When Mozambique’s President Daniel Chapo attended the 100th anniversary celebration of the country’s only synagogue this past June, he was honoring an institution that had been shuttered under his own party’s rule.
Chapo belongs to Frelimo, the party that has governed Mozambique since independence in 1975. Under its Marxist leadership, religious practice was restricted, the synagogue ceased functioning and the building became a Red Cross warehouse.
The June 11 ceremony at the Honen Dalim Synagogue in Maputo drew roughly 100 people, including former community members, Jewish leaders, government officials and the head of Mozambique’s Islamic Council. For a congregation that sometimes struggles to assemble a minyan, it was quite a turnout.
The roots of Mozambique’s Jewish community lie in the goldfields of neighboring South Africa.
The discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 transformed Johannesburg and boosted trade through the Mozambican port then known as Lourenço Marques. Jewish merchants and their families began settling there, bringing different backgrounds and traditions.
Some came from Lithuania and Britain; others had roots in Morocco, Portugal and elsewhere. Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews worshiped together, not always without disagreements.
One story preserved by the community tells of a Rosh Hashanah service at which the cantor alternated between Ashkenazi and Sephardi pronunciations and melodies to keep everyone satisfied. It was an ingenious solution to a problem that many larger Jewish communities have grappled with as well.
In 1899, Rabbi Dr. Joseph Herman Hertz arrived in Lourenço Marques after being expelled from the Boer republic because of his pro-British views during the South African War.
Hertz, who had been serving as a rabbi in Johannesburg, spent only a short time in Mozambique, but he gathered the local Jews together and urged them to organize. He would later become chief rabbi of the British Empire. In Mozambique, his contribution was more practical: helping launch a congregation.
For years, its members prayed in private homes and rented premises. In 1921, they formally organized as Honen Dalim, meaning “Helping the Poor.” The association’s objectives included caring for needy Jews, assisting travelers passing through the port and maintaining a Jewish cemetery, alongside the ambition to establish a permanent synagogue.
Five years later, that ambition became a reality.
The rise, fall and rise of a synagogue
The synagogue that opened on Aug. 29, 1926, was unusual for a Jewish house of worship. Designed by Portuguese public-works architect Couto Martins, it had a white, ornate Baroque-revival facade more suggestive of a Portuguese church than of the synagogues of Eastern Europe. But circular Star of David windows left no doubt about its purpose.
The building accommodated around 80 worshipers, although the congregation initially numbered only about 30. Jewish donors paid for much of the construction, with assistance from non-Jewish supporters, including a Greek tobacco manufacturer.
During World War II, Jews fleeing Nazi persecution found their way to Portuguese-ruled Mozambique. Portugal’s neutrality offered a measure of refuge, although colonial restrictions and prejudice did not disappear.
At its wartime height, the Jewish population reportedly reached several hundred.
But the community soon began shrinking. After the war, many Jews left for South Africa. Then came Mozambique’s independence from Portugal in 1975 and the establishment of a Marxist government under Samora Machel.
Religious institutions were treated with suspicion. Churches and mosques, as well as the synagogue, faced restrictions. Most of Mozambique’s remaining Jews left.
The Torah scrolls were sent to South Africa for safekeeping. The synagogue eventually became a warehouse, its furnishings disappeared or deteriorated, and the Jewish cemetery was vandalized. During Mozambique’s civil war, which lasted from 1977 to 1992, people even broke into the abandoned synagogue to scavenge wood for fuel.
Organized Jewish life in Mozambique appeared to have come to an end.
Then, in 1989, a Greek businessman named Alkis Macropolous, who was not Jewish, intervened to save the synagogue and secure its return. In 1990, a notice in a local newspaper called on any remaining Jews to come forward. They did.
At first, the gatherings were small and informal. Without a rabbi and often without a minyan, participants began meeting, singing and studying Hebrew. Eventually, services and holiday observances resumed.
The rebuilding was hardly easy. The roof needed major work, and restoration ultimately cost far more than expected. But in 2009, the congregation held its first bat mitzvah. Around the same time, the community secured formal legal recognition, while plans for a more extensive restoration gathered momentum.
In 2013, the synagogue was rededicated after extensive repairs, and a Torah scroll was returned from South Africa for regular worship.
Among those who refused to abandon the synagogue was Manuela Soeiro, a longtime member of the congregation who, with his relatives, continued looking after the building even during the years when religious services were prohibited.
Soeiro, who founded Mozambique’s pioneering professional theater company, Mutumbela Gogo, in 1986, was among those attending the centennial celebration. She had lived to see Jewish worship restored to the very building that she and her family had helped protect.
The Jews who refused to give up
Today, Mozambique’s Jewish community numbers only a few dozen. There is no permanent rabbi, and assembling a minyan remains a challenge. Members depend heavily on volunteer leadership and assistance from abroad, especially the South African Jewish community and the African Jewish Congress. Services are conducted in a distinctive mix of Hebrew, English and Portuguese.
When President Chapo entered Honen Dalim in June, he encountered a congregation whose future had once seemed all but extinguished. Those who reclaimed the synagogue had little money, few resources and no assurance that their efforts would succeed. Yet they persisted until regular services could resume.
The president’s visit was a welcome gesture. But it was those Jews who refused to give up, together with the supporters who helped them, who ensured that a congregation would still be there to greet him.
The government had returned the building. But it was the small and resolute community that made it a synagogue again.
