I wrote this in response to the past few months' news (August 2002 - February 2003) concerning the Abayudaya of Uganda and their being turned away from studying at orthodox yeshiboth and kibbutzim. Please forward to any and all individuals and organizations you feel may make some difference in the future in regards to similar groups who may undergo the same woe.

Thank you,
  Yafeu ibn Taom

While by no means deprecative of any of the European Jewish movements my heartfelt opinion is that returnees from the African diaspora of Judah and Israel should be assisted by established Jewries of their near relations.

Those of West Africa need teachers from the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya) employing their traditional ritual, customs, and prayerbooks. After all, they passed through the Maghreb to get to the Sahel, savanna, and forests of the western Sudan, greater Guinea, and possibly Bini.

Those of the Atlantic coast of West and Central Africa are known to have some impetus from Spanish & Portuguese Jews banished from Iberia and forcibly transported to those shores to build up Portuguese colonies and trade. Since they lost S&P traditions isn't that what they need to relearn?

Those of East Africa and possibly Bini would have been in touch through trade with the Mushrek (Sudan and Egypt) and Teiman (Yemen, Aden, and Hadramaut). Surely sympathetic teachers can be recruited from those Jewries for these populations.

Africans not of Hebrew stock could have teachers from any Jewry since they are not recovering a submerged heritage, but then maybe they too are returnees who have lost all memory of Israelite ancestry except for the pull of their Jewish souls longing to be reunited with their true people.

For those without links to `Am Yisra'el conversion to one of the modern movements is fine. Their is no compulsion to make Jews out of non-Jews for they too have a share in HaShem and the world to come by simply adhering to and abiding by the Noahide laws. Jewry is not a numbers game for we were never a great horde nor is there any requirement for us to increase our numbers though we may lose members in any one generation.

HaShem did not set His love upon you, nor choose you,
because ye were more in number than any people
--for ye were the fewest of all peoples--
but because HaShem loved you, and because
He would keep the oath which He swore unto your fathers.

Deuteronomy 7:7,8

Returning and converting Africans should not become, shall we say, ammunition in the war of the younger Jewish movements (Reform, Conservative, etc.) with the older established traditional Jewish movements (Hasidim, Orthodox, Haredi). Nor should they be punished by the older established traditional Jewish movements for an alleged "mistake." They should be made aware of the issues between all of these movements and the consequences of alligning with either of them. It should not come as a surprise to them when applying for schooling in Israel or making aliyah. They need to know the available options in full detail and make a choice on their own without any coercion or pressures.

If necessary, assistance should be provided as available for them to form communities within walking distance of their prayer centers with training in kasher slaughter techniques to overcome potential difficulties with the Israeli Chief Rabbinate instead of fighting against the established religious authority and then blaming the fallout on "racism" when the issue is really over observance of handed down tradition defined by Hokmei Yisra'el.

When the Americans from Chicago now settled in Dimona first arrived in Israel a Mughrebi (Moroccan) rabbi was willing to recognize them as returnees needing only giyur hhelqi to re-establish their links to world Jewry.

The Beta Israel and their Falas Mura brethren have always been recognized by Mizrahhi and Sepharade rabbis. It's the Hasidim, Haredi, and secular Jews who seem to have a problem wth them due, in my opinion, to their color and hair though disguised as doubts as to their lineage.

I feel it is only right that it is these above listed Sepharade and Teimani sources that need to be solicited in normalizing relations between lapsed African Hebrews and the rest of cognizant world Jewry. The vast Sepharade world has its own struggle to maintain tradition, custom, and culture in Israel today. Should returning Africans be immediately stripped of this which was once also their heritage too as the price of their return?

If there is a will to do so this it can be accomplished. Is there some rush to acheive the re-integration of African Hebrews that proper time and effort cannot be spent to retain Sephardi, Maghrebi, Mushreki, Mizrahhi, and Teimani instructors for African Hebrews who will help them recoup their losses?

Why saddle them unbeknownst with the extra burden of the O-C-R conflict, a conflict rejected en masse by the Jews of Iberia, North Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Gulfs?