An Organizational History of Kulanu

Jack Zeller, Monica Sisay, Diane Zeller, and Beejhy Barhany at a reception for Modreck Maresera as part of the Kulanu-Lemba Speaking Tour in New York City, February 2013. (Photo by Joan Roth)

By Ben Lefkowitz
Ben Lefkowitz is a young professional working in Jewish and Israeli policy. A product of the yeshiva day school system, Ben recently graduated from Wesleyan University
and is now pursuing a Masters in Public Policy at Harvard University.

Introduction

With 26 years under its belt, Kulanu is not a new organization. However, a quick glance at the magazine archive (which is quite fun to scroll through, actually) says otherwise: Kulanu seems to always be on the verge of some revelation – it seems like, almost every year, a lost tribe, emerging community, or long-lost heritage is discovered. Having recently completed a summer internship with Kulanu, I decided to take a retrospective look at the organization itself over the years. I rummaged through the aforementioned magazine archives and conducted interviews with six key volunteers. This article is a brief history and retrospective of the organization – how it evolved from 15 people in a living room to the ambassador of Jewish communities across the world to the mainstream Jewish world.

Kulanu: Beginnings

The endeavor of connecting scattered and isolated communities to the Jewish mainstream is not new; the prophets and sages crafted policy geared towards Jews in far-flung locales. For example, Jack Zeller, one of Kulanu’s founders, introduced me to Benjamin of Tudela, a sort of Jewish Marco Polo. In the 19th century, Christian missionaries attempted to identify lost tribes from among their colonial subjects, partly out of New World-inspired religious fervor, and partly as a means of controlling their new subjects. The establishment of the State of Israel generated a great beacon, alerting all world Jewry that a mainstream, established Jewish community exists. In the decades after Israel’s establishment, Jews from Middle Eastern communities — including Moroccan, Iraqi, Yemeni, Kurdish, and Persian – arrived as refugees to Israel and rejoined with Israeli-European Jewry after millennia of separation (and centuries of limited contact). However, there were still Jewish communities uncontacted, and here and there letters arrived at the Israeli Chief Rabbinate claiming to be from hidden or isolated Jewish communities. Rather than tossing them, the Rabbinate passed all these letters on to an Orthodox Israeli rabbi, Eliyahu Avichail. In 1975, Rabbi Avichail founded an organization, Amishav (Hebrew meaning “my people return”), to investigate the letters, claims, and reports. Amishav found incredible success, reconnecting with the Bnei Menashe (a community claiming to be a lost tribe residing in northeast India), as well as conversos (descendants of Jews forcibly converted to Christianity during the Inquisition), and the Jews of Kaifeng, China. To expand his support, Rabbi Avichail opened a branch in America: American Friends of Amishav. Somehow, Jack Zeller, a clinical pathologist and Jewish activist from Silver Spring, Maryland, and his wife, Diane, an African Studies scholar, wound up in Rabbi Avichail’s house. Jack and Diane were very active in the American Association of Ethiopian Jews, an organization that played a critical role in the return of thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 1991, and sought to take Jewish outreach further, to more isolated communities. Jack became an integral part of Amishav USA, which was growing with support from Jews of liberal denominations (Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, etc.). Rabbi Avichail worked out of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, however, and the increasing support from non-orthodox groups made his position precarious. In 1994, he asked Jack to continue Amishav USA’s work, and the American group decided to change its name to be more inclusive, choosing Kulanu, which means “all of us.” In the same year, Karen and Aron Primack, also from Silver Spring, Maryland, found themselves at a lecture by Rabbi Avichail. The Primacks had lived in Uganda in 1971-72 as cancer researchers, and administered Peace Corps medical offices in Niger in 1991-92. They had seen Africa, but African Jewry was something new, exotic, and exciting.

Kulanu: 1994-2001

Aron Primack walking from the market with matooke, a type of banana grown in Uganda, 2002. (Photo by Karen Primack)
Karen Primack visiting the Abayudaya in Uganda with baby Aaron Schechtman Keki, 2002. (Photo by Aron Primack)

In its first few years, Kulanu was tiny and ad-hoc. About 70 people were signed up when Kulanu got its new name, but about 15 people were actually present for the name change. The Primacks hosted Kulanu events out of their living room, getting about 20-25 people to show up, maybe more if a movie was showing. The Primacks also established two crucial features of Kulanu: a newsletter (the ancestor of this very magazine)  and a website. Things moved pretty slowly at first, especially before the inception of the website. The Primacks put ads in Jewish Week
but didn’t get much turnout. “We were working on the groups we knew about – Avichail’s groups,” Karen told me, “but we were also sitting at our desk, twiddling our thumbs, waiting for what else was out there.” Amishav’s big focus had been the Bnei Menashe of northeast India and the conversos, and Kulanu didn’t yet have its own direction. They had no real means of finding new communities – the communities came to them. According to Karen, “People just climbed out of the woodwork. And this was before the internet, so it was a mystery as to how they found us. But they wrote to us.” The operation itself was also lean, never purchasing an office or phone. “When we started printing the newsletter,” Jack told me, “we folded the newsletter on my dining room table. Then we would put the pages into envelopes and we sorted them by zip codes. And then I would take them to a special post office that did bulk mail like that.” Everything, from newsletter to community aid to accounting, was done by volunteers. “We wanted to maintain that if you gave us money, it would all be going to the communities,” Jack explained Kulanu’s first project independent of Amishav would be in 1995, with the Abayudaya of Uganda. In 1994, Matt Meyers, a junior at Brown University, attended a synagogue service during his semester abroad in Kenya. The synagogue members were mostly white, but Meyers noticed a few Black Jews. Meyers struck up a conversation and learned that they had driven 14 hours from Uganda. Intrigued, Meyers and a colleague decided to visit the Jews of Uganda. “They were totally astounded,” Karen told me, “and the world hasn’t been the same since.” Meyers had connected with the Abayudaya, a then 75-year-old community of Jews in the heart of Africa, almost completely isolated from the world Jewish community. He had written letters seeking support to 150 Jewish organizations, of which only one responded: Kulanu. In early 1995, a delegation of Kulanu members, including the Primacks, arrived in Uganda to visit the Abayudaya. The trip – the first-ever delegation of mainstream Jews to the Abayudaya – was an incredible success. The Primacks had seen Uganda, but the idea that an old and completely dedicated Jewish community had been right under their noses the whole time… well, you can read about their response in the summer 1995 Kulanu magazine, entitled “Visiting the Ugandan Miracle,” (bit.ly/summer95). The success of the Ugandan mission and the slow growth of the internet began to attract more supporters and more contacts from isolated and marginalized Jewish communities. The Zellers and the Primacks were the powerhouses driving the organization: making and utilizing connections, coordinating events and support for communities, guiding expansion, and more. Karen Primack published a book in 1998, Jews in Places You Never Thought Of; edited and wrote for the Kulanu newsletter; and made the first recordings of Abayudayan prayer and song. In those years, the focus was on the Abayudaya, conversos in Brazil, and the Bnei Menashe, with hints of the communities in southern India and China appearing in the newsletter.

Kulanu: 2001-2007

Kulanu President Harriet Bograd (in red) and Athalia Nalongo (foreground) dancing at the music and dance festival during a Kulanu Mitzvah Tour to Uganda in January 2012. (Photo by Steve Gray

As the internet took off, Kulanu saw gradual growth in its membership and partner communities. The biggest change to Kulanu in these years, however, was organizational development. Harriet Bograd started with Kulanu in June 2001, when she and her husband visited their daughter in Ghana who was volunteering for Kulanu in Sefwi Wiawso’s Jewish community. Watching her daughter teach Ghanaian children, Harriet told me, was quite an experience. “You just never see a group of kids in Hebrew school in the United States quite as excited and involved as these kids were. And I was just so proud of her, and so proud of them, and so glad to be there.” Harriet happened to be a “professional volunteer” with a degree from Yale Law School and with strong experience in running professional NGOs. She started a Yahoo group and email account for the Jews of Ghana and helped set up a challahcover business that has since made $50,000 for the community. Before 2001 was over, Harriet was invited to join the Kulanu board and she became treasurer of the growing organization. She soon took over the database and accounting system and hired part-time employees, moving the organization’s mailing address and main office to her home in New York City. “She had a way of finding very gifted, effective people,” Karen told me. Harriet brought organization, professionalism, and dynamism to Kulanu. While volunteers were still the core of Kulanu, a couple of dedicated part-time employees would form an important administrative backbone. In this period, Kulanu’s strongest work was in Africa and with conversos. The highlight of Kulanu’s work was with the Abayudaya. Karen arranged for a team of Conservative rabbis to oversee conversions in Uganda in 2002. During that visit, Kulanu members witnessed 300
conversions, seven weddings, and a community lit by joy and celebration. Early focuses of Kulanu, such as the Jews of China and northeast India, remained important but faded from priority. Instead, Kulanu largely left those to
other Jewish organizations with special interests in those communities. Some communities gained more attention – the conversos of Portugal and Central America, returning Jews of Poland, and the Igbo Jews of Nigeria. Karen Primack published a second book in 2003, Under One Canopy: Readings in Jewish Diversity. However, exercising my power as Kulanu historian, I define this period as one of focus and professionalization, without much growth in the way of new communities.

Kulanu: 2007-2020

Bonita Sussman wearing her new Cameroonian dress in Cameroon, 2010. (Photo courtesy of Bonita Sussman

The last 13 years, on the other hand, have seen incredible growth in partner communities, supporters, and tools and technology. Part of the change was propelled by two dynamic volunteers: Bonita and Rabbi Gerald Sussman. Boni discovered Kulanu in a talk in 2007 by Abayudaya leader Aaron Kintu Moses (of blessed memory). Aaron wrote out Harriet’s phone number on a napkin and gave it to Boni. A short time later, the Sussmans were on a plane to rural southern India, a Kulanu volunteer trip that changed their lives. Having been welcomed into the Bene Ephraim community, they taught classes every night for three weeks covering Shabbat, all the holidays, and life cycle events. They planned activities around the different holiday celebrations, including making masks for Purim, lighting Hanukkah candles, and baking matzah. Up until 2007, Kulanu only accepted work with partner communities if there was a dedicated regional coordinator willing to act as a liaison. “I was shocked,” Boni told me. “I said, I’ll be the coordinator of all these new groups. Just give them to me.” With Boni taking on any community that didn’t have a volunteer regional coordinator, Kulanu was able to flourish rapidly. In the following years, Boni became Kulanu’s First Vice President. She also took the lead on setting up the Kulanu Academic Cohort that tied the academic study of these communities with Kulanu in an official way, and she facilitated conversions in Africa and Latin America. Moreover, there are several other elements to Kulanu’s expansion in this period. Since 2007, Kulanu opened up to many more Jewish organizations, bringing in new sources of support and renown, and spreading its mission to establishment Jewish institutions. Boni now serves as Kulanu’s external affairs “ambassador,” working on building relationships with other Jewish organizations to introduce and integrate these communities into the worldwide Jewish community The expansion of Kulanu’s organization saw the creation of grant proposals, personnel, governance, and fundraising committees. In 2008, the board began to expand – a quick perusal of today’s Kulanu board will show a list of diverse, active individuals, many of whom are from or represent Kulanu’s partner  communities. Internet technology was perhaps one of the biggest changes external to Kulanu’s organization. Internet access has not only connected more people to Kulanu, but has also connected more emerging, returning, and isolated Jews to Jewish religion, identity, and each other. The Sussmans shared their in-depth perspectives on this phenomenon and its implications, but for the sake of space, I’ll offer only this quote from them: “What the translation of the Christian Bible did for the growth of Christianity, the internet did for the Jewish religion. [Now] you have open access to Jewish ideas in English and Spanish [on the internet].” We are seeing an unanticipated birth
and revival of Judaism around the globe.

Kulanu is also no slouch when it comes to technology. “We make sure that each community has some way to communicate, whether it’s with a smartphone or laptop or tablet; we make sure they have some kind of internet access through our technology fund,” Harriet told me. With the internet and computers, Kulanu’s more remote partner communities have access to communication with Kulanu and the worldwide Jewish community; Jewish education and practices; and income opportunities and learning of skills to combat conditions of hardship. Kulanu has also used technology to expand its message to the mainstream Jewish world. The website was revamped a few years ago, and when the pandemic began, Kulanu began a semi-monthly speaker-series over Zoom. As of this writing, over 1700 individuals participated in the Zoom programs and there were more than 8000 views on Facebook and YouTube. In the last decade, the Zellers retired to Israel and Karen Primack retired in 2010 after 14 years of magazine editing, but both the Zellers and the Primacks are still active. Harriet now serves as president, with Boni as first vice president and an evolving board. Kulanu’s first few communities are still active participants in its mission and are joined by many more. We’ve also seen the emergence of vibrant Jewish communities in 33 countries, including Guatemala, Pakistan, the Philippines, Brazil, Cameroon, Indonesia, southern India, Madagascar, and Italy. Kulanu has expanded the vision of its founders.

A strong force for change, building stronger Jewish communities across the globe

Rabbi Jerry Sussman teaching Serge Etelle in Cameroon how to put on tefillin, 2010. (Photo by Bonita Sussman

As we’ve seen over this 30-year survey, Kulanu has grown a lot — from printing newsletters in a living room to friends and memories on almost every continent (we’re still waiting for Jewish penguins in Antarctica). Its new scope, and the 30 years since its founding, has left new questions and challenges to be answered. There’s the philosophical (“What does it mean to be Jewish”), the organizational-existential (“Is Kulanu just about supporting Jewish needs, or should it focus as well on economic support and development”), the structural (“What additional staffing and structure are needed for Kulanu to be ready to thrive without relying on current leaders?”), the anthropological (“How can Kulanu avoid acting in a colonialist or imperialist manner?”), and the strategic (“How do we get this person a visa?”). Another important thing to note is that, for all its recent successes, Kulanu is still mainly dependent on passionate volunteers and patrons. It is critical that Kulanu attract young people to carry out its mission, and new donors to fit with its internal growth (organizational) and external growth (new communities). I’ll end this historical record with one “Jack-Zellerism” (apparently, Dr. Zeller is one of those mythical sources of quotes): “Kulanu is not an empire.” I heard this “Zellerism” quite a few times, from quite a few people, and it seems a bit counter-intuitive at first. Kulanu has grown and expanded — not only in terms of organizational structure and capacity, but also in the number of communities with which it works. Kulanu and its partner communities are also beginning to attract attention in the press, in academia, and in Jewish life. The Forward has even heralded Kulanu as the key activist in “the New Jewish Diaspora.” So is Kulanu an empire?

Exercising my right as a historian, I still say no. Kulanu is not an empire, because it does not have dominant authority. It doesn’t assert itself into any community, and has no expectations for them. It doesn’t push any denomination or philosophy of Jewishness, and does not push any agenda onto volunteers (who embody an incredible range of Jewish philosophies and denominations). Its mission and purpose, from its founding to now, has been purely to act as a connection, a publicist, and an unjudging benefactor for emerging Jewish communities. It has grown in capacity and prestige and partner communities, but has not altered the way it interacts with them. The strength of our Kulanu board, staff, supporters, volunteers, and partner communities is not only that each of us has different images and ideas of what is important about Kulanu; it is that we ARE Kulanu — all of us — we are many different people working together to bring all of us together.