History of The Jews in The African Diaspora - Ethiopian Jews

Ethiopian Jews

Individual Ethiopian Jews had lived in the Land of Israel prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. A youth group arrived in Israel in the 1950s to undergo training in Hebrew education and returned to Ethiopia to educate young Jews there. Also, Ethiopian Jews had been trickling into Israel prior to the 1970s.

During the 1970s, members of the Beta Israel, a community of Ethiopian Jews, began to immigrate to Israel after Ovadia Yosef, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, ruled that they were descendents of the Biblical Israelites and that they should be eligible for citizenship under Israel's Law of Return. As famine gripped Ethiopia during the 1980s, several thousand Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel in Operation Moses, but political instability in Ethiopia and Sudan made further immigration impossible. In 1991, when circumstances changed, more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews were flown to Israel in Operation Solomon.

Absorption of the Ethiopian Jews into Israeli society has been complicated by what some members of the community perceive as racism. According to the Anti-Defamation League, there are few reports of discrimination in Israel. Most Israelis support the Ethiopian Jews, who have received more aid from the Israeli government than any previous immigrant group. One study attributed some of the problems to the model of absorption chosen by the Israeli government. To prepare for the absorption the Ethiopian Jews, Israel adopted two "Master Plans", the first in 1985 and the second in 1991. Like earlier absoption policies, both Master Plans were based on the assumption that the new immigrants were broadly similar to Israel's existing majority population.

The Israeli Chief Rabbinate required the new arrivals to undergo certain conversion procedures, which many of the Ethiopian Jews considered an insult. In 1996, the Magen David Adom destroyed all blood that had been donated by Ethiopian Jews due to fear it might be contaminated with HIV or AIDS. Authorities pointed to the high incidence of AIDS and HIV in Ethiopia to explain the policy.

According to a 1999 report commissioned by Israel's Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, 75% of the Ethiopian Jews living in Israel could not read or write Hebrew. Nearly 50% could not converse in Hebrew. Because the Ethiopian immigrants came from a subsistence economy, they were not prepared to work in an industrialized society such as Israel's. An earlier study by the Brookdate Institute of Gerontology and Adult Development found that 66% of the Ethiopian women and 85% of the Ethiopian men in the city of Kiryat Gat could speak Hebrew.

In 2008, the unemployment rate among Ethiopian Jews in Israel was 18%, nearly three times that of the general Israeli population. A 2005 study found that the poverty rate among Ethiopian Jewish families was 60%, compared with 20% among all Israeli families.