LETTER FROM UGANDA:With the help of a young Jewish student, the Abuyudaya is back from the brink of extinction
STARTING TWO fingers above the elbow joint, Jacob Sebagabo wraps the leather straps of the Tefillin around his arm and towards his palm, reciting the book of Hosea in Hebrew as he finishes at the middle finger.
His head nods as the recitation continues, in a practice as old as King Herod and familiar to any Jew who takes his faith seriously.
Only the wet green plateaus of Uganda’s Mount Elgon national park, which frame a lush landscape of pawpaw trees and small garden plots, tell you that this is no ordinary Jewish heartland.
Near the town of Mbale, 15 miles from the Kenyan border, sitting underneath a fat sun that shines almost year round, is the small community of the Abuyudaya Jews.
Nearly finished off during the years of Idi Amin’s terror, when many were forced to convert to Islam or Christianity, the 1,000-strong community is finally making a comeback.
Numbers are on the increase and their leader, Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, even ran for parliament in the most recent parliamentary elections.
“We were just a rural community of subsistence farmers,” says Gershom, sitting underneath the inscription shabbat shalom, in the sittingroom of a modest stone house that looks onto the synagogue, the centrepiece of this isolated community.
“The only trip we ever made was to our gardens, hardly ever beyond the house. Now we are involved in politics and the community, we have a primary and secondary school that people of all faiths travel to. We’re even getting conversions.”
The Abuyudaya or “sons of Judah” in the Luganda language are unique among the global Jewish community, in that they don’t claim descent from the 12 tribes of Israel.
Rather, they were started in 1919 by a man named Kakungulu, a soldier and powerful member of the local Baganda tribe. Frustrated by the tenets of Christianity foisted on Africans by European missionaries, he adopted Judaism, as he believed the old testament offered a more practical means to living life.
The will of God was more clearly reflected in the five books of Moses or the Pentateuch he thought, known to Christians as Genesis, Exodous, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
When to observe shabat was more clearly defined, he believed, as were the rules governing what you could eat.
Converts were circumcised and when the railways came, Jewish traders from Britain and elsewhere chanced upon them, teaching the Abuyudaya more about the prayers to be observed and how to keep kosher.
However, the oppressive years of Idi Amin and Milton Obote brought persecution, with the community shrinking from 3,000 to below 1,000.
The numbers might have continued to drop, only for a young Jewish student from Brown University in the US meeting Rabbi Gershom, on a chance visit by both to Nairobi’s synagogue in 1992.
“I began a whispered conversation with Gershom during services,” says Matthew Meyer, who now runs a business in Nairobi called Eco Sandals.
A few weeks later he went to Mbale, following Gershom’s instructions, taking an overnight bus “that, had my good mother have known, would have made her cry”.”
“At the time they were just emerging from the Amin and Obote years. Their numbers had dwindled and it was clear that this little Jewish experiment in rural Uganda could soon face extinction.” Meyer contacted Jewish groups in the US, sending them cassette tapes with recordings of the unique Ugandan Jewish music played by the Abuyudaya.
This caught the attention of a few rabbis and rabbinical students, who began sending books and other resources such as Torahs to the community.
Since then they’ve built a new synagogue to replace the mud and brick building used for decades, installed a health centre and set up a primary and secondary school to which students from all faiths can attend.
“Even if you are not a Jew, you can attend the school,” says Mohamad Sakura, a local policeman and former student. “I’m a Muslim, but we all got breakfast and lunch every day, no matter what the religion.” Still, there are practical problems, some of which Irish Jews could probably relate to.
“It is very difficult to meet Jews we want to marry,” says Susan Namboozo, a 24-year-old aide to the rabbi. “So some of us marry other faiths, which means the number of us falls.” The numbers are on the increase though, up to 1,200 from 700 five years ago, says Gershom. Some of that rise is due to conversions, even though no one is proselytised to says Gershom. “But when they come, we open our doors.”