington, DC, area exclaimed. “What do you know? Before it is over we would have realized that we all have interchangeable body parts.”
Now this: How could [Ndiigbo] come from Israel? For the Igbo to say that they descended from the Israelis is like Nubians saying that the Arabs built the great Egyptian pyramids. Get wise my brothers and sisters; get wise.<
(NIGHT VIGIL, HOLY GHOST, VIGIL, FASTING VIGIL, PRIVATE INTERVENTION VIGIL. ALL NA LIE LIE 
