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Rabbi Reports on 1st-Week Progress on Nigerian Mission.........posted Feb 15, 2006

(Editor's note: Rabbi Howard Gorin filed the following progress report one week into his three-week education and training mission with Jews throughout Nigeria. He hopes to write about other aspects of his visit and include photos during his next dispatch (but he is working with a dial-up connection and a sticky keyboard that is not "responsive.").

On Sunday, my "entourage" -- various elders, future leaders and Jeff Lieberman, from Los Angeles, who is filming the visit -- paid a courtesy call on the Governor of Kaduna State. He is a Muslim and made a point of requesting that we visit him in his private residence. It was a point of pride to him that a rabbi was coming to visit, because he would have the honor of being the first governor in the North to receive a rabbi.

Our visit was organized by Pastor James Wuye and Imam Muhammed Ashafa, who run an Interfaith Mediation Centre in Kaduna. You might remember that the Pastor and the Imam visited Tikvat Israel in March, 2004, when they received an award from Search for Common Ground, acknowledging their efforts to curb religious violence in the North. They extended to me an invitation to meet them in Kaduna, when next I would be in Nigeria, so that they could introduce me to the Muslim and Christian leaders who are involved in making Kaduna an example of religious tolerance.

I congratulated the Governor on his instrumental role in not only supporting the interfaith efforts but in taking an active role in promoting tolerance in his state. (The governor's name is often mentioned in the context of a possible bid for the presidency in 2007). After my remarks and his response, I presented him with a bowl made of Armenian ceramic, on which the words "Shalom" (in Hebrew and English) and "Salaam" are inscribed.

The rest of the day was taken up with meetings with Muslim and Christian leaders. I met the secretary of the council that coordinates Muslim affairs in Kaduna State, who told me that he would inform the Emir of the Kaduna of my wish to meet him next time I am in NIgeria. We met a traditional chief as well as the secretary of the Kaduna branch of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN; the Nigerians love acronyms). With him was a government official in charge of Christian affairs in Kaduna. He told us that he had been to Israel 8 or 9 times -- thousands of Christian Nigerians go on pilgrimage to Israel every year, courtesy of their state governors, who also pay for Muslims to go on Hadj -- but that this was the first time that he got to meet a rabbi.

Why this whirlwind visit to dignitaries? Because no one in Nigeria knows that there are Jews in this country, and those who say that they do know that there are Nigerian Jews are thinking of messianics and sabbatarians. My companion, Elder Elam Ben Moshe David (Oliver Chukwu), made a point of clarifying that difference, and in subsequent introductions the Pastor likewise made the point that his visitors were Jews who practice pure Judaism - and that I was their chief rabbi.

Make no mistake about it: without a chief rabbi, the Governor of Kaduna would not have received us nor would any of the officials or other religious leaders bothered to meet with us. A chief opens doors, and the doors in this case are the door to acknowledgement of the presence of Jews in Nigeria, the door to religious tolerance (Jews here have it hard), and the door to inclusion "at the table" when the other two Abrahamic faiths meet. The visit has already gotten the Jewish community an invitation to attend a gathering to learn how religious leaders can help reduce electoral violence.

Among the gifts I left in Kaduna: copies of Firestone's "Children of Abraham: An Introduction to Judaism for Muslims" and the Jewish Lights Publication introducing Christians to Judaism. The gifts were received with gratitude.

Please understand that Kaduna in the past has been the flashpoint of violence between Christians and Muslims. With the anticipated protests against the cartoon lampooning Mohammed, the leaders in Kaduna are doing all that they can to try to contain the protests before they erupt into violence. There was a big meeting on Monday of all major Muslim leaders in Kaduna to discuss this matter, which meant that, instead of speaking to Muslim groups about Judaism, we curtailed our stay in Kaduna and returned to Abuja one day earlier than anticipated.

The other agenda item that day was supposed to have been a visit to the Governor of Zanfara State, who was called to Europe on business. (He too is mentioned as a presidential candidate.) He sent words of apology and asked that I consider accepting an invitation to return to Nigeria, at the government's expense, to participate in an interfaith gathering with Christian and Muslim clerics.