Fifteen years ago today, Ben Ammi Ben Israel—the late spiritual leader of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem—gave a brief but memorable speech on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. The occasion was the Million Family March, organized by the Nation of Islam and attended by hundreds of thousands of black men, women, and children. (This was the second of three mass gatherings that the NOI has held on the National Mall to date; the first was the Million Man March in 1995 and the most recent was the “Justice Or Else” rally held last Saturday.) Wearing all black and flanked by two of his “princes”—including Asiel Ben Israel, the community’s former “international ambassador,” who introduced him—Ben Ammi exhorted the crowd to embrace “another direction” for the black family based on ancient principles found in the book of Genesis.

Below is C-SPAN’s archival video of the speech. The audio cuts out briefly around the 7:00 mark and becomes somewhat hard to understand thereafter; scroll down to read my transcript. (If anyone has a better recording, please leave a comment at the bottom of the post.)

Ben Ammi’s speech is significant for two reasons. First, this is the most animated I have ever seen him—in person or on tape. His voice quickly rises to the point of shouting, and his hands churn the air in front of him like a boxer working the speed bag. His vigorous delivery reflects, I think, the adrenaline rush of addressing such a large crowd—likely the largest he ever addressed—as well as his passion for discussing how to improve family cohesion. The crowd seems to be receptive to his message, with smatterings of applause here and there, despite its patriarchal overtones. As Martina Konighofer notes in her book The New Ship of Zion: Dynamic Diaspora Dimensions of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem (2008), the “preferred order of God” that Ben Ammi delineates in this speech “indicates that the status of women is to be inferior to that of men and that males have clear dominance in the political and formal domains.”

Second, this is one of the few times that Ben Ammi and NOI leader Louis Farrakhan appeared in public together. The two met in the late 1970s, and Farrakhan visited Dimona in 1978. Though not a secret, their relationship was not advertised, as revelations about Ben Ammi’s association with a noted anti-Semite could have seriously harmed his efforts to win legal status for his community in Israel. Yet they seemed to share a special bond. At the end of his own speech at the Million Family March, Farrakhan summoned Ben Ammi to the podium, calling him “a great spiritual teacher and my brother” and “rahbee,” a variation of rabbi meaning “my teacher” and one of the many titles that Ben Ammi used during his lifetime. Then he put his arm around him, as seen in the clip below.

Black Muslims and Hebrew Israelites are not natural allies, at least no more than Arab Muslims and Jews are, for both theological and political reasons. As Farrakhan told the Jerusalem Post in 1986, “We have shared beliefs in that we believe that God has chosen us to be the cornerstones of a new world government. But they’re coming at it from the point of view of the Torah and we’re coming at it from the point of view of the Qur’an.” To my knowledge, the NOI and the AHIJ did not collaborate on any projects while Ben Ammi was alive. But, as Farrakhan told the Post, several Hebrews were former members of the NOI, and the leaders maintained open lines of communication. Ben Ammi told me in 2009: “Our contacts remain through the African-American social arena, where both communities are almost always represented. During those gatherings, the subject matter has to do with issues of concern for the African-American community at large. Beyond that, there is an understanding that we voice the positions of the State of Israel and the NOI (Nation of Islam) the positions of the Arab world.”

Yet there is more synergy between the platforms of the two groups than either leader ever publicly let on. As I watched the webcast of Farrakhan’s discursive, two-plus hour speech on Saturday, I heard many distinct echoes of AHIJ doctrine, as when he quoted Genesis 15:13 and argued that it refers only to African Americans, when he exhorted his people to shed their slave names (“You can’t be free walking around in the name of your former owner!”), when he talked about how America is under divine judgment, and, especially, when he spoke about the dangers of eating “poison animal flesh.” The misogyny was also recognizable and unmistakable: “Let me tell you sisters, you know you’re beautiful but a woman who’s beautiful and can’t cook is a killer in the kitchen.” One wonders how much Ben Ammi influenced Farrakhan’s thinking on these matters, and vice versa.

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Transcript of Ben Ammi’s speech

First I would like to give all honor and praises and thanks to the God of our fathers, Yah Yisrael. I would also like to express my thanks and appreciation to the Honorable Louis Farrakhan for the invitation to be here to share these precious moments with you today. I’m thankful that I have received the opportunity to come and to behold the countenances of those sons and daughters of Abraham, those sons and daughters who are in the Diaspora, those sons and daughters who are destined to lift up a light, that all of the human family might find their way back unto the Creator.

I have considered my dissertation many times, listening to the speakers that preceded me. And I have changed what I was going to say at least a dozen times. And knowing now that the honorable Louis Farrakhan is waiting to come before you, I will certainly be brief, but there is a couple of things that I would like to say unto you.

Whenever it is the objective of evil to flourish in a social system, the first thing that is done is that they have to destroy the sense of what is right and wrong in the midst of the people. And once they have destroyed the sense of what is right and wrong, they give them an injection of ‘tolerate.’ And once you’ve lost your direction, and you’ve been injected with ‘tolerate,’ then they proceed on to extract from you all things that could possibly provide unto you a light to find your way back to the source of your strength.

I must remind you, I must remind you, that you were brought into this land to give an advantage to the slave masters. And you must understand that for 400 years, they have maintained that advantage because you have maintained your dedication to that advantage that you have given them since you arrived on these shores. And they will not lose that advantage. There is no plan, neither present or future, for the American hierarchy to lost their advantage. Democracy is all about advantage. To strip you of the value of your man was to protect their advantage. To cause your woman to equate equality with sameness was to protect their advantage. To take your children away from you, away from the authority of the parents, that was to protect their advantage. That’s what democracy is all about. And I must remind you today that they will not lose that advantage until they in fact lose you.

And they will not lose that advantage. It is like a seesaw. You continue to sit on the seesaw, looking up and wondering when will they come down. They cannot come down until you get up. It is a matter when they said you need to stand, if you get up off of the seesaw, he that is higher than you has to come down. It is time for you to understand that you need another direction, what I will call the Genesis Direction. We cannot leave you today without a prototype of what a successful family in the eyes of God has to be. I will go back to the Genesis and remember that Adam was created from the dirt of the earth in the image of God, but the woman was not created from the dust of the earth. She was taken from Adam, and children are a byproduct of their parents.

Honor thy father and thy mother. Every time a problem develops in the midst of the children, they continue to empower the children. Don’t you know that you’ve got to empower the parents? The future, the direction of children is intrinsically liked to decisions of parents. What is the problem with the children? The problem with the children is that they…(audio cuts out)…what I call the Genesis Direction. Woman, created from man, what is the message? Whether it occurred like that or not is not the question, but the message is simply, that you are a derivative of man, your strength comes through your man, and you cannot maintain your strength being estranged from your man.

So the Genesis Direction represents man in the image of God: Put your hands in the hands of God. Woman: Go back to your man, you cannot survive alone in this system without the source of your strength. You must return and put your hands in the hands of your man. And children, children: Honor thy father and thy mother. That holds the key. I want to make a slight correction. We’ve heard the [inaudible] say on so many occasions that our future depends on the children. We understand the beginning, we understand but we must reverse that, that the future of the children and the return, that future depends upon you. We must understand that the destiny of our people depends upon those who are making the decisions for the children. We need to un-empower children and to re-empower parents. And once we give children back unto the parents, we will see that there will be a change in the neighborhood.

I want to say I’m thankful and I’m grateful. And I do pray that in the very, very near future, that we will all come together as we have come together on this great occasion, and we will be a light to all of the families, and notifying you of the port of embarkation when we start our journey back to the Promised Land. That’s when their advantage will be lost. We are their advantage, and it won’t be lost until they lose us. And it is time now for the return to the Promised Land. Thank you.