Uganda is now Chabad’s 100th permanent outpost

The landlocked East African country of Uganda has become the 100th country to welcome a permanent Chabad-Lubavitch presence.

In October, Rabbi Moishe and Yocheved Raskin, along with their young son Menachem Mendel, moved to the country’s capital city of Kampala, where they established Chabad of Uganda. The milestone was formally announcement on Sunday evening at the annual International Conference of Chabad Emissaries (Kinus Hashluchim) in New Jersey.

Other countries where Cha-bad is establishing new permanent presences this year include Montenegro, Nassau in the Bahamas, and the Caribbean island of Curaçao. These countries followed the recent opening of Chabad Houses in Laos and the Pacific island of New Caledonia.

“The Rebbe tasked us with the mission of connecting Jews to their heritage wherever they may be,” said Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of the Chabad movement. “The number 100 is spiritually significant, and these young couples are willing to go to the farthest reaches of the earth to make this happen.”

Chabad has had contact with the small but dynamic Jewish community in Uganda since at least 1999, when Rabbi Shlomo Bentolila, who together with his wife, Miriam, heads Chabad of Central Africa in Kinshasa, Congo, first sent “Roving Rabbis” there for the summer and to help mark Jewish holidays throughout the year.

The country has come a long way since the 1970s when it was under the thumb of dictator Idi Amin who, in 1976, famously allowed a plane that had taken off from Tel Aviv and was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists to land at Entebbe Airport. The episode culminated with the Israel’s miraculous Operation Thunderbolt, when Israeli commandos surreptitiously landed in Uganda and freed 102 hostages. The operation’s commander, Yoni Netanyahu, the older brother of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was killed during the rescue.

In recent years, stability has been the rule in Uganda, which has seen an influx of international business. Today, some 400 Jews, mostly Israelis, live there year-round, joined by Jewish diplomats and NGO staffers from around the world.

“The time was right to establish a permanent Chabad House there,” says Bentolila, who arrived in the Congo in 1991.

The Raskins, both from Israel, traveled to Kampala for Purim and Passover, running holiday programs there before making the decision that the country would become their permanent home.

The International Conference of Emissaries brings together 5,600 rabbis and their guests from around the world, from as far off as Stalin’s Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan, in Russia’s Far East, to Staten Island and now, Uganda.