ON THE HOLIEST DAY of the Jewish year, while Jews everywhere fasted and stood before Heaven in white, a baby boy was born in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Eight days later he was carried into the Sukkot village of the Beth Ha’arachman Jewish Community, where the festival was in full swing, and entered the covenant of Abraham.
His name is Menashe. And in the Ukpong household, a Yom Kippur birth had happened once before.
Menashe is the son of Emmanuel Yerimyahu Ukpong, leader of Beth Ha’arachman, and his wife Sarah. Three years earlier, on Yom Kippur 5784 (25 September 2023), Sarah gave birth to their daughter Rachamim, whose name means “mercy”, the very thing the Jewish people pray for on Yom Kippur.
Then, on Yom Kippur 5787 (21 September 2026), it happened again. While the community prayed in the synagogue for a good seal in the Book of Life, the Ukpong family received its own blessing: a son.
Two children, three years apart, both born on the Day of Atonement. In a community that reads meaning into every sign, few people saw it as coincidence.
Eight Days Later, in the Season of Our Joy
The Torah commands that a baby boy be circumcised on the eighth day of his life. For Menashe, that day, 28 September, fell during Chol HaMoed Sukkot, when Beth Ha’arachman’s Sukkot village of more than 20 family sukkot was alive with families eating, praying and celebrating together.
So the Brit Milah took place right in the middle of the festival. Beside the community’s open prayer sukkah stands its marble-floored, pillared sit-out. There, elders, parents and children gathered around the table as Menashe was brought into the covenant.
The sit-out has a story of its own. It was built and donated by Abba Otu Ori, the same community member whose generosity paid for the eye surgery that gave an elder back his sight, a story we told in Sight Restored, Hope Rebuilt: One Man’s Gift to Beth Ha’arachman. A place built from one man’s kindness now held a child’s first covenant.
On the festival the Torah calls zman simchateinu, the season of our rejoicing, a family that began the holiday season fasting ended it in celebration.
May God Make You Like “Ephraim and Menashe”
When the baby’s name was announced, the room understood at once. Menashe already has an older brother: Ephraim.
Ephraim and Menashe were the two sons of Yoseph, born in Egypt and blessed by their grandfather Yacov before he died. Since then, Jewish parents everywhere have placed their hands on their sons’ heads every Friday night and said the same words: “Yesimcha Elohim k’Ephraim v’chi’Menashe”, “May God make you like Ephraim and Menashe.”
For generations, Jewish fathers have prayed for their sons to be like Ephraim and Menashe. In the Ukpong home, there is now an Ephraim and a Menashe sitting at the Shabbat table. As we wrote in Sukkot Around Africa: One Festival, Many Sukkot, where this Brit Milah was first reported, in this home the blessing has come to life.
The name itself also carries a message. Joseph named his firstborn Menashe, saying, “God has made me forget all my hardship” (Genesis 41:51), a name of healing and of new beginnings after difficult years.
The Children Who Came to Witness
Among the witnesses were students of Brachot Yeshiva School, where three-year-old Rachamim is a pupil. The school teaches both Jewish and non-Jewish children, and it was a normal school day. But the community made a deliberate choice: the Jewish students were taken out of class and brought to the synagogue so they could see the covenant of Abraham happen in front of them.
Their teachers knew a lesson seen with your own eyes is never forgotten. For these children, the Brit Milah was no longer just a chapter in the Torah. It was their schoolmate’s baby brother, in their own community, during their own Sukkot.
These students are used to doing more than learning Jewish life from books. The school named its computer laboratory after Tikkun HaYam’s Rabbi Ed Rosenthal, and only weeks ago the same children were out on the Atlantic shore of Ibeno Beach clearing plastic in the 9th Reverse Tashlich: African Jewish Communities Take Up the Call to Repair the Sea. Repairing the world, they are learning, starts at home.
A Covenant as Old as Avraham
Last week, Jewish communities around the world read Parashat Lech Lecha, where God first commands Avraham to circumcise every male child at eight days old. This Shabbat, in Parashat Vayera, Avraham carries out that command for his own son: “And Avraham circumcised his son Yitzhak when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him” (Genesis 21:4).
Yitzhak was a child of promise, born to parents who had waited a long time for him. Thousands of years later, in a Sukkot village in southern Nigeria, a father did the same for his son on the eighth day, while a new generation of Jewish children stood watching.
In conclusion, it has been a year of Blessings for Beth Ha’arachman. It has been a remarkable year. In August it welcomed its first-ever Torah scroll, brought from Boston by Professor William F.S. Miles. An elder who had lost his sight can now read from the Torah again. And in its most joyful season, the community welcomed a child born on its holiest day.
For Emmanuel and Sarah, the story now reads: two children born on Yom Kippur, and two sons who carry the Friday-night blessing in their names. From Avraham to Akwa Ibom, the covenant continues.
Mazel Tov to the Ukpong family and to the whole Beth Ha’arachman community.