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Yaphet Kotto, Jewish actor who was first Black Bond villain, dies at 81
According to the ManishTana website, run by Orthodox rabbi Shais Rishon, Kotto’s father Avraham Kotto immigrated to the US in the 1920s as an observant Jew who could speak Hebrew. Kotto reportedly said in the past that his father’s ancestors were African Jews who originated in the area of modern Israel and migrated through Egypt to Cameroon. He also had said his mother, Gladys Marie, who was an officer in the army, converted to Judaism before marrying his father.
In a widely quoted interview, apparently with the Associated Press in 1994, Kotto described growing up in New York and the anti-Semitism he experienced as a religious Jew wearing a yarmulke headcover.
“It was rough coming up,” Kotto said. “And then going to shul, putting a yarmulke on, having to face people who were primarily Baptists in the Bronx meant that on Fridays, I was in some heavy fistfights.”
In a 2019 interview with the InsideHook website, Kotto talked about how Judaism was a guiding force in his life.
His father, who he said was a crown prince of Cameroon, “instilled Judaism in me.”
Black Israelite fr fr...
Yaphet was giving James Bond hell up.in Harlem 
) shyt was wild funny. 
