Day 10

12/26/08

This morning Anna and I went to the Abayudaya at around 8:45am. We shared a boda motorcycle and got there around 9:10. These Ugandans are unquestionably Jewish because the ceremony, which was scheduled to begin at 9am, didn’t start until 10:30am. But Anna got to meet a bunch of Jews and we spoke with Rabbi Darren Kleinberg, the rabbi from Phoenix who brought the Torah (or “Mateka” in Lugandan), for quite a bit before people began to gather. We also met two families from the west coast of the US. One is just doing some Africa traveling/safari, and another is backpacking for a year with their four children. I didn’t get to speak to them enough, but a room opened in the guesthouse so I will be returning this afternoon to spend Shabbat with them.
The ceremony was amazing. It began with Rabbi Gershom, his brothers and their sons, and Rabbi Kleinberg standing in a circle with some musical instruments, guitars, bongos, cymbals. The African/Jewish music erupted full-throttle from the start, and the obvious excitement and joy at receiving a new Torah was contagious. Sometime in the middle of the first song, I realized what was occurring in front of my eyes. I just took a mental step back and immediately got the chills. A village of African Jews, recently exposed to the Jewish world and more eager as a community than anything imaginable to embrace all aspects of Judaism, was taking on the responsibility of caring for and internalizing every word of this scroll. And I was a muzungu, with my camera out and unable to decide how to balance battery life, video, and stills. Scratch that; I was just another Jew, proud as hell to be here to experience this. After some songs outside, everyone moved inside the synagogue. Rabbi Gershom welcomed everyone and gave a brief overview of the ceremony’s proceedings. The new Torah was brought by Rabbi Kleinberg and one of the men who is here with his family, Marc, to the newly-built Beit Midrash, the building in which Judaic studies are taught and learned. I was given the honor of holding one of the four posts upon which was tied the chuppah, the canopy under which people are married and a Torah is traditionally received. The four Torahs that the community already had were carried out of the synagogue and met with the new Torah under the chuppah. Each Torah was touched to the new one, and the whole community along with plenty of muzungus sang and danced around it for a bit. The Torahs were then brought into the synagogue and several verses were read from the new one by Rabbi Gershom. I got a good amount of pictures and videos of the fascinating event. After the ceremony, Anna and I took a boda motorcycle back down the rocky mountain to town. We picked up some things at the supermarket and grabbed lunch at the Mount Elgon Hotel nextdoor to Anne’s house. We then came home and I decided I wanted to go back to the Abayudaya for Shabbat so I packed up, said goodbye to Anna who is leaving tomorrow for Dar-el-Salaam in Zanzibar, Tanzania for a holiday, and went to the clinic to work for a couple of hours. At 5pm, Dr. Wafula gave me a ride on his motorcycle to town where I got a boda motorcycle ride back to the Abayudaya at Semei Kakungulu. Luckily a room had opened up which I shared with an Israeli backpacker named Noa. Yisrael and Ohad, the Israelis who I met last weekend were also back and I felt quite at home.