Behind the Headlines the Jews of Kenya

The Nairobi Hebrew Congregation was founded in 1904, but no minutes were kept until 1907, when Il men adopted the name officially. One year later, the British colonial administration offered the congregation land for a synagogue, but fund-raising problems prevented construction until 1913. The cornerstone ceremony, attended by Kenya’s 30 Jews, was based on Masonic ritual, with prominent Royal Arch Mason present in full regalia.

The history of the congregation, according to Rev. Julius Carlebach, who wrote a pamphlet on the “Jews of Nairobi” published in 1961, “is an almost continuous record of apathy and financial difficulties caused by (dues) arrears and personal strife.”

The friction among members caused presidents and councils to be attacked, to resign and be reinstated many times in the course of the congregation’s first 30 years. Carlebach attributes this “inevitable friction” to the “individualistic nature of the Jewish settlers,” Concerned to prevent a small group from taking power, they invested it in the general membership meeting, “of which,” notes Carlebach, “there were many.”

AN INTERESTING AND FEISTY LOT

The picture that emerges from Carlebach’s congregational history, however, is not as bleak as he him-self summarizes it. Throughout its history services were held — not always with good attendance — children’s classes went on — often without great parental support — and the congregation responded warmly and generously to fund-raising appeals from abroad.

The matzot It imported from Britain and sold to the well-off, it gave away free to the poor. And, as even Carlebach points out, one or two men always came forward at the times of the worst financial crises to prevent congregational bankruptcy. All in all, the congregation members seemed an interesting, and feisty lot.

FACING THE GREATEST CHALLENGE

The congregation faced its greatest challenge with the rise of Nazism. As early as June, 1933, several months after the first anti-Jewish boycott in Nazi Germany, congregation president Edward Rubin summoned the Jews of Nairobi to a meeting on the “grave situation” there. Its representative at the Board of Deputies of British Jews in London, Cyril Henriques, spoke out many times, unsuccessfully though, for an anti-German boycott.

The first Jewish refugees arrived in Kenya in November 1933, and continued to trickle in. The problem was that under British dominion, every refugee had to be found a job on a farm as a farm manager. The Jews of Kenya responded by establishing the Plough Settlements Association to train and settle German Jewish refugees on Kenyan farms. As late as 1938, it sent a recruiting committee to Germany — and returned with 27 refugees.

The next year, the Kenyan Jewish Council for Training and settlements bought Upper Gilgil Training Farm to further help “absorb” refugees. (With the outbreak of the war, the area was declared a military area, which it remains today.)

In the mid-1940’s, 94 Polish Jews were interned in camps in Uganda and Tanganyika (today Tanzania). They were among the 10,000 Poles who had fled to Eastern Poland in 1939, were interned and later allowed to leave for Persia. The congregation kept in touch with them, supplying them with matzot and placing some of the children in private schools. It also aided a synagogue established by the 37 Jews at Tanguru Camp in Tanganyika.

A CONGREGATION IS FOUNDED

Jews, mostly refugees, living outside Nairobi (declared off-limits to them as a security area) joined the congregation but held their own services. In 1941, a congregation was founded in Nakuru by refugees and South African Jewish soldiers.

They met in a converted garage and later built a beautiful little synagogue in 1956 (later sold to the Children’s Welfare Society). Jews in the Kitale/Eldoret area 200 miles from Nairobi held services in members’ homes in the late 1940’s. By the early 1960’s these communities had ceased to exist.

During the war, the congregation also stayed in touch with Jewish soldiers stationed in East Africa, hosting them at seders, conducting special services for them, and sending them matzot.

Some of the refugees remained in Kenya after the war; many had changed their lines of work. Carlebach’s book notes that an artist became a hotel manager; a furniture dealer, an accountant; a corset-maker, a salesperson, among many others. Polish Jewish refugees, who refused repatriation, were helped to find jobs and relatives in other more congenial countries.

Membership in the congregation reached a peak of 500 during the war, declining to 176 in 1952 after many left for Britain, Australia and Israel, and to 142 ten years later. (Women were not counted officially as members until 1945, so the number of actual members in the early years was obviously larger.)

Jews continued to be active in the Kenyan economy after Kenya attained independence from Britain in 1963. One immediate positive effect of independence was that the social clubs which had excluded both Blacks and Jews under the British became open to both after they had departed.

“Jews and Israelis can work here freely,” said business executive Dr. Manfred Lehmann. He said that President Daniel arap Moi had expressed interest in the prayer the congregation says on Shabbat for the welfare of the government and its leaders (a standard part of Jewish services), and Dr. Lehmann had the prayer itself printed up for him.

Many African non-Jews come to Shabbat services and often there is a question-and-answer session afterward on what Judaism is all about. Lehmann said that before the advent of the missionaries, East Kenya was a “monotheistic society with an invisible god.” Some Black Africans feel closer to Old Testament Judaism than to Christianity, he said, and are eager to be in contact with Jews and to visit Israel.

The membership of the congregation today — male and female — is about 125. “There was a theory 12 years ago that we wouldn’t be here,” said lvor Davis, a former congregation president and now its public affairs person. “But we didn’t lie down and die. It’s a challenge to keep the community together.”