Two Flags, One Grief: KKSY and World Jewish Relief Mark October 7th Anniversary
On the third anniversary of October 7th, KKSY in Nasenyi, Uganda, joined by World Jewish Relief, lit memorial candles, recited the Mourner’s Kaddish and stood side by side holding two flags, Uganda’s and Israel’s, as one people.
Members of KKSY, joined by visitors from World Jewish Relief, outside the synagogue in Nasenyi, Uganda, on the third anniversary of October 7th.
IN THE VILLAGE of Nasenyi, in eastern Uganda, the community of Kahal Kadosh She’erit Yisrael (KKSY) gathered to remember a day that no Jew anywhere in the world will forget.
Three years have passed since the morning of Simchat Torah 2023, when terrorists crossed into southern Israel and murdered some 1,200 people, taking hundreds more as hostages. The festival of rejoicing with the Torah became a day of mourning for the whole Jewish world, and in Nasenyi, half a world away, that grief was shared as if it were their own.
The gathering was small, but it was complete, for in Jewish orthodox tradition it takes ten men to form a minyan, the quorum required for communal prayer and for the Mourner’s Kaddish. Ten had come, and so nothing was missing. Among them were Aaron Diibo, the chairman of the community; Tarphon Kamya, a director of Jewish Response Uganda; and the community’s two young chazanim. They were joined by Rabbi Elisha, the rabbi of KKSY, and by two visitors who had journeyed a long way to stand with them: Paul Anticoni, Chief Executive of World Jewish Relief, and Danny Rosenkranz, who traveled with him. The two had been at KKSY only the day before, planting a jackfruit tree of friendship with the community, and they returned to stand with their hosts in remembrance.
On the bimah, two candles were lit and left to burn, for the murdered, for all who were taken captive and didn’t return, and for every family whose world was broken that day. Beside them, the Mourner’s Kaddish was recited, the ancient words that Jews have said over their dead for centuries, rising from a small synagogue in the Ugandan countryside on an ordinary weekday morning.
Outside, the community stood together holding two flags, the flag of Uganda and the flag of Israel, side by side. The image said more than any speech could. Paul had come from London; Danny carries a German-Jewish heart shaped by his family’s own history. Neither is Israeli. Danny was accompanied by his wife, Cathy, who stood with the community. Yet here they were, joining Ugandan Jews under the banner of Israel, a quiet testimony that the Jewish people stand together no matter what has happened, and no matter how far apart they live.
KKSY traces its roots to Nabugoye, the headquarters of the Abayudaya on the cascading hills of Mbale where Judaism thrives. From there, the community’s journey led out to Putti and finally to present-day Nasenyi, where in February 2025 we watched the Nasenyi Jewish Community in Uganda inaugurate its new synagogue, the very building where the community gathered this week to remember. It is a strong, agriculturally stable community; almost all its members are farmers who work the land and keep the practice of Judaism alive, generation after generation. These are people who have held fast to their faith through hardship and who understand, perhaps better than most, what it means to endure.
That is why October 7th is not a distant headline to them. It is family. When the enemy strikes at Jewish joy, when a festival is turned into a massacre, every Jewish community feels the wound, whether in Israel, in London, or in a village in eastern Uganda. To remember together is itself an act of defiance: it declares that the murdered are not forgotten, that those who were taken are not forgotten, and that the Jewish people, scattered across continents, remain one people.
As the two candles burned on the bimah of KKSY, and the two flags stood together in the early morning, Nasenyi gave its answer to those who sought our destruction: we are still here, and we still remember. The candles have since burned out, but what they stood for has not. From Nasenyi to Jerusalem, the message is the same, and it will outlast every enemy: Am Yisrael Chai.
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