Black African Jews: The Abayudaya of Uganda

In connection with our upcoming Jewish literature book group, "Between Two Worlds" (see last posting) an email from a friend yesterday provided a link to a BBC site that has a slide show about Ugandans who call themselves "Abayudaya", which means "Jews". They have adopted Judaism as their religion, following the lead of their warrior leader Kakungulu who converted to Judaism in 1919, based solely on his reading of the Jewish scriptures. Since then they have connected with other Jews. Oddly, the link I copied here isn't working -- I reach BBC but get an Error 404. Yet the link still works from my email. Oh well, I have now removed the link from here.

I first learned about the Abayudaya several years ago when I came across (and purchased for my husband) a book by Richard Sobol and Jeffrey Summit and an accompanying cd of music by members of the Abayudaya community. Richard Sobol is a photographer, and has an interesting site with more information about and images of the Abayudaya.