Uganda Gets Its First Jewish Parliamentarian

Earlier this month, Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, one of the leaders of the Abayudaya—as Uganda’s indigenous Jews are called—was sworn into his country’s parliament. Tommy Trenchard and Aurelie Marrier D’Unienville report:

The Abayudaya, which means “people of Judah” in the local Luganda language, live in a handful of eastern Ugandan villages, and they could do with some political leverage. There are fewer than 2,000 members; they make up less than 0.006 percent of Uganda’s predominantly Christian population and only 3 percent of [their region’s] Muslim-dominated population.

Sizomu’s brother, Kintu Moses Aron, [believes] Sizomu’s new position will help the community obtain the same legal rights as Christians and Muslims, including getting the government to recognize Jewish holidays so the Abayudaya can observe their traditions [more easily]. Community members also hope that Sizomu’s election will help them obtain funding for Jewish educational services and places of worship.

The Abayudaya, originally followers of a tribal leader who came to Judaism through Christianity in the early 20th century, suffered intense persecution during the reign of Idi Amin in the 1970s. More recently, they converted to Judaism under the auspices of the Conservative movement; a small group is now seeking Orthodox conversion. Last year they were formally recognized as a Jewish community by the Jewish Agency.

Read more at Newsweek

More about: Africa, African Jewry, Conversion, Jewish World

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society