American delegates escort Ethiopia’s Falash Mura
to new homes at Israeli absorption centers

 

JERUSALEM — The flight from Israel to Ethiopia takes only six hours — but when it comes to the conditions of the Jews living there, it might as well be a journey of light years.

It takes years for Ethiopian immigrants to Israel to adapt from living in squalor to succeeding in a modern, Westernized Jewish state. Israeli and American visitors to Ethiopia experience culture shock from the opposite perspective.

That’s what happened last week when a delegation of 100 leaders of Jewish federations, including United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ campaign chair Lori Klinghoffer, Women’s Campaign chair Paula Saginaw, and Steven and Beena Levy of Morristown, took part in a fact-finding mission to Ethiopia and Israel sponsored by United Jewish Communities, the umbrella organization for North American federations.

The group accompanied Jewish Agency for Israel chair Ze’ev Bielski.

 

The mission was intended to raise awareness and funding for “Operation Promise,” a $100 million project to help the estimated 20,000 Ethiopians still waiting to immigrate and to aid the absorption of more than 100,000 Ethiopian immigrants already in Israel. UJC has already pledged $45 million in a special campaign.

Klinghoffer, Saginaw, and the Levys spent two days in Ethiopia visiting the capital Addis Ababa and the Gondar region in the countryside to learn first-hand about how the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee are helping the Falash Mura, Ethiopians whose ancestors converted to Christianity and who have since returned to Judaism.

After visiting the compound in Gondar run by the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry that is home to 10,000 Falash Mura, the MetroWest leaders returned to Israel on an Ethiopian Airlines airlift with 150 new immigrants. They then spent two days touring absorption projects for the Falash Mura in Israel. The experience left them startled but more ready than ever to describe the urgency of the federation’s campaign on the Ethiopians’ behalf.

“There is reverse culture shock in going to a fourth-world country,” Klinghoffer said. “I can only imagine the difference for the Ethiopians coming to Israel, but for me going in the opposite direction was a splash of cold water on my face. It gave me a shot of passion to help people understand why it is so critical to do what we do and be philanthropic.”

Saginaw added that “it has been quite extraordinary to witness firsthand the lives these people live in Addis and Gondar and see how important it is to bring them to Israel.”

They said they saw extended families in Addis living in tiny houses made of mud and straw with dirt floors, with barely any food and no running water, electricity, or sewage system.

Among the Ethiopians they visited was the Amar family — Awaka, his wife Yashitwaka, and their three young children. While waiting to come to Israel, the Amars have lived for four years in a house smaller than a standard American closet with mud walls, floors, and beds. Their family in Israel sends them money for food and rent for the hut.

The mission members also visited a shack that serves as a schoolhouse, where 60 children packed into classrooms divided by pieces of aluminum studied quietly and greeted the visitors politely. They met parents waiting to find out whether the Israeli Interior Ministry deemed their families qualified to be brought to Israel.

Ya’akov Amitai, the Israeli ambassador to Ethiopia, hosted the group of Americans for lunch, and they had dinner with American ambassador to Ethiopia Vicki Huddelston at her private residence. The mission received a briefing there on the political and health situations in Ethiopia. They were told that in a few years, there will be five million Ethiopian orphans.

The Gondar compound includes a synagogue, a food distribution center, and classrooms in which everything from basic Judaism to parasite prevention, family planning, and prayer shawl weaving is taught.

After leaving the compound, the group visited Woloka, a former Jewish village whose inhabitants came to Israel on Operation Solomon in 1991. They saw the remnants of a once thriving Jewish culture, including a synagogue and cemetery. A guide who now lives in Israel told the group about what it was like for him to grow up in the village.

Saginaw recalled a light-hearted moment when the soon-to-be Israelis boarded an airplane for the first time. She helped them with their seat belts, explained the wonders of the video monitors that announced flight safety instructions, and demonstrated how to use the earphones that the stewardesses handed out.

“The Ethiopian people are the most gentle, quiet, lovely people, who just want so badly to live their lives in Israel,” Saginaw said. “We saw their frightened faces on our plane to Israel. When they received their identity cards, we wished them mazal tov and clapped, and they smiled with huge grins.”

The new immigrants were processed quickly at Ben-Gurion International Airport. They were given food, but it was evident to the Americans that the Ethiopians had never seen a sandwich, a cherry tomato, or any food wrapped in cellophane before.

The group went from the airport to the apartments at the Jewish Agency Absorption Center in Lod, where the 150 new Israelis will live temporarily. The Americans welcomed them with gift baskets containing honey, olive oil, chocolates, and a mezuza.

“We visited a couple who arrived with us and were given an apartment in the absorption center that was modest — but the difference was extraordinary,” Saginaw said. “We gave hope to these people and helped them start a new life here. It’s remarkable that we as Jews can help them to help themselves and change their lives.”

The rest of the trip was devoted to visiting JDC’s Ethiopian absorption projects across Israel. They visited students in Netanya who are learning English in the Schooling Priorities and Community Empowerment (SPACE) program and went to Ramla and Hadera to observe the operation of the Parents and Children Together (PACT) program.

They spoke to parents seeking to improve their Hebrew skills in order to further their social mobility and strengthen the parent-child-teacher bond, attended therapeutic interventions for students with learning difficulties, and met young Ethiopian athletes training for the 2008 Olympics and heard their stories of successful integration.

UJC MetroWest’s Project Atzmaut (Independence) in Rishon LeZion is considered a model for hastening integration of Ethiopian families. The program features family education and gives jobs to parents so they will develop self-esteem and become self-sufficient.

Klinghoffer and Saginaw said that after years of involvement in Project Atzmaut, it was particularly meaningful for them to see what the lives of the successful Ethiopian immigrants they have met were like before they came to Israel.

They said they would return to MetroWest with new stories to tell about the plight of Ethiopian Jews and why it is imperative to invest in finding solutions to their problems.

“We went to Ethiopia to see and understand how far this population has come and how far they still have to go to get to a position where they can integrate into Israeli society,” Klinghoffer said. “To stand on the ground in Addis and Gondar — feel it, touch it, and smell it — gives you a perspective you cannot otherwise have….”

The effort being made to assist the Ethiopians’ adjustment to their new lives in Israel is “pretty remarkable,” Klinghoffer said, “and the fact that the American-Jewish community can be a part of it is a privilege and responsibility.”