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The Face
Of Jewish
Uganda

Visitors to Detroit to share
unique ancestry through
music, photos and stories.

SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN

StairWriter

jr

.J. Keki looks very much like his Ugandan
neighbors. He grows coffee, bananas and maize
on his farm; travels on dirt roads by bicycle-taxi
and pumps water from the ground several times a day
to carry home to his family.
But no matter what he is doing or where he goes
J.J. always has a kippah on his head, eats only kosher
foods and on Friday nights and Saturdays, he walks to
synagogue for Shabbat.
"That is because I am Jewish," J.J. explained.
He and his daughter, Rachel Namudosi Keki, will
be in Detroit on Friday through Sunday to share
experiences of Jewish life in Uganda at three area
synagogues and the Jewish Community Center in
Oak Park.
The Kekis and other members of six eastern
Ugandan villages are descendants of a group of
Christians who left the church in 1919 and became
Torah-observant Jews.
Under the leader-
ship of Semei
Kakungulu, an ele-
phant hunter, military leader and once-devout
Christian from the Buganda region of Uganda, 3,000
Ugandans, including J.J.'s father and grandfather,
began to observe Jewish dietary laws, hold Jewish reli-
gious services and perform Jewish circumcisions on
their sons. Locals referred to them as Abayudaya, a
Luganda (language) word meaning, "people of Judah"
or "Jews."
Kakungulu and the Abayudaya left their homes
in Kampala and formed their own community in

COVER STORY

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J.J. Kekis daughte;;
Shuva, feeds one of her
familys dairy cows,
donated by the Heiter
Project hzternational.