Samson Nderitu Njogu was raised in a Messianic Jewish family in Kenya. Today, the 34-year-old is a third-year rabbinical student at the Conservative movement’s Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles.
Njogu’s journey from East Africa to the West Coast of the United States — and from Messianic Judaism to mainstream Judaism and rabbinical school — is a uniquely modern Jewish story. It’s one he plans to share from the bimah at San Francisco’s Congregation Beth Sholom, where he starts as a rabbinic intern on Sept. 5.
“I’m going to bring a new perspective to the community and share some African, and particularly Kenyan and Ugandan, insights and traditions,” he told J. in a recent phone interview.
Njogu (pronounced JO-gu) will fly up from L.A. once a month to help lead Shabbat services and teach introduction to Judaism classes. Rabbi Amanda Russell, Beth Sholom’s spiritual leader, enjoyed a similar arrangement at the synagogue from 2015 to 2019 while she was a student at Ziegler herself.
“It was invaluable for me to get out of L.A. and experience another Jewish community as I was studying to be a rabbi,” she told J. in an email. “This year, I thought, maybe I could give that experience to a current rabbinical student, and Samson responded to my posting” on a Ziegler email list.
One of 13 children, Njogu was born into the Kikuyu tribe in Eldoret, located in Kenya’s Rift Valley region. His family was very poor, and he often went to bed hungry, he said. In 1992 when he was a toddler, they had to flee Eldoret after their home was set on fire in a spasm of ethnic violence following the first multi-party general election in Kenya.
“We had to sleep in the forest. From there, we went to a refugee camp for about a month,” he recalled. “After that, a Messianic church took us in and gave us a house.”
Njogu’s parents, both subsistence farmers, eventually left the Messianics, who consider themselves Jewish but believe Jesus is the messiah, to join a non-Messianic community that exclusively followed the Torah. Members of that community, Kehillat Israel Kasuku, taught themselves Hebrew and Jewish customs from books.
In 2003, Gershom Sizomu, the spiritual leader of the Abayudaya Jewish community in neighboring Uganda and the future chief rabbi of the country, visited Kenya and met with members of Kehillat Israel Kasuku. He extended an invitation to the young people to study with him in Uganda.
“I was the first person to think about going,” Njogu said. “When the rabbi came and was teaching, I was like, ‘Wow, that’s beautiful. I want to learn more.’”
Njogu was one of eight Kenyans who traveled to Uganda in 2005. He lived in Sizomu’s house in Nabugoye, one of the Abayudaya community’s 10 villages, and attended Semei Kakungulu High School, named for the Abayudaya founder. He officially converted through the Conservative movement in 2010 and enrolled in Sizomu’s yeshiva.
After Sizomu was elected to Uganda’s parliament in 2016 and moved to Kampala, Njogu helped lead services and teach b’nai mitzvah classes in Nabugoye. He served as a counselor at Jewish summer camps in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2016 and 2017, respectively, and participated in the first Abayudaya Birthright trip to Israel in 2018.
“Even in the Messianic church, I grew up dreaming about going to the Promised Land, and so that was a dream come true,” he said about the trip.
Njogu earned a bachelor’s degree in Uganda in project planning and entrepreneurship but remained passionate about Judaism. Inspired by Sizomu, who graduated from Ziegler in 2008, he applied to the rabbinical school and received a full scholarship.
This year was a tumultuous one at Ziegler, as former students went public with complaints of gender-based discrimination, prompting an investigation. In June, Ziegler announced that the law firm conducting the investigation found no systemic problems but declined to release the firm’s report.
Asked about his experience at the school so far, Njogu said he has not faced any type of discrimination. “I’m not treated a certain way because I’m African,” he said. “I feel very comfortable.”
Njogu lives in the heavily Jewish Pico-Roberston neighborhood of L.A. with his wife, Dafnah Sizomu (who is Gershom Sizomu’s daughter), and their 2-year-old daughter, Shirah. He also serves as a rabbinic intern at Hamakom, a Conservative shul in the San Fernando Valley. Dafnah Sizomu is a ba’alat korei (Torah reader) at several area synagogues.
In total, Njogu spent 17 years living in Uganda and identifies as much with the Abayudaya — the word means “People of Judah” in Luganda and traditionally refers to Ugandan-born Jews — as with the small Kenyan Jewish community, which numbers around 250, he said.
Remarkably, he is not the only person affiliated with the 2,000-strong Abayudaya who will be helping to lead congregations in the Bay Area.
Rabbi Shoshana Nambi, who was raised in the community and was ordained at Hebrew Union College in May, is the new assistant rabbi at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills. She and Njogu often ate meals together at Sizomu’s house in Uganda and remain friends.
After his ordination, Njogu intends to return to Africa and split his time between Uganda and his homeland.
“Kenya needs a rabbi for Kenyan Jews,” he said. “My upbringing was a bit difficult, and I feel being a rabbi, I can uplift the people and give them hope.”