Israel spurns Ugandan Jews

[dArKeR]

Scraping their flip-flops on the synagogue's concrete floor, the congregation gathers around the Torah. The men touch their prayer shawls to the scrolls, then shawls to their tongues. To the left, a baby is hushed with its mother's breast. 'O Rock of Israel, arise to help thy scattered people,' prays Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, in guttural Hebrew, from the most isolated corner of the Jewish world. 'Deliver all who are crushed beneath oppression's heel.'

Israel is now planning to fetch home some of the most scattered Jews, the Falasha tribesmen of Ethiopia, but for this Ugandan community there is no answer to Sizumo's prayer.

The Abayudaya, or People of Judah, are in many ways like the Falasha. Both are devoutly orthodox, isolated and sometimes persecuted. Both black African Jewish communities practise slightly different rituals to the wider Jewish world's. There is one key difference -- unlike the Falasha, the Abayudaya do not lay claim to a lineage dating back to David. They were converted to Judaism less than a century ago, after a row with the British.

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=32300

[brainshrub]

1. So is Israel saying that to be "Jewish"

lineage is more important than faith?