American Jews, after hearing about the Lemba, went
to meet them and bring Judaic artifacts, trying to
teach the people about the religion. Some Lemba
people already were wearing tallit and yarmulkes, but
those articles would have been introduced long after
the tribes were dispersed because they came into use
much later in Jewish history.
Despite saying they descended from the tribes of
Israel, the Lemba don't act like Jews for the most
part in their everyday practices, according to Espar.
A lot of them are Christian.
Apsell remains impressed with the details revealed
through Parfitt's investigation.
"Many science films that we make are detective
stories that ultimately come out with no answer,"
says Apsell, who also has produced a program on the
Dead Sea Scrolls.
"It's not just that the genetic marker is found
both in Jews and Lemba but in the leadership, or
priesthood, clan of both groups in about the same
proportion. That's a piece of information people
have to raise their eyebrows about, although it's not
completely conclusive.
"The great thing about science is that it can take
you on a journey and reveal something that you did-
n't know before. It's the interest in any kind of
detective story that will sustain people's interest in
this program, which also has plenty of characters
who are passionate, articulate, enthusiastic and very
diverse." ❑

ple. All the interviews in the film, with one excep-
tion, are ones that I did."
The search for Israel's lost tribes dates back to
722 B.C.E., after conquering Assyrians banished
them from the Kingdom of Judah. Countless con-
jectures and fantastic theories have been proposed
to account for their fate.
Parfitt, on staff at London University, was skep-
tical when he heard that the Lemba, a black African
tribe, claimed to be practicing Jews and descen-
dants of biblical patriarchs. He wanted to analyze
their male, or "Y," chromosome to see if there was
a unique pattern also found in the Jewish priestly
class, the kohanim. The
kohanim passed their pro-
William Massala is a
fession from father to son.
member of the Lemba
"I hope viewers will get
tribe, who claim to be
a little more understanding
practicing Jews and
of what DNA is, what
descendants of the
chromosomes are and how
biblical patriarchs.
that can be used in helping
to figure out whether cer-
tain things that people have dismissed as myths or
have taken for granted can really be proved to some
extent," Espar says. "I also hope that the viewer
comes away with a little skepticism, too.
"We can't really know when these people came
to Africa or when they interbred with whoever it
was that introduced the kohanim chromosome type
into that population.
"Although it is felt that there is some interaction
between the Lemba people and the kohanim, we
can't really know exactly what that interaction was,
how long ago it happened and where it happened."
As Espar revised the program that originally was
shown in England, he learned that a group of

Lost Tribes of Israel airs 9 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 22,
on Detroit Public Television-Channel 56.

Former Detroiter
David Espar
reduced "Lost
Tribes oflirael."

Behind The Camera

ormer Detroiter takes a Large role in "Lost Tribes o

avid Espar, writer and producer
enjoys
learning the stories and meeting the
people associated with the Nova
programs he's assigned. He also
approaches each program with cau-
tion.
"I've done a few Nova programs
over the years and know that
they're not necessarily the absolute,
undeniable truth," explains Espar,
who has won an Emmy, two
Peabody Awards and two Writers
Guild Awards. "These things are
what people think now."
When Espa.r was attending
Detroit's Henry Ford High School
in the '60s, a television career was
not his goal. He earned a manage-
ment degree at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology before

MO for Lost Tribes of Israel,

going on to Stanford for a master's
in communication.
"I never thought about this kind
of career until really late in col-
lege," explains Espar, who had his
bar mitzvah at Temple Beth El. "I
was interested in movies and start-
ed a little film production compa-
ny in Palo Alto with my wife and
some friends in 1970."
In the early 1980s, Espar's corn-
pany worked on some projects with
the San Jose public television sta-
tion, which was doing co-produc-
tion with WGBH Boston on a
series called Enterprise.
"After I worked on episodes for
Enterprise, the executive producer
asked me to come to Boston and
work on a new series called War
and Peace in the Nuclear Age, a 13

-

hour documentary
about nuclear weapons
and politics after
World War II," Espar
recalls.
"I produced a couple of those
programs and went on to The
American Experience, which had
one series about Richard Nixon
and another on the Kennedy fami-
ly. ),

Settled into the Boston area,
Espar did a series on the history of
rock 'n,' roll, which brought him
back to Michigan to capture the
Motown experience. He also did
some footage at the Fox Theatre
and the Roostertail.
A Science Odyssey was his first
project for Nova, which also asked
him to work on a history of the

Apollo space project.
"Through my working
with Nova, the show
about the Lernba came
up," Espar explains.
Although work often dictates his
travels, Espar manages to get back
to Michigan every few years to visit
with relatives. His parents moved
to California during the time he
lived there, and TIOW he mixes busi-
ness and vacations when he travels
west.
"I met my wife, Sheri, at
Stanford," Espar says. "She's an
artist and does art therapy with
children. My son works for a tele
vision production company in New -
York, and my daughter is a junior
at Vassar majoring in international
❑
studies."

6 AN

2/18

2000

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