BanTo Be Fought

Ban To Be Fought

WELLINGTON — The case against New Zealand’s ban on kosher animal slaughter will be heard Nov. 29 in the High Court in Wellington.   Calling the ban “unintentional antisemitism,” the president of the New Zealand Jewish Council said the community has a strong case and urged Jews worldwide to help pay its $123,000 in legal costs. Last May, Agriculture Minister David Carter rejected a proposal that shchitah, which has been performed in New Zealand since 1843, be exempt from the new animal welfare code, which says all commercially slaughtered animals must first be stunned. The community filed legal action in August after talks with Carter broke down.

Rabbi To Run

KAMPALA —  Native-born Ugandan Rabbi Gershom Sizomu is running for his country’s national Parliament. If elected in the February vote, he would be the first Jew elected to national office in Uganda and the first rabbi to be seated in a nationally elected government outside Israel, according to Be’chol Lashon, an American organization committed to strengthening the Jewish People worldwide. Rabbi Sizomu, an ordained Conservative rabbi and the chief rabbi of Uganda, has been endorsed by the Forum for Democratic Change party and is waiting for his candidacy papers to be approved by the National Electoral Commission. The rabbi serves Uganda’s native Jewish community, called the Abayudaya, 300 of whom converted to Judaism in 2003 under his initiative. Israel and Orthodox Jews in the Diaspora don’t recognize the Abayudaya as Jewish.

Monument Stolen

BERLIN — Thieves made off with a 750-kilogram Kristallnacht monument from the Jewish cemetery in Cologne, Germany. The theft of the nine-foot-high monument occurred Nov. 14, just days after commemorations of Kristallnacht, the night of Nazi-spurred violence and looting in 1938, Ha’aretz reported. The local Jewish community is offering a 4,000-euro reward for its retrieval.