Surprised to see such a sculpture in an art galery in Zimbabwe, I asked the gallery director about it. He told me many people purchase these for their children's bar and bat mitzvahs. He shared with me information about the Jews of Zimbabwe and then told me that on his mother's side he is o the Lemba tribe. They do not eat pork, they practise male circumcision, they ritually slaughter their animals, some of their men wear skull caps and they put the Star of David on their gravestones.The Lemba have a sacred prayer language which is a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic, pointing to their roots in Israel and Yemen. Despite their ties to Judaism, many of the Lemba in Zimbabwe are Christians, while some are Muslims. Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago.British scientists have carried out DNA tests which have confirmed their Semitic origin. Pinease told me there is a white Jewish population in Zimbabwe. During the 19th century, Ashkenazi Jews from Russia and Lithuania settled in Rhodesia after the area had been colonized by the British, and became active in the trading industry. In 1894, the first synagogue was established in a tent in Bulawayo. The second community developed in Salisbury (later renamed Harare) in 1895. A third congregation was established in Gwelo in 1901. By 1900, approximately 400 Jews lived in Rhodesia.In the 1930s a number of Sephardic Jews arrived in Rhodesia from Rhodes and mainly settled in Salisbury. This was followed by another wave in the 1960s when Jews fled the Belgian Congo . A Sephardic Jewish Community Synagogue was established in Salisbury in the 1950s. In the late 1930s, German Jews fleeing Nazi persecution settled in the colony. In 1943, the Rhodesian Zionist Council and the Rhodesian Jewish Board of Deputies were established, later being renamed the Central African Zionist Council and Central African Board of Jewish Deputies in 1946. After World War II, Jewish immigrants arrived from South Africa and the United Kingdom. By 1961, the Jewish population peaked at 7,060.In the first half of the 20th century there was a high level of assimilation by Rhodesian Jews into Rhodesian society, and intermarriage rates were high. In 1965, black nationalist organizations began an insurgency, known as the Rhodesian Bush War, which lasted until 1979, when the Rhodesian government agreed to settle with the black nationalists. By the time the Rhodesian Bush War ended in 1979, most of the country's Jewish population had emigrated, along with many whites.By 1987, only 1,200 Jews remained. Until the late 1990s, rabbis resided in Harare and Bulawayo, but left as the economy and community began to decline. Today there is no resident Rabbi.Two-thirds of Zimbabwean Jews are over 65 years of age, and very few are children. The last Bar Mitzvah took place in 2006/