The Jews of Africa -- The House of Israel of Ghana

The House of Israel Community, Ghana

religious life

Members of the House of Israel community are both serious and playful about their Judaism. On one hand they take Jewish religious observances very seriously. Every night the community gathers at the house of Brother Isaiah to study Judaism from books that Western donors have sent. "Rabbi" Alex reads the passages in English and David Ahenkorah explains each passage to the men, women and children who sit before him. They study hard because they know they have much to learn. On the other hand, they realize that Judaism is a living religion that they must interpret according to the needs of their community. When they debate the community’s religious decision they do so with some degree of playful excitement, feeling a conscious part of the Judaic debates that they know Rabbis have had throughout the ages.

Jews in Sefwi Wiawso live amongst non-Jews and only separate themselves due to their religious observances. The Sefwi Wiawso Jews keep kosher – they do not eat pork and kasher meat according to Jewish custom. Women in the community follow Biblical restrictions during their menstrual periods and are not allowed to cook or be part of religious observances until they are considered "clean." The predominantly Christian neighbors don’t know what to make of the long, flowing robes the men don for the Sabbath, nor the "strange" holidays the community follows.

On Shabbat the Sefwi Wiawso community sets itself particularly apart. Each family celebrates the evening of Shabbat with its own celebration. The Armah family celebrates in the small television room of their house, all ten children gathering around a tiny table and around their father, Jacob, and twenty-three year old "Rabbi" Alex Armah. Alex blesses the lit candles and the wine (the community does not have kosher wine so the replace it in their rituals with bottles of Coke). He reads several prayers in English (from an English/Hebrew prayer book – community members are just learning how to speak Hebrew), then allows Jacob to bless both the children and his wife, for her tireless work. From the moment the Shabbat lights are kindled the community uses no electricity.

Saturday morning community members wake up early, bathe using cold water in a bucket (there is no running water), then meet in the synagogue for prayer. Men wear long, flowing white robes and traditional kippot. Women wear their best dress, usually a flowered, hand-made creation. The community elders sit at the front of the synagogue facing the rest of the community. Women and men sit separately on the synagogue’s wooden benches, and children sit on benches running along the synagogue’s side. The synagogue of recent visitor Mike Gershowitz has donated plentiful Sim Shalom prayerbooks, but David and Alex do not quite know yet how to sculpt a Shabbat service from them, so they draw upon a fraying Union prayer book intended for the High Holy days that someone had sent them. They have memorized prayers word for word from that prayer book, and recite them back in order with near perfection. The community has no Torah but it does have an English/Hebrew Tanach from which Alex reads the week’s parsha in English as David explains every line in some what of a rolling sermon.

After about 1 ½ hours of services, community members return to their homes for breakfast. Local families host the visitors from the far off farming community of Sefwi Sui who regularly come twenty miles to join in the services. After breakfast the community again convenes at the synagogue for a study session and some more prayers. Later in the afternoon the services break up and families return to their own houses where they discuss Judaism, teach prayers verbatim to their children, and ponder the long week of work behind them and the next that is coming. As the sun sets each family celebrates Havdallah its own way. The Armah family gathers once again in the small television room and Rabbi Alex leads a traditional Havdallah service, ending the Shabbat observance by dipping a twisted, three wicked candle into a cup of Coke that is substituting for wine. After Shabbat has gone Jacob flips on the electricity that powers the TV room’s glowing green light bulb and its slow, churning overhead fan.