Fair Trade and Abayudaya
These kippot are “fair trade” items. I buy them from a women’s co-op in Uganda for $15 plus shipping; and I sell them for $16.95. (For the small size, I buy for $7.00 and sell for $8.95.)
The Abayudaya are members of a Jewish community in Uganda, not ancestrally Jewish. The community got started in the early 20th Century, when a local pastor who had been converted to Christianity decided he didn’t buy the Jesus narrative, but wanted to lead his flock to living by the “Old Testament.” He started them on a path to become Jews. They got some help from overseas Jews, starting with a few Germans in the 1920’s, then were mostly forgotten by world Jewry until the 1960s. Today they have at least one rabbi ordained by the United Synagogue, and many have done formal conversion. They lost many members in the Idi Amin period, but have revived in the years since.
