Growing up in Surabaya, Indonesia, Dovid Sayers did not know much about Jewish life, but his classmates always reminded him that he was Jewish. His first name, significantly different from the local variant of Dued, said it all. He was constantly bullied; one time a girl threw a stick at his face following the release of an American movie about Christianity.
Indonesian Native Returns Home From the UK for Sukkot
Growing up in Surabaya, Indonesia, Dovid Sayers did not know much about Jewish life, but his classmates always reminded him that he was Jewish. His first name, significantly different from the local variant of Dued, said it all. He was constantly bullied; one time a girl threw a stick at his face following the release of an American movie about Christianity.
But for all of the taunts and torments, Sayers – who now studies at the Chabad-Lubavitch yeshiva in Manchester, England, and recently returned to his native country to run a Sukkot program – says that not all of his memories are bad.
“What I remember as a kid was that there was a lot of dancing from visiting rabbis,” says Sayers, referring to Chabad rabbis who would come from Australia for the holidays.
They went to the synagogue where Sayers’ grandfather was the caretaker and lived. But one day, for some unknown reason, the visits halted when he was four years old.
sholom
keep up the good work!!!
sholom!