A Faith Born in Uganda: Why the Abayudaya Deserve Recognition

ON THE LAST SATURDAY of every month, Uganda stands still. Since 25 July 2026, when the government launched its National Cleaning Day, roads empty, businesses close and from 7 to 10 in the morning citizens spend three hours clearing rubbish, opening drainage channels and sweeping markets, homes and places of worship. In the words of the government circular, “The last Saturday of every month… shall be observed as National Cleaning Day throughout Uganda.” Those who stay away risk legal action.

For most Ugandans, it is a welcome effort to keep the country clean and healthy. For the Abayudaya, Uganda’s Jewish community, it has created a painful choice. Saturday morning is Shabbat, the time of Shacharit, when the community gathers in its synagogues to pray. Once a month, the law of the land and the law of the Torah now meet at the same hour.

The Torah is clear on this point: “Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Hashem your God; on it you shall not do any work” (Exodus 20:9–10). For a Jew, Shabbat is not a day off that can be moved. It is a commandment as old as the giving of the Torah at Sinai.

The Abayudaya do not object to cleaning their communities. Many of them already take part in clean-ups on other days. What they ask is to be recognised for who they are, so that their day of rest can be respected in the same way the faiths of their neighbours are.

A faith born on Ugandan soil

The Abayudaya are not a foreign import. Their story begins with one of the best-known figures in Uganda’s history, Semei Kakungulu, the military leader and administrator whose name still echoes across the eastern region.

Around 1919, after years of studying the Bible, Kakungulu came to the conviction that the Torah’s commandments were meant to be kept as written. He circumcised himself and his sons, began to observe Shabbat, and gathered followers around him in the hills near Mbale. They called themselves the Abayudaya, “the people of Judah.”

In other words, this is a Ugandan faith, founded by a Ugandan, more than a century ago. Its story is woven into the history of the nation itself.

Nonetheless, this is typically a community that refuses to disappear. The road since then has not been easy. In the 1970s, under Idi Amin, Israelis were expelled from Uganda and Judaism was banned. Synagogues were closed and many families abandoned their faith under pressure. Yet a small remnant kept praying in secret, holding on to Shabbat and the Torah until the danger passed.

From that remnant, the Abayudaya grew again. Today they live in communities across eastern Uganda and beyond, with synagogues, schools and farms. On the cascading hills of Mbale, where Judaism thrives, they keep the same Shabbat that Kakungulu kept a century ago.

A nation that remembers

Uganda’s relationship with the Jewish world has also changed. At the old Entebbe airport, where Israeli commandos carried out their famous rescue in 1976, a memorial now honours Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, the commander who fell there. It stands inside the old terminal, behind the security of a Ugandan government site. Uganda has chosen to remember that history rather than hide it, a sign of how far the country has come since the Amin years, and of the warm ties it now shares with Israel.

But for the Abayudaya, the years around the raid were among the hardest they had known. Amin’s hostility toward anything Jewish only deepened, and the community in and around Mbale felt it most. Many were persecuted for their faith. Some fled and resettled elsewhere, others abandoned the religion altogether or converted to other faiths to stay safe. Yet a determined few refused to let go. They kept meeting in secret in a cave near Nangolo, turning it into a hidden synagogue where Shabbat prayers continued in whispers. Today that cave is a historic site, visited by people from around the world who come to hear how the Abayudaya kept their faith alive in its darkest hour.

Recognising the Abayudaya would be a natural next step in that journey: a Ugandan nation honouring a Ugandan faith whose roots it shares.

Women at the heart of the movement

The call for recognition is being carried by the community itself, and women are among its strongest voices. Sarah Nakintu, a women’s leader at Tsyon Beit Hamitzvot in Mukono, is no stranger to bringing Uganda’s Jews together. Last Pesach, she led a national matzah baking in Mukono that drew representatives from Jewish communities across the country, some of whom made a journey of matzah, wine, and hope all the way from Kwania to Mukono. Her visit to the United States also helped bring about a Hachnasat Sefer Torah: after 25 years, two Torah scrolls came home to Mukono this October. Now she has been bringing members together to discuss the way forward, alongside other community leaders and members.

Their message is simple. Other faiths have already been formally recognised in Uganda. The Abayudaya ask for the same dignity, not as a favour, but as Ugandans whose faith has been part of this land for more than a hundred years.

For a community that survived a ban and kept its light burning in the darkest years, recognition would mean more than a legal status. It would mean that the country Kakungulu loved has finally welcomed his faith home.