Ethiopian Israelis Take on Leadership Roles

Still, as David works with parent groups and community activists across Israel, he relies on more than his work experience and academic qualifications to guide him. One of the 15,000-plus Ethiopian Jews who came to Israel through Operation Moses — the first mass rescue operation from Ethiopia supported by the American Jewish community — David's journey to Israel is a tale of faith, fear and blind courage. It is this journey — from Ethiopia to Sudan to the country that became his new home — which continues to shape his life and his work today.

It was 1984, and David was 17 and studying at a Christian high school in Gondar. He had been living in the city for the better part of four years, after attending a series of Jewish day schools funded by the Diaspora Jewish community. By the time he was 12, Ethiopia’s Communist government declared the Jewish schools imperialist and closed the system down, imprisoning the teachers and burning their books.

"We felt like we didn’t belong in Ethiopia," tells David, who is now 39. "Jerusalem was the land of Israel. In each blessing, we would mention Jerusalem. So we started planning to go to our land."

David, an older cousin and a group of other Jewish teenagers spent a year planning their escape, telling no one, including their families. They were 13 teenagers and they knew they had to get to Sudan, to Gedaref, where Israeli organizations had local representatives who could help them reach Israel.

"We were excited," remembers David. "We were teenagers, we had no fear." He chuckles and shakes his head. "I would never do such a thing now."

They hired guides to take them through the rebel regions — Ethiopians who stole the group’s belongings, and later blackmailed them for more money. When they finally left them, the guides took what food remained and said that Sudan was about a day’s hike away. A chance meeting with an old farmer gave them some respite from the journey, including a hot meal and beds in which to sleep.

After the farmer’s sons led the group toward Sudan, it took a week for them to safely cross the Takkaze River, the geographical border between Ethiopia and Sudan. Once in Sudan, they managed to hitch the nine-hour journey from a couple of Sudanese officers. But as they were ready to leave, their drivers demanded that they leave two of the girls behind. And then, help appeared from another unexpected source: an Ethiopian dressed in the flowing robes of the Sudanese, who bribed the officers and sent David’s group along on the truck. They landed at a detention center, where they were eventually found by Jewish agents who brought them to one of the interim refugee camps outside Gedaref for several months.

When they finally arrived in Israel, the group was brought to Tsafat, a place they had never heard mentioned when dreaming of Jerusalem. David spent two months in the hospital recovering from his experience before being moved to a yeshiva in Beersheva. Here, even once in Israel, his journey's tests of identity and leadership continued. As tensions with Israel's religious authorities arose regarding conversion of Ethiopian Jews, David and his friends decided to leave the yeshiva. Instead he moved to study Hebrew at an ulpan in Netanya.

By now it was nearly a year since David and his group had begun their journey, and they had had no contact with their families. A chance interaction with an American tourist in Netanya brought him in contact with one of his cousins who worked in Gondar’s one hospital. A week later, David finally spoke to his family.

"My parents — all of our parents — had sat shiva for us. They thought we were dead," David says. "When I got on the phone with my grandfather, I couldn’t speak. I just cried."

David’s parents and eight siblings made it to Israel in 1991, on Operation Solomon — the second mass rescue mission funded by the American Jewish community that brought 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. By then, he had earned a degree in social work from Bar Ilan University and served in the army as an education officer. As a student, he received several JDC grants and worked with new Ethiopian immigrants, explaining how to operate within the Israeli bureaucracy.

After spending seven years on the Israeli police force as an officer in the immigration department, he joined JDC as a coordinator for educational and leadership training programs, helping the community help themselves as they face one of their most major integration challenges — educational underachievement among Ethiopian-Israeli children and youth.

David's role is to help Ethiopians, whether new immigrants or more established citizens, to adjust to the Israeli educational system, helping parents work with and support their children. For many parents who have no formal education themselves or else are used to schools in Ethiopia where a hands-off parental role is a deeply rooted norm, this help is crucial. In fact, Ethiopian-Israeli parents often feel belittled by Israeli educational professionals who simply do not understand their background.

This is where David's experiences make such a difference. As he says, "My added value within the community is that I understand where they’re coming from and how to help them. I feel like I’m a kind of ambassador. I can show them that I also went through this whole process. So I try to be an example to them."