Uganda – Jewish Independent

Goldene Medina comes here

The Goldene Medina exhibit is designed to have the feel of a scrapbook album, to have come from any Jewish South African’s family memoir. (photo from South African Jewish Museum)

The Goldene Medina exhibit arrives in Vancouver July 29 for two weeks. A celebration of 175 years of Jewish life in South Africa, the exhibit was displayed in South Africa, Australia and Israel prior to arriving here, where it is making its North America debut at Congregation Beth Israel. Local Jewish community member Stephen Rom, who is from South Africa, saw it for the first time in Sydney and was instrumental in bringing it to the city.

“You need to remember your past to engage in the present,” reflected Rom. “I was struck by the level of professionalism of this exhibit, which was produced by the South African Jewish Museum in Cape Town. What’s different about it is the way the stories have been written. Nobody is named or personally identified. This is the story of all Jews in South Africa, the community as a whole.”

The Goldene Medina was the Jews’ name for Johannesburg when they arrived during the gold rush in 1886. “This exhibition has soul – it’s not a dry exhibition of facts and figures,” noted Wendy Kahn, national director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies. “It’s one that tells real stories of families that have been living in South Africa for 175 years.”

“This is a social history,” agreed Gavin Morris, director of the museum, “the story of families and people and their experiences as South Africans and as Jews for 175 years, from our forefathers arriving to contemporary Jewish South Africa. Everything is taken from unpublished memoirs, articles and out-of-print books, to give the exhibit a sense of a scrapbook album, of any Jewish South African’s family memoirs. Our goal was for people to find their own stories in similar stories.”

The stories are excerpts written in the first person and accompanied by photographs old and new. One excerpt, titled “My Mother’s Table,” reads, “At my mother’s table, ‘being full’ was never a reason to stop eating. Some of the many reasons to have some more included: ‘I cooked this especially for you because I know you like it,’ ‘you can’t put so little leftovers back into the fridge,’ ‘it’s freshly made,’ and ‘you don’t like my cooking.’ Refusing more was to snub the generosity and abundance that was on offer. Eating was proof that you were loved and that you knew how to love back.”

Another, titled “Cubs,” reads: “After my mom realized that I only knew Jewish kids, she sent me off to Cubs – not exactly your standard Jewish activity. I came home with my first friend and said, ‘Mom, isn’t it wonderful? Here’s my first friend from Cubs and guess what – we’ve got the same Hebrew teacher!’ He was the only other Jewish kid there and we found each other. My mother gave up after that.”

A third is titled “A Surprise Guest”: “What is the epitome of Jewish chutzpah? Inviting the president of the country to attend your bar mitzvah. And what is Jewish mazel? When the president actually accepts. The bar mitzvah boy delivered his handwritten note to a security guard outside [Nelson] Mandela’s Houghton estate. He hoped to get a card from Mandela in return. Instead, his parents received an official call to say the president will attend. On the day, President Mandela arrived and sat at the main table, between the bar mitzvah boy and his father.”

The excerpts are thought-provoking, poignant, entertaining, informative and never boring. And the photographs are deeply intriguing, telling a story of their own – a timeless Jewish story that has relevance to all Jews whose ancestors have known immigration and resettlement.

Accompanying the Goldene Medina in Vancouver will be the exhibit Shalom Uganda: A European Jewish Community on the Ugandan Equator 1949-1961, curated by Janice Masur.

photo - The Kampala Jewish community gathers for visit of Chief Justice Joseph Herbstein from South Africa, 1958. Gifted by Ilsa Dokelman, in 2005 — The Kampala Jewish community gathers for visit of Chief Justice Joseph Herbstein from South Africa, 1958. Gifted by Ilsa Dokelman, in 2005. *(photo from Janice Masur)*

“As a child, I lived in this remote European Jewish community on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kampala, Uganda, under British Imperial rule, with no rabbi or Jewish infrastructure. Yet, this tiny community of 23 families and 20 children (15 of whom were born in Kampala) identified as Jews and formed a cohesive group that celebrated all the Jewish festivals together,” explained Masur. “Now that most references to Jews in Uganda pertain to … Abayudaya Jews, I want this history – my story about my Ashkenazi Jewish community in Kampala – to be remembered in the Jewish Diaspora.”

The photos and stories that comprise the Ugandan display are, said Masur, “a testament to a determined but isolated group of Jews who were secular in a [remote] place but upheld their Jewish identity and traditions as best as was possible,” given the lack of religious, educational or cultural Jewish institutions. (For more about the Ugandan Jewish community in which Masur grew up, click here.)

The July 29 opening night of the Goldene Medina starts at 7:30 p.m. at Beth Israel, where the display will be up until Aug. 14.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Meet Next Einstein winner

Aaron Friedland’s Walking School Bus garnered the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s 2016 Next Einstein award. (photo from Aaron Friedland)

When Vancouverite Aaron Friedland, 23, heard his Walking School Bus digital reading program was the recipient of the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s 2016 Next Einstein competition, he was surprised to say the least. Studying for his master’s dissertation on applied economics at the University of British Columbia, he’d entered it into the contest without ever thinking his would be the $10,000 grand prize winner out of 1,400 submissions.

Friedland was born in South Africa and immigrated to Vancouver with his family in 1993, when he was a year old. In 2011, while he was attending King David High School, he and his family visited Uganda’s Abayudaya community on a “voluntourism” project that would change his life and inspire the Walking School Bus.

“Three things left an impression on me during that trip,” he reflected. “One was the distance Ugandan students were walking to school, with many traveling five to eight kilometres each way. They needed a school bus. Then, I noticed their daily nutrition of maize meal and wondered, what’s the point in bringing them to school when they haven’t eaten anything for breakfast? And when the curriculum at the school is almost nonexistent?”

Back in Vancouver, Friedland had two goals: to raise awareness of the plight of Uganda’s students by publishing a book, The Walking School Bus, and to use the money from book sales to buy a school bus. An Indiegogo campaign raised $12,000 and Friedland is negotiating publication of the book with a major publisher. “But I received so much interest in what I was doing that I realized the efforts should end with an organization, not a book.”

He learned the tools of creating such an organization at McGill, where he studied economics and economic development, and, later, as an analyst in a fellow position at United Nations Watch in Geneva. It was in Geneva that he became determined to form an organization around The Walking School Bus that might accomplish all three of his goals: not just the school bus, but agricultural training that would enable locals to grow more nutritious food and an enhanced school curriculum that would engage students better in learning.

The Walking School Bus was incorporated into a nonprofit foundation in 2015 and is presently in the throes of conducting economic research. “We’ve raised $25,000 to buy our first school bus, developed the models we need to ensure that bus can be sustained in the community and raised awareness in Vancouver, North America and parts of Australia about what it is to access education,” he said. He will soon lead a group of 18 economists, professors, educators and volunteers to Uganda to deliver the school bus.

In the Walking School Bus’ digital reading program, volunteers create audiobooks that are shared with partnering schools in Uganda, Canada and the United States – a total of 40 schools to date. Friedland has also created a Hebrew textbook, read by students at KDHS, that will help Ugandan Jewish students learn Hebrew. “We’re looking for students to help us create more books,” he said, and encouraged Canadian teachers to learn more about helping out with the reading program online at thewalkingschoolbus.com.

The prize money from the Next Einstein competition is being used to create a downloadable app that will allow people anywhere in the world to read books and poems from their cellphones. “They will be able to see text and even record themselves and send it in to our servers. Our team will engineer those recordings and send them on to empower literacy for students.”

Far from limiting his sights to Uganda, Friedland’s vision for the Walking School Bus is global. When he delivered a TEDx talk in India in recent months, he toured the Dharavi slum in Mumbai and noticed again the distance children were walking to school. He immediately assembled a team, comprised mostly of students from the Delhi Technological University, to investigate the possibility of building a suspension bridge. With a bridge across the river, students could walk 100 metres instead of the five-kilometre route around it. “We’re doing our due diligence right now, scoping out project locations and conducting cost-benefit analyses,” he said.

Friedland said his parents, Phillipa and Des, laid the foundations for his work by teaching their children “how everyone was equal, regardless of what the media said or what the social norms of the time were.”

He said, “My entire life I’ve watched my incredible parents do good things, whether it was my dad picking up earthworms so they wouldn’t be crushed by traffic, or my mom giving money to every single homeless person she saw. I saw how they were able to positively impact people, and how good it made them feel. That motivated me to apply those same principles as an adult.”

To read more on Friedland, visit jewishindependent.ca/better-access-to-education.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net. A version of this article was originally published in the Canadian Jewish News.

America’s pastime in Africa

Ruth Hoffman with baseball player Arthur Lusala, left, who today studies developmental economics at university, and coach George Mukhobe. (photo from Ruth Hoffman)

Vancouver baseball teens and their parents piled into the Rothstein Theatre on Sunday, April 19, for Opposite Field, a documentary by Jay Shapiro about a Ugandan Little League baseball team and its struggle to compete on the international stage.

The story caught Shapiro’s eye several years ago when he learned about an American businessman, Richard Stanley, who was sponsoring Uganda’s first baseball field and creating a Little League team. It was comprised of tenacious youngsters, many from poverty-stricken homes and unable to afford the most basic baseball gear. But the Ugandan team proved you don’t need fancy equipment to be a winner. What they lacked in material possessions they more than made up for in determination and skill, eventually traveling to Poland in 2011 to play in the regional championships. There, they earned the right to compete in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Penn., where they would have been the first African team in history to participate.

Bureaucratic red tape forced the cancelation of their trip, when visas to the United States were declined due to insufficient documentation. One player in Opposite Field explained that unlike most families in North America, who possess and protect important documents like their children’s birth certificates, in Uganda this is close to impossible. Birthing clinics fail to record information and families struggling to feed their children have other priorities than obtaining and keeping the documents.

Enter Ruth Hoffman, a Vancouver accountant who heard about the plight of the Uganda Little League team in August 2011, not long after their visas were declined. A specialist in microfinance who has worked in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Hoffman is a mother of three and well acquainted with baseball.

“My twin boys competed in Poland and their team made it to the World Series in 2006, something that became the highlight of their youth,” she recalled. Her sons’ trip had almost been canceled, too, as they were trying to fly to the United States at precisely the same time as the shoe bomber’s failed attack was discovered, stopping most international flights. Hoffman recalled hovering at the airport among the reporters, waiting desperately to get onto a flight. Determined as they come, she told her boys’ story to a reporter – that they were scheduled to play but couldn’t get a flight out to their destination. It quickly garnered media coverage with surprisingly positive results. “British Airways put the boys and their team on the first flight [possible],” she said.

With this experience in mind, if there was anyone could change the plight of the Uganda Little League team, it was Hoffman. First, she called the mayor of Langley, B.C., as the team had been scheduled to compete at the World Series against the Langley Little League team. She suggested they bring the Uganda team to British Columbia to play Langley. After further discussions with Uganda coach George Mukhobe, it was decided that the Langley team would visit Uganda, instead.

Shapiro and his cameras were there for the January 2012 trip, as were three members of Major League Baseball, Jimmy Rollins, Gregg Zaun and Derrek Lee, who felt compelled to join the unique journey. Hoffman partnered with a humanitarian organization, Right to Play, which encouraged her to leave a legacy for what became known as the Pearl of Africa series. Together they raised $155,000 for this trip, funds used towards education of the Uganda team players, equipment, improvement and construction of baseball fields and a player transportation fund.

It might have ended there but that was just the beginning for Hoffman. In Part 2 of the Pearl of Africa project, she raised another $40,000 for the Uganda team, funds that helped train Uganda softball and baseball coaches. Her goal for Part 3 is to raise another $20,000 for the Uganda Baseball and Softball Association.

Opposite Field tells some of this story, focusing mostly on the time leading up to the Langley team’s visit. Filmmaker Shapiro humanizes the team by focusing on individual members, their personal struggles and their motivations and goals. In the process, he takes viewers deep into Uganda, revealing a level of poverty unrivaled in North America. It’s a beautiful story with a happy, or happier, ending, one that’s still in the making.

View an excerpt online at opposite-field.com or look out for the entire documentary, whose Canadian rights have been purchased by CBC, on television.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.