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Temple Beth Avodah, 45 Puddingstone Lane, Newton.
Talk by Cindy Paisner about the Abayudaya, Jews of Uganda, on Sunday, April 3rd at 10:45am. There will be a question and answer period to follow led by Rabbi Jeffrey Summit and myself.
About the Abayudaya
The Abayudaya is a Jewish community of approximately 1,000 people living in villages surrounding Mbale in Eastern Uganda. They passionately follow Jewish ritual, including observing the laws of the Sabbath, celebrating Jewish holidays, keeping kosher and praying in Hebrew. This community self-converted to Judaism in 1919 and over the past ninety years has moved increasingly mainstream in their Jewish practice. In 2003, a Beit Din, a rabbinic court, from the Conservative Movement traveled to Uganda to supervise halachic (Jewish legal) conversations for more than three hundred members of the community. Their spiritual leader, Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, was recently ordained from the Zeigler School, the Conservative Movement’s rabbinic school in Los Angeles.
The community is mainly subsistence farmers and they have many needs, from clean water and sanitation to health care, yet they are developing a sustainable base of financial support. Generations of the community refused to participate in local education because all of the schools were Christian missionary schools. The Abayudaya would not give up their Judaism, even to obtain an education and a better way of life.
The Education Project
Beginning in 2000, Rabbi Jeffrey Summit, the Neubauer Executive Director at Tufts University Hillel, and an ethnomusicologist working with the Abayudaya, began a program to raise funds to send Abayudaya students to college and university in Uganda. In 2002 he was joined by Cindy Paisner, a passionate and committed community advocate of this project. Literally an entire generation of the Abayudaya youth is seeking a higher education to help strengthen their community, but because of limited funds, only a fraction of them have had that opportunity. This is about “teach a man to fish”..........raising up an entire people and together, Rabbi Summit and Ms. Paisner are accomplishing this.
Thanks to a small cadre of donors, to date, the project has educated 20 members of the Abayudaya community, including an engineer, a lawyer, a physician, hotel manager and several teachers, all of whom have committed to stay in their community to help their fellow Jews build a better life. As of 2010, the program supports eighteen students enrolled in college and university. It costs approximately $5000 a year per student to provide tuition and living expenses for a student. Many young members of the Abayudaya community are presently on a waiting list for this program.
The story of the Abayudaya challenges stereotypes of race, religion and culture. The Abayudaya have endured adversity in the practice of their Judaism, surviving the persecutions of Idi Amin. They have developed warm, productive relationships with their Christian and Moslem neighbors. At a time when little positive news comes out of Africa, this is a story of hope, faith and renewal. We hope you will join us in this project in educating a generation of leaders for the Abayudaya Jewish Community. Your support would mean nothing less than helping an incredible Jewish community to become self-sufficient and ultimately to thrive.
For more information on the Abayudaya Higher Education Fund or to make a contribution, please contact Cindy Paisner via email: cpaisner@aol.com or telephone: 617-630-1011.
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