SAJA seeks to unite the continent’s emerging communities.
BY AVI KUMAR
Participants at the Kulanu gathering in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, earlier this month. Credit: Serge Etele.
(December 30, 2022 / JNS) – The Sub-Saharan African Jewish Alliance was founded this month, with the goal of facilitating ties among the continent’s Jewish groups. The organization will include representatives from Tanzania, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Kenya and Cameroon.
The SAJA was established after representatives of Jewish communities across sub-Saharan Africa gathered for the first time in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, this month to discuss various aspects of Judaism and Jewish life in the region.
SAJA has a temporary board with Mordreck Maersara from Zimbabwe currently serving as acting president. The group aims to draft a constitution and hold elections for a permanent board in the next six months. It also has a vice president and treasurer, and intends to add more positions to the roster after the constitution is finalized.
Maersara told JNS, “Our goal is to help each other by discussing both shared successes and challenges to aid each other to grow in our Judaism across Africa.”
Rabbi Mendy and Rivky Hertzel will move to Zambia early next year to establish a Chabad House and assist the small but thriving Jewish community in the southern African nation. Zambia has not had a rabbi in over 60 years.
Rabbi Hertzel told JNS, “In February of this year, they tasked me to go to Zambia and investigate the possibility of establishing a permanent Chabad presence here. After a three-month stay, I saw firsthand that the country was a good fit for us to establish a Chabad House. So, I will be moving to Africa very soon and we are looking forward to this.”
Mendy is from the Golan Heights and his wife hails from Alaska. The newlywed couple will oversee operations in Zambia, joining the ranks of more than a hundred countries and territories where Chabad is active.
There are an estimated 100-150 Jews in the country of almost 20 million people. The Jewish community has diverse roots, including South African and Israeli ex-pats working in a variety of professions, and around 30-50 are Zambian citizens.
Jewish community members in Zambia, including Shlomo Abutbul, center, welcomed Rabbi Mendy Hertzel, right, to Lusaka on Purim.
The first Jews to arrive in Zambia were Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe (mostly Lithuania) who migrated in the 19th century when it was a British colony. A few Sephardim also came, including the Katzenellenbogen family from Germany.
The main waves of migration came during the several diamond and gold rushes; other newcomers were pioneers in the cattle industry, copper mining and agriculture. Jewish merchants were active.
Some of the descendants of the early Jewish settlers still live in Zambia. The nation had its first Jewish wedding in 1905. During World War II, a few Holocaust survivors arrived, mostly from Germany and Lithuania fleeing Nazi persecution, seeking refuge in the furthest place they could reach.
The Jewish population peaked in the 1960s at around 2,000. However, the community dwindled as part of a larger white emigration. Many Zambian Jews moved to the United Kingdom, Australia or Israel.
Yerachmiel Glazer, a Zambian Jew who had extensive correspondence with Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson about the Jewish community there, speaks with Hertzel at the Kinus Hashluchim. Glazer was the Rebbe’s first emissary to Zambia.
Lusaka, the capital and largest city, historically had the largest Jewish population. The second biggest community was in Livingstone, near Victoria Falls.
The community in Livingstone had around 200 Jewish members at its peak and had a distinct identity, maintaining closer ties with the Jews in Bulawayo (now in Zimbabwe) because it was nearer, back when Zambia and Zimbabwe were Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia, respectively, under British rule (1911-64).
A synagogue built in Livingstone in the 1920s is now a church. A Star of David over the main entrance still remains visible, attesting to the historic Jewish presence.
Representatives of Jewish communities in Sub-Saharan Africa gathered last weekend in Ivory Coast to create an umbrella religious organisation for the region.
During a week of activities in Abidjan, the attendees learnt about Jewish practices, such as “kosher” slaughter and burial practices.
“The purpose of this meeting is to bring together all of the emerging Jewish communities that are developing and growing throughout Africa. For example, Nigeria has over 80 orthodox synagogues and it’s growing. And we find this in many countries across Africa. They’ve never met each other. (…) We spent a week together learning and studying the Bible, the Torah, the Jewish traditions and the Jewish law”, explained Arieh Greenspan, co-organizer of the conference.
The event was organized by a Jewish non-profit organization, Kulanu, with the aim of reuniting emerging Jewish communities in Africa.
“They understand that Judaism in Sub-Saharan Africa is sometimes a new phenomenon. Though some believe they are descendants of lost tribes or Israelite tribes in the Bible. Some have found Judaism new. And this group of combined people are practising Judaism, living Jewish lives, and for the first time ever got together to create an alliance”, added Bonita Sussman, known as Rabbanit, president of Kulanu.
On the final day, ahead of the Hannukah celebrations, the group planned to consecrate a new synagogue with the laying of a cornerstone.
Rabbi Sussman teaching in Antananarivo, Madagascar
Imagine taking a trip on one of those huge luxurious cruise ships unbeknownst to you the course is altered by a few degrees. While you are traveling everything seems the same except that because of this seemingly small course alteration the ship will end up arriving at a destination completely different from the one you expected.
Right now an important and I believe decisive development is taking place which, while at this moment mostly unnoticed, will with time transform the Jewish faith and people from the tiny and often embattled minority that we are, to a truly international people with numerous adherents in every corner of the globe.
All the headlines about antisemitism have obscured the fact that all over the world people are turning toward Judaism. New Jewish communities are emerging in Africa which proclaim descent from the Lost Tribes or who have found that their search for religious truth has led them to Judaism.
In Latin America, numerous communities are springing up being founded by Crypto Jews who no longer want to keep their Jewish ancestry a secret but publicly embrace their Jewish roots and openly practice Judaism and are rejected by the Jewish establishment.
The same phenomenon is also found to some extent in India and to a limited extent in Europe. Even in the United States there are Christian backgrounds who are seriously exploring Judaism.
In the coming months, I hope to introduce you to specific emerging communities, their histories, practices and the issues they face. To name a few there are the 30 million plus Ibos in Nigeria and the two mllion Danites in the Ivory Coast, the B’nai Ephraim of South East India, or the Gogodalas of Papua New Guinea who claim that the Ark and the staff of Moses lie under the water of the Fly River lagoon. I also want to introduce you to some of the academic study who of these groups.
Will these new communities lead to a different definition of Judaism? Does racism play a role in their acceptance? Are Jews a race? Does the field of Jewish genetics play a role? What role does socio-economics play? What would be the consequences of the new communities coming to comprise the majority of the Jewish people?
I first became interested in the subject back in 2007, when my wife and I attended a conference at the Academy For Jewish Religion where my wife taught. We met a leader of the Abayudaya community of Uganda and offered to volunteer. We ended up volunteering for the Bnai Ephraim community in India, It was a life-changing experience. Since then I’ve been to Cameroon, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, and Nicaragua as a volunteer for Kulanu, an organization which supports emerging, returning and isolated communities around the globe and of which my wife Bonita now serves as president.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rabbi Gerald Sussman serves as the coordinator of the Rabbinic Ambassador program of Kulanu and has traveled extensively to meet emerging Jewish communities around the globe. He lives on Staten Island and serves as rabbi of Congregation Temple Emanuel-El, Staten Island. He is also a founding member of the Union for Traditional Judaism and on the Board of Governors of the New York Board of Rabbis.
