As I look back on 2008, these highlights stand out:
- We initiated and/or continued our partnership with Jewish communities in more than thirteen countries on five continents.
- Kulanu shared the prestigious Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award from Tufts University with the Mirembe Kawomera “Delicious Peace” Fair Trade Coffee Cooperative and Thanksgiving Coffee Company for the interfaith coffee project initiated by the Abayudaya community with the help of Kulanu.
- Kulanu organized a lecture tour and supported Dr. Navras Aafreedi, a Pashtun, in his project to bring Jewish Studies as an academic discipline to India.
- In only three weeks, Kulanu supporters matched a $5,000 emergency grant for the Kulanu-Abayudaya Child Hunger Project from the Estelle Friedman Gervis Family Foundation. Gervis and other Kulanu donors funded two new dormitories and a primary school kitchen. The first graduating class in the Abayudaya primary school did well in their national exams.
- A Kulanu working group has continued to support the Lemba in South Africa and Zimbabwe, and has explored rabbinic training options for a promising young Lemba man from Zimbabwe.
- Remy Ilona, Kulanu’s liaison in Nigeria, has continued to research, write, distribute books, and host email groups about the Igbos. Kulanu has advised him about application to graduate school in the U.S. so he can prepare to teach Jewish Studies in Nigerian universities.
- Kulanu made possible a four-month visit from Alex Armah, teacher and spiritual leader of the Sefwi Wiawso community in Ghana, to study with the Abayudaya in Uganda.
- Kulanu has improved our web site and inaugurated Kulanu Updates sent via email. Past issues of Kulanu Update can be read on Kulanu’s new blog, created by volunteer Matthew Feldman, at www.kulanu.org/blog.
- Kulanu began work with the small Jewish community in Suriname. Kulanu provided a summer volunteer teacher, financial assistance, and help with renewal of the Jewish community and expanded Jewish tourism. Board member Jacob Steinberg became our coordinator for Suriname.
- Kulanu’s Sandy Leeder and Jack Zeller worked with Young Judea’s post-high school “Olami track” to organize visits to Jewish communities in Africa, India and Portugal.
- Kulanu leaders assisted Tebeka, an organization that provides legal assistance to Ethiopian Jews in Israel, to form an American Friends of Tebeka, and sponsored the visit of M. K. Shloma Molla to the initial fundraising event of AFT in Washington, DC.
- Kulanu’s youth participation program continued to grow, and included development of a brochure for bar/bat mitzvah candidates. Kulanu mitzvah projects were successfully accomplished by eight bnei mitzvah candidates, three summer camps and nine schools.
- We expanded the Kulanu board, adding Barbara Vinick of Boston, Andria Spindel of Toronto, Sonia Rosen of Washington, DC, Jacob Steinberg of Toronto, and Rabbi Stephen Leon of El Paso. All have participated enthusiastically in Kulanu’s efforts.
- Our annual Abayudaya speaking tour has been a great success. By the end of the tour on December 1, this year’s speaker, community chairperson Israel Siriri, will have spoken before more than 2,300 people across the U.S. and Canada at more than 25 venues including congregations, schools, Hillel programs and other groups.
Today, I write to you in our shared role as Kulanu supporters, asking you to join me in continuing our support of this organization that is so important to so many. We are able to do so much, even with small amounts. For example, $50 is enough to help an Abayudaya woman begin a business; $100 educates a child in the Abayudaya schools for a year; $650 sends a Jewish teacher from Mumbai to the poor community of Andhra Pradesh, India; $2,000 provides computer facilities to Dr. Navras Aafreedi in India; $5,000 funds an African student in Israel for yeshiva study.
We know that next year is going to be a challenging one economically for many. We ask you to help us maintain our programs by giving as generously as you can. My deepest thanks for your generous support.
Please donate online at www.kulanu.org/donate, or mail a check in U.S. dollars, payable to Kulanu, to my address below.
With all best wishes,
Harriet Bograd
President
I am very sad to inform you that former Kulanu board member Rabbi Moshe Cotel died suddenly and unexpectedly October 24, 2008 while davening.
Rabbi Cotel and his family and my family have been close friends for more than 25 years, and he is the person responsible for getting me involved in Kulanu. Rabbi Cotel served on Kulanu’s board of directors from 2002 through 2007. His death is a great loss.
In 2003, as a “second-career” rabbinical student, he traveled to Uganda in 2003 with a team of rabbis and others organized by Kulanu, to serve on a beit din that affirmed the Jewish identity of hundreds of members of the Abayudaya community.
Condolence notes can be mailed to his wife, Aliya Cheskis-Cotel and his children, Sivan and Orli, at the family home or to Kulanu. The family has designated Kulanu to receive contributions in his memory
We extend our deepest condolences to Aliyah, Sivan and Orli, and to his entire family..
B’shalom,
Harriet
Kulanu’s Fall Newsletter is now available online!
This issue includes these articles, and much more:
* “Remembering Rabbi Moshe Cotel” by Harriet Bograd (p. 1)
* “Olmert Agrees to Aliyah of Bnei Menashe from India” (p. 1)
* “A Ghanaian Learns in Uganda” by Alex Armah (p. 1)
* “Kudos to Kulanu Youth” by Harriet Bograd and “Kulanu Youth Honor Roll” (p.2)
* “A Bat Mitzvah Project about Coffee” by Juliana Moskowitz (p. 2)
* “Uganda Trip Report, Part II” by Laura Wetzler (p. 3)
* “A Ugandan Learns in Chicago” by Samson Wamani (p. 6)
* “Update on Prof. Xu Xin and a Remarkable Endowment” by Beverly Friend (p. 7)
* “A Non-Jew Dreams of Bringing Jewish Studies to India” by Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi (p. 7)
* “The Kaifeng Stone Inscriptions, by Tiberiu Weisz,” A review by Irwin M. Berg (p. 10)
* “Among Maroons: Discoveries of Color, Judaism, and Slavery,” by Shai Fierst (p. 12)
* “Searching for Subbotniks in Subcarpathia, Ukraine,” by Michael Nosonovsk (p. 14)
This past summer saw Kulanu mitzvah projects at several Jewish camps. One wonderful example was the “Holchim L’Chaim” (We Walk for Life) walkathon at Herzl Camp in Webster, Wisc. Kulanu was one of three organizations chosen by the campers to benefit from the walk and received $835. Although rained out, the walk was moved indoors with information about the three beneficiaries decorating the rest stops. This was the first time that the camp, with more than 400 campers, did a fundraising event and it was designed to educate the campers in skills that it is hoped they will bring back to their schools and home communities. Past camp projects have included the creation of a chuppah, which was donated to the Teferet Israel community in Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana, and of mezuzot, which were sent to Nigeria.
Shanah Tovah and our best wishes for 5769! The economic news in recent days has been frightening and no one knows what lies ahead. However, our wishes for this new year do not change. We wish for all of us a year of health and joy. We wish for all the world that this is a year in which peace is made. And what we know is that, no matter what the future may bring, that we are stronger as part of a community. We hope that being part of the “all of us” that is Kulanu brings you learning and growth, new friends and renewed ties with old, and a renewed sense of wonder at the diversity of the Jewish world. At the same time, as we close last year, we ask your forgiveness and understanding if any action of ours hurt you in any way.
Harriet
As you may know, Kulanu will be bringing Israel Siriri, chairperson of the Abayudaya community in Uganda, to the U.S. and Canada for a speaking tour October 30-December 1. We are delighted at the response to this tour–so far, he will be making presentations in New York, California, Massachusetts, Illinois, Wisconsin, New Jersey, North Carolina, Florida as well as Ottawa and Toronto in Canada. And, thank you to Richard Sobol (richardsobol.com) for this recent photo of Israel.
We’ve created a calendar with details of each of Israel’s speaking engagements during his tour, so that you can easily pass this information on to friends and relatives in the places where he’ll be speaking. Please note that we will be updating this calendar as we receive confirmation of times and locations from each of the venues — check back closer to the dates for more final details. To access the calendar, visit: http://calendar.yahoo.com/kulanuevents. (Click on the “Month” tab, then click on the arrows at the top to switch from October to November).
The calendar also shows the dates that are still open. If you know of a group that might still want Israel Siriri to speak, please have them look at our tour announcement on www.kulanu.org, and then contact speakers @ kulanu.org.
We are very excited to announce that we have inaugurated the Kulanu blog with the help of volunteer Matthew Feldman. Its main purpose, for now, is to give online access to these Kulanu Updates, and to allow readers to add comments. If you missed the earlier Updates, you can read them in our blog. The blog format also makes it easy for readers to spread the word about Kulanu – just click “share this” after any item.
www.kulanu.org/blog
And, if you haven’t visited the Kulanu web site recently at www.kulanu.org, now’s the time! With the help of many web-savvy volunteers, Kulanu staffer Katie Rosenthal has been making all kinds of changes and vast improvements.
Kulanu made possible a four-month visit from Alex Armah, teacher and spiritual leader of the Sefwi Wiawso community in Ghana to the Abayudaya in Uganda. We included excerpts from a few of his reports in the last Update and wanted to share this additional one:
Hello,
Greetings to you all. It is my will to study and to teach my people in Ghana. As the studies are going on, I made my mind to trying to read from the Torah on Shabbat. So what I did was to see one of the Torah readers Isaac and told him I want to read the Torah on Shabbat.
(more…)
In July, the Kulanu/Abayudaya Child Hunger Project received a 30-day emergency matching grant from the Estelle Friedman Gervis Family Foundation and in just three weeks, 35 Kulanu supporters responded to help us meet the match. Thank you all! This enables us to return to our usual fundraising efforts to support this terribly important program. One way you can help is to estimate the money you will save by fasting on Yom Kippur and send that to Kulanu for the Child Hunger Project.
