The Masorti Foundation, and collegial organizations, are creating a special emergency fund to pursue justice for Yosef Kibita and the Abayudaya Jewish community from Uganda. Yosef lives at Kibbutz Ketura, a kibbutz with Masorti affiliations in Southern Israel, where he has been for a year. He is seeking to make Aliyah.
The Israeli Ministry of the Interior rejected Yosef Kibita’s request to immigrate under the law of return; moreover, the Ministry used this ruling to broadly disqualify the entire Abayudaya community of 2,000 from making Aliyah, declaring that the community and their conversion to Judaism is not recognized.
The Masorti Movement is developing an emergency, multi-pronged, campaign to correct this injustice. Please give as generously as you possibly can –and as quickly as you can– since the court case must be heard THIS JUNE! All funds contributed will be used to support Masorti Israel’s efforts for Yosef Kibita and equality for the Abayudaya community.
This is an issue that hits close to home; as some of you may know, it was only with considerable opposition from the Chief Rabbinate that the Ministry of the Interior eventually decided to allow Karaites to make aliyah in a time of great crisis for Egyptian Jews in the early 1950s. Gershom Sizomu is a good friend of a good friend, and it stings to once again see the validity of a group of “weird Jews” legally questioned.
You can read the statement of the Masorti/Conservative movement (who are also being thrown under the bus with this decision) over here. If you have a few shekels or words of encouragement to send their way, all the better.
“How does the Interior Ministry dare to deport someone who was born a Jew?” the outraged chairman of the committee, Avraham Nagosa, asked its representatives attending the session. “Do you have special criteria for black converts?” Nagosa, a member of the ruling Likud party, was born in Ethiopia.
According to the Law of Return, any individual converted in a “recognized Jewish community” is eligible to immigrate to Israel. Several years ago, the Jewish Agency granted recognition to the Abayudaya.
Interior Ministry officials attending the Knesset session said that, as far as they were concerned, the Abayudaya were not a recognized Jewish community but rather an emerging Jewish community and, therefore, not eligible to immigrate to Israel under existing criteria.
Nagosa proposed in response that the Agency and Interior Ministry form a joint committee to determine whether the Law of Return applies to emerging Jewish communities – in other words, communities in which the vast majority, if not all, of the members are converts to Judaism. Many such communities exist around the world today, particularly in South America.
The Abayudaya began practicing Judaism some 100 years ago, but were only officially converted in recent years. Most of the members were converted by rabbis from the Conservative movement.
Rabbi Mikie Goldstein, president of the Rabbinical Council of the Conservative Movement in Israel, noted that when he immigrated to Israel from England, no questions were raised about his Jewishness. “But when someone comes from Africa and his skin color is different, there are lots of questions asked,” he said. “And on top of that, he’s told that he’s not Jewish.”
There is literally no demographic more interesting than queer religious people. Even if you never had much of a crisis in faith (like me), we are still forced to reconcile what we believe in with our own existence in a way that straight religious people, and nonreligious queer people, will never fully experience. I once spoke to a lesbian minister of a queer-centric nondenominational church who said “the god you believe in is always a reflection of self, which is why queer people see god as so much more loving and forgiving than other people do. Our god is a form of self-love and acceptance” and i will never forget that.
I have been beside myself about the emergence of child concentration camps so I want to give a shout out to all the immigration attorneys doing your respective deity’s work right now
How can the rest of us best support you? I know of RAICES and KIND, and am trying to find the best local legal services groups to donate to
Update, friends–
My law school just emailed alums a bunch of information if we’re interested in helping immigrant families who have been separated at the border.
Here’s the gist.
Opportunities to assist with family separation:
Immigration Justice Campaign (**for attorneys only** powered by the American Immigration Council and American Immigration Lawyers Association)
Donate to organizations that have hosted Pro Bono Caravans and/or In-House Pro Bono Projects and are assisting immigrant families and unaccompanied minors:
KIND – Kids in Need of Defense https://supportkind.org/ They are supporting kids directly at the border and beyond through legal and social services.
RAICES is a nonprofit that provides free and low-cost legal services to immigrant children, families and refugees in Texas. Donate generally or specifically to the RAICES bond fund: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/bondfund
TIL that stock photo sites also have stock vintage film
clips.
I haven’t watched this with the sound on yet, so
I’ve no idea what they’re talking about (other than frankfurter goulash, which
sounds kind of terrifying.)
You play as a dumbass that stays up all night watching murder myseties, and your companion is your equally stupid dog that decides he wants to go out at 2AM, on a literally dark and stormy night in a only-sort-of euclidian suburban neighborhood that backs up into The Mountains. Your Dog has better sensory perception than you, but terrible judgment, and you have at your disposal:
Flashlight that apparently only works for 45 seconds at a time and needs 3 minutes to recharge
Cell Phone (12% battery)
$6 folding knife you got at walmart for opening boxes, and that you have no training with
Bear Mace. Might be expired. Might explode if used.
On your walk through the neighborhood you’ll meet such lovely NPCs as:
Random guy in shorts wandering between the houses looking for “My girlfriend, Kristin, she drives a black honda”
white utility van with no front lisence plate and a broken headlight that’s apparently circling the neighborhood
Karen, drunk crying on her front porch. At 10 PM, that’s not unusual but it’s 2AM and 24 degrees out. She threw a shoe at you last time you asked what was wrong.
The on-and-off sound of someone jogging on the next street over but that stops right before the jogger should come in view. The longer you play, the closer they get before stopping.
Rodger’s large and aggressive bloodhound, roaming the neighborhood
Something with glowing eyes at the end of the hiking road. It might be a deer, but it’s awfully tall.
Enjoy such engaging enviornmental effects as:
Coyote noises!
Shit, those aren’t coyote noises at all!
All the lights are on in every single room in that one house with the rowdy kids, but absolutely nobody is home and it’s kind of a mess
another neighbor has his front door hanging open
a black honda that might belong to “Kristin”, parked half way on a curb right beside the (flooded) creek
Loud wind!
and by consequence, every goddamn creepy-ass windchime clattering around and deafening you!
tumbleweeds that look like wild animals or people in your peripheral vison!
Is that the fox screaming or a child being murdered? Who knows! Not you, unless you want to spend more time out here investigating!
Anyway, I just had a terrific time taking the dog out and salting my doors, happy Firday the fucking thirteenth everyone!
IIRC, “sneaked” was replaced by “snuck” sometime during the
twentieth century, and is one of the words that can trip you up if you’re
writing historical dialogue because it’s not obviously an anachronism. Mind
you, very few readers/viewers are likely to notice or care.
TIL that stock photo sites also have stock vintage film
clips.
I haven’t watched this with the sound on yet, so
I’ve no idea what they’re talking about (other than frankfurter goulash, which
sounds kind of terrifying.)
Mooncustafer 