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May 2001 Issue

The Sound of One Jew Celebrating

By Nina Dudnik

In Bouaké, Cote d'Ivoire, the Jewish community is unable to form a minyan. Bouaké, the second largest city in this West African country, has a Jewish community that consists of me and me alone.

I'm not sure if I really considered this possibility before deciding to come here to study rice genetics for a year.

Maybe I assumed that for one year, anything was tolerable. And maybe I underestimated my reliance on others in defining my identity. This Erev Pesach, I lit my candles and sat down to clarify what it means to be Jewish in a town where so few people even recognize the word.

For much of the time, it means a serious identity crisis. If the category of "Jewish" doesn't exist, to label myself as such begins to seem meaningless. I am asked "Are you Christian?" "Are you Muslim?" "Are you animist?" I get so many blank stares when I say I am a "Juive" that I start to wonder if such a thing exists at all, anywhere.

Those who recognize the word still don't know what it entails. Most people I have met think Jews are an ethnic tribe based in the area of Israel, the way Yorubas are a tribe based in Nigeria. I have to explain that it's not an ethnicity, it's not another way of saying Israeli, it's actually a religion.

But how am I to demonstrate that? There are dozens of mosques and possibly a hundred churches in Bouaké, but not a single synagogue. My friend, another American my age, goes to the local Catholic church and finds at least some of the same rituals familiar to her from home. I don't have that.

When a holiday approaches, it is no longer a given that I will celebrate it. In a place where no one else has heard of the holiday, how can I observe it, what will I do? Each time, I almost decide to do nothing, and each time, an instinct kicks in that I cannot deny.

The rituals give me an anchor-line, something predictable and familiar, something that continues a rhythm set for me decades ago. Observance reestablishes and reemphasizes my identity for me.

When I stayed home from work on Yom Kippur, everyone assumed I was sick, but I knew what I really did that day. During Pesach, when the only thing I could eat at the staff luncheon were the canned olives, I was unequivocally reminded of who I am. And I knew I was tied to something much larger than myself.

When I lit my candles Erev Pesach in my little house in Bouaké, I closed my eyes and pictured all the people in Israel who had lit candles two hours earlier; the people in Europe lighting them together with me; and my family and friends in the US who would be lighting them in a few hours. Suddenly I felt connected to this entire global Jewish community in a way I never have before, not even while standing in my home synagogue surrounded by familiar faces.

But the connection I find through ritual has a serious shortcoming. When I pictured all those others lighting candles, they were among family, about to start seders with those they love. The fact was, when I opened my eyes, I was alone. I had no one to share my rituals with, and my interpretation of Jewish observance is that it is meant to be communal.

What did it mean to stand there alone reciting prayers written in the first person plural, saying "us" when there was only "me"? What good did the rituals do me if I was the only one who knows what they are?

After the initial rush of observing Pesach passed, I felt alienated from all my colleagues who were eating sandwiches at lunch. It's wonderful to be tied to a specific community, but what connects me to all the people in whose midst I may end up? What connects me to all the people who do not necessarily look and speak like me?

Rituals go a long way, but they do not answer this deeper need. I need something more resonant to rely on, something that doesn't dissipate if I can't find matzot to eat, or someone who knows what a haggadah is. Something that transcends ethnic and religious lines, to bring us all into sync.

So I am trying to cobble together a theology, a spiritual framework for myself. And in fact, this may actually be easier to do here in Africa. Belief is less dogmatic for most people here. They know there are numerous powers at work in the world, that there is a range of explanations for any given phenomenon.

My friend recently went temporarily blind each night for two weeks. He finally realized he had accidentally violated his family's totem by eating squirrel meat--a squirrel had saved the life of their ancestor and thus had sacred power over them.

Another friend implored the spirit of his deceased brother to reveal those responsible for his death. I saw with my own eyes, the casket careening through the village indicating the houses of the culprits.

All emotions from pain to joy are experienced here with equal fervor; people observe funerals by weeping intensely and dancing until dawn. As both a biologist and a romantic, this strikes deep within me. For me, the world around us is miraculous, life itself is a blessing.

I cannot say for certain whether these are the works of a single creator or the domain of the spirits, but I feel it is crucial to be aware and grateful for their continued existence and our opportunity to participate. I value the many ways people have for expressing this gratitude.

Pesach is a festival of rebirth and renewal--of our world and of our faith. This year, instead of a seder, I attended a ceremony at a Yoruba Pentecostal church in which my friend dedicated his newborn daughter. No, it was not a familiar ritual, but it was the celebration of the birth of a new person and of the faith of her parents and community.

And while I may have differed on certain theological points, there was no way I could fail to share in their happiness, nor be moved by the drumming and singing through which they expressed it.

Ritual gives us something concrete to do when we get up in the morning. Belief gives us a reason to get up in the first place. For me, they both revolve around feeling that I am part of a community and thus have a specific place in the universe.

My ritual observance is attenuated here, because I lack the community within which it makes sense. Instead, I look for things which transcend the practical and link me to the people and the world around me on a deeper level.

I may not define how to be truly Jewish in Bouaké, but I may go farther in understanding what it means to be truly me.

Nina Dudnik is currently on a Fulbright fellowship in West Africa--studying rice agriculture (officially), and dance and obscure ethnic languages (unofficially).

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