The community has built an ele-
mentary school and a high school.
"Our Jewish children are now
allowed to go to community schools
without being baptized, but only in our
schools would they be able to have
Hebrew and Judaic studies," J.J. said.
"We have 200 students in our elemen-
tary school and more than 300 in our
high school, but all of them are not
Jewish. We invite everyone."
Even in a remote area of the world,
Ugandan Jews have been victims of
anti-Semitism, with children sometimes
teased and beaten by peers. "People
who are not Jewish say we are 'Jesus
killers,'" J.J. said. "But they learn from
us that that is not true.
We teach them about
Judaism."
Rachel will return
home with him. She
serves on the Abayudaya
Jewish community's exec-
utive council.
But there is more in
store for Rachel. "She is
interested in studying at
an American university,"
Dr. Tobin said. "The
Institute will help her with
the application process."
And for Rachel there
also is music.

(Smithsonian Folkways Recordings,
Washington D.C., available at ama-
zon.com ), that brought the Grammy
nomination in the category of Best
Traditional World Music Album —
Vocal or Instrumental.
"To make the CD, Rabbi Jeffrey
Summit from Tufts University near
Boston traveled to us with his recording
machines and produced the CD," J.J.
said. "We sang and he recorded."
Rabbi Summit, executive director
and CEO of the Tufts Hillel
Foundation and Tufts' Jewish chaplain,
is an ethnomusicologist who teaches in
the school's Judaic studies program and
department of music.
Rabbi Summit has
conducted research on
music and liturgy of
the Abayudaya. He also
annotated a music CD
that accompanies

Abayudaya: The Jews of
Uganda, whose text
and photographs were
created by Richard
Sobol (Abbeville Press,
N.Y.). Both have visit-
ed Mbale.
A third CD is in the
works, this time with
L.A.-based Gershom as
the producer.
"Something else we
want to have in our
Sounds Of Music
villages is musical
A completely unexpected Matthew Meyer with
instruments," J.J. said.
experience has come from Kenyan child Jane Wambui
"Our young people
Western involvement
in Korogocho, Kenya
love music. If they
with the Abayudaya —
could learn to play
an astonishing musical
instruments, they could have jobs as
success.
musicians."
Two CDs of African melodies
emerged from a village with only two
The Right Thing To Do?
old, worn and chipped guitars.
While J.J. and his community are in
Composed of both original lyrics and
awe of what has been accomplished by
traditional Jewish liturgy in English,
and for his people, Meyer sometimes
Hebrew and local languages including
second guesses his promise to tell the
Luganda and Swahili, one of them was
world about the Abayudaya.
nominated for a 2005 American
"I think, indirectly, what I did has
Grammy Award.
led to some amazing and good things
The musical recordings began when
for the community in terms of substan-
the delegation from Kulanu visited in
tively addressing their basic community
1995. They were so impressed with the
needs," he said. "But I regularly wonder
music that they returned and produced
if it did not lead in some way to what
the CD, Shalom Everybody Everywhere.
It features Gershom's original music and may be their destruction."
Meyer still returns to visit the
the Abayudaya's Kohavim Tikvah choir,
Abayudaya
every year or two, often for
which included J.J. and Rachel, a
a Shabbat or Jewish holiday.
soloist, then only 9 years old.
"I consider myself extremely lucky
"Kulanu put us on the Internet and
simply to observe what I have observed,
they are selling our CD [at its Web site]
to serve witness to a community that has
for a fund-raiser for the Abayudaya,"
so
blossomed and yet been so destroyed.
J.J. said.
I,
myself,
am never quite sure which."
Abayudaya:
It was the second CD,
After
their
initial visit to Uganda,
Music from Jewish People of Uganda

Meyer and his travel partner, Julia
Chamovitz, who also has made return
visits to the Abayudaya, discussed at
length the decision of how much to
share with the outside world about their
discovery.
"We spoke of everything, of how
this community wanted us to do every-
thing to help them: to promote aware-
ness of their existence, to keep them
safe, to help them build schools, to
build a synagogue that was not built of
mud and sticks," Meyer said. "They
had never had a permanent-structure
synagogue before.
"And they wanted their children to
be healthy. Disease was rampant. The
AIDS scourge was just beginning to hit
the community — which posed a par-
ticularly acute threat as the community
had some success in practicing sexual
exclusivity (only marrying within)."
He thinks of new risks that came
with the notoriety of news media pub-
licity and the Grammy nod.
"The most incredible thing may be
the amazement and interest with which
American Jewish audiences find them,"
Meyer said. "Because that amazement
and interest is not too dissimilar from
how the Abayudaya view us.
"The danger is that the community
will disappear or assimilate to such a
degree that they do not even exist any-
more," Meyer said. "The community
today is as divided as it has ever been.
Kids are healthy. Everyone goes to
school. But their services today much
more closely resemble what you would
find in a Southfield synagogue than
what you would have found at Moses
Synagogue 12 years ago. And I question

Rabbi Ger-sham
Sizomrd holds
the Torah at
the fillo4s ,

Synagogue.

whether that is a good thing."
The last time Meyer visited the
synagogue was this past Yom Kippur,
the same High Holiday that first
brought him to the Abayudaya a
dozen years before.
"The banana porridge at sundown
tasted quite sweet," he recalled.
But he has seen J.J and Rachel since
that trip. Last Friday night, Feb. 25,
Meyer had Shabbat dinner with them
and a group of Americans, including
their host Rabbi Darren Levine, who
have all spent extended time living in
the Abayudaya villages.
"We are generally less interested in
helping the community get religious
materials and electricity and dig bore
holes and are more interested simply in
engaging the community as friends, in
challenging them to serve each other
better and just try to learn something
from them," Meyer said.
He will definitely return to the
Abayudaya villages and visit the way he
and his dinner companions always do.
"Most who go visit the community
stay in Mbale's finest hotel four miles
from Nabugoye Hill," he said. "We
stay in the village, often on the dirt
and concrete floors of their homes.
And we could not imagine doing it
any other way."

❑

Meet ILL and Rachel

While in the Detroit area, J.J. and
Rachel Keki will be at the following
venues:
• 6 p.m. Friday, March 4,
at Congregation Shaarey Zedek
West Bloomfield, B'nai Israel
Center. J.J. and Rachel will teach
niggunim (wordless melodies)
during a musical service. A dinner
following the service requires pre-
paid reservations. Cost: $12 for
adults; S5 for children; no charge
for children younger than age 3. For
information, e-mail David
Saperstein at:
DMS@maddinhauser.com .
• 9 a.m. Saturday, March 5,
also at the SZ B'nai Israel Center.
J.J. will speak at the service.
• 8 p.m. Saturday, March 5, at

Congregation Shir Tikvah.
A reception with J.J. and Rachel
will include a slide show of their
community photos and a musical
performance. No charge. No
reservations necessary
• 10:30 a.m. Sunday, March 6, at
Congregation Beth Shalom. J.J. and
Rachel will speak and give a musical
performance. No charge. No reser-
vations necessary. For more infor-
mation, call Danny Kochavi at
(248) 547.7970 or e-mail:
dkochavi@congbethshalom.org.
• 1 p.m. Sunday March 6, at
the Jewish Community Center in
Oak Park. The Kekis will make a
presentation about their community
and give a musical performance. No
charge. No reservations needed.

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