Last Ethiopian Jews Finally Make Exodus to Israel

GONDAR, ETHIOPIA — In the half-light of dawn, 16 families huddle on benches in the early morning chill, waiting patiently for their journey to a new and unimaginable life. They sit in a courtyard, hidden from the view of friends and relatives who have come to say farewell, behind the modest local offices of the Jewish Agency for Israel, in a walled and guarded lot.

The women, wearing headscarves, are wrapped in flowing gabis ­­— traditional Ethiopian throw blankets. Some men are dressed in Western clothing; others dress more traditionally and grasp their dulas, or walking sticks. Some of these 82 adults and children have crosses tattooed on their foreheads, emblematic of their Christian backgrounds — and of the status that has kept them and their compatriots waiting in Gondar for a decade or more to emigrate to Israel despite their validated claims of Jewish ancestry.

But the previous morning, the heads of these families were handed a small travel allowance by officials from the Jewish Agency for their long awaited journey. Each signed the acknowledgement of receipt with a thumbprint. As village people who used to farm with oxen and are now day laborers, it is clear that they will not fit into Israeli society easily.

Twenty years after the second of two mass airlifts of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, the seemingly endless trickle of other Ethiopian immigrants who claim Jewish ancestry is coming to a long-delayed conclusion. Known as Falash Mura, such Ethiopians lived as Christians for generations in order to escape persecution. But in recent decades, they asserted their Jewish ancestry and began to practice Judaism. Their relatives in Israel have petitioned the government to allow them to immigrate and join the estimated 130,000 Ethiopian Israelis already there, including roughly 35,000 other Falash Mura.

These 16 families in Gondar are among the early beneficiaries of Cabinet Decision No. 2434 of November 14, 2010, which committed Israel to ending the immigration of Ethiopians with the intake of some 8,700 more Falash Mura within two to three years.

Although there have been several claims in past years that the immigration from Ethiopia was finished, the major players all seem to agree that this time it feels genuine. “This is absolutely the end of the organized aliyah from Ethiopia,” says Shlomo Molla, the only Ethiopian member of Israel’s Knesset. “After the families approved in Gondar come in, immigration from Ethiopia will be on an individual basis like anywhere else.”

The Falash Mura are being brought in not under Israel’s Law of Return, which grants Jews an automatic right to enter and become citizens, but under the Law of Entry, for family reunifications. This enables the Ministry of the Interior to set its own guidelines. Those slated to enter via this final wave have consequently faced criteria and scrutiny that give new meaning to the phrase “the chosen people.”

Under the terms of the November 2010 Israeli Cabinet agreement, entry will be limited to Ethiopians who appear on an existing census of Falash Mura, those who can prove matrilineal Jewish ancestry going back two generations, and those whose relatives in Israel have petitioned the government to allow them to immigrate. Nearly all of the Falash Mura gathered in Gondar have been waiting there for more than a decade. But it is expected that some 10% to 20% will not meet the matrilineal criterion — the traditional religious qualification for being considered a Jew.

At the entry rate of 200 immigrants per month specified by the November 2010 decision, the wait for some families could be another three years. But in June – typical of what has been happening to the Falash Mura aliyah – the Finance Ministry, citing the budget for immigrant housing, recommended that the rate be cut from 200 to 110 immigrants per month. For some, this will prolong the wait to 2015.

Israelis became aware of the Falash Mura when thousands appeared in Addis Ababa, just before Operation Solomon, the 1991 airlift of more than 14,000 Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors never abandoned their Jewish practice). Then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declined to take them in, believing they were Christians who were claiming Jewish identity to escape Ethiopia, which was in the midst of a civil war. Although many influential Israelis, including Chief Sephardic Rabbi Shlomo Amar and a former Supreme Court justice, have since concluded that the Falash Mura are “Jewish beyond a doubt,” many still adhere to Shamir’s point of view or versions of it.

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/142154/#ixzz1Wo51GZKW

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