THE JEW RUNNING TO BE CONGO’S PRESIDENT
THE UNLIKELIEST contender for the presidency of the volatile Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is an Orthodox Jew from Jerusalem.
Black, burly and bearded, Pinhas Eliyahou Shaday was born in Kinshasa and raised in France, and says he will soon be presenting himself under the banner of the Congolese Socialist Party.
President Joseph Kabila failed to step down last December, and unrest looms again in the war-torn country.
Mr Shaday says his journey to Judaism brought him back to his native Congo. Holding his twoyear-old baby as we talk over Skype from his Jerusalem home, the 35-yearold talks about the resolve he needed to convert and how, for him, being a Jew is about being involved in improving people’s lives. His conversion was born of a strong inner spirituality, and dissatisfaction with the Catholic religion.
Mr Shaday’s father eked out a living as a taxi driver in Kinshasa, but poverty and political unrest pushed him to emigrate to France.
Like many people in the DRC, Mr Shaday’s parents were members of an evangelical church. “I was brought up in a religion that frequently mentions the God of Abraham, Jacob and Moses,” he said.
As a social sciences student at Caen University in Normandy, he searched the internet to learn about the Old Testament. He felt he was discovering “an approach that brought the spiritual into everyday life, and that appealed to me.”
In 2007, he approached the Central Consistory of the Jews of France saying he wanted to convert. They told him he must first attend a synagogue for a year. The rabbi at a Sephardic Tunisian synagogue in the east of Paris received him warmly. “He invited me for the Sabbath. I learned how to pray and the congregation eventually got used to me.”
He also took a year of evening classes at the Consistory in Paris. “None of this was easy. I had to move out from my
family’s home and rent my own flat so as to respect the kosher rules.” He eventually passed the written tests, and was converted in 2012, when he acquired his new Jewish names, Pinhas Eliyahou. Mr Shaday felt he had to move to Israel “as I had built a true Zionism inside me”. After another year, he eventually settled in Herzliya.
His decision to move into Congolese politics came after he went to live in Jerusalem with his family to be close to his new rabbi. Thanks to B’nai Brith’s connections with the DRC’s political
diaspora in Belgium and France, he felt he could make a difference.
“A couple of years ago, the Congolese Socialist Party contacted me to write speeches for them. We became involved with the opposition.” For a while, this included another Jewish presidential contender, Moise Katumbi, the wealthy former governor of Katanga Province now on the run from Mr Kabila. Unlike Mr Shaday, Mr Katumbi’s father was Jewish.
Mr Shaday says the Congolese have always felt well disposed to their small Jewish population. They do not associate Jews with the colonial past, and see them as “God’s people”.
He says it is too soon to talk about his party’s plans, but that Israel “has real influence in the Congo, even if that is sometimes exaggerated.” Being socialist in the Congo, he adds, means wanting everyone to have food, medical care and a roof over their head. He would like to head the transitional government due to take over before the long-promised elections to replace Mr Kabila.