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Participants will have the opportunity to tour the regional capital city of Arusha including visiting a working coffee plantation, the Maasai market and the Tanzania Cultural Center. The group will spend Shabbat with the small Jewish community in Arusha and share Shabbat evening services and dinner as well as Shabbat morning services and lunch. After this meaningful Shabbat, we will spend 5 days on safari in the Ngorongoro Crater, Serengeti and Lake Manyara.

In 1971 the Jewish community of Arusha, Tanzania, beset by Christian missionaries determined to convert them, lost their only Sefer Torah in a fire related to the conflict with the missionaries. That Torah had been brought over the mountains from Ethiopia on a donkey.The Tanzanian government had nationalized their synagogue leaving them homeless and without a Torah. The population dispersed throughout the city and concealed evidence of their Jewish identities. Yehudah Amir Kahalani, son of the late rabbi of Arusha, now leads the Jewish community. Kahalani is a lawyer by profession and, along with his partner Efrat, he has dedicated himself to rebuilding Jewish life in Arusha. Yehuda studies daily by skype with Rabbi Meyer Landy in New Jersey, and the community meets every Shabbat for prayers.

When the Tanzanian government offered land to the Jews of Arusha in restitution for the seizures of the 1970's, Kahalani obtained a portion of the site where another synagogue previously stood. There, he built a tiny chapel with an amud, an ark and plush seating for 14. Yet the ark sat empty, waiting for a sefer Torah. Kahalani built a fine house adjacent to the synagogue, where he and Efrat are raising their five children in the Jewish tradition he inherited from his late father, Amir Kahalani, the last rabbi of Arusha. A number of people from the Jewish community also live nearby and attend services on Shabbat. Other Jews in Arusha live too far away to walk to the shul.

Adjacent to the chapel, there is a covered courtyard with room for up to 50 people. This expansion is a work in progress. They also plan to build a mikveh and a guest house for volunteers who may wish to come and help the community. The Jews of Arusha are looking for ways to teach the younger generation Hebrew, as well as Jewish customs and laws. It is a huge challenge, to which Kahalani has dedicated his time and efforts.

On Nov 7, 2019, Harry Silverman, founder of Synagogue Solutions USA, was privileged to be part of a group of 38 pilgrims from North America who brought a Torah from Kehillat Beth Israel in Ottawa and celebrated with Yehudah and the Jewish community of Arusha, the inauguration of their new Torah scroll. A procession of several dozen people marched with the Torah into the synagogue and placed the Torah in the ark. A few minutes later, the Torah was removed from the ark and read for the first time in its new home.

The Jewish community in Arusha has been quietly coping with its problems on its own for decades, without the help or even the knowledge of the broader Jewish world. The contact by remote communication with Rabbi Landy provided them with a lifeline, and the visit by the group from Kehillat Beth Israel has hopefully demonstrated that engagement with the wider Jewish world will enrich them and bolster them in their struggle to survive as a Jewish community.

ITINERARY