The Abayudaya People Meet Portland, Oregon

By Emma Fredgant February 7, 2013

The Abayudaya are a tribe of roughly 1,000 Jewish Ugandans living in and around Mbale. Haven’t heard of them? Me either—until I recently got the opportunity to meet their leader, Aaron Kintu Moses, during a shabbaton at the P’nai Or of Portland. The event was sponsored by Kulana, a non-profit organization that works to support isolated…

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(Almost) the First Jewish Ugandan Parliamentarian [Global Jewish Voice]

By Gabriel T. Erbs February 9, 2012

A local Jewish politician campaigns for the goyishe vote – in Uganda: At one time, Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, who spent five years at the seminary of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles and a year in Israel, was planning to run for Parliament in Uganda – perhaps one day to run for President. […] With…

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Playing the White Man: A Day with the Abayudaya of Uganda

By Noah Hertz-Bunzl December 14, 2005

Last summer, on the eve of Shavuot, during one of my visits to the Abayudaya, a Ugandan community that converted to Judaism in the 1920s, I met a young man named Israel. Later that night, Israel’s older brother, Saul, his wife Samalie, and their newborn child, were hit on their bike by a motorcycle, on…

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