Ethiopian Aliyah Featured in This Year’s Film Festival

By Tair Giudice

The Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte is a proud sponsor of the Charlotte Jewish Film Festival, a program of the Levine Jewish Community Center. The Federation is also proud to sponsor the film “The Passengers” as part of this year’s 17th annual film festival.

“The Passengers” tells the story of the Ethiopian Jews and the struggle for this final community to immigrate to Israel. The film follows the journey of two young men as they represent their Ethiopian community on a fateful mission in America.

Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the government of Israel has brought 3.3 million new olim (immigrants) to Israel, including 95,000 immigrants from Ethiopia. In the mid-1980s, 8,000 immigrants arrived with Operation Moses through Sudan. In Operation Solomon, conducted in 1991, an airlift brought 14,000 immigrants to Israel. In the summer of 2013, Operation Dove’s Wings brought an additional 7,000 immigrants from Ethiopia to Israel. This Aliyah (immigration to Israel) from Ethiopia is a core mission of Jewish Federations and the Jewish Agency for Israel and is central to their collaborative work.

However, many thousands are still waiting in Ethiopia to join their families in Israel. Most have left their homes and villages to wait in the major cities of Gondar and Addis Ababa. They are known as Falash Mura, or Falashmura, the name given to those of the Jewish Ethiopian community in Ethiopia and Eritrea who converted to Christianity during a time of upheaval, famine, and ethnic strife in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some members of this community who are not eligible for Aliyah under Israel’s Law of Return managed to immigrate to Israel during Operations Solomon and Moses in 1984 and 1991 respectively, during which time the entirety of the Jewish Ethiopian community that had never converted was brought to Israel. In November 2015, the government of Israel issued a formal decision to bring the remainder of the Falash Mura waiting in transit camps in Ethiopia to Israel on the basis of family reunification. This decision was embraced by Jews across the world, but implementation has been slow, primarily for budgetary reasons. Despite ongoing limbo and harsh conditions, the communities in these cities maintain a strong Jewish identity and carry out daily Jewish rituals.

Operation Zur Israel, which kicked off in December 2020, aims to reunify 2,000 Ethiopians waiting in Addis Ababa and Gondar with their families in Israel. The first Aliyah flights with about 500 immigrants on board landed in Israel in early December 2020.

The Jewish Agency works in full cooperation with the government of Israel, primarily with the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, on Ethiopian Aliyah. The organization has been authorized by the government of Israel to operate all Aliyah preparation in Ethiopia and to oversee the arrival and integration of these new immigrants into Israeli society. Once these olim land in Israel, the Jewish Agency provides them with their first home in one of its absorption centers dedicated specifically to meeting the needs of Ethiopian immigrants and provides Hebrew and vocational training for adults, academic enrichment, after-school activities for the children, and social and recreational activities for all. Support for these efforts is provided by Jewish Federations across the country through our collective overseas dollars to The Jewish Agency.

Jewish Federations nationally and The Jewish Agency are awaiting final approval from the government of Israel to bring all those waiting in Ethiopia to Israel.