The Abayudaya of Uganda

By Jay Sand

Religious Life

Most members of the Abayudaya community are devout in their observance of Jewish customs and rituals. The Abayudaya’s Judaism begins from birth, when males are circumcised on the eighth day (unlike local Bagisu youth whose traditional religion dictates circumcision in the fifteenth or sixteenth year.) Abayudaya children grow up with a distinct awareness that they are Jews. They sing Jewish songs, some in the local language of Luganda, others in Hebrew with African melodies written by community members. They tag along at their mother’s heels as she fulfills the traditional role of keeper of the household, especially while cleaning and cooking for Shabbat. From birth the children also accompany their parents to services, both on holidays (the Abayudaya observe the same holidays as Western Jews), and weekly for Shabbat.

Almost all Abayudaya attend Shabbat services, some on Saturday morning only but most on both Friday evening and Saturday. There are five synagogues in the community, and each offers its own particular style of observance. At the Moses synagogue on Nabugoye Hill, “Rabbi” Gershom Sizomu leads Friday night and Saturday morning services in Hebrew and English – “Rabbi” Mishael delivers a sermon on the week’s parsha every Friday night in Luganda. Some families walk miles and miles to Nabugoye Hill to pray on Saturday mornings – children scamper along in front of their parents, elderly men trudge up the hill leaning on hand-carved walking sticks. Shabbat and holiday services are often the only time that community members will see each other for the week, so they become both social and religious occasions.

While those on Nabugoye Hill have chosen to add Hebrew to their traditional Lugandan prayers (with many of the Lugandan melodies written by Kakungulu himself), congregants at the nearby synagogue in the village of Namanyonyi have chosen to hold their services exclusively in Luganda. Shabbat morning services in Namanyonyi are peaceful and solemn. Congregants remove their shoes before entering the synagogue and speak in reverent tones. The week’s prayer leader stands before the congregation and preaches about the moral tenets of Judaism.

There are two synagogues in Palisa, a village several miles away from both Mbale and Nabugoye Hill. The farmers in Palisa bring their families to the synagogue, which are active with religious observance throughout Shabbat. The community’s fifth and most remote synagogue is in the village of Namatumba, approximately seventy kilometers from Mbale. Many Namatumba elders have passed on and the younger community members have not followed them in their observances. Members of the Abayudaya Youth Group have initiated efforts to revive Jewish observances in the most distant part of their community.

Being Jewish is a consistent and conscious part of life as an Abayudaya. Until recent developments such as the opening of Semei Kakungulu High School have invited more non-Jews to enjoy the recent success of their community, Abayudaya children were often teased or even beaten by other children because of their religion. Members of the community have been known to accuse the Jews of being “Christ Killers.” The Abayudaya were especially pressed to forego their religion during Idi Amin’s harsh rule in the ‘70s. During those difficult times many of the approximately 3,000 Abayudaya did convert, but a hardy 500 remained true to their faith.

Daily Jewish observances do continue to set the Abayudaya apart from their neighbors. Most Abayudaya keep kosher according to Talmudic law. Abayudaya slaughter their own animals according to Jewish custom and will not eat pig products. Jews do not participate in local Basigu circumcision rituals, nor do they follow the popular Christian and Musilim holidays of their neighbors. The Abayudaya keep a respectful distance from non-Jews in matters of religion, but they mingle with their neighbors at home, in the market, and in all other areas of public life.

History

In the 1880s, British missionaries converted the powerful Bagandan warrior Semei Kakungulu to Christianity. Because Kakungulu was a Protestant, British colonists commissioned him to bring the fertile African lands near the Nile’s source at Lake Victoria under their influence. Kakungulu won the lands, but became disenchanted with the British when they limited his domain to a 20 mile square plot near today’s small city of Mbale, 160 miles from the Ugandan capital of Kampala. He broke with them in 1913 when he joined the Malachites, a movement that the British called a cult because it combined Christianity with Judaism and Christian Science, and began to rewrite the Christian bible as a Malachite tome. Kakungulu became more and more a follower of Jewish tradition and less a familiar Protestant. In 1919 he circumcised his sons and himself and declared his community Jewish. 

Soon the British could communicate with him no longer and forced him from Mbale. Kakungulu fled to the foothills of Mount Elgon to a village called Gangama where he started a separatist sect known as Kibina Kya Bayudaya Absesiga Katonda (the Community of Jews who Trust in the Lord). After the warrior’s death, his followers split into two groups – one that retained a belief in Jesus and another, the Abayudaya, that became devout Jews. These Abayudaya isolated themselves from the Christians for fear of reprisal, passing Jewish traditions from generation to generation, maintaining their community through a succession of anti-Semitic regimes such as that of Idi Amin, whose soldiers outlawed the Jews’ rituals and destroyed their synagogues. With poor communications equipment and very little personal mobility, the Abayudaya did not establish connections with any outside Jewish communities; they maintained their traditions in total isolation. In the ‘60s and ‘70s the initial members of the Abayadaya community began to grow elderly and implored the rising generation to extend themselves to Jews outside of Uganda. The community reached out to Israel in the ‘60s and ‘70s and even had the first secretary of the Israeli embassy in Uganda visit them. 

In 1992, Matthew Meyer, a Brown University student studying in Kenya, heard of the Abayudaya and traveled to Mbale to spend the Sabbath with them. He returned to the United States with photographs, cassettes of the community choir singing Hebrew prayers to African melodies and letters from Abayudaya community members in both English and Hebrew. Since then, a delegation from Kulanu and a handful of other English-speaking travelers have visited the Abayudaya, bearing gifts such as a new Torah and money from the Brown University Hillel to build a synagogue. 

The Setting

The approximately 500 members of the Abayudaya community live sprinkled among the rolling, green hills of Eastern Uganda. Most community members live within several miles of Mbale, the third largest city in Uganda, which is about four hours from the capital of Kampala.

Mbale is a bustling, medium-sized city. The streets are full of minivan-taxis and boda bodas, bicycle taxis with multi-colored cushions on the back upon which a rider sits as the driver propels him or her by pedaling. Mbale is at the base of several large hills that are part of the same range at Mt. Elgon, one of the tallest mountains in the region. Peaks such as the daunting Wanaleare always visible. The hills begin where the cities (and the paved roads) end.

Renowned Bagandan elephant hunter and local military leader Semei Kakungulu founded Mbale about 80 years ago when he fell afoul of his British colonialist supporters. He and about 3,000 of his followers lived about the region, farming and hunting and practicing Kakungulu’s own hybrid of Judaism and Christianity. Most of them settled in areas around Nabugoye Hill where Kakungulu planned to build a grand synagogue that looked down the hill toward Mbale. Kakungulu died before he could complete the structure and Christian missionaries assumed control of the hill until the early ‘80s when a group of young Abayudaya calling themselves “the Kibbutz movement” reclaimed the it and built the Moses Synagogue. This brought the community’s focus back to the high ground.

Today most community members live around the Moses synagogue or the nearby synagogue in the village of Namanyonyi. Other community members live several miles on the other side of Mbale, in the flat land town known as Palisa, where there are two synagogues. The community’s fifth and most remote synagogue is in the village of Namatumba, approximately seventy kilometers from Mbale.

All of Kakungulu’s former domain is fertile and green.

Multicolored wildflowers accent the lush foliage. Ugandans farm most of the land, both mountainous and flat – there are scattered groves of jackfruit and papaya trees everywhere, plots of cotton and sugar cane, fields of cassava and cocoa. Outside of town there are few motorized vehicles so the air does not fill with exhaust; there is so little pollution that a clear night’s sky is ablaze with stars.