Rabbi Aaron Kintu Moses: Helping Lead Uganda's Black Jews to the Promised Land

By Alan Abrams
Sojourner's Truth Reporter

"Have you heard the story about the two Falashas (the black Jews of Ethiopia) who met in Israel?" Rabbi Barry Leff asks the guests seated around his dinner table last Saturday evening.

Seeing the unanimous response of negative head-shaking, Leff continues with the story. "When one of the Falashas arrived in Israel as a recent emigrant, she met one of the Falashas who had come to Israel in the massive airlifts of the mid-1980's. ‘How are things here?' asked the newcomer. The reply she received was, 'I never knew white people could be Jews. That was my biggest surprise when I came to Israel.'"

One of the guests at the table of Rabbi Leff who laughed the heartiest was Rabbi Aaron Kintu Moses of Uganda. Like the 70,000 Falashas now in Israel, Rabbi Moses is also a black Jew. And so are the 753 members of the Abayudaya, the Jewish community of Uganda of which Moses is the acting spiritual leader. The Abayudaya, whose name in the language of Luganda literally means "People Who Follow the Torah," are Jews solely by choice. 
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The Abayudaya are not linked historically or generically to other ethnic Jews. But they are devout in following the precepts of the religion. And like Jews throughout history, they have suffered persecution, in this case at the hands of the tyrannical African despot Idi Amin, a villain equal in stature to anyone served up to believers by the Old Testament

Moses is the headmaster of the Abayudaya Primary School in Mbale, and serves as the acting rabbi of the community. He holds that position until Gershom Sizomu completes another year-and-a-half of his five-year rabbinical training and becomes the first ordained rabbi of the Abayudaya.

And like Moses in the Old Testament, the Abayudaya hope that their rabbi will be able to lead them to Israel – the Promised Land.  But unlike biblical times when 40 years of wandering the desert was enough to convince even the most heartless of authorities of one’s good intentions,  the Abayudaya are going to have to go through a mound of paperwork to prove their Jewish bona fides.

Why? Because the Israeli religious oligarchy jealously guards the dispensation of Israeli citizenship, despite the promise of its founding fathers that Israel would be the home for all Jews. The Orthodox rabbinate officially recognized the Falashas as Jews in 1975. They have thus far declined to recognize the Abayudaya, in small part because they have lacked an established rabbi as their leader and in greater part because the community was converted by Conservative rabbis, and not those of the Orthodox persuasion.

Aaron Kintu Moses and Barry Leff

Rabbi-in-waiting Sizomu is currently studying at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles, the same institution from which Rabbi Leff was ordained. Sizomu completed some of his training in Israel where his wife, Tzipporah Naisi, gave birth to their daughter, Naavah Sizomu, in Jerusalem this past February. Naavah became the first Abayudaya Sabra -- Israeli-born Jew.

So what brought a teacher from Uganda to spend part of a chilly early November weekend in Toledo?

Moses was here on Day 11 of his first visit to the United States, a fundraising and educational journey that is taking him on a 16-city speaking tour. His visit is sponsored by Kulanu, an all-volunteer, not-for-profit organization connecting Jewish communities around the globe. 

His schedule brought Moses to Toledo for two weekend events, a Friday appearance at Stone Hebrew Academy and a Saturday evening talk at B’nai Israel, the Conservative synagogue on Kenwood Boulevard of which Rabbi Leff is spiritual leader. His wife, Lauri Donahue, is Kulanu’s school coordinator.

Leff, who belies every stereotypical image of a rabbi, is also an accomplished pilot. He flew Moses to his next appearance in Columbus early Sunday morning aboard his Cherokee Piper.

Uganda may be an anomaly in the modern world, because African Jews not only peacefully co-exist with their Christian and Muslim neighbors, but they work together in harmony. Moses explains this is evident on two fronts, the ethnic makeup of the schools in which children of all three religions study together in peace, and the community’s interfaith cooperative venture which produces and exports Mirembe Kawomera (literally “Delicious Peace”) organic coffee.

Over dinner, Moses explains how the Abayudaya, whose number was estimated as high as 3,000 in the early 1970’s, were persecuted under Amin’s dictatorship (the focus of the current film, The Last King of Scotland, in which Amin is stunningly portrayed by acclaimed actor Forest Whitaker).

“The problems for the Abayudaya started as soon as Amin declared that all Asians must leave the country,” says Moses. The decree included the Jews, who were then enjoying the beginning of a relationship fostered through Israel’s diplomatic mission to Uganda.

Later that evening, Moses tells the attentive audience at B’nai Israel that Amin prescribed the existence of only four official religions in Uganda: Catholicism, the Lutheran Church, Islam and the (Eastern) Orthodox Church. All other religions were lumped together under the designation of Pagan.

“As a teenager, I had to identify my religion as Pagan to the school registrars,” recalls Moses. Although many members of the Abayudaya community converted to Christianity, some 300 faithful Jews prayed in secret, fearful of discovery by their neighbors who might report them to the authorities. Amin had destroyed the existing synagogues and banned the performance of all Jewish rituals.

“My father was arrested and paraded through the village by the police,” says Moses. Eventually he was freed through a bargain that included the transfer of two goats. “But the police raided houses and made the leader of the community take his (Jewish ritual) books to the police. We were not allowed to have (Jewish) funerals for our people,” Moses adds.

The official harassment intensified after Israel’s daring the July 4, 1976 raid upon the Uganda airport at Entebbe where Palestinian terrorists and their German counterparts were holding 105 Israelis as hostages following the hijacking of an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris. The terrorists were acting with the implicit blessing of Amin. Interestingly, the successful raid, which infuriated Amin, was held on the day the United States was celebrating the bicentennial of its independence.   

During the years following the overthrow of Amin, things changed for the better for the Abayudaya. Their numbers had dwindled but are now steadily growing.

“We now have five synagogues, all in the eastern region of Uganda, and within a 50-mile radius,” Moses tells the audience at B’nai Israel as he narrates a slide show of photographs of the community.

Through the help of worldwide Jewish organizations such as Kulanu and Hadassah, the community now supports two schools – one  primary, the other secondary. The high school is named after Semei Kakungulu, who can justifiably be called the prophet of the Abayudaya. Although originally converted to Christianity by British missionaries around 1880, his study of the Bible’s Old Testament (among other factors) led him to fully embrace Judaism in 1919.
 

Kakungulu circumcised his sons and himself and declared his community of followers Jewish. But the arrival the following year of a foreign Jew known only as “Yosef,” who stayed with and taught the community for about six months, helped the fledgling Jews discover the significance and observance of traditional Jewish holidays. Yosef’s legacy inspired Kakungulu to establish a school that functioned much as a Yeshiva, in which Jewish knowledge would be imparted to children. 

However, Moses stresses that unlike many Christian-run schools, learning Hebrew and Judaism is optional for non-Jewish students. The students at the elementary school are 75 percent Jewish with the remainder comprised of Christian and Muslim pupils.

But the picture is different at S.K. High School where out of 260 students, only 70 are Jewish. Many Uganda families send their children to the schools as boarders. There are 36 boarders currently in the primary school and 20 in the high school, according to Moses.

The teaching staff is also interfaith with Christian and Muslim teachers. “We all work together,” says Moses.

Leff says the Abayudaya community was discovered by the outside Jewish world after an Israeli irrigation expert arrived in Uganda and sought workers for the much-needed project. He met with a group of Abayudaya, and was told that the workers would accept the job but would not work on Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath.) The Israeli asked why, and the workers responded that they were Jews.

While the story may be apocryphal, by the turn of the present century, it was clear that most American Jews had recognized the existence and struggle of the Abayudaya.
 

Living in rural Africa, the Abayudaya exist mainly as subsistence farmers, living off the crops they grow. The development projects instituted through the assistance of Kulanu have resulted in major strides in providing health education, clean drinking water, sanitation, electricity and even a micro-credit loan society (along the structure of the organization recognized last month by being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize).

However, the needs of the Abayudaya community are many, especially in terms of the funds needed to support the schools, provide breakfasts and lunches for 400 children a day, and dig clean water wells.

In addition to exporting the community’s delicious Mirembe Kawomena coffee, Kulanu raises funds for the Abayudaya through the sale of hand-crafted African kippot (the traditional head covering worn by Jewish males) and CD’s of African Jewish music.

Kulanu (which means “All of Us”) also sponsors an annual Jewish Life in Uganda Mitzvah Tour & Wildlife Safari, which helps support the Abayudaya community. For more information on any of their admirable projects, or if you would just like to make a tax-exempt donation to aid the Abayudaya, visit their Web site at www.kulanu.org  

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