Place_Like_This

The British colony of Nigerian was divided into three administrative regions. The administrative center of the North was in Kaduna, about which I have written elsewhere. In the West, the administrative center was in Ibadan, the site of first university established in Nigeria and considered by many to be one of its finest. The administrative center in the East was in Enugu. Enugu (the city and the state) is in Igboland, and to this day, the five states of Igboland - Abia, Anambra, Enugu, Ebonyi (which was carved out of Enugu State in the late 1990's), and Imo - are referred to as "The East."

During the course of my most recent visit to Nigeria (February 2006), I spent Shabbat in a rural compound, near the city of Okigwe, in Imo State. I also visited Ebonyi. This dispatch will be about my visit to the latter.

Ebonyi's capital, Abakaliki, is about two and a half hours from where I spent Shabbat. I had been told that I was to speak at a congregational gathering there. That was all I was told.

As we approached Abakaliki, I saw a group of fifteen to twenty men and teenage males, many of them wearing tallitot, standing on the side of the road. They were the advance delegation, waiting on the road to town to welcome me. In spite of the searing heat and debilitating humidity, they were clearly quite energized; after all, this would be the first time in their lives that they would get to see a rabbi.

As we neared, I saw what was written on the banner that they held aloft. It contained the same message that was on the posters that adorned virtually every light pole and wall along the route: Welcome, Rabbi Howard D. Gorin, to the Ebonyi Jewish Messianic Faith Assembly.

Oh, dear.

I will spare you the negotiations that resulted in my agreeing to address the assembly - some 200-250 individuals - that had waited outside, long past the scheduled hour of my arrival. What you need to know about my decision is this: In the West, the door of Jewish messianism swings only one way: out, leading people born as Jews away from normative Judaism. In many parts of Africa, the door of Jewish messianism swings in the opposite direction: in, toward a more complete connection with normative Judaism and the Jewish people. The same, too, applies to those who believe that their ancestors were anusim, or conversos, Jews of the Iberian Peninsula who accepted Christianity under duress

A case in point: Samuel Chukwuma, whom I know as Shmuel Tikvah Ben Yaakov, shared with me some of his spiritual autobiography. He is Igbo. He was born into a Catholic family. During his post-college stint in the National Service Corps, he met a messianic Jew, with whom he debated the relative merits of Church doctrine versus the text of the Bible itself. The more he studied, the more he was drawn to "the original." He spent a Shabbat with his friend and decided to become a Jew. Providence, as he would have it, brought him into contact with Sar Habakkuk Ben Yahudah Nwafor, the spiritual leader of a small congregation in the outskirts of Abuja, Nigeria's capital. He spent Shabbat with Habakkuk's community and was startled that the congregation did not offer their prayers in the name of Yeshua (Jesus). After a few weeks with the congregation, neither did he. His teshuvah- return to Judaism - was complete. He is now a full or "orthodox" Jew. (That is how the word "orthodox" is used in Nigeria.)

Now, perhaps, one can better understand the difficulty in answering the question about how many Jews there are in Nigeria. One person I know suggested that, of every ten Igbos, seven are Christian and three are sabbatarian, that is, they observe Shabbat on Saturday. Two of the three sabbatarians are Christians; only one in three is a Jew. Keep in mind, though, that every messianic I met called him- or herself a Jew. So, while there are tens of thousands of Nigerians who call themselves "Jews," only one in fifty - a very generous estimate - practices what we would consider normative or "orthodox" Judaism.

Whether or not the leadership of the Jewish Messianic Faith Assembly in Ebonyi intends to lead the congregation toward normative Judaism is not clear to me. On the one hand, I have been assured that such is the intention. On the other hand, I was also told that the congregation received an inducement in the form of the promise of receiving some of the books that Tikvat Israel Congregation has shipped there. As I heard numerous times from leaders of messianic congregations, "How can we do teshuvah without books and other materials?"

In my remarks to the congregation, I acknowledged their desire to learn more about the Jewish heritage, quoting for them the passage from Amos 8:11, "A time is coming - declares Adonai my God - when I will send a famine upon the land: not a hunger for bread or a thirst for water, but for hearing the words of Adonai." I told them about Pirke Avot and quoted Hillel's saying: "Be like the disciples of Aaron the High Priest: loving peace and pursuing peace, loving your fellow creatures and drawing them near to the Torah." That, in essence, was my purpose in reaching out to this congregation.

And then I showed them the Torah. I had taken a Torah with me, minus its atzei hayim (the wood rollers). Standing in the middle of the congregation's courtyard, I began to unroll the Torah, drafting people to hold it up until the entire Torah had been unrolled. Then I invited the rest of the congregation to go inside the half-circle created by the Torah, where I invoked God's blessings for them and their children.

I cannot describe how thrilled the community was to see and hold a Torah and how touched they were that a rabbi - a "real" rabbi - had taken the time to visit them. Time will tell whether or not the visit will have any enduring impact, but for that moment, there was a special meeting of minds and hearts.

At that meeting in Abakaliki, I was made an honorary chief and given the title Nwannedinamba: "Our brother in the Diaspora." Or, if you prefer, you can call me what one fellow at Port Harcourt Airport dubbed me: "Reverend Chief."

Dispatched February. 23, 2006

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