Gershom Sizomu will become the first officially ordained rabbi of Abayudaya Jews in the central African state of Uganda. Sizomu, like his father and grandfather before him, has served as the isolated community's spiritual leader. After five years of study at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, he will become a Conservative rabbi on 19 May when ordination ceremonies are held at Sinai Temple in that city. Some 1,000 Abayudaya Jews live in five Ugandan villages. The community, which has been isolated from the Jewish world since its founding in 1919, based its traditions on a literal reading of the Old Testament until visits by western rabbis in the mid 1990s. Most Abayudaya Jews converted in 2004, and hundreds of the children now attend the Hadassah School, where they learn Hebrew and Jewish studies along with a general curriculum. At the end of May, Sizomu will return with his wife and three children to Uganda to reassume leadership of the Abayudaya.
