Uganda’s Tree of Life leaders visit Pittsburgh namesake
Congregations share prayers, gifts and stories of faith
Last Oct. 27, Yonatan Katz Lukato was quietly observing Shabbat, the Jewish holy day, in Kampala, the Ugandan capital where he lives.
A friend rushed up to him with the news: A gunman had attacked an American synagogue. The friend knew that Mr. Lukato had worked at a Jewish summer camp in the Poconos the previous summer and, since the synagogue was also in Pennsylvania, wondered if he knew those targeted.
He didn’t, but he does now.
Mr. Lukato, one of the founders of a new Jewish congregation in Kampala, and Wanani Esau, its president, visited
Pittsburgh Monday to deepen the bonds they have developed with Tree of Life / Or L’Simcha Congregation in Pittsburgh in the wake of last year’s anti- Semitic attack that claimed the lives of 11 worshippers from three congregations meeting at its Squirrel Hill synagogue building.
Immediately after learning of the shootings, members of the Kampala congregation said prayers in memory of the martyrs and soon contacted the Pittsburgh congregation.
They asked if they could name their new congregation after Tree of Life. The Pittsburgh congregation heartily agreed.
Monday at Rodef Shalom Congregation in Shadyside, where Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life congregants have been worshipping over the past year, the two members of the Kampala congregation told their story to an appreciative audience. They were visiting for the day after traveling from the Poconos, where they’re working this summer at Camp Ramah.
“It’s a dream come true,” said Mr. Lukato. “I’ll take the message from here back home and tell my congregants about the good people I met here.”
Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life said the Kampala congregation’s request to adopt its name received a “unanimous and enthusiastic” response from his board.
He said the Pittsburgh congregation hopes to send surplus prayer books and other materials to its Ugandan
counterpart. And, he said “it’s a dream” one day to bring a Torah scroll to the Kampala congregation.
The two visitors displayed an array of jewelry and colorful hand- crocheted kippahs, or head coverings, crafted by members of their local Jewish community.
Rabbi Myers also gave them each kippahs with the post- Oct. 27 slogan, “Stronger than hate,” with the Steel City emblem containing a Star of David.
The Ugandan visitors told the gathering the history of their branch of Judaism, known as the Abayudaya.
It began around 1919 when some local Ugandans who had been following Christianity began to base their practice exclusively on the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament. Through the influence of Jewish visitors, they began further adopting the Jewish calendar and other rituals.
They suffered persecution under dictator Idi Amin in the 1970s, but today, about 3,000 people belong to Abayudaya congregations and can practice their faith freely, the visitors said. Most live in communities east of Kampala, but about 80 students and others belong to the congregation in the nation’s capital.