Like many others, Uganda’s Jews down to one meal a day because of ongoing famine
Uganda’s 2,000 Jews have long maintained a modest existence. They live in the east of the country in a hilly, rural area that lacks paved roads, consistent electricity and freely running water.
But this year, the situation for Uganda’s Jewish community, called the Abayudaya, is worse.
Twenty million people across Africa and the Middle East are now at risk of illness and death due to a famine that is centered in Somalia, Nigeria, Yemen and South Sudan. Caused by a mix of factors, including civil wars, underdeveloped infrastructure and a drought, the famine is “the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the UN,” Stephen O’Brien, the emergency relief coordinator for the United Nations, said in March.
“People look dehydrated and starving,” Gershom Sizomu, the community’s rabbi, told JTA on Tuesday. “People got sick and weak, and there are people who died because of complications because of the food shortage. People were already sick, so without food they become weaker and weaker.”
Sizomu told JTA that the Abayudaya, who rely on their own crops to survive, have been hit hard by the drought. While conditions are easing now because the harvest season has arrived for maize and beans, many families are subsisting on one meal a day, he said.
Two community members who already were sick have died of malnutrition.
Fleeing is useless, Sizomu added – food shortages plague cities, too.
The community, whose members converted to Judaism under Conservative auspices about 15 years ago, stays in regular touch with Jewish communities in the United States and Israel. But only one American synagogue has provided famine relief.
Beth El, a Conservative congregation in Pittsburgh, had hosted Sizomu for a weekend of Torah study last year, where he mentioned the risk of impending famine. So when 60 members convened last month for the synagogue’s annual meeting, congregation president Cliff Spungen passed around an envelope for donations. It came back filled with $800.
In the following weeks, Spungen sent email appeals to the synagogue’s members, as well as to Temple Emanuel, a nearby Reform synagogue. In total, the Pittsburgh campaign has raised $6,500 – a hefty sum in rural Uganda, where a family in Nabugoye, the Abayudaya’s main village, can live on as little as $5 a day.
When it comes to the Jewish community fund-raising for famine relief in East Africa this year, Beth El’s campaign is a rare success story. Take the Jewish Coalition for East Africa Relief, 24 Jewish groups convened by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee – it has raised just $10,000.
The “trickle” is not enough to even begin planning for allocations, said Will Recant, the coalition’s chair. Instead, the coalition is now investing in raising awareness through education and advocacy, sending pamphlets and UN fact sheets to congregations and Jewish communities.
The coalition’s goal is broader than the synagogue campaign. The synagogues were able to make an impact because their donations targeted one small community. The coalition hopes to make a significant contribution to the overall aid effort in East Africa.
Sizomu told JTA that the Abayudaya shared the money they received from Pittsburgh with surrounding communities also suffering from shortages. And if the coming harvest improves conditions, Sizomu said he hopes to refocus the community’s attention on setting up water storage and irrigation systems so farmers can weather the next drought.
But he acknowledged that developing the necessary infrastructure will be costly. And in the meantime, people are still starving. (JTA)