GHC is pleased to have Shoshana Nambi as our special guest scholar. Shoshana will join us for services and kiddush on Saturday, March 11 and for a congregation-wide program on Sunday, March 12 at noon. The Community is invited to both events.
About our Guest: Shoshana Nambi grew up in Uganda’s Abayudaya Jewish community in her village of Nabweya, learning Hebrew at her synagogue and teaching young children songs and the Torah portion. Shoshana is currently a rabbinic intern at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York, where she lives with her 13-year-old daughter, Emunah. After graduating from Kampala International University in 2011, she worked part-time as an HIV counselor and agricultural educator. She worked three summers as a camp programmer and Tefillah coordinator at URJ Camp Coleman in Cleveland, GA. Learning more about Judaism there paved the way for her dream of becoming a rabbi. She traveled across the USA in the fall of 2013 and 2014 with Kulanu, Inc (which supports emerging and returning Jewish communities around the world) teaching about her Jewish community with an emphasis on the role of women in her villages.
After a year of studying Hebrew and Jewish texts at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, she was offered admission to the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City and spent her first year at its Jerusalem campus.
Shoshana recently authored a children’s book, The Very Best Sukkah: A Story from Uganda, about the Jewish holiday of Sukkot and the joyful way it is celebrated in her community. Shoshana humbly says, “Most importantly, I am on my way to becoming a Jewish leader myself, just like the leaders who inspired me growing up.” She recently won won the inaugural Children’s Picture Book Tracy and Larry Brown Family Award for this beautiful book.
The entire community is invited. To RSVP and for more information about the Scholar-in-Residence event, please contact Naomi Feinkind at naomi.feinkind@ghcny.org .
