A small but vibrant community of Jews lives in Gondar, Ethiopia. They worship daily at their synagogue, run by the Hatikva Beta Israel Religious Organisation. The synagogue, made of corrugated iron, houses the shabbat services as well as classes in Hebrew for children and the rehearsals of a folk group. They observe a strict kosher diet, not eating meat because the community does not have a butcher certified in orthodox Jewish laws and practices.
After two waves of immigration - Operations Moses in 1984 and Salomon in 1991 when they were airlifted out of their country of birth, some 120.000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel now. But the Gondar community cannot emigrate: they are Falash Muras, whose Jewishness is not recognised by the State of Israel.
Wudie Molla Tessema, aged 60 to 65 – she does not know her exact birth date – and her family live in two poor huts, next to the synagogue. She is a widow and raises two of her grandchildren whose father died. Her son Gashaw Abinet Malede is 27, has one child and is the synagogue’s Torah reader. Her daughter Mulu Tesfa Negusie is around 32 and has five children.
Grandmother Wudie laments :
“Wealthy in the morning, poor in the afternoon! We abandoned a good life in our village to perform aliyah, the return to the Promised Land, and now we are stuck in misery in Gondar.
Even if life, back in the village, was not easy – I did not know my mother who died when I was four and I was raised by my stepmother – we were much better off than we are now: we owned three acres of good arable land – the average for Ethiopian peasants, is one acre. We grew everything we needed.
My son went back to the village to see if we could claim our farmland and move back there, but is not possible: the land has been re-allocated to other peasants by the government.
Why do we want to perform aliyah to Israel? We always felt we were living in a foreign land here. The Lord promised us the land of Israel. Since childhood were told stories about the land of milk and honey. Whenever we sat for coffee with our parents, or when they were weaving, we were told we would go to the promised land, either with our parents or later, we, their children.
Yes, I feel terribly sad I cannot do aliyah, but I am still full of hope, I would one day inherit the land I have been promised since childhood. We are the Chosen People and God will keep His promise.
When our village neighbours who have been successful in performing aliyah come back to visit us, they are like flowers. I know they sometimes suffer from discrimination in Israel, but if our skin colour is different, isn’t our blood the same?”
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