For the first time last year, Israel’s Knesset held a special session on a shocking issue: the imprisonment of large numbers of soldiers of Ethiopian origin by the army. Pnina Tamano-Shata, one of the country’s two Ethiopian members of the Knesset, reminded her fellow MKs that 40% of all Ethiopian men who have served in…
On Wednesday, 21-year-old Yityish Aynaw was crowned Miss Israel for 2013. The occasion marked the first time an Ethiopian Israeli had won the national beauty pageant. Despite the landmark moment, I have to be honest: I was more excited when Pnina Tamano-Shata, a lawyer and member of the Yesh Atid party, was recently elected the…
The recent admission by the state of Israel that it has been clandestinely using Depo-Provera, contraceptive injection containing the hormone progestin, on Ethiopian Israeli women is just the beginning. Israel must apologize and make restitution to the victims. There should be an apology by no less than the Prime Minister, not only to Ethiopian Jews…
An easy case followed by a harder case: At the beginning January, Israel’s Channel 2 reported that it had encountered in the town of Kiryat Malachi what used to be called here in the United States a “restrictive covenant.” Such a covenant is a legal device that enables the seller (or renter) of real estate…
In the half-light of dawn, 16 families huddle on benches in the early morning chill, waiting patiently for their journey to a new and unimaginable life. They sit in a courtyard, hidden from the view of friends and relatives who have come to say farewell, behind the modest local offices of the Jewish Agency for…
Melissa Fay Greene is the author of “No Biking in the House Without a Helmet.” Her posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in November 2001, I…
On October 14 at the Osher Marin JCC in San Rafael, California, at a performance for 400 middle school students from six different Bay Area Jewish day schools, the members of the Beta Dance Troupe seemed to defy the laws of human kinetics. Their shoulders pulsed, their heads bobbed and their elbows flapped, while their…
The contentious debate over the immigration to Israel of the Falash Mura — Ethiopians who claim descent from Jewish converts to Christianity — is pitting the two Ethiopian members of Israel’s parliament against each other. Even as Israel’s government has declared an end to the mass-immigration of the Falash Mura, Ha’aretz reports that Mazor Bahyna…
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