It was a life-changing day for Sei Mang Khong Sai, a 35-year-old man from Sazal, India. Inside the mud and bamboo hut on stilts with him were community leaders, his family and guests. They chanted tribal prayers to the beat of a lap drummer.<\/p>\n
In this village, hours away from any major city, they were preparing for the barhote<\/em>, the bris. Sei Mang was about to enter the covenant. In an area of warfare, poverty and drug-running, he was seeking Judaism\u2019s deeper connection to a peaceable life.<\/p>\n Before the ceremony was complete, however, he was to be given his Jewish name. The honor was spontaneously given to visiting stranger Bryan Schwartz, from Oakland, Calif. The first thing that came into Schwartz\u2019s head was Menashe, and so Menashe it was.<\/p>\n A kippah was placed on Menashe\u2019s head, the hut\u2019s doors were thrown open and the assembled outside were informed of the new name, to cheers of \u201csiman tov!\u201d and \u201cmazal tov!\u201d<\/p>\n As the history is told, seven Jewish couples were shipwrecked off the Konkan coast in India, south of Bombay, some 2,000 years ago, the progenitors of today\u2019s Bnei Israel of India\u2019s Maharashtra province.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a pretty astonishing moment for me that brought home both the commonality, the amount that we share even in the most diverse corners of the world, and also how different some Jewish lives are from the one that I have,\u201d said Schwartz, a civil rights attorney.<\/p>\n Sei Mang\u2019s story and many others \u2013 from Schwartz\u2019s travels to 30 countries and more than 100 villages \u2013 are chronicled in Schwartz\u2019s recent book, Scattered Among the Nations: Photographs and Stories of the World\u2019s Most Isolated Jewish Communities<\/em>, which he put together with Jay Saul and Sandy Carter.<\/p>\n Scattered Among the Nations<\/em> is the culmination of a 15-year journey that began in 1999 when Schwartz was a law student and was planning a spring break trip to North Africa. He stumbled upon a listing for Jews in the index of his Lonely Planet guidebook, including historical descriptions of the island of Djerba in the Mediterranean off the coast of Tunisia. Jews there claim not only to have in their possession the oldest Torah, but a past extending directly to ancestors fleeing the destruction of the Second Temple. It is believed that some high priests \u2013 kohanim \u2013 found refuge on the island, bringing with them one of the gates of the Temple, which they later buried. Legend has it, a synagogue, which still stands today, was built overtop the burial site. Schwartz learned there were 15 synagogues on the island.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m reading all of this and I\u2019m just blown away that there is this place that is so fascinating, and a story that is so colorful and beautiful, and that I have never heard of it,\u201d he told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cI decided there must be places like this all around the world that I could visit and, as a writer and photographer, capture some of it and share it with other Jewish people.\u201d<\/p>\n Prior to embarking on this ambitious quest, he contacted some communities by fax and mail and connected with global Jewish outreach centre Kulanu, which has ties to Jews in far-off corners. He also researched the \u201clost\u201d communities, reading Hillel Halkin\u2019s book on the Bnei Menashe, Across the Sabbath River<\/em>, and Tudor Parfitt\u2019s The Lost Tribes of Israel<\/em> and Journey to the Vanished City<\/em>, about the Lemba tribe of southern Africa, who maintain Jewish practices and share kohanic DNA. He took special note of the 1999 documentary film by Simcha Jacobovici, Quest for the Lost Tribes of Israel<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of these communities exist in places so geographically and culturally distant from other Jews that they must struggle daily to maintain the religion of their ancestors,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Scattered Among the Nations<\/em> contains more than 500 color photographs. Over the course of two years, Schwartz\u2019s articles and talks have gained attention globally in the media, learning institutions, houses of worship and Jewish museums.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to show the full diversity of the Jewish world,\u201d he said. In Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana, for example, Jews don\u2019t know how they got there \u2013 perhaps an ancient Israelite exile or Ethiopian Jewish traders. But what\u2019s certain is that the community of 200, who call themselves the House of Israel, is dedicated to living a Jewish life.<\/p>\n \u201cThey embrace Judaism with such love. They have this tiny Torah that somebody delivered to the community,\u201d said Schwartz. \u201cAnd then, to return home and to see in my synagogue the wall of Torahs in the ark \u2026 Torahs draped in silver and velvet, and realize how very fortunate we are to have the kind of resources that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n An \u201cextraordinary part of the journey,\u201d said Schwartz, was showing up, not knowing a single soul, \u201cand just by virtue of this Jewish faith that was shared, that I would be treated like a long lost cousin and brought in, and I could stay with a family for Shabbat or for a whole week or for several weeks, and nothing be asked of me at all, other than to join them.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, he said, even members of economically disadvantaged communities offered him the best room in the house in which to stay, three meals a day and touring.<\/p>\n In Ghana, for instance, he stayed in Joseph Arma\u2019s house \u2013 one of the wealthier community members \u2013 where only one room had electricity. The home had an outhouse.<\/p>\n Arma\u2019s nephew was staying with them, but Arma kept referring to him as his son. Confused, Schwartz asked for clarification. It was explained that the tradition is that people who have kinship with one another can be called son \u2013 and that its what this American visitor would soon be called, as well. \u201cThat\u2019s how it is here in Africa,\u201d he was told.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is how I was treated in a lot of communities, like I was the son of the community and as much a part of the family as anyone else,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, more than 100 people of the Shona Jewish community convene each Shabbat morning at their synagogue outside Rusape, Zimbabwe. It is there they sing original Afro-Jewish melodies, gospel-style, in Hebrew, Shona and English.<\/p>\n The Ebo Jews in Nigeria, on the other hand, consist of several thousand members.<\/p>\n In each locale, their practices are recognizably Jewish, though continued observance of said practices often requires outside assistance.<\/p>\n The Inca Jews in Peru, as they identify themselves, have struggled to maintain the traditions.<\/p>\n \u201cThey don\u2019t have teachers, they don\u2019t have clergy, they don\u2019t have books and the resources to buy kosher foods that they want for holidays,\u201d Schwartz said. They are by necessity vegetarian, he explained \u2013 not by choice, but due to the fact that kosher meat is unavailable.<\/p>\n This is one of the many reasons that it wasn\u2019t enough for Schwartz to simply publish his book and hope that these communities would be able to continue practising Judaism despite their lack of resources. Instead, he has also launched Scattered Among the Nations, Inc., a nonprofit organization that is designed, among other things, to assist isolated Jewish communities in gaining the recognition and resources to meet their needs. The organization, for example, has helped the Inca Jews buy kosher meat for Pesach and the High Holidays.<\/p>\n A number of communities \u2013 including the Inca Jews \u2013 don\u2019t have kosher Torahs and, at one point, the community in northeastern India had to use a toy Torah, the kind bar mitzvah kids are given, said Schwartz. After reading an article about this situation, septuagenarian Chicagoan Sam Pfeffer stepped up to the plate, offering to purchase a Torah. But it\u2019s not as though the scroll could be mailed or couriered. To avoid the reams of red tape, the only route was to deliver it personally. And so it was that this community, for the first time in perhaps several hundred years, leined from a fresh, new Torah.<\/p>\n \u201cNothing in the world could have meant more to them,\u201d said Schwartz. \u201cIn northeastern India, you know, there is just not enough hope. Economically there, life is a struggle and to get to Shabbat really is a salvation every week.\u201d<\/p>\n Whole communities \u2013 including the Bnei Menashe and Inca Jews \u2013 have expressed a strong desire to make aliyah in order to live fuller Jewish lives. But they haven\u2019t necessarily been met with the warmest of receptions.<\/p>\n \u201cIt felt to me like an injustice that this [Inca] community has been actively and deliberately practising Judaism for decades, and really struggle to gain attention from the outside Jewish world. They\u2019re fighting to get the attention of the [rabbinical authorities], to practise and make aliyah,\u201d said Schwartz. \u201cThat was a fight that felt like \u2026 social justice that I engage in my law practice as well. Some of what I have seen \u2026 has felt like discrimination to me, and I think it\u2019s something we need to confront and address.\u201d<\/p>\n After some of the first members of the Inca community made aliyah, an Israeli newspaper wrote editorials suggesting that these Peruvians were just the pawns of an Orthodox establishment trying to use them in the war against the Palestinians, recalled Schwartz. \u201cWhich, to me, is an incredibly \u2026 bigoted way to look at a group of people, to suggest they were sort of evil-minded, or did not have their own free will to exercise their own passionate conserving of Judaism.<\/p>\n \u201cIn fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. The community actually struggled for a long time to gain any recognition for their own very devoted Jewish practice \u2026 to the point where they were photocopying pages of the Chumash and sticking it to parchment, to make it a \u2018Torah.\u2019 It\u2019s hard for most of us to imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n The Bnei Menashe of Myanmar (Burma) and India only recently gained official recognition as a \u201clost tribe\u201d from religious authorities.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was so fundamental to their identity that they were part of a lost tribe,\u201d said Schwartz, puzzled at the inconsistencies. Why, he wondered, when so many Soviet Jews \u201cwere welcomed with open arms in Israel, despite so few devoted in their Jewish practice,\u201d do Bnei Menashe, in contrast, \u201cnot have the same reception? I think that\u2019s something that we need to continue to confront as a community.\u201d<\/p>\n It seems that clashes with so-called mainstream Jewish life have become the rule, rather than the exception. In the 1980s and 1990s, for example, Jews in Mexico and Portugal emerged from centuries of isolation, \u201ccoming out\u201d for the first time since the Spanish Inquisition, as Schwartz explained. \u201cNow that they no longer are forced to hide their Jewish practice, that they\u2019re not as isolated as they once were, while it is a blessing, it also causes challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n Reconnecting to the Jewish world meant newfound (to them) rabbinical insight that often conflicted with their own traditions, he explained. Portuguese prayers would make way for Hebrew prayers; kashrut meant a whole other list of laws and strictures. The Jewish community in Portugal had been, for hundreds of years, developing secret (to us) Jewish practices, including a Shavuot they referred to as Ascension Wednesday, a gathering in the field to celebrate.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a struggle in the community as to what extent to embrace modern Jewish practice, or to keep going with their … practices that they\u2019ve had for centuries,\u201d said Schwartz. \u201cSuddenly, you\u2019ve come face to face with the entire Jewish world and realized that the way you\u2019re practising is not entirely consistent with the way the other communities are practising and you have to make decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n Schwartz couldn\u2019t help but be affected by the faith of these communities, in light of what would often be harsh circumstances.<\/p>\n \u201cIn visiting these communities,\u201d he said, \u201cI realized the struggle that some people have to get to survive every week, and how meaningful it is to really live the whole week, to arrive at Shabbat. It is just inspiring. It made me realize the gift that it is to be Jewish, and it makes me want to pray every day, and be grateful every day, in a way that I certainly wasn\u2019t before.\u201d<\/p>\n