(JTA) — To immigrate to Israel from Ethiopia, Pnina Tamano-Shata’s family had to trek on foot through the desert to Sudan in the middle of a famine. Later, the truck bringing her mother and two of her sisters to the airfield broke down. It wasn’t until the plane doors closed that Tamano-Shata realized that they…
In the 1997 Seinfeld episode “The Strike,” George Castanza is embarrassed when his father Frank shamelessly promotes Festivus, a December 23 celebration that Frank created years ago in reaction to the other winter festivals in popular culture. The episode ends with George’s friends and enemies joining together at the Castanza home as Frank leads the…
Immediately after the normally joyous holiday of Passover, Jews enter the period of Sefirah, a traditionally somber time that concludes seven weeks later with the joyous festival of Shavuot. The Talmudic tractate of Yebamot ties this period of sadness to the fact that thousands of disciples of the great sage, Rabbi Akiva, perished in a…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — An Israeli kindergarten was ordered closed after segregating students by race. The children of Ethiopian descent in the southern town of Kiryat Gat met in an auxiliary room with a separate entrance, The Times of Israel reported. They were spread out to kindergartens and day cares throughout the town, with transportation provided…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Thousands of Ethiopian Israelis and their supporters demonstrated in cities across Israel on Tuesday night to protest the killing two nights earlier of an Ethiopian teen by an off-duty police officer. At least 60 protesters were arrested and at least 47 police officers were injured as protesters blocked major intersections throughout the…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — An Ethiopian-Israeli teen was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer who said he felt in danger after he tried to break up a street fight in a northern Israeli city. Solomon Tekah, 19, was killed on Sunday night in Kiryat Haim, a suburb of Haifa. Eyewitnesses to the incident told…
Hadar Yosef came to Israel from Ethiopia in 1983 after traveling to Sudan by foot. She was 17 when she did this, with only her brother for company. Her parents and older brother remained behind in Ethiopia for another year, where the Beta Jews of Ethiopia are thought to have arrived sometime between the 1st…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Rabbi Moshe Havlin, the chief rabbi of the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Gat, reportedly said he would withdraw kosher certification from a local catering company if Ethiopian women continued to prepare the food there, unless they could prove their Jewishness. Under Orthodox Jewish law, certain foods which were completely cooked by…
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