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Clive Lawton's interfaith trip to Kenya - October 2025
Clive Lawton's interfaith trip to Kenya - October 2025
Whilst in Kenya in October 2025, Clive Lawton, our Executive Chair, met with Bishop Paul Kitengela, an Evangelical Protestant leader and president and founder of 'March for Israel' - an initiative that he set up after seeing an' anti-Israel' demonstration in the heart of Nairobi. He felt that it was unacceptable to have his beloved Israel insulted without response and so mobilised thousands onto the streets for this march. Since then, he has worked to spread the movement, initially across Kenya and now, more ambitiously, across Africa. This movement of Christians is driven by a simple conviction that any sensible Christian must know that being in positive relationship with Jews and Israel is a fundamental part of being 'Bible-true'.
Also whilst in Nairobi, Clive addressed the Bible and Theology students and faculty of Tangaza University, a Roman Catholic institution in the city. Under the title, 'If we're all on the same side - and we are! - why do we disagree?' he explored the divergent ways of reading the Bible and the ways in which for nearly two thousand years the Roman Catholic Church had turned away - and worse! - from Jews, teaching ideas of contempt and replacement. But in the last sixty years, since Nostra Aetate, it had made an inspiring and dramatic turn back, making it one of the brightest beacons in interfaith opportunities between Jews and their neighbours. Clive told his audience that witnessing the Church fully accepting that God never revoked his covenant with the Jews and addressing Jews as 'our elder brothers in faith', this single development should in itself give us all rich cause for optimism that even the most apparently implacable hostility can be reversed.
Clive Lawton with Bishop Paul Kitengla
March for Israel in Nairobi
Interfaith activitites from across the Jewish Commonwealth communities
Interfaith activitites from across the Jewish Commonwealth communities
The Diversity Conference 9th September 2025 in Gibraltar focused on impact on the workplace of Gibraltar’s melting pot for a variety of religions. Visit: https://youtu.be/uHoSKidxap4?si=hQZiJIWGRoFffaGH for more info.
The Arusha Jewish Community in Tanzania continues to be actively engaged in interfaith meetings with their neighbouring Muslim community. They have also made efforts to engage the local Christian leadership. On two occasions, a local bishop has approached the community for financial support who did what they could to assist. The Jewish community has extended financial assistance to the local mosque whenever possible, especially during Ramadan. It has been a small but meaningful way to affirm their solidarity during their sacred season.
An update from Clive Lawton direct from Zimbabwe - November 2025
An update from Clive Lawton direct from Zimbabwe - November 2025
"I'm writing this while still in Africa, after a visit to our community in Nairobi Kenya, and what a jewel it is. It blessed with a magnificent campus of buildings and resources which would make communities twice the size jealous. Also possibly uniquely in Africa, I think Nairobi is the only location where the shabbat services are populated by Black and White Jews sitting together, learning together, eating together, all in the context of an impeccably Orthodoxly-led (is there such a word?) synagogue. The CJC has been happy to help Nairobi secure the kind of religious leadership it seeks while at the same time providing some further educational and religious resource to other communities in East Africa in Uganda and Tanzania, both of which are themselves inspiring outposts' of Jewish life and enthusiasm.
But as I write, I'm sitting in Zimbabwe, a country that has had its very real troubles over past years and is not yet fully out of them yet, though it is clearly a long way from the truly desperate economic circumstances I found when last I visited om years back. On that previous visit, I was warmly hosted by the long-established Jewish communities of Harere, both Ashkenazi and Sephardi, visited their Jewish school, now of course with no Jewish pupils (as far as I know), but still Jewish!
But this time, I've been the guest of the Lemba Jews, who are a remarkable group, an African tribe whose history and traditions have led them to explore the Jewish roots they felt sure they had. Since then, DNA analysis has demonstrated that, unlike, for example, Ethiopian Jews (the most fully accepted group of apparently indigenous African Jews) Lemba Jews have all the right DNA markers to indicate Jewish ancestry (no, I don't really understand it either!) and this has led many of them to deeply embrace Jewish life and teaching. One or two have spent time in yeshiva in Israel, many others are learning Hebrew and if the shul service I attended on shabbat is anything to go by, they could knock many a more established Jewish congregation into a cocked hat for enthusiasm, dedication and sincerity.
Back in the summer (my summer, I mean, not Zimbabwe's!), I visited Canadian Jews in Toronto. One campaign they run is to stress the indigeneity of Jews in the Promised Land. Being here in Africa, I have heard many tales of this or that tribe moving around the continent, displacing those who had gone before. Such narratives are the stuff of ancient times and are, of course, clearly recorded in the Bible, but in the Middle East, not Africa. But at some point things eventually settle down and one looks to see who's been there most stably for longest. I'd say Jewish claims to the Land of Israel are pretty solid by those standards regardless of the various conquerors, occupiers and usurpers who have tried to push the Jews aside
Another strand of their activity, in the face of shocking levels of antisemitism, is to build up allies and seek friends and, the good news is, we've got very many.
Which brings me full circle back to Nairobi. The Christian-run March for Israel was a huge success and has galvanised its leader, Bishop Kitengela, to try to spread the movement across Kenya and, then, the continent. Who knows if he will be successful? But he has already performed an invaluable service. He has reminded us that we are not friendless. It's our job to find all those allies and show them we appreciate them.
Clive A Lawton OBE JP
Executive Chair"
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