Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 This reference to the dangers of eating meat comes from KRS-One’s ‘My Philosophy’, the first song on his album, By All Means Necessary, released by Jive Records in 1988.
2 This reference is from the song ‘Why Is That?’ found on Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hip Hop, released by Jive Records in 1989.
3 I would sometimes frequent their vegan restaurant across the street from the main campus of Howard University on Georgia Avenue in Washington DC when I was an undergraduate there, but I was not conscious of the connection between that eatery and the group in southern Israel.
4 For the differently pitched discussion of this overlapping and interconnected history (Dorman Citation2013; Jackson Citation2013). What I acronymize as AHIJ is referred to as African Hebrew Israelite Community (AHIC) by Nir Avieli and Fran Markowitz in ‘Slavery Food, Soul Food, Salvation Food’ in this issue.
5 Much of the AHIJ/AHIC project pivots on an attempt to redeem Yah’s chosen people, redeem them for the sin of disobeying Yah’s commandments.
6 Of course, there are other compelling explanations that create a different relationship between materialist and idealist explanations of cultural practices, other canonical texts that could be particularly useful in any discussion of outlawed/shunned collective practices (for example, Douglas Citation2002).
7 Also, the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem see a kind of conspiracy in how people are misinformed about the links between diet and disease, including the fact, they argue, that organizations like the American Cancer Society are in cahoots with meat and milk producers such that they do not thematize links between meat-eating and cancer in any substantive way.