Uncategorized
Jews mobilized for Darfur 20 years ago. As violence surges again, where are they now?
They spoke of genocide and “Never Again.” They pushed to divest from entities that supported the offending government.
They protested the government’s blockade of humanitarian aid to the disputed region. They were arrested while protesting outside of an embassy.
The thousands of Jews who bused and flew to the National Mall from across the country on April 30, 2006 to call for these things fought on a platform that would be instantly recognizable to today’s pro-Palestinian protesters. But they were not there for Gaza. They were there for Darfur.
“Our halacha dictates that we help save lives,” Rebecca Stone, a Yeshiva University student who organized a fleet of buses from the Modern Orthodox school, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the time, referring to Jewish law. “Apathy is really antithetical to Torah values.”
The Save Darfur Coalition sprung into being in the mid-2000s in response to the haunting spike in murders orchestrated by Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir, whose Arab Islamist government waged a civil war against ethnic African tribes in the country’s Darfur region. They would eventually kill an estimated 300,000 civilians and displace another 2.7 million.
Many of the coalition’s loudest voices were Jewish, and cited what they saw as a uniquely Jewish imperative to prevent genocide. Together, they worked to elevate Darfur as a significant foreign policy issue.
“The American Jewish community has been absolutely vital in uplifting the issue of Darfur, the crisis in Darfur, and the situation in Sudan in general in the American consciousness,” Noah Gottschalk, chief external relations officer for the Jewish immigrant aid group HIAS, said in a recent interview. “When you look at the organizations that were founded in the aftermath of the genocide in 2003, so many Jewish organizations were part of that.”
Today, six years after the end of al-Bashir’s reign and 14 years after the founding of South Sudan as an independent country, Darfur is again descending into chaos as the RSF, Sudan’s government-backed paramilitary forces, have laid siege to the town of el-Fasher. More than 150,000 people have been killed, and another 12 million have been forcibly displaced. Rape, kidnapping and famine are rampant. The bloodshed is so extreme that it is visible from space.
Yet nothing like the Save Darfur Coalition has been reconstituted on the activist front — neither by the mainstream Jewish groups who mobilized for the cause two decades ago, nor the progressive left that activated so strongly over what they deemed a genocide in Gaza, during the war that followed Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
“At this time, and simply for capacity reasons, we are not actively engaged in efforts around the ongoing tragedy in Darfur,” Barbara Weinstein, associate director of the Religious Action Center at the Union for Reform Judaism, told JTA.
Ruth Messinger attends the New York Action 2015 global mobilization event on Sept. 24, 2015 in New York City. (Brad Barket/Getty Images for Action/2015)
“The Jewish community has legitimately had several dramatic issues that have raised attention and concern, and often caused crisis, in the last three years, particularly Oct. 7 and rising antisemitism,” Ruth Messinger, the longtime head of American Jewish World Service and former New York City mayoral candidate who co-founded the Save Darfur Coalition, told JTA.
Messinger continued, “Those issues have appropriately concerned the Jewish communities around the world, and so concerned the Jewish communities that it’s been hard to create space for other concerns.”
It’s a conclusion that would have been foreign to Messinger two decades ago. Back then, she was at the forefront of a movement to take the lessons of the Holocaust, still relatively fresh, and apply them to a contemporary crisis.
She and others were haunted by the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which occurred over just 100 days when the country’s Hutu government led an attempted purge of its Tutsi ethnic minority. An estimated 1 million Tutsis were massacred, and the speed and scale of the killings — many of which took place in churches, or in open fields in broad daylight — shocked the global consciousness.
Later, President Bill Clinton said he would have taken stronger action against genocide in Rwanda if he had known more at the time. Messinger and other Jewish leaders — those who had embraced the Never Again ethos 50 years after the term genocide was coined in the wake of the Holocaust — took that as a charge.
“There were a lot of people in the Jewish community who felt like we had missed the boat on Rwanda,” Messinger recalled. “We considered ourselves watchdogs for the potential next genocide.”
When, a few short years later, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof started writing regularly about the crisis in Darfur, Messinger and others — a group including Rabbi Steve Gutow, diplomat Samantha Power and the Holocaust survivor and Nobelist Elie Wiesel— paid attention. In a meeting organized by American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Wiesel directly implored Jewish leaders to do something.
“I will never forget that meeting as Wiesel addressed us in his soft-spoken, yet powerful, voice,” recalled Rabbi Marla Feldman, director emeritus of Women of Reform Judaism, who worked on social justice issues with the Reform Action Center at the time. “He looked directly at each of us gathered around, impressing upon us our personal responsibility to take action. No one could say no to his charge to organize that day.”
They decided to throw everything they had into mobilizing on Darfur. The coalition was born.
“Everyone who came to the meeting said, ‘Well, let’s continue working together, and we’ll call ourselves the Save Darfur Coalition,’” recalled Jerry Fowler, now a law professor at the University of Wyoming. At the time Fowler was the (non-Jewish) director for the Committee on Conscience — a division at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum committed to applying the lessons of the Holocaust toward preventing future genocides.
The museum, and more specifically the Committee on Conscience, played a significant role in elevating the crisis in Darfur within the Jewish community by issuing a rare warning that the region was at risk of tipping into genocide. When, in 2004, the U.S. government declared that the Sudanese government and its related militia groups, including the Janjaweed, were indeed committing genocide in Darfur, citing the United Nations Genocide Convention, the combined effect was to put Darfur on the map as a Jewish issue.
Rabbi David Saperstein (center foreground) and Jerry Greenfield (background) of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream fame, are arrested outside the Sudanese embassy during a protest against the genocide in Darfur, July 29, 2004, Washington, D.C. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“Social justice is a huge component of the way American Jewry expresses their Jewish identity,” said Rabbi David Saperstein, director emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center. He was an active figure in both the Save Darfur Coalition and an earlier movement to push for a peace accord to end the Second Sudanese Civil War.
Quickly, Saperstein recalled, “Save Darfur” signs made their way into synagogues across the country.
“Many people put Darfur into their Passover Seders,” he said. “That helped deepen the connection [to] people forced to flee out of oppression and persecution, and what it was like to live in the desert, in a place not your home, with the hope of finding safety and security.” American Jewish World Service encouraged such identification by distributing Darfur-specific seder material.
Back then, Darfur crossed Jewish denominational boundaries. Everyone from the Union for Reform Judaism’s advocacy arm to the Conservative summer camp Camp Ramah to Yeshiva University engaged on the issue. Synagogues jumped onboard “Nothing But Net,” a UN-led initiative to raise funds to send malaria nets to refugee camps — and raised enough on their own to fully stock several camps. Young observant Jews would go on to intern with Darfur policy groups and bring their activism to the upper levers of power.
Union for Reform Judaism leaders distribute bed nets to Sudanese refugees in Dabaab, Kenya, as part of their organizational efforts with the Save Darfur Coalition, Feb. 10, 2009. Rabbi Marla Feldman, at the time a leader of social justice issues with the Religious Action Center, is second from left. (Claudio Gallone)
“I have this vivid memory of sitting in the Beit Knesset at camp listening to a Jewish World Watch staffer talk about the Janjaweed and show photos of devastated villages,” Ami Fields-Meyer, a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and former White House policy advisor under former President Joe Biden, recalled about his time at Camp Ramah. “It was shocking. It was almost certainly my first exposure to human rights work.”
Adam Zuckerman was a 17-year-old high school student in Maine when Messinger came to his Portland synagogue to speak about Darfur. He was immediately engaged on the issue, making close friends with members of the state’s large Sudanese refugee community and riding buses to D.C. with them.
“I think a lot of it was that, with the legacy of the Holocaust, we had a responsibility to make sure that it never happened again to anyone,” Zuckerman recalled, about the pitch to Jews for getting involved in Darfur. “That was a sort of driving force in why I took on anti-genocide work.”
His friends in the refugee community included El-Fadel Arbab, a genocide survivor who spent nine years trying to enter the United States before finally being granted passage in 2004. Upon his arrival in Maine, Arbab was embraced by local Jewish groups. He would go on to tell his harrowing story, involving fleeing his village and living on the street as a child, at synagogues and Holocaust museums in the state and beyond.
Arbab quickly felt a kinship with his Jewish allies and supporters, rooted in shared trauma: what Darfur villagers suffered at the hands of the Sudanese groups had morbid similarities with the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
“What they went through is also remarkable,” he told JTA. “So many Jewish people have been killed. Millions and millions have been killed. They’ve been tortured, they’ve been burned alive. And this is not right.”
Besides the brutality, the Jewish comparison also inspired Arbab — particularly the refrain “Never again,” which he often repeats himself. “They’re still fighting for justice. They’re saying, ‘These victims will learn from the history.’”
A list of the biggest voices within Save Darfur included some of the most prominent Jews in America at the time.
Speakers at the National Mall rally included Messinger; Saperstein; National Jewish Democratic Council director Steve Gutow; Rabbi Rick Jacobs of the Union for Reform Judaism, before he became its president; and Rabbi Marc Schneier.
They shared the stage with then-Sen. Barack Obama, months before he announced his presidential bid; the top Democrat in Congress, Nancy Pelosi; actor George Clooney; and a range of Sudanese and interfaith activists. “I don’t think there have been many rallies like it in recent years,” Feldman said.
Elie Wiesel speaks at a Save Darfur rally at the National Mall, Washington, D.C., April 30, 2006. (Screenshot via C-SPAN)
But perhaps the most noteworthy person to grace the stage was Wiesel, who had vocally lobbied not only on behalf of Rwanda but also over the plight of Soviet Jews. It was Wiesel who had inaugurated the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience in the first place, to, in the words of the committee’s mandate, “alert the national conscience, influence policy makers, and stimulate worldwide action to confront and work to halt acts of genocide or related crimes against humanity.”
Only a few months earlier, in January 2006, “Night,” Wiesel’s memoir of the concentration camps, was chosen as an Oprah’s Book Club selection 50 years after its original publication. Though already a bestseller, the Oprah exposure introduced “Night” to a new generation of readers and reinforced Wiesel as a global authority on humanitarian crises.
He threw all of that leverage behind Darfur.
“I, as a Jew, am here because when we needed people to come to help us, nobody came. Therefore, we are here,” Wiesel told the National Mall crowd. “I am here as a member of the human family, and we believe that we sinned with Rwanda. We could have saved 6-800,000 men, women and children in Rwanda, and we did not, and the world should be ashamed for that.”
Over applause, he continued, “We are here because in Darfur, families are being uprooted, starved; children tormented and slaughtered in the thousands; and in the eyes of the victims, the world remains indifferent to their plight. We are here because we refuse to be silent. Remember, silence helps the killer, never his victims.”
It was a galvanizing moment, an explicit bridging from the Jewish communal trauma of the Holocaust to the modern-day tragedy in a far-off corner of the world with no obvious Jewish connection. To Wiesel, it just made sense.
“For my father, there was no split between doing what was right on the global stage and standing up for the Jewish community,” Elisha Wiesel, Elie Wiesel’s son, told JTA. “It wasn’t like those were two completely separate projects. My father felt that to be a good Jew meant to stand up and do the right thing on a global scale.”
And there was a divestment push within the Jewish community. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, under pressure from its members, divested its holdings from companies that did business with the Sudanese government, as a means of economically hurting al-Bashir’s regime. In so doing, it joined dozens of similar actions from the country’s leading universities, including Harvard, Columbia, and MIT, all celebrated by the activist group Investors Against Genocide. (A spokesperson for the Reconstructionist movement declined to comment for this story.)
Sustained Jewish activism around Darfur continued for years. In 2009, Jewish leaders were arrested for staging a demonstration outside the Sudanese Embassy in protest of al-Bashir’s expulsion of more than a dozen aid groups from Darfur. The rabbis were joined at the protest by Democrats including civil rights leader John Lewis. Several Jewish leaders also signed a Save Darfur Coalition letter urging Obama — then president — to resume humanitarian aid in Sudan.
The following year, a delegation of Jewish leaders — including Messinger, Saperstein and Jacobs — traveled to visit a camp for Darfur refugees just over the border in Chad. The trip happened to coincide with the holiday of Sukkot, which, like the Passover Seders before it, drove home the Jewish resonance of the cause.
“To see people living out in the open and eating out in the open,” Saperstein said, “had a particular resonance for us.”
As the years passed, the focus and methods of the Save Darfur Coalition attracted scrutiny and criticism from some corners. “Darfur Wasn’t Saved,” Slate declared in 2017 in a postmortem; groups like Genocide Watch have reached similar conclusions.
Critics dinged the movement for proposing the wrong policy solutions; for infighting among leadership; and for failing to steer more of its own financial resources toward direct aid, among other issues. Some, as early as 2006, were already accusing the movement and its Jewish leaders of using Darfur to ignore Israeli conduct in Gaza — which had just elected Hamas to power earlier that year.
Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani (right) with son Zohran and wife Mira Nair at a mayoral campaign event for Zohran, June 24, 2025, New York, New York. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
One of the foremost critics of the Save Darfur movement was Mahmood Mamdani, the Ugandan-born Columbia University professor, prominent critic of Israel and father of New York City’s mayor-elect.
In his 2009 book Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror, Mamdani argued that Darfur did not constitute a genocide; that those who applied the label may have been operating from a prejudiced perspective against Islam; that activists like those in the coalition didn’t have the proper context for the situation; and that Western intervention may have made the conflict worse. In promoting the book, Mamdani also didn’t mince words in criticizing the Save Darfur Coalition.
“Save Darfur is telling its supporters that the lesson of Rwanda is that there’s no point in talking about causes of conflicts,” Mamdani said on WNYC’s “The Takeaway” in April 2009.
Strains of dissent could also be heard from within the Jewish world, where some argued against what they saw as a conflation of Jewish and progressive values. “Health care, labor unions, public-school education, feminism, abortion rights, gay marriage, globalization, U.S. foreign policy, Darfur: on everything Judaism has a position — and, wondrously, this position just happens to coincide with that of the American liberal Left,” the Israeli writer Hillel Halkin complained in the conservative Jewish magazine Commentary in 2008.
But the Darfur coalition transcended typical ideological divides, including a wide array of Jewish groups as well as fundamentalist Christians and figures motivated by anti-Islam animus. The combination could be awkward. A series of rapid leadership changes, accusations of financial mismanagement and other infighting through the late 2000s led to the group’s ultimate collapse as a viable political force. Jewish communal leaders who spoke to JTA acknowledged that the coalition’s momentum couldn’t be sustained, but they believed that it had a lasting effect, particularly on Jewish communal organizing.
Zuckerman went on to become a close disciple of Messinger at the American Jewish World Service. Today he works for Public Citizen, a progressive group, on environmental issues.
He credits his Darfur activism with his trajectory, as well as for something else: his pro-Palestinian activism, which he has expressed through work in IfNotNow as well as with Jewish Action Maine, a group affiliated with the local Jewish Voice for Peace chapter.
“It’s been tricky, because I don’t feel like I necessarily fit into a box on it, and I am uncomfortable with some of the rhetoric and some of the slogans in these spaces,” Zuckerman said.
At the same time, he said, “I think it would be hypocritical for me to speak out about Darfur and not say anything when people who share my religion are also committing atrocities.”
A man amongst a group of African refugees, mostly from Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, visits the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum on Aug., 2009 in Jerusalem, commemorating the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)
Israel itself got involved in the initial round of Darfur activism, allowing hundreds of refugees from the region to apply for asylum there. (Upon arrival some of the refugees visited Yad Vashem, the national Holocaust museum.) Most of those asylum cases, which were handled by HIAS and did not involve Jews, took years to work their way through Israeli courts before a judge granted the Sudanese asylum seekers temporary status last year.
Today much of the same Jewish institutional muscle that once advocated for Darfur has turned inward, toward fighting antisemitism and shoring up Jewish support for Israel since Oct. 7. That has included fending off accusations that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
Over the last two years, Jews have at times disputed statistics and declarations about the state of Gaza’s humanitarian crisis — including allegations that Israel, like Sudan before it, has deliberately withheld humanitarian aid from a conflict zone — that come from the United Nations and various NGOs they had previously worked together with on Darfur causes. Jewish leaders, including at the RAC, have objected to resolutions to boycott or divest from Israel, usually on the grounds that such measures are divisive and unhelpful or can lead to antisemitism.
This has saddened some of the more progressive Jews who saw, in the Darfur fight, a commitment to a kind of universalism of Jewish values they now believe has atrophied.
“I don’t think our voice would have the same weight or the same legitimacy that it has now to speak out on Darfur, because we’ve been so silent, and in many cases so oppositional, to what’s been happening in Gaza,” Zuckerman said. “I think that when we are silent about something that people who share our religion are perpetrating, the world would look at us sort of sideways to be speaking out about [Darfur]. I think it would be seen as trying to distract from other crimes against humanity that are happening in another part of the world.”
Others worry that the fight over whether or when to declare a genocide is blinding people, including Jews, from focusing on what’s really important.
“The term ‘genocide’ is being used in different ways today than in the past, and that’s itself a challenge,” Feldman said. “You could get caught up in the wordsmithing of it — call it genocide, don’t call it genocide. There are atrocities and tragedies taking place around the world, and that speaks to us, and that has a claim on us.”
A protester holds a Sudan/Palestinian flag with the words “Gaza” and “Sudan” as US rapper Kendrick Lamar performs during the Super Bowl LIX halftime show, Feb. 9, 2025. (Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images)
Meanwhile, with some exceptions, the global pro-Palestinian movement has also been relatively quiet on Darfur — further lending itself to criticisms that a purported principled stance against genocide didn’t extend further than Israel. Many Jews in a post-Oct. 7 climate have noted a fraying of the kinds of interfaith, intercultural alliances that once helped bolster the Save Darfur Coalition.
Jews who spoke to JTA for this article had mixed feelings on this shift. But some were quick to point out that they don’t see Darfur and Gaza as comparable.
“It’s not a parallel thing because you didn’t have an Oct. 7 in Darfur,” Saperstein said. “You didn’t have the people of Darfur attack the population centers where the Janjaweed were. This is just civilians caught in the middle of a horrible, horrible attack from the north and from the Janjaweed militias.”
Elisha Wiesel, like his father a staunch supporter of Israel, also believes Jews’ relative silence on Darfur in the wake of Gaza is a problem. In part, he said, he feared that Jews were allowing terms like “genocide” to become diluted by pro-Palestinian activists.
“I think we have to restore language to its proper use, and we have to call it as we see it,” he said, noting that the Wiesel family foundation has taken on the cause of the persecuted Uyghur minority in China. Similarly, the best way to assert Jewish credibility on the world stage, he argued, would be for Jews to advocate both for Israel and for global humanitarian concerns like Darfur.
“Since Oct. 7 we’ve been reeling, as an American Jewish community, with our own tragedy. And worse, we’ve been having to be on the back foot as accusations of genocide have been flung at Israel,” Wiesel said. “I feel now is the right time to reengage. I think the best way forward is to tackle real genocides.”
Arbab, the Darfur genocide survivor, also disagrees with the genocide label being applied to Gaza. He described feeling an immense empathy for Jews and Israelis after Oct. 7, noting that the brutal nature of the Hamas killings at the Nova music festival mirrored the nature of how the RSF and other Sudanese militias have targeted innocents.
“These monsters, they jumped on people partying, and they’re butchering everybody,” he said. “Israelis want to protect their people and their land, and they come and attack them.”
El-Fadel Arbab, a Sudanese refugee from the Darfur region, reunites with his family in the United States after they fled the region amid reignited hostilities, March 2024, Boston, Massachusetts. Arbab has allied with the Jewish community to advocate for Darfur’s victims. (Courtesy of El-Fadel Arbab)
Arbab continued, “If you’ve been through this struggle, you definitely will say, ‘I stand with Israel.’ If you did not go through these horrible things, you might go to the other side, you might say, ‘Oh, I will support the Palestinians.’ But that is not the case to me. If I have the power, I will protect my people. And anybody who comes to my people, I’m not going to leave them alone.”
Times have changed, some of Save Darfur’s Jewish leaders said. Even setting aside Gaza, the sheer scope and scale of the world’s challenges today means that pushing Jews to mobilize around something like Darfur has become much harder.
“We can’t fight every crisis everywhere,” Feldman, now retired, told JTA. “The current leaders have to be strategic, and the population, to a certain extent, is also going to speak with their feet in terms of what’s compelling them today.”
For more progressive Jews who cut their activist teeth on Darfur, the relative inaction — not just from Jewish communities, but more globally as well — especially stings.
“Darfur was in every Jewish space. And it felt like everyone had a green ‘do not stand idly by’ wristband,” Fields-Meyer recalled. “The unmistakable message was that our moral obligations as Jews bound us to people for no other reason other than that they are human. And a lot of us took that to heart. I certainly did.”
He continued, “Being consistent about those Jewish commitments means doing what’s necessary for families being torn apart by masked agents in Los Angeles, and for children under bombardment in Gaza, and for people under threat in Darfur, and for fellow Jews who are attacked for their identity. It means that there is no hierarchy of human dignity. We’re all worthy.”
A map of two years of hostilities in Darfur as of April 11, 2025. (AFP via Getty Images)
Today, the forces that are engaged on Darfur are trying to put pressure on the United Arab Emirates, currently Sudan’s largest arms dealer. President Donald Trump also signaled an interest in ending the conflict and dispatched Massad Boulos — a Lebanese-American businessman and Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law, who has also proposed a roadmap to Israeli-Palestinian peace — to try to negotiate a ceasefire.
But recent failed ceasefire efforts have led the United States to consider wider sanctions on Sudan. On Dec. 9, the Treasury Department seemed to follow through, sanctioning entities associated with a Colombian group that, the United States said, was funneling mercenaries to Darfur.
Some remain optimistic that American Jewish leadership could reactivate on Darfur today — and believe that it would be the right thing to do.
“I’m hopeful that there will be really positive energy for Darfur,” said Gottschalk, the HIAS staffer. He noted that HIAS, which operates a refugee camp in neighboring Chad, has remained active since the last conflict and is engaged again on Darfur today — in part thanks to the legacy of the coalition. “We haven’t left. It’s been more than 20 years. It’s an expression of the Jewish community’s solidarity.”
People displaced from El Fasher and other conflict-affected areas are settled in the newly established El-Afadh camp in Al Dabbah, in Sudan’s Northern State, on Nov. 9, 2025. Tens of thousands were forced to flee after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took control of the city of El Fasher on Oct. 26, triggering intensified clashes across North Darfur. (Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images)
He continued, “When we’re working with people in Chad, we are absolutely the first and probably the only Jewish organization they’ve ever met or ever encountered with. We are representing our values and reflecting something really positive with the community.”
Today, Arbab still has family in Darfur under grave danger, though he was able to evacuate his wife and sons out of the region last year. He knows it’s harder now to get the international community to pay attention. He’s still speaking to some Jewish groups, though not as many as before.
The Sudanese government, he believes, fears the accountability that would come with the genocide label being applied once more to Darfur. He hopes the global community will activate again — and this time try to break the cycle of killing for good.
“The Jewish people, they went through their genocide a long time ago,” he said. “But the genocide now is the same, and even worse. These criminals, always, they’re thinking of new tactics and new ways to do more genocide, how to harm people. We have to stop that. Especially those who have felt the pain of the victims, they have to stand up.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jews mobilized for Darfur 20 years ago. As violence surges again, where are they now? appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Mozambique’s only synagogue has been keeping Judaism alive in the country for a century
Inside the Honen Dalim synagogue in Maputo, Mozambique, a security team of men in suits wearing colorful kippot swept the inside of the small chapel, while members and visitors milled about on the lawn outside. Security had to be thorough; the president was coming.
For the rest of the city, it was a normal day. The sidewalks near the synagogue were crowded with vendors selling clothes, fruit and candy. Across the street, students hung out in the courtyard of the technical college the Instituto Comercial de Maputo. But for the city’s small Jewish community, it was a momentous occasion.
On June 11, Honen Dalim celebrated the centenary of the synagogue, which was officially inaugurated on Aug. 29, 1926. Congregation leaders and government officials gave speeches. Camera crews from three different TV stations — including the Mozambican state news channel — crowded in the small chapel to capture every moment.
Lay leader Marcos Vaena told me that celebrating the synagogue is not just about the building, but what it represents for Mozambique’s Jewish community, which consists of only a couple dozen families.
“It’s a sense of pride and historical heritage,” he said, adding that the synagogue has endured “profound changes in society — the liberation struggle that the country went through, the independence movement — and it still remains.”
It hasn’t been easy to keep the synagogue alive for a century, but Honen Dalim’s small congregation has persisted without a permanent rabbi or any local Jewish institutions to rely on.
Maputo is a multicultural city with a history of religious partnership, and the celebration’s 100 attendees were a diverse mix of government officials and community members. Among them were the country’s Christian president, Daniel Chapo, whose election in 2024 was marred by accusations of corruption and fatal clashes between security forces and protesters. Across the aisle, sat the German ambassador to Mozambique Ronald Münch and Sheik Aminudin, the President of the Islamic Council of Mozambique. Manuela Soeiro, Honen Dalim’s longest member and “the mother of Mozambican theater,” spoke about being involved with the synagogue since in the 1940s.
Longtime lay leader Samuel Levy gave an opening speech in Portuguese on the spirit of religious tolerance in Mozambique. Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, chief rabbi of the African Jewish Congress, which supports Jewish communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, and AJC president Nahum Gorelick recited from Psalm 92 — which describes the fruitful life granted to those who are devoted to God — in Hebrew and English. The crowd sang “Hosi Katekisa Afrika,” a Tsonga version of a hymn meaning “God Bless Africa.” Around 50 more people watched on Zoom.
“This date is much more than a chronological milestone,” Chapo said in his speech. “We recognize, with appreciation and admiration, the enduring presence of the Jewish community in the religious, historical, and cultural fabric of our country, Mozambique.”
A long Jewish history
Although the synagogue is 100 years old, the presence of Jews in Mozambique dates back even further. Levy, a New York-born lawyer who has been part of the congregation since the ‘90s, told me the oldest grave in Maputo’s Jewish cemetery, located a few blocks from the synagogue, dates back to 1899.
Global events have always shaped Honen Dalim’s story. Levy said some of the earliest Jews migrated to Maputo due to the Witwatersrand Gold Rush that began in 1886 and helped develop Johannesburg, South Africa. Maputo — known then as Lourenço Marques, after the Portuguese explorer — was critical in the export process due to its coastal location, making it an ideal location for Jewish merchants.
Early Jewish arrivals came from around the world — including Morocco, Lithuania, the United Kingdom, and Portugal, which ruled Mozambique from 1505 to 1975 — often by way of South Africa. In 1906, they established themselves as a community under the name Honen Dalim — meaning “He who is charitable to the poor” — and prayed in each other’s homes.
During the Second Boer War in South Africa, which lasted from 1899 to 1902, the chief rabbi of Johannesburg, Joseph Herman Hertz, was expelled for his pro-British leanings and opposition to the government’s restrictions on Jews and Roman Catholics. During his years-long expulsion — the next time he came to South Africa, it was as the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom in 1920 — he spent a few days in Lourenço Marques and encouraged the Jews there to finally build a synagogue.
Levy said the “community waxes and wanes” but that many hundreds were there during the Second World War. Because Portugal was a neutral country, Mozambique was a place where European Jews could find refuge, although they didn’t have full economic freedom and suffered from religious segregation.
Manuela Soeiro, who founded the first Mozambican theater troupe Mutumbela Gogo in 1986, told me at the centenary celebration about her experiences being a Jew at a Salesian Catholic boarding school in the ‘40s and ‘50s. When the nuns saw her hug her Jewish grandfather, they made her and her two sisters sleep in a cold bathtub as punishment for engaging with “the devil.”
After World War II, many Jews immigrated from Mozambique to South Africa, which was experiencing an economic boom.
The Jewish community took another hit when, in 1975, Mozambique gained independence from Portugal due to the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique’s (FRELIMO) successful guerilla campaign. A communist government led by President Samora Machel took over and restricted religious practice.
“All of the religious buildings, not only the synagogue — mosques, churches, everything — was expropriated by the government,” Levy told me.
The majority of the Portuguese in Mozambique left, some by force and some by choice, and many Jews were among those who emigrated. The country was hit hard by economic destabilization. Concrete shells of building projects abandoned by Portuguese builders after independence dot the city skyline.
Only two years after independence, the country’s socialist and anti-communist factions waged a civil war that ravaged the country for 15 years. Honen Dalim’s synagogue fell into disrepair and became a warehouse for the Red Cross.
The synagogue’s address ties the building both to the country’s colonial and post-independence eras. Avenida 24 de Julho — July 24th Street — was named after the date in 1875 when Portugal took full possession of Maputo. Exactly 100 years later, on July 24, Machel nationalized almost every sector of Mozambican society.
Revitalizing the community
Nuno Soeiro remembers his mom Manula continuing to look after the synagogue, along with his uncles, even though they weren’t allowed to practice religion there in the communist era.
“Some people from the American embassy, they used to do some lessons,” Nuno Soeiro told me, saying they went to embassy officials’ houses to observe Jewish holidays.
In 1989, the synagogue had an unexpected savior: Alkis Macropolous, a Greek, and not Jewish, businessman. His Jewish colleagues in Johannesburg encouraged him to help preserve the building. He ensured that the dilapidated structure was not torn down and arranged for an ad to be placed in the paper asking for any remaining Jews to claim the synagogue — and they did. The defeat of the communist government in 1990 — which was replaced by a presidential republic — allowed religious communities to be active again.
When Samuel Levy arrived in 1993, the synagogue didn’t have enough people for a minyan and wasn’t having official services, but on Saturday afternoons, Jewish and non-Jewish members gathered together to sing folk songs. Although it wasn’t a traditional service, Levy found it spiritually fulfilling.
“Those songs were maybe the most simplest prayers I’ve ever heard,” Levy told me. “But also the deepest.”
For Larry and Diane Herman, Conservative Jews from Detroit who arrived in Maputo in 1999, practicing Judaism without a large community was nothing new. Larry’s work as an economist took them around the globe, including to Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger and Uganda.
“We were the center of the Jewish community in Ouagadougou from 1975 to 1977, which simply means the three or four or five other Jewish Peace Corps volunteers,” Larry told me.
The Hermans took on leadership roles and Diane put together a spiral-bound siddur for services that includes prayers in Hebrew, English and Portuguese. They wrote a prayer for Mozambique based on the prayer for the country found in many U.S. prayer books. Levy also led services, even while away.
Natalie Tenzer-Silva, who moved from South Africa to Mozambique with her family in 1993, told me Levy would send cassette recordings of Kol Nidre when he couldn’t be there to lead High Holiday services himself.
“He would blow the shofar over a cell phone or send a recording of it,” Tenzer-Silva said. “He really is the pillar, making sure that we have all the writings and the readings and all of that ready for the holidays and for the Friday nights.”
The Hermans were the only Shabbat-observant and kosher members of the synagogue at the time. To buy kosher food, they went to Johannesburg, often bringing things back for the congregation. These imports were critical around Passover, when the Hermans hosted seders at their home, sometimes for as many as 50 people.
Not big enough to have a full executive board or leadership team, the synagogue members had to set their own guidelines.
“We sat for like four hours trying to hash out the rules,” Diane Herman said.
“When you already don’t have a minyan of Jews, let alone males, and you’ve got all these intermarried couples, what do you do about the spouse? And what do you do about these people who aren’t Jewish at all, but want to participate?” said Diane. “We hashed out how to create a community there. It was fascinating.”
“When Jews come there from other places, they realize if they’re going to give any expression to their Jewish identity, they need to work on it,” Levy said. “If you want your kids to know something, well, you’re going to have to start a Sunday school or really participate in it. If you want the holidays to happen, you’re going to have to organize to import matzo and kosher wine for Passover because we can’t make it.”
Rebuilding the synagogue
Considered one of the poorest countries in the world, Mozambique attracts many people from abroad who work in diplomacy, aid, or international development. As more Jews arrived to work in these sectors, it became clear the synagogue needed physical improvements.
“When I arrived, there were poles supporting the roof,” Tenzer-Silva told me. “And every time we would go to services, if the wind blew, my children would think the roof was going to fall in.”
Larry Herman remembered one Shabbat where a corner did fall in — and another where a rat fell from the rafters.
In 2009, congregant Juliana Becker decided she wanted a bat mitzvah — the first to happen in the country — and turned to Larry for tutoring. A Torah was brought in from South Africa, since the synagogue lacked its own, and 125 people attended from Maputo and from abroad. The event prompted Honen Dalim’s leaders to successfully file for official recognition from the government in 2010, making them the legal owners of the synagogue.
Five years later, in preparation for the bar mitzvah of Tenzer-Silva’s older son, Jordan, the congregation decided to replace the roof. But this could not be done safely without updating the walls and flooring. Tenzer-Silve said what was originally supposed to be a $25,000 bill became more than $120,000.
With help from the local community, and friends and family abroad, Honen Dalim managed to raise the money — just in the nick of time for Jordan.
“The Friday of his bar mitzvah, they had finished painting the walls,” Tenzer-Silva said.
In 2013, Honen Dalim held a rededication ceremony celebrating the rebuild. Ann Harris, then-President of the African Jewish Congress, and Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft gave the congregation a kosher Sefer Torah — something they had lacked before. Other faith leaders and government representatives attended, including then-Minister of Justice Maria Benvinda Levi, who now serves as the country’s Prime Minister and has Jewish ancestry.
Multiple members of Honen Dalim described the environment of Maputo as extremely tolerant and supportive of the Jewish community.
“The entire time I lived in Mozambique, I wore a kippah on the streets and never had any problems,” Larry Herman told me.
Many attribute this respect for religion to the role faith leaders played in dissuading violence during the civil war. A wing of the city’s central church is dedicated to Pope John Paull II, who made a famed visit in 1988 advocating for peace. Ultimately, the Catholic lay movement, the Community of Sant’Egisio, brokered peace. Tenzer-Silva and others remarked that the civil war made people tired of conflict.
Honen Dalim is part of the COREM — the Council of Religions in Mozambique. Its President, Moisés Chiziane, spoke at the centenary event, urging continued coexistence.
“Peace is not built only by the absence of conflicts,” he said. “Peace is built by respect, listening, acceptance of diversity and recognition of the dignity of every human being.”
Levy told me Honen Dalim has hosted a Muslim adult study group at the synagogue to learn about Jewish practices, such as putting on tefillin.
“The people who run the different faith organizations,” Levy said, “they make it an article of faith that they need to actively get along — not tolerate, but learn about the faith of other people.”
In recent years, a branch of ISIS has established itself in the northern part of Mozambique, displacing local residents and leaving other religious groups — and non-affiliated Muslims — fearful of being attacked. But Natalie Tenzer-Silva said that type of extremism has not been seen in Maputo.
“It won’t come down south,” she told me confidently. “People wouldn’t tolerate it.”
A tenuous position
Although the community is still active, members described Honen Dalim as “fragile.” Tenzer-Silva said there could be anywhere “between three and 12 people” at a Friday service — the turnout isn’t big or consistent. They also lack the type of programming that bigger synagogues offer.
“I would like to take my kids to synagogue to learn Hebrew,” Nuno Soeiro said. “We don’t have that.”
Individuals like Levy can help organize lessons for kids like Soeiro’s daughter to be on track to become bar or bat mitzvahs. But the number of people with that type of knowledge is limited.
According to Levy, COVID was “a big blow to the Jewish community.”
“At that point we had Sunday school with eight kids,” he said. “After that, things kind of became a little more tenuous and they’re a little more tenuous today, but we try to keep going.”
The congregation’s reliance on expats also puts it in a delicate position. Synagogue leaders say only around a third of congregants are permanent residents. While some expats find a permanent home in Maputo, others leave due to work or family. After 16 years in Maputo, the Hermans left and now live in Los Angeles. Levy divides his time between Maputo and Dubai, although all three help manage things from a distance.
The recent cuts to USAID programs to Mozambique will likely diminish the number of American Jews who have jobs that require them to move there. And a hidden debt scandal in the mid-2010s that cost the country nearly $2.2 billion broke the trust of investors from around the world who may have sent Jewish employees to Mozambique.
“A lot of the international community withdrew support for many years,” Marcos Vaena said. “It was 10 years of economic crisis.”
Vaena, who grew up in Brazil in a Sephardic family with Turkish roots, first moved to Maputo in 2006 as a UN volunteer for a development program. He left in 2010 to work in other developing countries, but returned in 2024. He told me he saw “a diminished community” compared to the Honen Dalim he’d left behind. He decided to start leading Shabbat services a couple times a month.
“I wanted to make sure that my kids have continued exposure to a Jewish tradition and education,” he said.
It’s not just expats, however, who want a more formal way to be involved in Judaism.
“There’s a regular interest from Mozambicans that are seeking spiritual connection through Judaism,” Vaena said. “But then you need, I think, a more structured process and support for those who are there.”
“There were a lot of people who had been happy to convert, and that just wasn’t possible,” Diane Herman added. “There was no rabbi around.”
“We have a lot of people who were, I call, ‘lovers of Zion’ as opposed to Jews,” Larry Herman told me. “They were some of the biggest supporters.” He recounted what happened when he and Diane lost their fathers. ”Both of us went to the funerals in the United States and came back, and we were in our period of mourning — it was the non-Jews who supported us by coming to every service.”
There is also no mikveh, the ritual bath needed for conversions. Diane said some people go to South Africa for the rite, but they tend to be those with money. In a country where half of all workers earn less than 60,000 Metical a year — less than $1,000 — it’s not a viable option for the vast majority of Mozambicans.
Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, chief rabbi for the AJC, occasionally helps the congregation with critical events, but Silberhaft serves nine different countries and cannot be everywhere at once. Tenzer-Silva told me that bringing in a permanent rabbi for such a small congregation would be difficult, especially with the lack of kosher food options. Vaena said he himself has considered seminary training.
“That experience leading the services and being more engaged on a daily basis has really brought me a lot of joy,” he said.
Perseverance
Despite the struggles the community faces, the 100th anniversary ceremony did not feel like a pity party for a dying congregation. Kids ran around the lawn during the reception, which was stocked with bagels and cakes from a kosher caterer in South Africa. Tenzer-Silva’s son Jordan, who’s in his late twenties now, helped usher people at the event and recited “Tzadik Katamar” alongside other synagogue leaders. The younger generation of the synagogue is small, but present.
And those who have moved away don’t really leave Honen Dalim behind. From Los Angeles, Larry Herman serves as the president of the Friends of the Jewish Community of Mozambique, helping garner international support for Honen Dalim. Although he and his wife haven’t lived in Maputo in 10 years, they spoke of it with great reverence.
“It’s a wonderful community,” Larry said. “I’m very proud of it.”
Honen Dalim continues to welcome new members and serve as a place where Jewish visitors can have a home. Members told me that travelers have come from America, Paris, Israel and other parts of the world. For Jews who end up in Maputo — whether for a few days, a few years, or the rest of their lives — Honen Dalim serves as a vital source of community. Several people said they had never been more Jewish than they had been in Mozambique.
“May the next hundred years be of peace, prosperity, and abundant blessings for all,” Chapo said toward the end of his speech. Although his words were practically all in Portuguese, he closed with a message Jews around the world could understand: “Shalom. Shalom. Shalom.”
The post Mozambique’s only synagogue has been keeping Judaism alive in the country for a century appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
More US Jews feel ‘politically homeless’ than ever. What are we to do?
The news that most Jewish adults don’t feel comfortable in either major political party is not a death knell for American Jewish political participation. It’s a rallying cry.
Most American Jews feel politically unrepresented by both parties, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Research poll released this week found. That survey only confirms what every conversation I’ve had with Jewish friends lately gets around to: a new sense of political homelessness, combined with fears of increasing antisemitism.
Only 15% of respondents say the Democratic Party supports Jewish people in the United States “extremely” or “very” well, and 41% say it supports them “not very well” or “not at all.” Views of the Republicans are slightly worse — about half say the party doesn’t really support Jews.
What the poll shows is an undeniable slide in both parties on an issue many Jews still care deeply about, Israel, as well as the feeling that too much anti-Israel sentiment bleeds into antisemitism.
The poll found 63% of Jewish adults consider antisemitism an extremely or very serious problem, and 77% say prejudice has increased since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023. Only 38% of Americans overall share that level of concern. The gap between how seriously Jews perceive the threat and how seriously the broader public does only compounds our sense that we’ve been abandoned by civic institutions, and no longer fit neatly within the party system.
At first glance, the fact that American Jews feel less attached to either political party isn’t unusual. A growing number of all Americans are turned off by the two major parties, according to a May New York Times poll, which found that 43% of voters were dissatisfied with both parties.
But a major source of party dissatisfaction, the Times poll found, was, yep, America’s relationship with Israel. Among dissatisfied voters, 80% opposed economic and military aid to Israel. That includes 38% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who said they wanted the party to distance itself from Israel. That’s what Vice President JD Vance meant when he recently said — warned? — that, “Israel’s opinions matter, but fundamentally they are separate.”
So a shrinking share of Americans in both parties supports Israel — while roughly six in 10 American Jews say Israel is central to who they are. That’s the squeeze. No wonder we feel unsupported.
It’s tempting to litigate why this gap exists. You could argue that it’s not fair. You could argue a dozen other countries behave worse than Israel, or that Qatari and Chinese money have poisoned American minds and infected the algorithms, or that the antipathy toward Israel and Zionism has always been and will always be about Jew-hatred.
Still: this is where we are in 2026, and we can’t will the facts away. So where, politically, do Jews turn? How do we pick a lane when they all seem to lead to dead ends?
One option is to leave. In the past, the somewhat glib answer to “where should we go?” if Jews wanted to run away — or were kicked out — was, of course, Israel. American Jews who kept one bag packed by the door — even if figuratively — saw the Jewish state as a refuge.
But our relationship with Israel as it is now is complicated. Putting aside the fact that a country that has weathered years of war and terror is hardly a refuge, American Jews are deeply unhappy with the current Israeli government. The AP poll found that 4 in 10 Jewish adults think the U.S. is too supportive of Israel, and that among American Jews, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is more popular than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
If there is no flight, there is only fight.
That’s what former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was doing in Tel Aviv this week with a speech in which he called for a “fundamentally new and different approach” to U.S.-Israel relations. He was not fighting against Israel, but fighting for his party — the Democrats — to demand more of it. He talked about his emotional ties to Israel — something the majority of American Jews share — as well as his critiques.
And it’s why sharp criticism of his speech came from both sides of the aisle. On the right, Jonathan Tobin at JNS called the speech a recycling of “the persistent delusion of failed policies,” and Peter Savodnik at The Free Press wrote that Emanuel “bows to the left.” Meanwhile, the left accused Emanuel of placing too much blame on the Palestinians for corruption and intransigence, and for trying to stake out a pro-Israel position within the Democratic Party.
Emanuel didn’t pick a lane, which is why people who hold such disparate ideologies are all upset with him. Instead, he carved a new one. He embraced a politics so critical of Israel that it would have been anathema in mainstream Democratic circles until very recently. That’s not a bad thing. His idea — which is really an idea promoted by the progressive pro-Israel lobbying group J Street — is that the U.S. should push Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab nations toward a “23 state solution” that recognizes Palestinian rights and integrates Israel fully into the Middle East. As far-fetched as it seems now, it is also more pragmatic and optimistic than anything the far left or right have to offer.
Emanuel showed one option for how to decouple support for a strong, secure Israel from support for the disastrous direction in which the country’s leaders are taking it. He showed how to love Israel as an American Jew, warts and all. His position is highly critical of the country’s current leadership and direction — as are the majority of Israelis, by the way — but out of concern for its security and democracy, not out of objection to its existence. It’s a position that recognizes the rights of all peoples between the river and the sea to security and self-determination. It moves beyond blame to solutions.
The right response to American Jews’ sense of political abandonment is for candidates who care about our community — and despite our dismay, there are many — to pivot, like Emanuel, to making creative cases for the future. Come with a vision, come with a plan, come with a path that offers the chance of a better life for the millions of Jews and Arabs who live there and aren’t going anywhere. Come with a pitch that shows American Jews that the full complexity of our concerns matters, and that your parties are capable of adapting to meet this moment.
That’s the fight that has to happen. Don’t wait for a lane to open. Pick a party, and start opening one.
The post More US Jews feel ‘politically homeless’ than ever. What are we to do? appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
UK Jewish groups express concern as the likely next PM criticizes Israel over Gaza
(JTA) — Andy Burnham, who is on track to become Britain’s next prime minister following Keir Starmer’s resignation last month, apologized for his party’s handling of the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas mass killings in Israel, saying that it should have done more to push for a ceasefire and called for exerting greater pressure on the Jewish state today.
His comments prompted a joint response from the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, which said they had contacted his team to express “significant concerns” about his remarks.
Burnham made his comments in a video statement on Thursday in response to questions from the public. Burnham is likely to become the next prime minister after gaining the overwhelming support of sitting Labour members of Parliament. To date no one has challenged him for the party’s leadership ahead of a July 17 deadline.
“I know many people feel that at the start of Israel’s military action in Gaza, my party didn’t get it right, and I am sorry about that,” he said. He added that he supported further sanctions on Israelis involved in the violence in Gaza, measures to ban trade with Israeli settlements and restrictions on arms licenses to Israel, saying there was “increasing evidence that war crimes appear to have been committed.”
He also condemned increased antisemitism in Britain, and said that tackling antisemitism did not contradict holding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to account.
His comments came as lawmakers across the political spectrum have pushed for increased condemnation of Israel and sanctions on the country.
“The unbearable suffering in Gaza is a scar on our collective conscience,” Burnham said. “The killing of innocent Palestinians, including children,” was “completely unacceptable,” he added, declaring that Britain had to do more to “put pressure on the Israeli government.”
He described the country as “too slow to call for a ceasefire” and that “we must now do more to strengthen our approach” as “Israel continues to violate the ceasefire agreement killing innocent Palestinians.”
In their response, the Board and JLC said they shared “concern for the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip” but stated that the conflict “cannot be understood without reference to the role of Hamas not only in launching the conflict but in perpetuating the war through the holding of hostages, war-fighting entirely from within the civilian population, and [their] ongoing refusal to cede power and disarm, in line with the 20 point peace plan.”
They added that the conflict also could not be understood without reference to Hamas’ regional backers and allies, including Iran and Hezbollah. Burnham addressed none of this in his comments.
Burnham did, however, reiterate his condemnation of Hamas, describing the Oct. 7 attacks as “monstrous,” stressing that he denounced them “as strongly today as I did in the immediate aftermath.”
He said that he also condemned “the increase in appalling antisemitic attacks here in the U.K. and those who seek to divide our communities by targeting Jewish people.”
“I felt first-hand the anxiety in our Jewish community and the very real threat they face,” the former mayor of Greater Manchester said, referring to the Yom Kippur 2025 attack on the city’s Heaton Park synagogue in which two people were killed.
The Board and JLC welcomed Burnham’s “zero tolerance approach to antisemitism” and affirmed his assertion that “there is no contradiction between fighting antisemitism and disagreeing with actions of the Israeli government.”
However, they said, “Antisemitism cannot be confronted without addressing all its drivers,” arguing that in Britain that includes “Islamist, far left and far right extremists who go beyond criticism of the Israeli government to a place of hatred directed at Jews and Israelis.”
Their joint statement pointed out that Burnham knew “first hand the links between hatred of Israel, antisemitic extremism and deadly violence against British Jews,” adding that, “in a country in which antisemitism has become more normalized, more extreme and more violent, we call on our leaders to show the utmost care in their rhetoric in relation to the conflict.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post UK Jewish groups express concern as the likely next PM criticizes Israel over Gaza appeared first on The Forward.
