Our visit to Ambon in the Maluku Islands started with a bang. Literally. Our Garuda flight gently descended through the lush greenery of the island, then hit the tarmac with a very hard jolt. The last time I remember a landing that bad was in Macassar, way back in 2015. Landings like that stay with you for quite a while. Things could only go up from there. We had left the glitzy and cavernous Jakarta airport and now walked out into a humble terminal. Drivers ringed by clouds of cigarette smoke vied for our business, so we were relieved when Benny spotted Moshe straight away. Moshe is the local leader of the Ambon Jews and one of the most enthusiastic representatives of the Indonesian Jewish community. He and his wife Vera joined Benny and Rachel at the biennial conference of the Union for Progressive Judaism in Perth back in 2016, and he’s since traveled to several other meetings within the region. It’s an amazing role for him to hold, considering how remote Ambon is from every other Jewish community in the world except nearby West Papua. Ambon is probably the most unsafe place in Indonesia to live as a Jew—not because of threats from Muslims, but because of intimidation by the local Christian population. The city is approximately 60% Christian and 40% Muslim, and many of the Christians are adherents of particularly strident streams of Protestantism. Moshe’s group brought a lawsuit against a church down the street from his home, whose members regularly threw rocks at him and others who had come to worship and study in his home. At the same time, others in Ambon have an incredible affection for Israel, and some are not always clear where Christianity ends and Judaism begins. The menorah, an ancient Jewish symbol, is to be seen all around Ambon; we were driving from the airport when I saw a church with a series of murals painted on its walls—the menorah was directly underneath a picture of Jesus. As happens elsewhere in the Christian world, Judaism is mythologized and otherwise appropriated in many ways, which can make navigating life as a Jew rather tricky—especially when there community numbers only 20 or so people. Moshe brought us to the delightful restaurant Kole Kole around the corner from our hotel, managed by a member of the Jewish community. It was here we had our first taste of Ambon cuisine, which has quickly become among our favourite of the Indonesian foods we’ve tasted. Tuna is a local delicacy, and we enjoyed amazingly delicious soup with tuna, tuna skewers, and tuna fried with tomatoes and shallots. We also had our first taste of breadfruit, which is a little starchy but otherwise quite addictive. We walked back to the hotel and were dismayed to discover that the church across the street was BLASTING Christmas music. The music was so loud outside that I’m convinced it was well out of the safe range. Thankfully it was only that one night, and only until 10:00 pm. That evening, Moshe picked us up and drove us up and up and up to his home for worship, Hanukkah candle lighting and some Torah teaching. As with the communities that I’d visited in Manado, Timika and Jayapura, the living room of Moshe’s house has been transformed into a small synagogue, with prayerbooks and a little ark. David and Shelley had brought along a lovely Hanukkah menorah to donate to the community, which had none of its own. I told them about the old practice in poor eastern European communities to cut four potatoes in half, scoop out some of the contents, fill them with oil, float wicks and thus celebrate Hanukkah inexpensively. The next morning, we convened a beit din (a religious court) in Benny’s hotel room to interview five adults who wished to finalise their conversion status. One person’s story was particularly impressive: a man who had served for his entire adult life as the pastor of a church, but had gradually concluded that Judaism was the true path. He has been moving in the direction of publicly leaving Christianity for a number of years, but the decision was so fraught since it meant abandoning his livelihood as well. Everyone we spoke with came from a Christian background, but some talked of an ancient Jewish ancestry: there is a tradition that the explorer Vasco da Gama delivered a number of crypto Jews from Spain in Ambon in the early part of the sixteenth century. Many of the Jewish community here have tried to trace their ancestry back 15 generations to those Jewish refugees. After the beit din, we headed out for a day of exploring. Moshe drove us 60 km (40 miles) or so to a Portuguese compound, fortified to protect both the people and the precious spices within. Cloves and nutmeg are grown nowhere else in the world, and these spices have been prized for hundreds of years. The drive there and back was absolutely charming, despite heavy rain as we were nearing our destination: the countryside is lush, green, and the villages are small and charming. We were especially taken by the tendency of villagers to paint their homes in bright blues, greens and oranges. From there, we drove back to Ambon and out the other end to eat lunch overlooking the ocean. Moshe had packed a magnificent picnic for us, but in order to eat the food in one of the small seating areas by the beach, we had to all order coconut milk from the proprietor. I loved watching the coconuts be prepared so that we could drink the milk, and I was just as fascinated to watch our hostess prepare rujak, a delicious dish of fresh fruit coated in a paste of crushed peanut, coconut sugar and fresh nutmeg. Very yum! It was getting late in the day, and we knew Moshe had a schedule to keep: Christmas eve was coming, and his street would soon be closed to traffic to allow for overflow parking at the church. But Shelley’s one request for our visit had been to visit some local weavers, and Moshe made that happen. We drove into Skip, a rather derelict village just down the road from our hotel with one very skinny street leading in and out. It took all three of our Indonesian hosts to negotiate our passage past another car on a lane clearly only built to accommodate one car at a time. Thankfully no scratches this time! Moshe led us to a very lowly home where we met two older women. They explained to him that they’d already packed their looms away in anticipation of the arrival of Christmas, but would be happy to take one out again to show us. We followed them up a rickety staircase to a small room with a few photos and a large print of Jesus. The older of the two women began to assemble her very simple loom and to thread it as we watched in fascination. Benny explained to both women that we were visiting, that all of us were part of the Jewish community, and that David and I were rabbis. The younger woman—probably in her sixties—abruptly burst into tears and hugged me to her. She told Benny that she loved Israel and its people and that she believed God had sent us so that we could pray for her elderly father, who was also married to the other weaver. The two women declared that they would weave shirts for David, Shelley and me to be ready for our departure in only two days, and they proceeded to measure us for the clothes. Although they insisted that the clothes would be their gift to us, I was relieved when later on we all agreed that we would slip them a substantial payment for their work. After the measuring was done, we gingerly walked down the stairs to the small living room where an elderly man lay on a couch. His daughter roused him by telling him that people from Israel were here to pray for him. David and I recited a prayer for healing in Hebrew and then we all sang the 23rd psalm. The impact of our visit appeared to be quite great, as he sat up and blessed us for the next ten minutes. May he enjoy a healing of body and spirit and many more years! We returned to our hotel to prepare for another evening of prayer and teaching. Across the street, people dressed beautifully were gathering for the Christmas eve service, and as I write this, I can hear them singing Christmas carols in Indonesian. Blessings of peace to all those who celebrate Christmas throughout the world, and may those celebrating Hanukkah bask in its light. I'd like to encourage you to follow Rabbi David Kunin's blog as well at tokyorabbi.blogspot.com His photos are gorgeous, and he sometimes sees things in a different light.
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Rabbi Shoshana KaminskyI've been the rabbi of Beit Shalom Progressive Synagogue in Adelaide since 2006. As part of the Council of Progressive Rabbis of Australia, New Zealand and Asia, I'm now on my fifth trip to Indonesia to teach, pray and celebrate with the communities here. Archives
July 2022
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