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David Espar, Senior Producer. A long-time independent producer, David Espar joined WGBH in 1981 to produce, write, and edit five episodes of the prize-winning business series Enterprise. He...
A long-time independent producer, David Espar joined WGBH in 1981 to produce, write, and edit five episodes of the prize-winning business series Enterprise. He later coproduced, cowrote,...
- Meeting The Lemba
- Tantalizing Hints
- A Quest Begins
- Finding Sena
- Clues in The Genes
NOVA: How did you come to hear about the Lemba and their story?
Tudor Parfitt:I first heard about the Lemba when I was in South Africa. I had been asked to give a lecture there on the Ethiopian Jews, the Falashas, because I'd just written a book on the exodus of the Falashas from Ethiopia to Israel. The lecture was mainly attended by white South African Jews, but at the back of the hall I noticed some black people wearing yarmulkes, the Jewish skull cap. That was rather intriguing, so at the end of the lecture I went across to say hello. I wanted to know...
What is the Lemba's oral tradition as you've come to understand it?
It's complicated, because for the last hundred years their oral and other traditions have been contaminated by Western traditions, Western religious practices—in other words, modernization. Now, insofar as one can reconstruct genuine Lemba traditions, what they say essentially is that they came from the North, possibly from Judea. They subsequently went to a place called Sena, then they crossed from Sena to Africa via Pusela. We don't know what that is, and they don't know what that is, but t...
So when you went to the Lemba for the first time, what was it that you observed that made you think that maybe there was something to the story of their Semitic roots?
I think what really made me feel that there was something to the story, that is to say that there was something Semitic about them, was the amalgam of traditions and perhaps specifically two things. One was the fact that, unlike other tribes, they refused to intermarry and they had a good Semitic disdain for all other people that they referred to as wasenzhi,the gentiles. The other thing was the extraordinary importance they placed upon ritual slaughter of animals, which is not an African thi...
The Lemba believe they originally came from a place called Sena. Where is that?
In the oral history, which is really a rather ambiguous story, they don't know where Sena is. It acts as place of origin but also the place to which they go. They refer to Sena in the same way that we would refer to paradise or heaven. And they say, "We'll meet again in Sena" and things of that sort. It seemed to me that the whole story was magical. Of course, it was a fascinating journey going from village to village, picking up oral traditions from old men and going a little further along t...
How were you chosen to find Sena?
I became very friendly with the spiritual head of the Lemba, Professor [Mathsaya] Mathiva, whom I met right at the beginning of my research. He specifically asked me on one occasion to go and find Sena. He could see that I was looking forward to a long journey and was excited by the prospect, and so it was a kind of commission. I was very pleased at the end of my journey to be able to offer at least a version of where they may have come from. I think it holds water. I think one can probably s...
The Sena you discovered lies in a remote valley in southern Yemen. How did you find it?
I was talking to an imam in the holy town of Terim, and it was he who first spelled out the possibilities of this Sena, which I had never even heard of. I had been thinking that the Lemba's Sena might be Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, or some other place, possibly even Sayhut, which is one of the adjoining towns that sounds rather like Sena. He said, "Oh, no no, there's actually a place at the end of the Wadi Masilah that is called Sena to this day."
When you got to Sena, what about it made you feel that this was it, as opposed to Sanaa or somewhere else?
Well, quite a number of things seem to pull together. The old tradition of the Lemba that they crossed Pusela seems very similar to the Masilah, which they would have to cross in order to get from Sena down to the sea. The camel trains went down the Masilah river valley to the port town of Sayhut. The fact that Sayhut on the southern coast of Arabia was a port par excellence for the Arab exploration of Africa. From there they could go to Mombasa or Zanzibar or down as far as Sofala in Mozambi...
And you returned later to get DNA samples for a Y-chromosome genetic study?
Yes, [genetic anthropologist] Neil Bradman and I went to the Hadramaut and collected DNA samples over a number of days. I'd already collected large DNA samples of Lemba, and these went back to the lab in London. Once the analysis had been done, it seemed to show that there was something of an overlap, not specifically with Sena but with the general area of the Hadramaut. It looked entirely plausible that the Lemba Y chromosome and the Y chromosome that we collected in the Hadramaut area had s...
What are the implications, and questions, raised by this finding?
Well, it was very exciting that the Cohen modal haplotype was there in such high quantities in the Buba subclan. I wasn't quite clear what it meant, and common prudence dictated that we deal very carefully with the material. But it did seem on balance that, even though it was impossible to say when this element got into the Lemba genetic stream, it was more probable that it had come from south Arabia simply on historical grounds. We know, for instance, that there was no white or Jewish penetr...
What was the most amazing thing to you about all this?
Well, in a way I suppose it's the old adage that the observed interacts with the observer, so the Lemba today are completely different from the Lemba that I first met when I started on my journey several years ago. And as we speak, some North American Jews are arriving among the Lemba of South Africa on a two-year mission to bring them mainstream Judaism, complete with a library and with Torah scrolls and everything else. So as a result of my work, though it was in no sense intended, they hav...
People's Century was co-produced by the BBC and WGBH with executive producers Peter Pagnamenta and Zvi Dor-Ner, respectively, along with producer David Espar. The opening credits depict various images from the century, accompanied with a theme music score by Zbigniew Preisner.
- Documentary
David Espar is known for Rock & Roll (1995), American Experience (1987) and Evolution (2002). Add photos, demo reels. Add to list. More at IMDbPro. Contact info. Agent info. Awards. 1 win & 1 nomination. Known for. Rock & Roll. 8.6. TV Mini Series. Editor. 1995 • 2 eps. American Experience. 8.6. TV Series. Editor. 1990–2011 • 14 eps. Evolution.
- Editor, Producer, Director
- David Espar
R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Directed by David Espar. With Sean Barrett, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Liev Schreiber. During the British invasion of North America the soul and rhythm 'n blues artists and groups found their way back to the core of the music.
David Espar is known as an Editor, Creator, Director, Story, Consulting Producer, and Producer. Some of their work includes American Experience: The Nuremberg Trials and Nixon (American Experience).
