ON THURSDAY, 15 October 2026, members of the Tsyon Beit Hamitzvot Jewish Community of Mukono, Uganda, a congregation of about 150 people, stood at Entebbe International Airport waiting for something they had long prayed for. When the two Sifrei Torah were finally released into their hands, the waiting ended, and the celebration began.
For a community that once prayed from photocopied siddurim, it was a moment twenty-five years in the making.
A Journey that Began with a Question
The story of Tsyon Beit Hamitzvot begins with a Christian pastor named Nehemiah Bamutiire. Moved by the words of an Israeli speaker invited to a church crusade, he began a search for truth that would change his life and the lives of those around him. With a small group of followers, he left the church and set out on the path of Judaism.
This year, the community marked 25 years since that decision to renounce Christianity and follow the Torah.
Those early years were years of self-learning. Coming from a Christian background, the members had to learn everything from the beginning: how to keep the mitzvot, how to celebrate Passover, and how to celebrate Sukkot. They prayed from photocopied prayer books, and it took a long time before they had a place of worship to call their own.
Nehemiah guided them through it all. He insisted on a Hebrew-praying community, and today many of its young people, especially the boys, read Hebrew with ease. He also believed that unity among Jews was itself a sacred act, and he worked for peace between the Jewish communities of Mukono and beyond. To this day, the community keeps honoring the life and legacy of Nehemiah Bamutiire, father and founder of Tsyon Beit Hamitzvot.
Nehemiah did not live to see this day. He passed away after a long illness and is survived by his wife, Nanyonga Beis, and their eight children. His legacy lives on in his sons: the older boys now serve as chazzanim, leading the services in the synagogue their father built.
Choosing the Harder Path
As the community grew, it discovered that it was not alone. In eastern Uganda, around Mbale, the Abayudaya had been living Jewish lives for generations. Tsyon Beit Hamitzvot connected with them, learned from them, and received a few materials from them.
But while most Abayudaya communities follow Conservative Judaism, the Mukono community made a different choice. It wanted to be Orthodox. Orthodox conversion was very rare in Uganda, so the members waited, patiently, for years.
That patience was rewarded. About two years ago, Rabbi Sjimon den Hollander and his Beit Din converted most of the community according to Orthodox Sephardic tradition. Last year, the rabbi returned to convert a second group who had not been present the first time. Today, Tsyon Beit Hamitzvot lives and prays as an Orthodox Sephardic community.
The Mothers of Mukono
Since Nehemiah’s passing, the community has been carried by its women. The elders of Tsyon Beit Hamitzvot today are its mothers, and alongside them stand their young sons. Together they keep Shabbat and the festivals, cook for the community, settle their problems together, and keep the congregation united.
Many of these women are also members of the Shalom Women’s Development Network, and its founder is one of their own.
Who is Sarah Nakintu?
The Torahs would not be in Uganda without Sarah Nakintu.
Sarah is the president of Tsyon Beit Hamitzvot, the leader who now guides the community, and the founder and CEO of the Shalom Women’s Development Network (SWODN), a grassroots organization that empowers women, children, and vulnerable communities. She is also vice president of the Sub-Saharan African Jewish Alliance (SAJA), and for years she has led a Passover matzah-baking initiative for Ugandan Jewish communities with the support of Kulanu. In May, SWODN went global as Sarah joined key leaders in a conversation in New York, where she met Israeli Ambassador Yuval Donio-Gideon.
This summer, with her flight paid for by Kulanu, Sarah spent 90 days in the United States on an agricultural training program at Adamah in Connecticut, farming, working, learning, and praying. On weekends she travelled to New York, Buffalo, and other cities to visit friends of the community.
It was during that journey that two American congregations made a life-changing gift. Temple Sholom in Bridgewater, New Jersey, and Temple Beth Tzedek, a Conservative congregation in the Buffalo area, each donated a Sefer Torah to Sarah’s community.
A Torah Left Behind
Then came the hard part: getting them home.
As her agricultural training with Adamah ended and it was time to return to Africa, Sarah faced a painful truth. Her luggage was already full, with seven pieces to check in, and a Sefer Torah is too sacred to be sent in the hold as cargo. The usual solution is to buy the scroll its own seat on the plane, but her flight had none left. Days before she flew, Sarah knew she would have to go home without them, and it broke her heart.
Her friends would not let the story end there. After Sarah left the United States, the two scrolls were shipped to her as specially handled religious items, with Temple Sholom covering the cost. The hope was that they would arrive before Simchat Torah, so the community could celebrate the festival of the Torah with two brand-new scrolls of its own.
It did not happen that way. The scrolls were held at customs in Uganda, and officials wanted to know who had sent them, who was receiving them, and what they were for. Sarah went to the authorities to identify herself as the receiver, and the community was told it must pay import duty before the scrolls could be released.
The scrolls sat at the airport through an entire Shabbat. Once again, friends abroad came through: Temple Sholom sent the money to pay the duty. Simchat Torah had passed. But the celebration was only delayed.
A Race Against Shabbat
The community was determined that the Torahs would not spend a second Shabbat at the airport. The final payment of the import duty was completed on Wednesday night, 14 October, and the women of Tsyon Beit Hamitzvot went into overdrive.
Late that night, the women gathered at the synagogue to prepare the ingredients for the next day’s meal. Mama Moshe, mother of the community’s chief chazzan, was at the printer’s shop late into the night, seeing the celebration t-shirts through. Sarah herself, after an evening at Entebbe fighting for one last permission, was still in Kampala past 10 p.m., buying balloons to decorate the synagogue.
The next morning, one or two women stayed behind to cook, knowing the journey to the airport and back would take many hours. When everyone returned, exhausted and hungry, and went straight into prayers, a full meal awaited them.
For the guests, the day ran smoothly: vehicles waiting, t-shirts handed out, flags to wave, the Torah, the Kaddish, prayers and a feast. Behind that ease were women who had worked through the night.
Flags at Entebbe
On 15 October, the community travelled together from Mukono to Entebbe International Airport. Everyone was dressed for the occasion: members in matching uniform t-shirts, some white and some blue, and the women in elegant outfits chosen for the day. Many of the white shirts carried three Hebrew words, “Hachnasat Sefer Torah”, the welcoming of the Torah scroll, above the names of Temple Sholom, Temple Beth Tzedek, Kulanu and SWODN.
When the scrolls were finally handed over, the airport became a place of celebration. The Torahs were held up for all to see, the community burst into song, and Israeli and Ugandan flags waved side by side.
Kaddish at Entebbe
From the airport, the group did not go straight home.
Instead, they drove to the old Entebbe airport terminal, where a monument to Yonatan Netanyahu, who fell in the 1976 rescue of hostages at Entebbe, was unveiled earlier this year, while Sarah was still in the United States. The site is under military guard, and getting permission to enter was far from easy.
What the rest of the community did not know was how close the visit came to not happening. Sarah had written to the authorities days earlier and received no reply. That Wednesday evening, while the women prepared in Mukono, Sarah was still at Entebbe at 8 p.m., in the office of Uganda’s Chief of Defence Forces, explaining why her community needed to come. Drawing also on her connections, including the Israeli ambassador in Kenya, she pressed her case.
The officers, none of them Jewish, asked her why the prayer mattered so much. Sarah told them that Kaddish elevates the souls of the departed: Yonatan Netanyahu, the hostages who lost their lives at Entebbe in 1976, the victims of October 7th, whose third anniversary had just been marked, and all the Israelis who have lost their lives in the years of war since. Late that night, the approval came.
According to Sarah, Tsyon Beit Hamitzvot became the first Jewish community in Uganda to say Kaddish at the new monument.
The next day, with the new Torahs in their arms, the community stood before the monument and said Kaddish for them all.
“Shehecheyanu”
From Entebbe, the scrolls travelled home to Mukono. Outside the synagogue door, the congregation sang the Shehecheyanu blessing, thanking G-d “who has kept us alive, sustained us and brought us to this moment.”
Then the Torahs walked in. They were carried by two males, Eleizah and the other one of them, David, the leader of the Kigumba Jewish community in northern Uganda, straight to the bima. The men circled the bima again and again, while the women, standing to one side, sang, danced and filled the room with jubilation.
Then came the moment the community had waited 25 years for. The first scroll was rolled to the Torah portion of the day, read aloud and lifted high. The second scroll was opened, rolled to the same portion and read, and David lifted it before the congregation. For the community’s young people, the experience was entirely new: they had never had a Torah of their own to read from. Members of the neighbouring Mukono Orthodox Community stood beside the young people, guiding them through every step and serving as a living example of the unity between Mukono’s Jewish communities that Nehemiah had worked for. With evening falling, the congregation prayed Maariv together, and only then were the two Sifrei Torah placed in their new home: a metal ark built for them.
A Day for all of Uganda’s Jews
On 14 October, Sarah had sent a formal invitation, signed as president of the community, to Abayudaya congregations across Uganda through their synagogue leaders, calling on rabbis, elders, women, youth and children to join “this historic and spiritually meaningful gathering.” And they came. Besides the Mukono Orthodox Community, the second Orthodox synagogue in the town, guests came from Beit Shalom Reform Synagogue in Kampala and from as far away as Kigumba in northern Uganda.
Outside the synagogue, the feasting began. People ate and drank until they were full, and the celebration continued late into the night.
For Sarah, the scrolls are about the generations to come.
“This scroll is our faith, our belief, and our custom. Everything is embedded here,” she told Uganda’s Daily Monitor on the day the Torahs arrived. “It is a requirement to teach them to our children and our children’s children.” That is how we transfer the faith from one generation to another.”
In conclusion, two days later came Shabbat Noach, and with it something the community had never known. For the first time, Tsyon Beit Hamitzvot read the weekly parashat portion from its Sefer Torah, and seven members were called up for aliyot. Those who were there describe it as a deeply powerful Shabbat service, the first of many with a Torah of their own.
Twenty-five years ago, a pastor in Mukono asked a question and followed the answer wherever it led. Today, his children and his community read that answer from Torah scrolls of their own.