We're back! It's certainly been strange being away from the blog and Nabugoye, though the trip out west was a lot of fun, filled with breathtaking scenery, amazing animals and many tuna packets and protein bars. All in all, a great success--but I'm looking forward to enjoying my last few days here.
While much of today was taken up with the protracted journey from Kampala to Nabugoye via Mbale (the bus to Mbale only leaves when it fills and stops often along the way, so a 4 hour trip easily expands to 6), the night brought a long awaited occurrence--a great conversation with the rabbi.
The topics jumped from communal obligations and roles to theology, and was a fascinating experience from start to finish--four hours long, and could have easily been longer! Some highlights:
1) Hearing the rabbi's passion for pushing for a sustainable community--that the current situation of the schools is just too precarious, and that empowerment must be given to the people to pay for their child's education so that dependency does not continue forever. To that end, they will soon implement a plan by which the university fund will be tied to going into certain professions required in the community, but once the community is sustaining itself, then people will be free to study what they choose and work where they choose, but (hopefully) on their own dime.
2) What makes one Jewish here, he said, is practicing as a Jew. This was not, as I understood it, to negate conversion, but rather to stress the act of participation.
3) Hearing about his role as the only officially ordained African rabbi residing in an African community, and where that places him in a Pan-African context. Most fascinating was his wish to galvanize the Lemba, a prosperous South African tribe which identifies as Jewish and which was discovered to possess the "Cohen" (priestly) gene, to engage in more practical aspects of Judaism.
4) His belief in agriculture as Uganda's future was fresh and honest, and probably very accurate. J.J. was his shining example.
5) Hearing about the old customs of the community which arose when the Bible was the main source of guidance, such as taking off one's shoes upon entering the synagogue (as Moses did) or announcing when one is in niddah (menstruating) and removing oneself from the community for the duration of the period.
6) Hearing his take on Torah--in terms of the book, it is a human document that he personally connects to, with different reports by different people on the same events. Interestingly--he doesn't doubt the verity of the events, as many scholars do. There were merely many present and different viewpoints, and this, he says, is what the contradictions express. He identifies with many of the events in the bible, and reinterprets some when necessary, and is very comfortable disagreeing with parts, as one "does with a best friend!"
7) The importance to him is the now--not how a people came to be, what genes they have, why they became Jewish--what matter is where they are now, if they are sincerely practicing now or not and for the right reasons.
8) He stressed that he did not believe in chosen-ness, and did not like asserting one religion's prominence over another--thus his issue with certain prayers, including Aleinu. "What's good for me can't be bad for someone else."--it has to be good for everyone.
The main question we left off with, which he said he needed time to think about before giving the answer: If there is no belief at all the Judaism holds a special and important place on its own, beyond a personal connection to it--why preserve the Torah and Judaism?
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