EVERY WEEK, viewers around the world press play to watch a confident young girl from Akwa Ibom State explain the weekly Torah portion. With her younger sister beside her, Tehillah has become the familiar face of #ParashatKids, African Jewish Voices’ Torah series for children, now 14 episodes and 14 weeks strong, teaching halakha and the stories of our ancestors with a clarity well beyond her years.
This month, the lesson Tehillah had to live was a harder one. At about 14 years old, she has been forced out of her new secondary school in Uyo because she would not take part in prayers of a faith that is not her own.
Tehillah had only just begun at Adiaha Obong Secondary School in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. Like many schools in Nigeria, it holds daily Christian prayers, and participation was treated as compulsory.
Tehillah, quietly and respectfully, did not join in. Her classmates noticed, and they grew curious. When they asked her why, she told them the truth: she is Jewish.
What followed was not curiosity but hostility. A group of girls ganged up against her and reported her to the school authorities. Tehillah was called in and told that, as a student of the school, she was required to join the prayers. She held firm to her faith.
Her father, Rishon, was then invited to the school. Recalling the meeting, he said the principal told him, “Your daughter does not sing the worship songs, doesn’t clap, and doesn’t participate in the services. She must follow the rules here, or the school authority will take action.”
“We will withdraw her,” Rishon replied, “but can the fees be returned, even if it’s half? After all, she’s not been here for up to a month.”
The school did not refund the fees. Tehillah left. She has now been out of school for about two weeks.
A case of soft antisemitism?
There was no violence in Tehillah’s story. No one attacked her in the street or defaced her home. But what happened to her has a name. It is a soft antisemitism: the quiet pressure that tells a Jewish child she is welcome only if she stops being Jewish.
Across the world, we have watched antisemitism grow loudly on university campuses in America and across Europe. Tehillah’s story is a reminder that Nigeria is not untouched, even if here it arrives in a milder, more polite form. It is felt not in protests but in classrooms, in a principal’s office, and in the choice a father should never have been asked to make.
This story is not written to condemn a school. It is written so that the world can see what Jewish children can face when they find themselves in spaces that were not made for them.
Nigeria’s own Constitution speaks to this issue. Section 38(2) states that no person attending any place of education shall be required to receive religious instruction, or to take part in or attend any religious ceremony or observance, if it relates to a religion other than their own, or a religion not approved by their parent or guardian.
Tehillah’s departure from school could not have come at a harder time for her family. Just three weeks ago, the family welcomed a new baby girl, little Hadassah. Her mother, who gave birth by caesarean section, has since faced complications and returned to hospital with the newborn.
Now Rishon must search for a new school close to home, one that will accept Tehillah mid-term and respect her faith, and pay a fresh term’s fees so that she does not lose more weeks of learning.
When she spoke to African Jewish Voices by phone, Tehillah was saddened by everything that had happened. It all happened so fast, she said. Now she worries about how long it will take to find a new school and about the financial burden her father must carry once again. Yet she has not stopped doing what she loves: speaking and teaching about Jewish law and practice.
No doubt, she’s a young leader in the making. And to understand what is at stake, it helps to know more about who Tehillah is. Beyond #ParashatKids, she is training as a table tennis player, with hopes of representing Nigeria at the Maccabiah Games in 2029 and at the first proposed tournament of the Maccabi African Confederation, MAC.
More than that, she is proof of what young Jewish girls in Africa can become. If, at her age and with limited resources, Tehillah can teach Torah to children across the world alongside her younger sister, imagine what she and others like her could achieve with a strong Jewish education. They could grow into teachers, instructors, and leaders, a blessing to their parents and to their communities.
Tehillah refused to give up who she is. The question now is whether the world that has watched her teach will stand with her as she learns this hard lesson.
Tehillah teaches every week on #ParashatKids on the African Jewish Voices Facebook page and YouTube channel.