Finding Jewish communities in Africa

STEVEN GRUZD

Before embarking on the five-hour flight to Addis Ababa, I called for assistance to find a shul there. Within five minutes, I got a Shabbos invite from Rabbi Eliyahu Chabib of Chabad Ethiopia.

“I’m not frum!” I texted.

Pause. “We’re all frum.” Then he texted: “Can you bring kosher meat?”

“Chutzpah!” I thought.

I was about to catch an Uber to the airport when that request was made, so all I could do was buy a dozen ritzy Ooh La La! chocolates (Milchik, Beth Din Hechsher – I checked) at duty free instead.

Five or so hours later, at 17:00 on a Friday, here I was, waiting for Abi, my Ethiopian driver, outside the gleaming Chinese-built African Union headquarters. Did I have enough chocolates? Chassidim take the commandment, “Pru U’ Rev’u” (Be fruitful and multiply), seriously.

Later, I found myself hopelessly lost in Addis’s dusty side-roads when an Israeli-accented voicenote on my smartphone directed me to “find the yellow flag”. Soon I spied Chabad’s channukiah poking over a wall. I donned a blue-and-white beanie-sized yarmulke, bought a decade ago from “the last Jew in Cairo”. It covers my bald spot perfectly.

There were big mezuzot. Inside was an aron kodesh. Shelves heaving with Jewish books were lined along a wall. A giant poster of the Lubvitcher Rebbe dominated another. There was a Shabbos table bedecked with salads, humus and techina.

“Shalom! Ani Steve mi Drom Afrika (I am Steve from South Africa)!” I said to a seated senior citizen wearing a baseball cap. Shalom Tziyon was playing with two of the rabbi’s three young daughters.

Shalom’s family hails from Aden (now part of Yemen, sandwiched between Saudi Arabia and the Red Sea). Born in Ethiopia, Shalom splits his time between Addis Ababa and Hendon in London.

Once several hundred Adeni Jews lived in Addis Ababa. They built a diabetic treatment hospital there. Most made aliya. He showed me pictures of the Asmara shul (in Eritrea today) and its cemetery, recently vandalised, as well as the Adeni community. Was the vandalism connected to US President Donald Trump’s recent pronouncements on his country’s Jerusalem policy, or to the treatment of Eritrean migrants in Israel, I wondered. Shalom shrugged.

Enter Rabbi Eliyahu Chabib, a tall man dressed in black, with a scraggly beard and twinkling, bespectacled eyes. He set up Chabad Ethiopia five years ago from scratch. His father was born in Algeria and his mother was French – hence the miniature Eiffel Tower statue atop the bookshelf. Rebbetzin Devorah’s mom came from Chicago and her dad is Australian. I asked her what she does. She pointed her one hand to the table, her other to Mushkie (5). “We give all Jews in Addis Ababa a kosher meal every night if they want it.”

“Why only three children?” I asked.

“Yesh zman – dere is de time,” said the 30-year-old rabbi, who is one of 14 children. Good thing his mishpocha (family) wasn’t in Addis to scoff the chocolates, I thought.

After studying in New York for five years and being ordained as a rabbi, Chabad sent Rav Eliyahu on short shlichut stints to Peru, Bolivia and India. “Dere is Chabad ‘Ouse in about 12 cities in India,” he proudly proclaims. “Many Israelis and Jews love to trevel dere.”

Then Daniel Barhenu and Avraham (whose surname I didn’t catch), both Beta Yisrael (black Ethiopian Jews), arrived. In my pidgin Hebrew, rustier than a used car in Durban, we somehow communicated. Daniel went to Israel before Operation Solomon airlifted 14 000 Beta Yisrael from this 3 000-year-old community to Israel in May 1991 as the Mengistu regime crumbled in Ethiopia. His Hebrew is mellifluous. Mine is the worst by far, bar Shtum Avraham. I think he said he’d walked to Israel through Sudan.

Shabbos arrived. Rav Eliyahu explained that the service mixes Ashkenazi, Adeni and Sephardi traditions. I kept swopping siddurs and losing my place. Shalom chanted Shir Hashirim. It was long.

Then in rushed a young blond man in a tatty T-shirt, tzitzit and sandals. It was Ro’i Friedman (23); his parents hail from Poland, I think. He was at the tail-end of a mammoth trek through Africa. Chabad Addis was his last stop.

We all belted out Lecha Dodi, winking, smiling and dancing for about six extra choruses. I cried a bit.

Yigdal. Ro’i and I joined in, but we suddenly heard unfamiliar lines. Shalom explained that Sephardim have an extra line. That’s news to us.

Rav made Kiddush, we vassed and ate delicious challot that Devorah had baked. The meal was sumptuous and heimlich, dominated by salads, soup, chicken schnitzel and chatzilim (eggplant). We spoke – in Hebrew, English, Adeni, Amharic, Yiddish and French – about Trump, Bibi, Mugabe and Zuma, about the parsha and Jews around the world.

I taught them to sing Kol Haolam Kulo in English. Daniel did it in Amharic. We benched, and ended appropriately: “Hinei Matov u Manayim – shevet achim gam yachad” –“How good and pleasant it is for brothers [and sisters] to sit together.”

“So nu, you going to help us mit minyan tomorrow?”

“Is there a minyan if I don’t come?”

“Maybe ken, maybe lo. Come.”

I’m not the greatest shul goer, but when I lost my mom in 2015, I made a real effort to say Kaddish most mornings and evenings. Only then did I understand the meaning of Jewish community. If a mourner lacks nine other men, the departed soul ascends more slowly.

It’s 10:30 on Saturday. Was I the minyan man? =

Nope. Just Rav, Shalom, Avraham, Daniel, Ro’i and me..

I learned something else. We Jews can pray and learn and read a lot without a minyan. You can’t take out the Torah, granted, but you can still read the Chumash then, as persecuted Jews have done for millennia. ’n Jood maak a plan, nê?

I promised to make sure that Chabad Addis has kosher meat for Pesach. So please, if you’re passing through, perhaps on the way to Israel, do a mitzvah for this Rav and his tiny community. He’s even opened a Jewish prayer room at Addis airport.

And if you have the time and the inclination, make a point of meeting Jews on your journeys.