Bet_Din

The Bet Din took place in February, during the hottest and driest part of the year in this part of Uganda. Each morning the floor of the Moses Synagogue was swept and tables and benches were arranged for the Bet Din. The first day we had two parallel panels interviewing candidates for conversion. On subsequent days one panel remained in the

synagogue, while the other panel supervised the immersion, either at the river or in the community mikveh. (Photo by Howard Gorin)
Rather than interviewing members of the community individually, we interviewed them as family units. What struck us, though, was how differently family units were defined in Uganda. It was not unusual for adults to come accompanied by not only their biological children but also by their nieces and nephews. Orphans
are often cared for by one of the siblings of their deceased parents. Also, it is not unusual for an orphan, with no surviving family, to be cared for by a specific family or group of families, rather than being the ward of the community. (There are a lot of orphans in the Abayudaya Community, a sad but understandable fact of life in a country where - owing to poor nutrition, inadequate supplies of potable water, insufficient access to health care, AIDS and violence -- the average life expectancy is 43 years.) What was also striking was that, not infrequently, all the females of a family unit came to Bet Din together, while the males came at a different time. (Photo by Ed Samiljan)

Although English is the official language of Uganda, many people are more comfortable using their native, ethnic idiom. This is especially true when English is spoken with an American accent. As a former British protectorate, the Ugandan English accent is very different from that heard in the United States. To facilitate the Bet Din process, there was always one member of the Abayudaya Community - the community’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Gershom Sizomu (pictured at right); Joab Jonadab ("JJ") Keki, a past chairperson of the community ; Aaron Kintu Moses, the headmaster of the Hadassah Infant School - present during the interviews, to translate our questions and interpret the responses. (Photo by Ed Samiljan)

We based our interviews on the format of questions found in the Moreh Derekh, a manual for rabbis published by the Rabbinical Assembly. However, we made considerable modifications to those questions. For example, the question "Do you renounce all beliefs that you may once have had in any other religion?" made no sense in our context. Almost all of the people we interviewed had been Jewish (Abayudaya) all of their lives. In many cases, their families had been Abayudaya for three or four generations. Similarly the question "Do you accept the God of Israel as the one universal and indivisible God" had to be modified. Religiosity pervades Ugandan society. Witness such businesses as "El-Shaddai Fabrics. For the Abayudaya, there is no doubt who that God is and what sort of role God plays in their lives. Nor is there any question about God's unity and singularity. These are givens. (For a more detailed look at the questions posed by the Bet Din, follow this link: Bet Din Questions.)

| Next | Contents Page |