Paris: Europress,, [c.1965]. Black Hebrews in New York: a collection of photographs A strongly immersive group of images recording the activities of Rabbi Wentworth A. Matthew's Commandment Keepers, an African-American Jewish community in and around their synagogue at Mount Morris Park West. The photographs bear many stylistic similarities to those in Lawrence N. Shustak's rare portfolio Black Jews, but there are no direct matches. We have been able to trace just one reproduced online. Born in St Kitts, Wentworth Arthur Matthew (1892-1973) immigrated into the United States in 1913 and, deeply impressed by the Jewish communities he encountered, founded the Commandment Keepers Congregation of the Living God in Harlem. Based on the belief that the Ethiopian people represented one of the lost tribes of Israel, and that the biblical patriarchs were Black, Matthew established a form of worship based quite closely on Jewish law, including the strict observance of the rules of Shabbat and Kashrut, but with some concessions to Afro-Caribbean and African-American practices. At the Ethiopian Hebrew Rabbinical College which he established in 1925, now the Israelite Rabbinical Academy, he trained Black rabbis, many who set up similar communities across America. In 1962, he moved his headquarters to the former mansion of Arm and Hammer baking soda magnate John Dwight at 1 West 123rd St., Mount Morris Park. His attempts to gain acceptance from the Jewish religious establishment failed, and he twice attempted to become a member of the New York Board of Rabbis but was rejected. Nevertheless, Matthew never preached in a divisive manner, always seeking harmonious relations. On his death, confusion over his succession led to the fragmentation of the community, and in 2007 the impressive synagogue that features in the majority of these images was sold to developers. Most of the images offered show worship within the Mount Morris Park synagogue. These include several featuring Matthew himself conducting services, teaching a class of small boys, and blessing a shabbat meal, as well as one showing his 1931 ordination certificate from Arnold Josiah Ford's Beth B'Nai Israel synagogue, which can be seen hanging on the wall behind him in several shots. Other pictures present include Matthew and his congregation in procession on the street, several images showing women in worship, some with a number of them wearing head-dresses and robes, a striking shot of two boys in kippah and tallit, one whom is Black, the other not, and one of a Black woman leaving Gruenspecht and Sons kosher market at 3830 Broadway in Washington Heights. Raymond Darolle's Europress agency was set up in 1956, closing down after just 11 years, but during its short existence it was one of the agencies that flourished post-war with the development of illustrated news magazines such as Paris Match, Stern, and Jours de France, thriving on the political and cultural climate to create a distinctively French form of photojournalism. The images offered here form two groups: 12 with the agency's initial Boulevard de Clichy address on the wet-stamp, and which certainly appear earlier; and ten with the later Rue Gabriel Laumain address, one has no stamp, none of these prints can post-date 1967. Despite extensive online searches, we have been able to find just one image which precisely matches any in the group - that of a young student reading a prayer book which was published in the French antiracist monthly Droit & Liberté, January 1968, illustrating the "Lettres Americaines" column, with the credit "Boronicz" which has unfortunately proven a dead end. A second image used there, of an older woman lighting a menorah, is a close match to another in our group and was clearly shot on the same occasion. Despite extensive on-line searches we have been able to find just one image which precisely matches any in the group, that of a young student reading a prayer book which was published in the French antiracist monthly Droit & Liberté, January 1968, illustrating the "Lettres Americaines" column, with the credit "Boronicz" which has unfortunately proven a dead end. A second image used there, of an older woman lighting a menorah, is a close match to another in our group and was clearly shot on the same occasion. 23 vintage silver gelatin prints, one a duplicate, most "8 x 10s", c.210 x 270 mm or the reverse; all but one with the Europress agency stamp, most with pen and pencil notations verso, some including print instructions, 5 titled "Juifs noirs US". Housed in a black cloth archival folder. Most prints slightly curled, a few with minor creases, one with the tip of a corner chipped, some surface scuffing overall, else very good. Rabbi Sholomo Ben Levy, Biography of Rabbi Wentworth Arthur Matthew [&]... of Rabbi Arnold Josiah Ford, & The Destruction of the Commandment Keepers, accessible online; "Rabbi Wentworth Matthew, Led Ethiopian Temple Here," New York Times 5 December 1973, p. 43.
