Tagged Rabbi Gershom Sizomu

Ugandan rabbi: ‘We as a Jewish community need to be treated like any other Jewish community’

Rabbi Gershom Sizomu leads Uganda's Jewish community. (Courtesy of Be'chol Lashon)
June 5, 2018 / Josefin Dolsten, JTA

(JTA) — A Ugandan rabbi called on Israel to recognize his community after the government ruled against allowing members to move to the Jewish state. Rabbi Gershom Sizomu confirmed a report in Haaretz last week that the Israeli Interior Ministry had denied a community member’s immigration application. The Interior… Read more »

Uganda’s Jews are down to one meal a day because of East Africa’s famine

Gershom Sizomu, religious leader of the Abayudaya, in 2003. (Ken Hively/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
July 31, 2017 / Ben Sales, JTA

(JTA) — Uganda’s 2,000 Jews have long maintained a modest existence. They live in the east of the country in a hilly, rural area that lacks paved roads, consistent electricity and freely running water. But this year, the situation for Uganda’s Jewish community, called the Abayudaya, has worsened. Twenty million people… Read more »

Lacking status in Israel, Jews in Uganda see new synagogue as ‘our Jerusalem’

In anticipation of the construction of a new synagogue in Nabagoye, Uganda, the women and children there were given the honor of transferring the Torahs from the old synagogue to a temporary home. (Courtesy of Be’chol Lashon)
September 18, 2016 / Josefin Dolsten

  (JTA) — When there was no more space in the synagogue in Nabagoye, Uganda, congregants would go outside, gathering under trees. But the branches weren’t enough to shield them from the rain during the East African country’s wet seasons, which last about half the year. A new 7,000-square-foot… Read more »

In rural Uganda, small Jewish community splits over conversion
March 24, 2014 / Ben Sales, JTA
The central synagogue of the Abayudaya Jewish community in Uganda. Most of the 2000-member community is conservative, but a small faction has chosen to practice Orthodoxy. (Ben Sales)

NABUGOYE, Uganda (JTA) — On Fridays at sundown, the Jewish residents of this village set amid the lush hills of eastern Uganda gather in the synagogue to greet Shabbat. The room is bare, the light is dim and the Conservative prayer books are worn. But the spare surroundings do… Read more »

Chief rabbi recounts Ugandan Jews’ trials, triumphs for JFSA
November 21, 2013 / Sheila Wilensky, AJP Associate Editor
Rabbi Gershom Sizomu

As the first black rabbi from Sub-Saharan Africa, Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, chief rabbi of Uganda and leader of the Abayudaya Jews, may seem like an anomaly to some, but his commitment to Judaism is staunch. “I grew up in eastern Uganda with no electricity or water,” Sizomu told around… Read more »