House of Israel Hebrew Culture Center

House of Israel Hebrew Culture Center

In 1955, Rabbi Robert Devine Sr. founded and organized the House of Israel Hebrew Culture Center (HOIHCC) in Chicago, IL. Since that time, the legacy of the original House of Israel Hebrew Culture Center (HOIHCC) has developed into a spiritual institution with international students and adherents.

The House of Israel Hebrew Culture Center National Headquarters is now based in Braxton, Mississippi on the organization's expanding communal grounds.

The organization's website details its mission: "To transform the world using the foundations of ancient universal wisdom and knowledge. Our communal grounds serve as a place of mental and spiritual development in a deteriorating society unbound from the sanctity of the natural world and spiritual law."

Guiding Philosophy & Ideology

The broader sociopolitical and philosophical context around Congregational Israelites began its notoriety during the height of the Civil Rights Era. The Congregational Israelite Movement falls under the banner of the Black Nationalist Movement. For more information on the context of the Congregational Israelite Movement within Black Nationalism, See the section Politics below.

History

The broader historical context of

Founder

Rabbi Robert Devine (Ahzrel Daniel ben Israel) (21 September 1926 – 17 March 2019) was an Israelite Teacher of the House of Israel Hebrew Culture Center, a profound American Semite who led, consulted, and collaborated with many of North America's conservative Rabbis within the Original Hebrew Israelite Congregational Movement, based in theocratic communal theology and Canonical Torah & Tanakh Study.

Robert Devine began his ministerial journey as an ordained clergyman in the Church of God in Christ in 1952. After encountering great inconsistencies between the dogma of protestant religious doctrine and the holy scriptures, Rabbi was led to Hebrew Studies. He continued his studies at the Ethiopian Hebrew School of Chicago and the Jewish College of Studies of Chicago, now Sputters College. He reached the status of Rabbi in 1956. Rabbi Devine founded and organized the House of Israel Hebrew Culture Center in 1955 in Chicago, IL. He also established other congregations in Gary, IN; Covert, MI; Indianapolis, IN; Milwaukee, WI; Jackson, MS; Vicksburg, MS; and Braxton, MS.

Disciples

Rabbi Devine performed an essential role in training and ordaining several Israelite Rabbis and Priests during his life. This initiated their exposure to the government at several levels including engagement with a U.S. President at the White House and several other engagements at the state and local level.

He was sought to speak before white Jewish congregations in St. Louis, MO; Milwaukee, WI; and Chicago, IL. Because of his distinct position as a “Black Rabbi,” he was offered lectures at institutions of higher learning including Northwestern University, University of Illinois Circle Campus, Indiana State University, and Jackson State University. He served as a conduit of public debate stirring thousands of minds through challenging scriptural discourse and syndicated radio broadcasts. His contributions to the proliferation of our Spiritual Reality are immeasurable and recognized globally. In his late years, he publicly decreed his senior disciple Ahmetahee Yeroozedek as his successor. In 2019, at 93 years of age, Rabbi Devine passed at his residence. He contributed over 60 years of instruction, service, and history to the Israelite Nation, humbly furthering the Creator’s Will & Mission of Awakening the Lost Sheep of the Nation of Israel.

Governmental Outlook & Political Affiliations

The Black Nationalist movement

The Black Nationalist movement carries its roots in the U.S. as far back as the early 19th and 18th centuries with prominent Black leaders like Marcus Garvey and lesser-known individuals like David Walker & Henry Highland Garnett who authored early revolutionary texts criticizing and delegitimizing the indoctrinated natural right for hegemonic European institutions to exist and promote despotism with ethical, religious, and political impunity. The ideological foundations of Black Nationalism are rooted in the political, economic, and spiritual proliferation of indigenous peoples from the legacy of oppressive and exploitive institutions. The distinction of “Black” in Black Nationalism is derived from the fact that the majority of the earth’s peoples have darkly pigmented skin or have derived from peoples of like prescription.

Between various often converging corrective solutions for hegemonic institutions, many Black Nationalist organizations (BNOs) prioritize their agendas by focusing upon enriching the lives of indigenous sub-populations most aligned with their spatial, historical, religious, and/or geopolitical relevance. It is common for BNOs to subsequently advocate for the broader community of indigenous and oppressed peoples globally. There are also nuanced forms of this structure. Some organizations may have no prioritizations or variance remaining multi-national and advocating for all indigenous peoples; however, others may align within small coalitions of indigenous sub-populations who share historically, ideologically, and/or geographically allied motivations.

The Black Nationalist Movement is a product of long-standing societal grievances, inequality, and the structural strain of hegemonic dehumanization. Entering this sphere of consideration, status dissonance/inconsistency has dominated non-white populations discursively and psychologically on every continent. Classification as a social movement comprises utilizing collective action to challenge authorities in a systematized manner outside of official institutional channels (Snow 2004). The ideologies of the BNM guide the emergence of several aligned organizations which mobilize the resources needed for corrective reform outside of institutional channels. BNOs represent defensive collectives of citizens, anarchists, and revolutionaries seeking to mobilize their grievances through various means in order to correct the deficiencies in the flawed status quo and globally proliferate disenfranchised and indigenous communities enabling them with the power to make choices. The social mobilization generated by this relative deprivation is what allows the BNM’s qualification as a social movement. The political implications needed to successfully categorize the BNM as an international social movement are met because there is a “one-to-one correspondence between strain [(colonialism and neocolonialism)] and collective/[corrective] protest globally” (McAdam 1999) by BNOs.

The amount of strong will BNMs have to reform global systems of religious, economic, literary, cultural, historical, political, and governmental hegemony utilized by nations founded upon colonialism is not without provocation. Because of the strong authority challenges by BNOs, several state-sponsored devices were and are used to maintain the status quo. Major world powers continue to use neocolonial devices alongside public policy and evolved forms of exploitation and repression to systematically acquire absolute supremacy over telluric and celestial resources, space, and political domains. Operations such as COINTELPRO help contextualize the purpose of pursuing this question.

COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) was a surveillance and disruption operation facilitated by the federal government to deter anti-war movements, labor union activism, and disrupt the sociopolitical progress of organized Black intellectuals seen as anarchical (i.e. The Black Panther Party) (Scott et al. 2015). As a device of state repression, COINTELPRO illustrates one of the most disclosed government efforts to oppose a political organization providing unprecedented standards of integrity and sustenance for impoverished communities in the U.S.

It is important that alongside more intense repression than white (chronologically synchronous) organizations, the broad social justice and welfare policies sought by these organizations would have been ethically and societally beneficial for many struggling demographics; however, they would also pose a threat to capitalism, economic exploitation, and proletarianism. The examination of such historical incidents is timely considering the disproportionate rates of unethical activity major world and U.S. state actors are still inciting, domestically and internationally, to maintain hegemonic systems of oppression.

Why are some Black Nationalist Movements susceptible to more intense state repression than others? The answer to this question is the matter of perceived threat to the hegemonic ideologies and economic values of elitist/developed governments. One of the elementary conclusions drawn from this study is that intense state repression against BNOs is enacted to impede the Mobilization Potential (Ward 2016) of BNOs and to reduce the rate of individuals joining BNOs. This is done by actively decreasing the BNM’s sympathetic appeal and Mobilization Attempts (state seeks defamation), making sure that those who do sympathize with the BNM are not becoming sufficiently Motivated to act (false generalized state characterizations), and lastly that sympathetic and motivated individuals do not Actually Participate(causes state repression).

The High-Risk activism involved with the BNM is, by default, a product of revolutionary ideology. The relative deprivation fueling the BNM has risen as a result of deeply rooted societal institutions (McAdam 1986; Snow, Zurcher Jr., & Ekland-Olson 1980). The actualization of the BNM’s common agenda carries this ideology and directly opposes the existence of the U.S. and most developed European nations. Because of the wide array of discontent held by those still being affected by neocolonial institutions, any successful effort to inform and/or mobilize presents a direct threat to hegemonic vices of imperial actors.

In this respect, a successful mobilization of BNM proponents may also account for the creation parallel political success, if the BNM (philosophically literate actors) can gain recognition within the institutionalized political realm. This SM concept is illustrated within the context of political implications proceeding the emergence and acceptance of a SM ideology’s adaptation into an endorsed political institution.

“The initial hypotheses about the political impacts of movements were the same as the hypothesized determinants of mobilization. Scholars focused on a movement’s mobilizing structures, framing and other strategies, and political contexts favorable to mobilization (McAdam et al. 1996). These arguments hold that what promotes challengers’ mobilization will also promote their political influence; in short, specific forms of challenger organization, strategies (including framing strategies and protest types), and political opportunities will result in both mobilization and political influence and benefits for mobilized challengers.” (Amenta et al. 2010)

The consideration of adopting the BNM’s principles into major institutions in the developed world would illustrate the beginning of the reformation and decolonization of European-dominated world politics. The parameters of success can be empirically defined within a modified model of the Nonviolent and Violent Conflict Outcomes (NAVCO) data set, “to be designated a “success,” the campaign must have met two criteria: (1) its stated objective occurred within a reasonable period of time from the end of the campaign; and (2) the campaign had to have a discernible effect on the outcome” (Chenoweth & Stephan 2011). BNOs typically do not grasp success due to state nullification.          

The potential political influence of the BNM is a serious threat to oppressive forms of government. The Ideological State Apparatuses (mythical ideas) and Repressive State Apparatuses (tangibles aspects of the hegemonic institution) created by the colonialist experiment prompt the colonized to entertain one of two options for freedom, assimilate (the acceptance of, imitation of the colonizer) (120-127), or revolt (128-135) (revolution, the complete rejection of the colonizers and their influences, Education, Religion, etc.) (Memmi 1967, 91). Having BNM politicians or organizations (instruments of decolonization) promoted to authoritative roles in powerful political institutional channels would effectively serve as the end of the colonial system which is wholly delegitimized once the colonized attains a seat of equal authority in the colony while maintaining their heritage, principles, and mind (Memmi 1967, 85).

Strategies and Tactics

As a historically and empirically substantiated fact, most of the inhumanities exercised over the past two millennia have come as a result of intercontinental European conquests from the Caucasus Mountains. The greatest object of disdain for many BNOs, alongside unethical gender discrimination, is the European Imperialist institution and its unrepentant beneficiaries. This disdain for capitalistic, modernized, and individualistic values within exploitive European institutions, alongside the contemporary economic dependence placed upon indigenous populations, has evolved many philosophical forms within Black Nationalist and Decolonization social movements. Those respective interpretations of exploitive European institutionalism also maintain divergent philosophies that address how to permanently eradicate or transform European institutions while ensuring the justice and ethicality of the institutions to succeed them. Using general knowledge and experience accumulated from years of association and familiarity with the BNM, the simplistic categorization of BNOs provided below is a close approximation of what would be determined from a real-world execution of the proposed methodology.  

The largest point of dissent and contention amid Black Nationalists is how decolonization measures should be accomplished. Some organizations believe a change can be brought by spiritually humanizing imperial actors while deterring western values. Others believe the solution is to gain political and economic independence and rival European imperial powers.

The most radical sects of the movement believe the answer is to simply kill any and every individual consciously aligned with or assimilated into the injustices of European institutionalism. Sadly, many of the decolonial efforts fostered from this state of normative ambiguity among Black Nationalists are irresponsibly radicalized by sects within the BNM. The radicalized philosophies of these extremist Black Nationalist organizations (typically outcasts) are then defined as “hate speech” by civil rights organizations and/or government agencies. These radicalized views are then blown out of proportion discursively and are used to frame the ideological precedence of the entire movement within the confines of extremism often retaining little of the empirical claims fueling the philosophical irresponsibility of the extremist who endorse radical and bloated claims. This broad generalization of decolonial efforts is also one of the primary catalysts used by state actors to justify extreme state-sponsored repression and strengthen a stronger public disassociation with BNOs. In many cases, the major sects and those carrying various mixtures of BNO ideologies have been repressed by the U.S. government, regardless of their humanitarian contributions or degree of radicalization.

Further Analysis & Observation

Ultimately, this section may help one discover why some Black Nationalist Movements are more susceptible to state repression than others. The vacillation in radical ideals often changes between BNOs, but the data presented here seems to correlate state repression with organizations that seek intellectually-charged political autonomy combined with an equilibrium of reformative and reparative policies which are counteractive to institutionalized hegemonic enterprise.

The normalized political socialization of false hegemonic discourses, fabricated by European institutions, are at risk of delegitimization before the empirical claims and ideologies of Black Nationalist agendas generating the potential for mass mobilization if scholarly proposed. The integral revolutionary component of Black Nationalism would devolve the hegemonic discourses which substantiate the myths of White Supremacy, neocolonialism, and imperialism.

Future research considerations could concern the logistics of BNM ideologies and the prospect of BNM social welfare policies reaching major institutional channels. The ethnically prioritized, but inclusive nature of sensible, rational, and serious BNM campaigns may lead to a wider public understanding and acceptance of decolonization. Research on framing and the normalization of acceptable BNM ideals without violence are also objects for investigation.

Publications

THE ANTHOLOGY

WHO IS THE SO-CALLED NEGRO?

MARK OF THE BEAST

PAGAN HOLIDAYS

DEATH & RESURRECTION

GOSPEL, YAH'S GOVERNMENT

THE DOOR TO ETERNAL LIFE

References

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