The Tragedy of Ethiopian Jewry

I didn’t want to go.

A few months ago, I was invited to join a Rabbinic mission to Ethiopia.  I hesitated and procrastinated, hoping they would just send the mission without me. But I had been invited by dear friends, and it finally reached the point when I couldn’t refuse any longer. So muttering under my breath that I was too busy to leave work for a week, I boarded a plane for Addis Ababa.

Now, I’m embarrassed that I hesitated. This trip has changed my life.

Ethiopian Jewry has long stood at the periphery, isolated from the rest of the Jewish world. When outside Jews connected with them, Rabbis were often the first to support them. In the early 1500s, Rabbi David ibn Zimra was asked to judge the lineage of an Ethiopian Jewish woman who had been sold into slavery and bought by one of the members of the Cairo community. He ruled definitively that the woman was Jewish, a descendant of one of the Ten Lost Tribes. In 1864, Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer wrote a passionate plea calling for financial support for and political advocacy on behalf of the Jews of Abyssinia (today’s Ethiopia). In 1921, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook called for Jews around the world to accept upon themselves “…a sacred duty …to generously contribute donations for the welfare of the Jews in Ethiopia, to support the relocation of their young people to Jewish centers in the Diaspora and the Land of Israel, and to assist in every aspect of their material and spiritual revival.” A 1973 responsa by the new Chief Rabbi, Ovadiah Yoseph, ruled that Ethiopian Jews are to be accepted fully as Jews. The door was now open for immigration to Israel.

When Menachem Begin was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1977, he turned to the Mossad and said: “Bring me the Jews of Ethiopia.” Finally, they could come home.

A series of dramatic rescue operations commenced. In Operation Brothers, the Mossad bought and operated a Red Sea resort during the day, and used its beach to smuggle Ethiopian Jewish refugees at night. In Operation Moses, the IDF and the CIA airlifted thousands of refugees from Sudan to Belgium and on to Israel. In 1991, Operation Solomon, which took place during a Civil war in Ethiopia, brought over 14,000 Jews to Israel in one day.

But then everything changed. There was a feeling of “mission accomplished,” even though tens of thousands of Jews remained in Ethiopia. Many of those left behind were the Falash Mura, whose families had converted to Christianity. Even though Rabbi Ovadiah Yoseph had affirmed the Jewish status of the Falash Mura, politicians and bureaucrats, deterred by the high cost of absorbing Ethiopian immigrants, balked at bringing them to Israel. Right now, many have been stranded in Ethiopia for years, waiting for the final approval on their applications.

Once again, Ethiopian Jews are on the periphery, largely forgotten by the Jewish world.

One champion, Joe Feit, took up their cause. A partner in a prestigious law firm, he left his job decades ago to focus on Ethiopian Jewry full time; he has been very active with the SSEJ, the Struggle to Save Ethiopian Jewry, an organization founded by his son Jeremy. Together with his other children and a small band of activists (including the late Elie Wiesel and Joe Lieberman), Feit has advocated and fundraised for the Ethiopian Jews who remained behind.

What the SSEJ has accomplished is nothing short of remarkable. At their compounds in Gondar and Addis Ababa, the SSEJ provides food, medical care, and supplementary Jewish education. These programs have saved many lives, and the community is extremely grateful; several of them have named their baby boys “Joefeit.”

Since 1991, some 50,000 Ethiopian Jews have immigrated to Israel. Now, some 13,000 remain, supported by the SSEJ.

It is those remaining Jews that we visited on our rabbinic mission. And the conditions they live in are disturbing.

In Gondar and Addis Ababa, we went to visit people who live in tiny mud huts with corrugated aluminum roofs. In one, a family of 5 was living in an 80 square foot space; they utilized a shared kitchen and outhouse in the courtyard.

One of the Rabbis asked the woman who lived there what her family gets to eat. Our interpreter refused to translate the question; he said it would be too painful for her to talk about how little she and her family eat.

The situation of Ethiopian Jews has been desperate for a long time; and this year it is worse. Budget shortfalls have forced SSEJ to cut its food program for four and five-year-olds and regular grain distributions to families. At different points in our visit, several community members told us how they simply cannot continue their lives this way. The poverty is excruciating.

It was difficult to witness all of this. But what truly broke my heart was how lonely the Jews of Ethiopia are.

The first morning we were in Gondar, we joined the community for morning services. By the time services were over, nearly 4,000 people had packed into the compound to see us, overflowing from the synagogue into several nearby rooms. It was the first time in a long time that a delegation had come to see them. They have been forgotten.

After the services, we were approached by an unending line of people who handed us pictures of their relatives in Israel. It was pictures of their parents, children, and siblings; pictures of young soldiers and elderly mothers. In some instances, they have been waiting for decades to be reunited with their relatives; but they are stuck in a Kafkaesque bureaucratic limbo, unable to enter Israel. A child in Ethiopia might qualify to be reunited with a parent in Israel; but if the process moves too slowly (as it almost always does) and the parent dies, the child then no longer qualifies.

Ethiopian Jews have always had a profound love for Israel. When we met with the community council in Gondar, they presented us with a letter, written in idiomatic English, detailing their communal challenges. The final paragraph spoke of their longing to go to Israel:

We request you to quicken our journey to the Holy Land and contact us with our families there. Please enable us to stop weeping. With respect to this, we beg you to discuss with the concerned body and make it practical, as our creator promised to contact the far distant area people… We, by the name of God, beg you to make it practical.

We hope to be in Israel by next year.

In Gondar and Addis Ababa, they dream fervently of “next year in Jerusalem.” Their passion for Israel is extraordinary. But the very country they love has left them behind.

This makes no sense. Israel can use all the help it can get; and the Ethiopian community has demonstrated exceptional devotion to Israel. Young Ethiopian soldiers are overrepresented in commando units, and are prized for their courage; in the current war, the Ethiopian community has sustained, proportionally, twice as many casualties as the general public.

There are so many other young Jews like these soldiers languishing in mud huts in Gondar and Addis Ababa. Why would we want to shut the door in their faces?

This must change. The Jews of Ethiopia are our family. And since October 7th, we have learned how much family matters.

One of our meetings was with Sisai, a young man in his twenties who is one of the Gondar community’s religious leaders. He spoke passionately of how he has his Jewish lineage documented, yet still has to wait for a chance to apply for Aliyah. He remarked offhand that Jews will never achieve redemption unless we care for each other.

That is a fitting Pesach thought. Not just because it is about redemption; but because it is the very story the Tanakh tells about the Exodus.

The brothers throw Joseph into a pit, and then sell him into slavery. He cries out to them, but they don’t listen. As a result, they are exiled to Egypt. Three other siblings, Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, support and care for each other; and together, they bring the Jews out of Egypt.

The equation is clear. Fighting siblings end up in exile; loving siblings bring about redemption.

And this has been true through history. The internal strife of the Second Temple ended in exile; in 1948, the unparalleled support of Jews around the world resulted in the creation of the State of Israel.

Right now, we have a choice to make: will we be there for our Jewish brothers and sisters in Ethiopia?

They are crying out to us for help. It would be a tragedy of biblical proportions if we miss the call again.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.