Pot of Gold at Blue Mountain

While planning our itinerary to the jungles of Papua New Guinea to meet tribesmen who claimed a Jewish link, we learned that right across the border in Indonesia, there were also emerging communities desperate for Jewish contact.

When we heard that members of the Gogodala tribe in Papua New Guinea claim descent from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel and are now expressing interest in returning to Judaism we just knew we needed to plan a trip to the South Pacific jungles and see them for ourselves. We wrote about that trip last month; yet while still in the planning stages of this newest halachic adventure we learned that on the same island but right across the border there were emerging Jewish communities in Indonesia the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.

If that confuses you we can explain: The island of New Guinea has a border drawn right down the middle; the eastern side is Papua New Guinea (PNG) our original destination and the western side is Papua Indonesia. Indonesia a country which is actually a collection of over 17 000 islands straddles the equator and stretches over thousands of kilometers from the Indian to the Pacific Ocean. With over 260 million people it is the world’s fourth most populous nation. Although overwhelmingly Muslim (85 percent) it is officially secular and there is a sizable Christian population. Hinduism Buddhism and Confucianism are all recognized religions as well; Judaism is not.

In the last few years though different groups in Indonesia have begun to call themselves Jewish and have even opened synagogues. It was the community in Jayapura Papua Indonesia — just across the border from Papua New Guinea — that we decided to visit.