nee silent and sweet, a 3e c ge r erati n
of Et lopian Israelis cc
n ordinary days, Addisu Messale, cellular phone in
hand, rides around Israel listening to the prob-
lems of Ethiopian immigrants and pressuring
authorities to solve them.
Mr. Messale, head of the United Ethiopi-
an Organizations, is the recognized leader
of the Israeli population of some 60,000 for-
mer Ethiopians who have made the Jew-
ish state their adopted home in the past
12 years. He hopes to make a decisive en-
try into the high circles of Israeli power
next month, when he runs in the Labor
Party's primaries for a safe seat on its Knes-
set list. If he succeeds, he would become the
country's first Ethiopian-born Knesset mem-
ber.
Outwardly, it would seem that Ethiopians
such as Mr. Messale are weaving their way into
the fabric of everyday Israeli life, with bountiful as-
sistance from the government. Israel has given them every-
thing money can buy — nearly free apartments, massive school and income
subsidies, job training and more. "Everything you're talking about here is
material," says Mr. Messale. "What the Ethiopians want is respect."
Indeed, within the Ethiopian community is a bubbling brew of bitterness
and suspicion, borne of a perceived lack of respect by their countrymen. This
is especially true for a generation of young immigrants whose rage — cap-
tured by television worldwide — played out during a Jan. 28 riot outside the
prime minister's office.
On that day, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at some 10,000 Ethiopi-
an immigrant protesters, who had converged on the streets of Jerusalem af-
ter the Ma'ariv daily reported that the Magen David Adorn emergency clinic
had for years been disposing of blood donated by Ethiopians, without telling
them. A fear of AIDS contamination — tests showed Ethiopians to be 43
times more likely to carry HIV — led to the dumping.
While the window-smashing and rock-throwing was started by some
angry teen-age boys, once the police started firing tear gas, much of the crowd
got swept up in the violence. Sixty-two police officers and protesters were
hospitalized in the aftermath.
And Israelis and the Jewish world had to confront what they already knew:
These Ethiopian youths had grown up as Israelis, a people accustomed to
fighting for what they believe and making their opinions known.
The journey to the recent riot from the days that the Ethiopians arrived
in Israel — in two large waves, first in 1986 and then in 1991 — is figura-
tively 3,000 years. For that period of time, this ancient Jewish community
maintained its faith, praying fervently for its dream of being taken to the
Land of Israel.
Indeed, upon the Ethiopians' arrival in the Jewish state, Jews virtually
burst into collective tears of joy, contemplating not only the hardships the
newcomers had endured, but the role world Jewry played in bringing them
home to Zion.
So when the violence broke, Mr. Messale became quite an uncomfort-
able sight for a Jewish world that had embraced its perceived docile and
humble Jewish brothers and sisters.
Mr. Messale, hoarse from hours of shouting at Ethiopians and police to
back off from each other, issued an exasperated warning via the TV cam-
eras. Unless the AIDS stigma was removed from Ethiopian blood, "We won't
be able to calm people down. What happened today will be only the begin-
ning."
In the aftermath, the Ethiopians believe that the outburst was inevitable,
that their rage was fully justified, and that if they are not treated better in
the future, there will be worse riots. "From now on, it's going to be an eye for
an eye," says Esther David, 20, an Ethiopian-born student in Bat Yam who
plans on becoming a journalist.
Many believe the source of the Ethiopian rage emerges from a sense
s s ras.
that while they may be climbing, they're still on the bottom of the ladder.
But others believe the turmoil has more to do with a rejection of the Jew-
ish practices the immigrants brought with them when they were rescued
from African persecution and airlifted to Israel.
"The Ethiopian immigrants appreciate the assistance they've received,
but it's not enough," says Malka Shabta'i, an Israeli anthropologist who has
been researching Ethiopian immigrants for 14 years. "They didn't come here
to improve their standard of living. They came here to fulfill their dream
as Jews."
Ethiopian Jews are an extremely religious and conservative people. Their
lives in Ethiopia revolved around the synagogues, led by kessem, their spir-
itual leaders. There, they prayed in an ancient language called Giza. The
kessem officiated over holiday festivals, weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs
and brits. Since resettlement, all this has been taken away from them by the
Orthodox rabbinical establishment that rules Judaism in Israel.
There are no synagogues where the language of prayer is Giza. The kessem
have been granted no religious authority whatsoever. Of the hundreds of
sanctioned rabbis in the country, only 10 are willing to perform Ethiopian
weddings; the remainder are too doubtful of the Ethiopians' Judaism to do
so. There isn't a single Ethiopian immigrant on any of the councils that over-
see religious affairs in the country's towns and cities. Twelve Ethiopian rab-
binical students have been ordained, but are allowed to act as rabbis only
for Ethiopian immigrants, not for other Israelis.
Ethiopians, who in their homeland were among the most pious Jews on
earth, tend to stay away from Israeli synagogues. "People stare at us," says
Mr. Messale. "We're looked on as strange."
Between the scorn shown them by the Orthodox establishment, and the
tempting influence of the dominant secular culture in Israel, many young
Ethiopian immigrants have fallen away from observant Judaism.
Humiliation In Blood
,
Mr. Messale's first encounter with the Israeli rabbinate — three days
after he arrived in the country — led to the start of his activist career. He
and scores of other Ethiopian men were taken from their Beersheba ab-
sorption center for what was described as the "renewal of the covenant."
Israel's rabbinic establishment didn't recognize the Ethiopians as Jews, so
mohels were dispatched to prick the men's penises with a needle and draw
a symbolic drop of blood. It didn't matter, Mr. Messale said, that all Ethiopi-
an Jewish men were circumcised.
"We were taken to a room where there were three men in beards and
white robes," he recalls. "They told us to pull down our pants, and they
drew blood from all the Ethiopian men. When they got to me, I asked them
why I had to do this. They just repeated, 'Pull down your pants.' I refused.
Finally they told me it was for immunization against disease, and I be-
lieved them. A week later I received a 'certificate of conversion,' meaning
that in their eyes, I hadn't been a Jew. I can't describe to you how low I felt
— it was a black day."
Mr. Messale and others wanted to stop this practice, but were afraid that
if they made waves, Israel might stop smuggling Jews out of Ethiopia. When
Operation Moses — the large-scale rescue operation — was revealed pub-
licly in 1984, they rebelled openly.
With the aid of some sympathetic Jewish Agency workers, Mr. Messale
boarded planes filled with Ethiopians arriving at Ben-Gurion Airport and
told them, "Don't take down your pants."
Masses of Ethiopians protested in tents outside the chief rabbinate's head-
quarters in Jerusalem. Ethiopian children stayed out of school. A hunger
strike lasted 35 days. "Mohels were afraid to come into the absorption cen-
ters. In the Afula center, the Ethiopians cut off their earlocks," Mr..Messale
says. In the end, after much turmoil, the rabbinate ceased the "renewal of
the covenant" practice.
Most Ethiopians live in ghettos of Israel's largely working-class and work-
ing-poor cities: Beersheba, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Afula, Kiryat Gat, Lod, Ram-
le, Hadera and others.