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PAGE 22RH THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE October 3, 1986
History of Kenyon Jewry
by Aviva Cantor
JTA
The history of Jews and the his
tory of Kenya, a black East Afri
can country, have intersected three
times in the past 80 years. The last,
and perhaps best known of these
encounters was Kenya’s role in the
1976 Israeli rescue of Jews in En
tebbe, Uganda. Permission for the
Israeli rescue aircraft to refuel in
Kenya, which has no official diplo
matic relations with Israel, was a
key element in the success of the
operation.
The second encounter took place
before the birth of the Jewish state.
In 1947, members of the Etzel (the
Irgun) were interned by the British
in the Gilgil Camp in Kenya, about
70 miles northwest of Nairobi. Six
prisoners, led by Yaakov Meridor —
later to become minister of the
economy—broke out of the camp
on April 15, 1948.
The first encounter goes back
even further—to the British pro
posal for creating a place of refuge
for Russian Jews in East Africa—
the misnamed “Uganda Plan.” The
area in question was a section of
Kenya known today as the Uasin
Gishu Plateau. The plan was ulti
mately rejected by the World Zion
ist Congress in 1905.
The Nairobi Hebrew Congrega
tion, founded in 1904, has about
125 members, according to Ivor
Davis, a professional public rela
tions person who also serves the
Jewish community in this capacity.
Less than half the members are
permanent residents of Kenya.
The congregation holds services
there Friday evening and Saturday
morning. Men and women sit sep
arately, with a mechitza (partition
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Camp in Kenya for members of Irgun Zeva’i Le’ummi and Lohamei
. . t Uoioctinp hv the British. 1947.
between worshippers) between them.
The community has always “volun
tarily submitted itself’ to the au
thority of Britain’s chief rabbi. It
was out of the wish to maintain
community unity that a group who
wanted a Reform synagogue in the
1950s eventually abandoned the
idea.
The synagogue runs a Chevreh
Kadisha (burial society), maintains
the old cemetery and the new one
dedicated in 1946.
The first Jewish settlers, some of
whom had imagined themselves
the vanguard of a new Jewish
Commonwealth, arrived in Nai
robi in 1903, mostly from Poland
and Russia. Nairobi was at the
time a little more than a railroad
camp in the middle of a frog
swamp. The settlers lived in tin
shacks, cooked their meals in the
street, and traveled by rickshaw.
Abraham Block, a pillar of the
community died in 1965 after a
long and successful business and
communal career. Block arrived in
1903 from Eastern Europe via South
Africa, “with a donkey and three
sacks of potatoes,” and went on to
pioneer tourism in Kenya.
Block acquired the atmospheric
Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi and later,
the New Stanley, which he sold to
Conrad Hilton. HesoldtheMawingo
Hotel in Nanyuki to the late Wil
liam Holden, who renamed it the
Mount Kenya Safari Club.
Other Block hotels included the
Samburu Lodge in Samburu Game
Reserve, the Lake Naivasha Hotel
and the Keekorok Lodge in the
Masai Mara Game Reserve.
Besides Block, other Kenyan Jews
who “made good” include Israel
Somen, a one-time congregation
president who served as mayor of
Nairobi in 1955-57; S.S. Abraham
who was appointed attorney gen
eral of Uganda in 1924; and a Jew
named Kramer who was mayor of
Nakuru in the 1940s. Other Jews
succeeded as merchants, farmers,
hoteliers and restaurateurs, engi
neers, lawyers, musicians, survey
ors and accountants.
The Nairobi Hebrew Congrega
tion was founded in 1904.
The history of the congregation,
according to Rev. Julius Carleb-
ach, who wrote a pamphlet on the
"Jews of Nairobi” “is an almost
continuous record of apathy and
financial difficulties caused by
(dues) arrears and personal strife.”
The congregation faced its great
est 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 Nai
robi 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, unsuccess
fully though, for an anti-German
boycott.
The first Jewish refugees arrived
in Kenya in November 1933, and
continued to trickle in. The prob
lem was that under British domin
ion, 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 Jew
ish Council for training and set
tlements bought Upper Gilgil
Training Farm to further help “ab
sorb” 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 al
lowed to leave for Persia. The con
gregation kept in touch with them.
Jews, mostly refugees, living out
side 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 refu
gees and South Africa Jewish sol
diers.
They met in a converted garage
and later built a beautiful little
synagoguein 1956(latersold tothe
Children’s Welfare Society). Jews
in the Kitale/Eldoret area 200 miles
from Nairobi held services in mem
bers’ home in the late 1940s. By the
early 1960s these communities
had ceased to exist.
Jews continued to be active in
the Kenyan economy after Kenya
attained independence from Bri
tain in 1963. One immediate posi
tive 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.
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 Chris
tianity, he said, and are eager to be
in contact with Jews and to visit
Israel.