Saturday, March 23, 2013

Ethiopian Jewish Community From Christianism to Judaism

  • Facilitated by the Israeli government, a young couple and their children are going on aliyah from Ethiopia — a purposeful ascent, or "going up" to Israel. The facial cross tattoos, often sought to hide their Jewish origins, are frequently removed once they have arrived in Israel.
    Facilitated by the Israeli government, a young couple and their children are going on aliyah from Ethiopia — a purposeful ascent, or "going up" to Israel. The facial cross tattoos, often sought to hide their Jewish origins, are frequently removed once they have arrived in Israel.
    Ilan Ossendryver
  • An elderly couple, ready for their long-awaited move to Israel, June 2011.
    An elderly couple, ready for their long-awaited move to Israel, June 2011.
    Ilan Ossendryver
  • Woman sculpting a clay pot in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, June 2011.
    Woman sculpting a clay pot in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, June 2011.
    Ilan Ossendryver
  • Woman with menorah in Addis Ababa, June 2011.
    Woman with menorah in Addis Ababa, June 2011.
    Ilan Ossendryver
  • Man with Star of David in Addis Ababa, June 2011.
    Man with Star of David in Addis Ababa, June 2011.
    Ilan Ossendryver
  • Paint on the side of a Jewish school in Gondar, Ethiopia, reads "Welcome Nacoej, Talmud Torah Class," June 2011.
    Paint on the side of a Jewish school in Gondar, Ethiopia, reads "Welcome Nacoej, Talmud Torah Class," June 2011.
    Ilan Ossendryver
  • Students at a Jewish school in Gondar, June 2011.
    Students at a Jewish school in Gondar, June 2011.
    Ilan Ossendryver
  • Men at morning prayers touch the Torah Scroll with the fringe of their prayer shawls at a Jewish compound in Gondar, June 2011.
    Men at morning prayers touch the Torah Scroll with the fringe of their prayer shawls at a Jewish compound in Gondar, June 2011.
    Ilan Ossendryver
  • Ethiopian men and women at morning prayer with a traditional dividing curtain between them, Gondar, June 2011.
    Ethiopian men and women at morning prayer with a traditional dividing curtain between them, Gondar, June 2011.
    Ilan Ossendryver
  • As of summer 2011, approximately 5,000 Beta Israel remain in Ethiopia anxiously waiting for an opportunity to join friends and family who are now in Israel.
    As of summer 2011, approximately 5,000 Beta Israel remain in Ethiopia anxiously waiting for an opportunity to join friends and family who are now in Israel.
    Ilan Ossendryver

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For South African photojournalist Ilan Ossendryver, photographing the Ethiopian Jewish community, also known as Beta Israel, started out professional but ended up personal.
His decades-long body of work is now represented in the exhibit "Beta Israel: Ethiopian Jews and the Promised Land," at the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art in Atlanta.
Ossendryver admits that he didn't know much about Ethiopian Jews before receiving an assignment years ago to cover their migration to Israel. Turns out that assignment wasn't so easy.
He recalls one of his first stops — an "absorption center" — in the southern Israeli town of Ashdod, where immigrants learn Hebrew and "get acclimatized to living in Israel."
He brought his camera, "but they weren't very happy about photography at the time."
The newly arrived immigrants were shy and uncomfortable about being photographed. But Ossendryver wanted to capture what he saw as resilience in a community stuck between two cultures in two countries.
His images offer a snapshot into the contemporary life of a community with a history that may not be well-known to many. And it may not be well-known because it is not entirely clear.
The contested origin story of the Ethiopian Jewish community has made the ongoing migration to Israel — which has happened in waves for decades — a complicated one.
Jewish ancestry determines whether one has a right to Israeli citizenship. Over the years, many Ethiopian Jews have lived as Christians, for example, to escape persecution — often going as far as tattooing crosses on their foreheads.
For Ossendryver, photography can do what historical analysis and DNA testing can't: examine how the community actually lives today.
The exhibition actually shows two groups: One still in Ethiopia, striving to make sense of its identity and trying to blend in while sustaining its traditions; the other group is seeking to carve out a new life in Israel.
The journey to Israel is one that the majority of Ethiopian Jews have shared in recent decades. According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, more than 78,000 Ethiopians have immigrated to Israel since 1980. By some estimates, only a few thousand remain in Ethiopia.
Getting to Israel isn't easy — and life for those who get there isn't easy, either, according to Ossendryver.
Recent events in Israel — like the vigorous and ongoing debate around immigration from Africa,accusations of discrimination and the recent news of Ethiopian immigrants being forcibly injected with birth control have also highlighted some tensions the community has faced within the country.
Even in the face of this adversity, Ossendryver says most Jews in Ethiopia have their eyes on Israel.
Ossendryver says one of his favorite scenes was a Jewish school in Gondar, Ethiopia. There, he says, students don't have to choose between two worlds.
"It's a really beautiful school. You'll see there's a picture of Africa, there's a picture of Israel and a picture of Ethiopia all in Amharic," the official language of Ethiopia, he recalls. "I found that quite nice to see."

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Yityish Aynaw: First black Miss Israel will go to the ball. BBC News


Yityish Aynaw and her brother Yellek
It's been an astonishing three weeks for Yityish Aynaw, an immigrant orphan from Ethiopia, who became the first black Miss Israel last month, and has now been invited to Thursday's gala dinner with visiting US President Barack Obama.
When Yityish Aynaw arrived in Israel as a 12-year-old, winning beauty contests and dining with presidents was as far from her thoughts as her native Ethiopia is from her adopted land.
Her mother had just died, leaving her an orphan - her father had died years earlier. So her mother's parents, who were among thousands of Ethiopian Jews already living in Israel, arrived in Addis Ababa to fetch Yityish and her older brother.
In their new home, they had to learn Hebrew from scratch.
"It wasn't easy because I couldn't speak the language and I was put into a regular class without any help," Aynaw, now 21, told the BBC World Service.

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Yityish Aynaw (Laisha Magazine)
Yityish Aynaw was interviewed on the BBC World Service programme Newshour
"It was a new language. It was a new culture. Quite often children even laughed at me," she says, though she adds that she also met many kind people.
But Aynaw was determined to succeed in her adopted country.
"I felt a responsibility to prove myself in everything I did and to improve myself as well," she says.
After school, like most other Israelis, she performed military service. She then stayed on in the army and was serving as an officer when she left, after three years, in September last year.
Before she was selected as Miss Israel on 27 February, she was a manager in a shoe shop in Netanya.
"For people from my country of origin it is a source of great pride," she says of her new title.
During the competition she named the black American civil rights leader Martin Luther King as one of her heroes.

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Her victory is great for us because it shows that the most beautiful woman is black and that people accept difference”
Penina Tamanu-ShataEthiopian Israeli MP
"He fought for justice and equality, and that's one of the reasons I'm here. I want to show that my community has many beautiful qualities that aren't always represented in the media," she said at the time.
But another hero, she told the BBC, was the US president.
"I was influenced and inspired by Obama. Like him, I was also raised by my grandmother. Nothing was handed to me on a plate and like him I also had to work very hard and long to achieve things in my life. To this day he inspires me just as he inspires the rest of the world," she says.
"I couldn't believe that one of the most influential people in the world, the head of such an important state, would invite someone like me to attend such an important event. It has only just now sunk in and I can understand that it's happening.
"It is a great honour not just for me, but the other people that I represent."
Aynaw says she hopes her victory will "achieve the acceptance of everyone in Israel".

Ethiopian Jews

Ethiopian Jews in Netanya
  • Some 120,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel
  • Known as Beta Israel, they mostly came from northern Ethiopia
  • They speak the Semitic languages Amharic and Tigrinya
  • Many Ethiopian Jews believe they are descended from one of Israel's ancient tribes
  • Israel decided in the 1970s that its law allowing Jews the right of return applied to them
Ethiopians often complain about discrimination when it comes to jobs, education and housing. There were even allegations last year that some new Ethiopian immigrants have been given contraceptive injections against their will.
Aynaw's victory "was very important for all Israeli society", says Penina Tamanu-Shata, one of two Ethiopian Israelis currently serving as a member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset.
"Her victory is great for us because it shows that the most beautiful woman is black and that people accept difference. Yityish won, but Israeli society also won. Her victory made a statement. She showed there are no limits."
Tamanu-Shata says the fact that the contest was shown on prime-time television was important as most Israelis encounter the Ethiopian community - just 120,000 strong - through the media.
"Sometimes the discrimination is under the surface. Most Israelis say they love the Ethiopian community, but there are still problems," she says.
"I think the situation is getting better, but we still have a lot of work to do."
Yityish Aynaw was interviewed on the BBC World Service programmeNewshour.
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Sunday, March 17, 2013

Ethiopia’s lost Jews- The Reporter

By Abdul Mohamed

The coercive eviction of Ethiopia’s Beta Israel community was an act of societal vandalism, whose stated justifications of hunger and religious discrimination are false.
The treatment of the Ethiopian Jews in Israel has been at best shabby and at worst—as we now learn—outright criminal. It is now time for both Israel and Ethiopia to apologize to the Beta Israel for how they have been treated and offer them the right to return to their Ethiopian homeland, with suitable compensation and guarantees on their personal and collective rights.

For millennia, Jewish communities were an integral part of Ethiopia’s social and cultural fabric. Over many hundreds of years, the three Abrahamic religions emerged in the fertile crescent, the Arabian peninsular and the Ethiopian highlands. The people of the Book coexisted and established a rich tapestry of culture and faith: they were part of the core of the historic societies on both shores of the Red Sea and the mountains beyond. Ethiopians have every reason to be proud of our Jewish heritage.

Historians cannot agree on the origins of the Ethiopian Jewish communities who called themselves Beta Israel and who were widely known as Falasha to other Ethiopians. Some claim that they were a lost tribe of Israel who migrated from Israel in the centuries before Christ. Others argue that there were numerous proto-Hebraic religions on both sides of the Red Sea, and some of their communities of followers embraced Judaism in historic times. Another explanation is that when Ethiopians adopted Christianity and started reading the Bible, they needed to find Jews who could fill that important role in the Holy Book, and so insisted that their Agaw neighbors, practitioners of these same Hebraic religions, were in fact Jews. Such stories of origin are all unproven, and none have any bearing on the devotion with which the Beta Israel practice their faith.

There is no doubt that when in Ethiopia, our Falasha communities were subject to discrimination, excluded from political office and often denied the right to own land. They suffered poverty and marginalization. However, their collective rights were respected and for the great majority of our history they worshipped undisturbed. And indeed there were many other minority peoples who suffered comparable or greater discrimination from the dominant highland peoples, including the pastoral nomads, Agaw groups such as the Qemant of northern Gondar, and the peoples of the western and southern frontiers who were historically subjected to enslavement.

One of the great achievements of the last forty years has been the decisive abolition of feudal and racial hierarchies in Ethiopia: we are all Ethiopian citizens, equal before the law. It is true that social attitudes can take longer to change, but the many formerly marginalized peoples are now respected by the constitution, and indeed given special rights for the protection of their languages, cultures and faiths. Had the Beta Israel remained at home, there is absolutely no question that they would enjoy protection under the constitution and all the rights extended to other minority nationalities and ethnic and religious groups. Their genuine grievances would have been redressed through the country’s post-1991 renewal.

Historical accident dictated otherwise. In the 1980s, American Jewish groups searching for “lost tribes” discovered the Falasha. In a series of military-style operations, Ethiopia’s Jews were surgically extracted from their ancestral lands. In the mid-1980s, in the clandestine Operation Moses, Jews were encouraged to flee secretly to Sudan, from whence they were airlifted to Israel. The CIA and the Israeli secret service paid millions of dollars to the Sudanese security services to facilitate this operation, which collapsed following the overthrow of the Nimeiri government in 1985. Israel subsequently cut secret deals with the Mengistu regime, supplying it with weapons such as cluster bombs (which were used to bombard Massawa after it was captured by the EPLF), in exchange for allowing the Falasha to leave. Knowing just how valuable were these Jewish hostages, Mengistu carefully maintained the rate of exodus at a slow trickle, extorting arms in return. As the EPRDF closed in on Addis Ababa, thousands of Falashas congregated in the city, and a central component of the American diplomacy that encouraged Mengistu to flee and recognized the Transitional Government headed by the EPRDF, was the melodramatic flight of these people to Israel onboard airliners with their seats ripped out so as to accommodate larger numbers of passengers. A few hundred remained behind and the EPRDF quietly let them depart over the following months.

None of these movements were without suffering. During the famine of 1984, the Falasha lived in one of the few well-watered areas of the northern highlands, where the impact of the hunger was muted. But the trek to Sudan and life in the Sudanese camps was a terrible experience and many died. Later on, the conditions of the Jews encamped around the Israeli embassy in makeshift shacks was deplorable, and their rushed flights to Israel were surely traumatic experiences.

Israeli attitudes towards the Ethiopian Jews were at best mixed. There was fierce debate at the outset as to whether they truly constituted Jews or needed formally to undergo conversion to qualify. They were subjected to racist attitudes by many Israelis, especially those newly arriving from the former Soviet Union and eastern bloc countries. Many Falasha joined the army, where they earned a reputation for fierceness. It is sad to see how many young Ethiopian Jews have become brutalized in this manner.

Now we have learned, from investigations carried out by Israeli human rights activists, that racist treatment was far more disturbing than everyday discrimination. Beginning from the time when Falasha women were given medical examinations in Sudanese refugee camps, they were administered the contraceptive drug Depo Provera without consent. This practice continued after arrival in Israel. Ethiopian Beta Israel women, for whom childbearing is the mot fundamental right and also a priceless element of their self-value and social standing, were being forcibly prevented from bearing children. Members of the community had long suspected that something was wrong, as their birthrate was too low. We now know it was deliberate: an officially orchestrated program to prevent births and keep their numbers low.

Parallels from modern history such as Australian programs of preventing Aboriginal women from bearing children spring to mind. Lawyers will peruse instruments of international law to see which conventions prohibit systematically preventing births among ethnic or racially defined groups. It is particularly shocking that Israeli Jews, a nation which does not need to be taught about the evils of such practices, are inflicting such violations on one of their own communities.

The Israeli government, without doubt, owes the Falasha community a formal apology and compensation. There should be an official inquiry and those found to be responsible should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. If Israeli domestic law is not up to the task, there are international courts available.

The Ethiopian state also owes the Beta Israel and apology. While the most egregious excesses were committed by the previous government of Mengistu Hailemariam, the current EPRDF government has preferred to close its eyes to the issue. And irrespective of which government perpetrated the violations, the state has a responsibility to its current and former citizens. Ethiopia may not be in a position to offer financial compensation to the Beta Israel, but it can offer them citizenship, and the status of a specially protected minority under the Federal Constitution.

The Ethiopian Beta Israel should be welcomed home. Those who wish to remain in Israel are of course perfectly entitled to do so. But those who wish to resume Ethiopian citizenship, or to acquire dual nationality should be able to do so. Ethiopia should seek a way to restore to them some of their former villages and synagogues, and should commission legal experts to explore the best way of ensuring that their individual and collective rights are fully protected under the constitution.

The extraction of the Falasha from Ethiopia remains a dark chapter in our history that we should not forget. As a nation we are poorer, deprived of their cultural and historical legacy. As a nation we are shamed by the cynical way in which our leaders exploited them for money and weapons. Most importantly, the Ethiopian Jews have become victims of this relocation, at best unwitting, at worst coerced. It is not surprising that people who have undergone such an uprooting are traumatized and prone to become social casualties. The revelation that the Israeli state has systematically violated their rights in the most sinister manner, betraying the trust that the Beta Israel put in that government as their protector, is a signal that this historic wrong needs to be righted.  The Israeli government has the most immediate obligations to restore the Falashas’ rights.

The Ethiopian government also has its responsibilities to shoulder. As part of Ethiopia’s renaissance, the government should break its silence, should speak out on behalf of its own children in an adopted land, and should extend to them the right and opportunity of return.

Ed's Note: The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of The Reporter. The writer can be reached atbati101@gmail.com 

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Ethiopian-born Miss Israel will meet President Obama | theGrio


Yityish Aynaw recently won the title of Miss Israel. (Photo by Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
Yityish Aynaw recently won the title of Miss Israel. (Photo by Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
President Barack Obama will be visiting Israel this coming week and among those who will meet him is the newly-crowned Miss Israel.
Originally hailing from Ethiopia, 21-year-old Yityish Aynaw was awarded the title and was the first Ethiopian-born Israeli to claim the pageant win.
“It’s important that a member of the Ethiopian community win the competition for the first time,” she was recorded answering to judges during the pageant. “There are many different communities of many different colors in Israel, and it’s important to show that to the world.”
Following her victory, Aynaw received a special invitation to meet and dine with President Obama and Israeli President Shimon Peres during Obama’s upcoming trip to the Middle Eastern country.
When asked why she was given the distinct honor to attend, Aynaw said in a Jerusalem Post piece that she is “the first black Miss Israel to be chosen and [Obama] is the first black American president. These go together.”
After moving to Israel at the age of 12, working as a clothing store sales assistant and joining the army, the opportunity once seemed like a far-fetched idea and Aynaw “didn’t think that such a thing could happen to her.”
It will be a memorable experience for the young pageant winner, who credited civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. for having a large influence on who she has become.
“He fought for justice and equality, and that’s one of the reasons I’m here,” she said. “I want to show that my community has many beautiful qualities that aren’t always represented in the media.”
Follow Lilly Workneh @Lilly_Work