High school English teacher, rabbi, international touring musician, volunteer with African Jews: Noam Katz is all of these. He is also the newly appointed joint Dean of Jewish Living at The Leo Baeck Day School, the only Reform Jewish day school in Toronto and the largest in North America, and URJ Camp George, Canada’s only Reform Jewish overnight camp, on the shore of Maple Lake near Parry Sound. This groundbreaking partnership between organizations is a unique collaboration; its intent is to bring Katz’s expertise and talents to the whole Canadian Reform community.

Katz has always been passionate about both music and education: he spent many years as head songleader at two Reform Jewish camps in the States, where each meal is concluded with a raucous, joyous song session. During the school year he taught high school English until he felt the rabbinate calling him; in May he will become a newly-minted Reform rabbi. In 2003 he took his show on the road, touring Reform camps all over the States with a combination of classic camp tunes and his own original compositions, which led to a yearlong tour of camps, synagogues and even kibbutzim in Israel. Katz continues to play shows around North America.

It is his time as a volunteer with the Abayudaya Jewish community in Uganda, however, that inspired Katz most of all. His 2005 album, Mirembe (which means “Peace” in Luganda) featured Abayudaya musicians and songs. The community, which numbers about a thousand, is concentrated in eastern Uganda near the town of Mbale, and its people are devout Jews, having survived the persecution and synagogue-burnings of Idi Amin. Katz, who taught English, Hebrew and Judaic studies and assisted with community development, now uses his concerts to raise awareness of the Abayudaya - and of Judaism’s true internationality – wherever he goes.