Let My People Go Fifteen years ago, I spent a year studying in Israel. Gershom Sizomu was my chavruta — my study partner. We laughed together, we ate together, we danced together, we cried together, we mourned together. We became rabbis together. Gershom was enrolled at a rabbinical seminary in Los Angeles, and I in New York City, but Jerusalem brought us together. Our initial divide was far greater than higher education on parallel coasts of the United States. I was a 20-something from New Jersey. Gershom was already a leader of the Abayudaya Jewish community of Uganda — a homegrown, century-old African Jewish community with a volatile history of persecution and rejection. But Gershom’s desire to enhance his studies and bring back deeper Jewish learning to his community brought him to our shared table of discourse at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in the Neve Granot neighborhood of Jerusalem.