Rabbi Judith Edelman-Green met Yosef Kibita last year in Uganda. He is a member one of the Abayudaya community who converted to Judaism through the Masorti Movement. The community has been observing Kashrut and Shabbat for 100 years; they study Torah, cover their heads with kippot, circumcise their sons and give their children Hebrew names.

Yosef, 30, came to Israel for five months as part of the Masa program, and fell in love with the country. He now lives at Kibbutz Ketura, where he works, observes Shabbat, kashrut, and lives a full Jewish life as someone converted by rabbis from the Masorti movement. He is the first member of the community to come on aliyah. The Jewish Agency, the “representative of the Jewish people,” confirmed the Jewishness of the Abayudaya but the Ministry of the Interior refuses to approve their immigration as Jews. The Masorti Movement is in the midst of a legal campaign to gain recognition for Yosef as a “Jew according to halakha,” as part of the larger struggle for recognition of the Abayudaya as Jews in every respect. Among other things, they are circulating a petition and we call on our members to sign it.

Shira, the daughter of Judith and Bernie Edelman-Green, invited Yosef to be interviewed for a documentary film about the Jews of Uganda she is preparing. Yosef, who already calls Judith “Ima,” asked to visit Hod veHadar, and he will be our guest on Shabbat 13-14 July. This will be a rare opportunity to meet in person a Jew who comes from a different environment and symbolizes one of the struggles being waged today against the Orthodoxy rabbanut’s monopoly on Judaism in Israel! Children are welcome.