Ethiopian Jews await chance to go to Israel
By Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times
Feb 10, 2006 (ADDIS ABABA) — In shantytowns scattered around the imposing Israeli Embassy here, thousands of self-described Ethiopian Jews wait idly, hoping one day to make it to the Promised Land.
They started flooding to Addis Ababa nearly a decade ago, expecting to join a massive migration to Israel.
Now many are caught in limbo. They abandoned jobs, homes and in some cases religious beliefs, but are uncertain whether they will ever join a resettlement program bogged down by budget constraints, political whims and an international debate over who is a Jew.
Like many, Haymanot Hailu, 34, moved eight years ago to a one-room metal shack in the shadow of the heavily guarded hillside embassy.
She and her husband gave up a comfortable life as sorghum farmers in the green hills of the north to bring their six children to Ethiopia’s congested capital. Neither can find steady work; they barely earn enough as day laborers to feed the family. They are sustained by one dream: to go to Israel, where, Hailu’s sister waits.
“I miss our old life very much, but now I try to forget it,” Hailu said. “I’m only looking forward. There’s no going back.
“I don’t know what we will do if we don’t go. We are Jews, and we want to go to the Promised Land.”
It’s unclear whether Hailu, and thousands like her, will be judged by Israeli authorities as eligible for relocation. Many are suspected of feigning Jewish roots to trade an often impoverished existence for a more comfortable, government-subsidized life in Israel. Others won’t qualify under eligibility rules; they must have relatives living in Israel.
“We can’t estimate how many are waiting for nothing,” said Konforti Ori, head of the Jewish Agency for Israel in Addis Ababa, appointed by the Israeli government to sort out who is a Jew and which Jews qualify for immigration.
A final list of those eligible for resettlement is expected in June.
“It’s a tragedy,” he said. “We’re going to give many people – maybe hundreds, maybe thousands – a negative answer.”
Israel’s resettlement efforts have relocated more than 50,000 Ethiopian Jews in 20 years. Known as Beta Israel or Falasha, they are believed by some to be lost descendants of the ancient tribe of Dan, perhaps having emigrated from what is now Israel to Egypt nearly 2,000 years ago.
Many Ethiopians believe the first Jews arrived here 1,000 years before that, with Menelik I, allegedly the son of King Solomon and the queen of Sheba.
Other scholars speculate that Ethiopian Jews are former Christians who broke with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church several hundred years ago and began practicing Judaism.
(The Cincinnati Post)