The Ethiopian Jewish Exodus: Narratives of the Migrational Journey to Israel, 1977-1985 (Memory and Narrative, 9)

THE ETHIOPIAN JEWISH EXODUS

‘The journey of the Ethiopian Jews is an epic of our times… Writing from deep experience in working with them, listening to their stories with a multi-disciplinary imagination, Gadi BenEzer has given us a rare and compelling book.’ Paul Thompson, Department of Sociology, University of Essex ‘His beautifully written book…of great importance…brings the reader closer to a community whose miraculous destiny serves as an inspiration.’ Elie Wiesel, 1986 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Between 1977 and 1985, some 20,000 Ethiopian Jews left their homes in Ethiopia and— motivated by an ancient dream of returning to the land of their ancestors, ‘Yerussalem’— embarked on a secret and highly traumatic exodus to Israel. Due to various political circumstances they had to leave their homes in haste, travel a long way on foot through unknown country, and stay for a period of one or two years in refugee camps until they were brought to Israel. The difficult conditions of the journey included attacks by bandits, night travel over mountains, incarceration, illness and death. The Jews also faced problems that were connected to their Jewish identity and to the fact that they were heading for Israel. A fifth of the group did not survive the journey. This interdisciplinary, ground-breaking book focuses on the experience of this journey, its meaning for the people who made it, and its relation to the initial encounter with Israeli society. The author argues that powerful processes occur on such journeys which affect the individual and community in life-changing ways, including their initial encounter with and adaptation to their new society. Analysing the psycho-social impact of the journey, he examines the relations between coping and meaning, trauma and culture, and discusses personal development and growth. Gadi BenEzer is a senior lecturer of psychology and anthropology at the Department of Behavioural Sciences in the College of Management in Tel Aviv. In the last two decades he has worked as a psychotherapist and organisational psychologist with the Ethiopian Jewish immigrants in Israel. He has written

ii

extensively on Ethiopian Jews, trauma and life stories, and cross-cultural psychotherapy. His book on the immigration and integration of the Ethiopian Jews (As Light within a Clay Pot, Rubin Mass, 1992) has become the main text on the subject in Israel.

ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN MEMORY AND NARRATIVE Series Editors: Mary Chamberlain, Paul Thompson, Timothy Ashplant, Richard Candida-Smith and Selma Leydesdorff 1 NARRATIVE AND GENRE Edited by Mary Chamberlain and Paul Thompson 2 TRAUMA AND LIFE STORIES International Perspectives Edited by Kim Lacy-Rogers and Selma Leydesdorff with Graham Dawson 3 NARRATIVES OF GUILT AND COMPLIANCE IN UNIFIED GERMANY Stasi Informers and their Impact on Society Barbara Miller 4 JAPANESE BANKERS IN THE CITY OF LONDON Junko Sakai 5 MEMORY AND MEMORIALS, 1789–1914 Literary and Cultural Perspectives Edited by Matthew Campbell, Jacqueline M.Labbe and Sally Shuttleworth 6 THE ROOTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS Popular Tradition and Personal Experience Edited by Stephen Hussey and Paul Thompson 7 THE POLITICS OF WAR MEMORY AND COMMEMORATION Edited by T.G.Ashplant, Graham Dawson and Michael Roper 8 LINES OF NARRATIVE Psychosocial Perspectives Edited by Molly Andrews, Shelley Day Sclater, Corinne Squire and Amal Treacher 9 THE ETHIOPIAN JEWISH EXODUS Narratives of the Migration Journey to Israel 1977–1985 Gadi BenEzer 10 ART AND THE PERFORMANCE OF MEMORY Sounds and Gestures of Recollection Edited by Richard Candida-Smith

THE ETHIOPIAN JEWISH EXODUS Narratives of the migration journey to Israel 1977–1985

Gadi BenEzer

London and New York

First published 2002 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2002Gadi BenEzer All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-21923-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-27437-7 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-27363-3 (Print Edition)

TO IRIT, WHO IS WALKING WITH ME ON A JOURNEY ‘FOR A LIFETIME’

CONTENTS

List of illustrations

viii

Acknowledgements

ix

Note on transliteration and form

xii

Maps

xiii

1

Introduction

2

The context of the journey

16

3

Interviewing and interpreting in cross-cultural research

39

4

The theme of Jewish identity

60

5

The theme of suffering

88

6

The theme of bravery and inner strength

120

7

The impact of the journey: psycho-social issues

151

Encounters and portraits in Israel, 2000

174

Ethiopian Jews encounter Israel

179

Concluding remarks

198

Appendix

202

Notes

205

Bibliography

227

Index

249

8

1

ILLUSTRATIONS

Photographs 2.1 Kess Menasheh, the eldest among Ethiopian religious leaders, reading the holy book 2.2 The Orit, the Ethiopian Jewish Bible, in the Ge’ez language 2.3 Buna, the traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony 2.4 Injera, the Ethiopian traditional bread Encounters and portraits in Israel, 2000

36 37 37 38 174

Maps 1 The various routes of the migration journeys of Ethiopian Jews to Israel 2 The Sudanese refugee camps along the Ethiopian Exodus © Tudor Parfitt, 1985

xiii xiv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost I wish to thank my interviewees. I am grateful for their trust in me and their willingness to let me escort them along the complex and often painful trails of their journey memories. I often admired their courage in recounting their experiences. I am also delighted to have this opportunity to thank all interviewees of nongovernmental organisations and government agencies, non-Ethiopians as well as Ethiopians, who have played a part in Operation Moses or have worked in the refugee camps in Sudan. I have interviewed them in Canada, Switzerland, England, the USA, Ethiopia and Israel. They were willing to share their observations with me and to shed light on various aspects of the journey. This has helped me in putting the journey narratives in context. I am deeply indebted to Paul Thompson for his patient guidance throughout the various stages of the PhD study upon which this book is based. In our meetings in ‘Little Greece’ and ‘Little Italy’, two Oxford ‘institutions’, Paul played an important role in making this research project into an enriching and enjoyable process. Many people have helped at different phases of the work. I would not be able to mention every one of them here but I am grateful to all of them. I would like to thank in particular Ian Craib, Richard Wilson and Ken Plummer as well as Brenda Corti at the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex. Terry Ranger and Jonathan Webber of the University of Oxford were willing to read and comment on parts of my work. Ideas within the study were also discussed with Roger Zetter, David Turton, Andrew Shaknow and Mary Chamberlain at the University of Oxford and at Oxford Brooks University I am obliged to Mary also for ‘pushing’ the project forward as an editor of the Routledge Studies in Memory and Narrative series of books. Robin Cohen from Warwick University contributed valuable sources to my review of the literature, as well as Vaughan Robinson at Swansea University. Deborah Dwork at Yale University encouraged me at the beginning of the project. At its initial phases I have discussed the work and worked on ways of analysis of the material with Gabriele Rosenthal, Nitza Yanai, Wolfram Fischer-Rosenthal, Dan Bar-On, Paul A.Hare, Joseph Sandler, Amia Lieblich and Yoram Bilu. I am indebted to all of them. When I chose the way to analyse the material it was Nitza in particular who made time in a very

x

busy schedule to help me master it. I thank her wholeheartedly. My ideas included in the psycho-social chapter, including the effects of trauma, were discussed with Maurice Eisenbruch, John Berry, Edna Lomsky-Feder, Jim Garbarino, Niel Boothby, Lena Punamaki-Gitai, Michael Korzinski, Danny Brom, Derek Summerfield, Elizabeth Colson, Michael Argyle, Marita Eastmond and Taddesse Tamrat. While they have helped me in crystallising and sharp-ening my ideas, all responsibility for the final result is, of course, mine. The thoughts concerning the chapter on the encounter with Israeli society were ‘aired’ in particular with Moshe Lissak, Shmuel Ben-Dor, Rina Shapira, Rene Hirschon, Abner Cohen, Tarik Modood, Roger Mumby-Croft, Nick Van Hear, Ken Wilson, Diana Cammak, Oz Almog and Alex Weingrod. Shulamit Hareven and Nurit Zarchi have helped me on the form of the narrative. I am delighted to thank Elie Wiesel, who has read the manuscript and was willing to endorse it. This study was supported in its various stages by grants from foundations and individuals, some of which preferred to remain anonymous. Albert Solnit, Sterling Professor Emeritus at the Yale University Child Study Center, and Donald Cohen, director of that Center, believed in the importance of this study from its initial phase. I thank them wholeheartedly for their moral and practical support. I am also indebted to Sidney Furst, Joseph Sandler, Isaiah Berlin, David Kessler, Edgar Siskin, Amichai Zilberman, Sidney Corob and Gail CohenSchorsh who were instrumental in raising the funds for this study. Funds for the interviewing and data collection phase, as well as for the first stage of analysis, were provided by The Jerusalem Fund for Anthropological Studies, Israel, and The Sidney and Elizabeth Corob Charitable Trust, England. AVI Scholarships in Switzerland, The New-Land Foundation in the USA, the Anglo-Jewish Association in England and the British Economic and Social Sciences Research Council (ESSRC) provided part of the funds for the second and third phase of the study. The last trip to Oxford in order to prepare the book for press was supported by the Department of Behavioural Sciences at the College of Management, where I have been teaching for the last six years. I am obliged to Natasha Burchardt for discussions of the work as well as hosting me in Oxford during that trip. The Refugee Studies Programme (now Centre) at the University of Oxford and The Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies supplied the working environment and library facilities at certain points of my work. I wish to thank in particular Barbara Harrel-Bond at the RSP and David Patterson and Phillip Alexander at the OCHJS. I also wish to acknowledge the assistance of the library of the Institute of Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Ann Thirkel-Smith has helped as a librarian as well as a ‘barometer’ of English. Sarah and Ann from the RSP Documentation Centre, University of Oxford, were helpful in finding sources at the final stage. My ‘working environment’ included not only the professional libraries and academics but my friends in Oxford. I am particularly delighted to thank Roger

xi

and Catherine Mumby-Croft, David Shires and Karen Kearley, Tessa and Steve Rothrocks, Kobi and Matti Sheffi, Andrew Shaknow and Katherina. I am thankful for being able to use ‘port meadow’ as a meditating place at times of writing block, as well as the Oxford canal for my daily breaks between the writing of words and the invention of more words at my computer. Elizabeth Walker, the Alexander Technique teacher, took care of painless sitting for long hours at the computer desk. I was fortunate to have James (Joe) Whiting as my editor at Routledge. He believed in the work and contributed helpful suggestions. Annabel Watson, his assistant editor and Emma Howarth, the production editor, were instrumental in orchestrating all others in the team and getting the manuscript ready for publication. Making authors keep to their deadlines is never an easy task and I thank them for how they managed it. I am thankful to Pnina Evental for permission to use her photographs of Ethiopian Jewish people in the book. Tudor Parfitt of SOAS gave permission to include one of the maps within this volume. Marion Wiesel and Chaim Peri have supported me during the last phase of getting the book published. I happily thank my assistants, Talia in particular, who have meticulously carried out the transcription of most of the tapes. David Meheret assisted me with transcribing the interviews with the elderly. Lejla and Tracy gave technical assistance at different phases of the work. Special thanks to Mulik, my friend, without whom I would have gone astray so many times. My deepest gratitude to Irit, my wife, who supported and encouraged me along the way, and to Inbal, Tom and Ya’el, my children, who supplied the smiles that are so essential for the creative process.

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND FORM

No transliteration rules are followed uniformly for Hebrew, Amharic and Tigrinya words in the psychological, sociological, anthropological and historical works dealing with Ethiopia, Israel and Ethiopian Jews. I have thus followed what seems to be the most commonly used transcription in anthropological studies on Israel. However, in the interest of readability, I have used diacritical marks as sparingly as possible. The following system is thus used for the pronunciation of sounds in the non-English words: Transcription a ch

Pronunciation father no close sound in English; as in German Bach, except for kessoch which is pronounced as with ‘tch’ tch—in the middle of the word church tz—at the beginning of a word tsetse, tswana (as in Botswana) e bet or encounter o Robert i lit u Judo, Sudan I have tried to preserve the sound of words in Amharic and Tigrinya used by the interviewees. Thus, for example, I used the form of Tigray (not Tigre) for that place in Ethiopia, but Tigreans for the people of that area (not Tigrim as in the already Hebreicised form of the word). The Ethiopian term for outlaws or robbers, shifta, was used both for the singular and for the plural as it was employed by most of the interviewees, without the suffix ‘-och’, as in kessoch, which symbolises the plural in Amharic. As for foreign terms, they have been italicised, including the names of festivals, but the latter are also kept in capitals. Ethiopian names of authors have been kept as they are in Ethiopia, i.e. given (first) name and the father’s first name as the offspring’s last name. This is how they appear in the text as well as in the bibliography (unless otherwise known).

xiii

Map 1 The various routes of the migration journeys of Ethiopian Jews to Israel

As for abbreviations, I have tried, as much as possible, not to use these in the text. I should note here that the abbreviation ‘n.d.’ stands in the bibliography for any reference that is not dated.

xiv

Map 2 The Sudanese refugee camps along the Ethiopian Exodus © Tudor Parfitt, 1985

1 INTRODUCTION

This book is about a journey. It is about the migration journey of Ethiopian Jews to Israel via Sudan. It focuses on the experience of the journey, its meaning for the people who made it, and its relation to the encounter with Israeli society. The migration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel since 1977 is a small yet dramatic movement, with unique features. It is interesting not only in its own right, but also because it shares, and often highlights, many features which are common to migratory movements throughout the world in the later twentieth century. It is a migration from the South to the North (the Third World to the West)1 of black people into a predominantly white society; a movement primarily of the young and the fit, inspired by a Utopian dream of life fulfilment; a dream sorely tested, if not shattered, by the experience of arrival in the ‘Promised Land’. The migration dream of Ethiopian Jews has, as we shall see, exceptionally deep roots in their traditional culture. However, their heightened expectations are similar to the experience of other migrants inspired by more secular dreams. During the period of 1977–85, some 20,000 Ethiopian Jews left their homes in Ethiopia and—motivated by an ancient dream of returning to the land of their ancestors, to ‘Yerussalem’—embarked on a secret, illegal and highly traumatic exodus to Israel. Due to various political circumstances, they had to leave their homes in haste, go a long way by foot through unknown country towards Sudan, and stay for a period of one to two years in refugee camps there until they were brought to Israel. The conditions of the journey were extremely difficult, including torture, incarcerations, bandit attacks, walking at night, crossing mountains, hunger and thirst, illness and death. A fifth of these migrants/ refugees2—4,000 people—did not survive the journey. The migrants/refugees also faced problems that were connected to their Jewish identity and to the fact that they were heading for Israel. Once in Israel, the immigrants were first put in absorption centres and then settled in different towns and villages. The adaptation process of these immigrants/refugees was complicated by their ‘anomalous’ Jewish identity. Religious authorities questioned the authenticity of their Jewish identity, and their physical appearance (e.g. skin colour) set them apart from ‘mainstream’ Israeli society. I began working with the Ethiopian immigrant community in Israel in 1982. Since then I have been working with them as a clinical psychologist and

2 INTRODUCTION

psychotherapist, and have been acting as a consultant in their absorption centres and educational and vocational settings. As I have also been trained in anthropology the arrival of Ethiopian Jews has presented a professional challenge for me: the challenge of cross-cultural (or, rather, inter-cultural) psychological work. In order to rise to the challenge I had to combine my various areas of expertise, achieved up to that time, as well as be ready to create new ways of thinking about and practising with these very different immigrants. In this process of encounter with ‘the other’, I have changed, not only professionally but also personally. The arrival of Ethiopian Jews has thus become a ‘present’ for me through which I have grown and developed professionally and personally. From this point of view, I could think of their arrival as a ‘present’ for Israeli society at large, and consequently advocate a change in policies and practice relating to this group. During this long period that I have been ‘immersed’ in the community I have won their trust and confidence. As my work with Ethiopian Jews progressed I started hearing more and more references to the journey from Ethiopia and its meaning in relation to their current life in Israel. For example, in a general conversation a respectable elderly man suddenly shared with me his frustration that he had had to go through ritual immersion in water as part of a symbolic conversion to Judaism. He said: ‘We suffered so much on our way here and they [the religious authorities of Israel] question our Jewish identity!’ In another instance I met a young adolescent boy who, while talking about the situation in his social milieu, commented as follows: Israelis do not know what we have gone through…the kind of journey we experienced. Israelis think we came directly from our village, that we just boarded an airplane. If they [the boys at his boarding school] only knew how much I suffered to get here, what I had to live through on our journey, that many people were left behind…did not survive. If they only knew all about that, I am sure they wouldn’t have picked on me! What struck me in these two instances was the fact that they related so strongly to the journey as a frame of reference for the current events in Israel. The suffering of the journey served as ‘spectacles’ through which the elderly man looked at the unresolved conflict with the Chief Rabbis3 of Israel and the adolescent saw his integration problems within the boarding school. I wondered why the old man did not refer to the two millennia or so of Jewish existence in Ethiopia and chose, in making his point, the more recent journey to Israel. Why was this such a significant point of reference for him and for the adolescent at the boarding school, and, as I was later to learn, an equally significant point of reference for so many others from this community? I started asking myself what had happened to them on their journey that could account for the fact that it played such a crucial and central role. What did it

INTRODUCTION 3

symbolise? What meaning had it acquired? In what way is this meaning linked to their current encounter with Israeli society? With these questions in mind I set out on my own ‘journey’: a quest for the understanding of the phenomenon. I devised a systematic research project which examined Ethiopian Jews’ narratives of their journey to Israel. I focused on the experience of adolescents during their migration journey. The research was summed up as a PhD dissertation (BenEzer 1995) which I then turned into this book. As I have stated above, this study focuses on the experience of the journey, its meaning for the people who made it and its relation to the initial encounter with Israeli society. In a nutshell, it argues that powerful processes occur on such journeys that affect the individual and the community in life-changing ways. This includes their encounter with and adaptation to their new society. Let me briefly present the organisation of the book. The study of the Ethiopian exodus aims to fill a gap in the existing literature in relation to journeys in migration and refugee studies. This literature will be examined in the following part of this chapter. We shall then proceed to Chapter 2, where we shall meet the Ethiopian Jews in their Ethiopian context prior to the journey. That is, we shall present a brief ethnography of ‘Beta Israel’, as they were called, and their historical background. Chapter 3 centres on methodological issues, particularly the problem and challenge of conducting research in a cross-cultural context. Chapters 4, 5 and 6, the main body of the text, describe the three themes that were found to be the major dimensions of meaning through which Ethiopian Jews constructed their experiences along the journey. These are the theme of Jewish identity (Chapter 4), the theme of suffering (Chapter 5) and the theme of bravery and inner strength (Chapter 6). I shall present and discuss the kinds of experience related to these themes, trying to let the ‘voice’ of my interviewees be heard here as much as possible. The psychosocial impact of the journey on the individual and on the community is analysed in Chapter 7. This is the most ‘psychological’ chapter in the book. Here I shall focus on the traumatic nature of the experience of the journey, the ‘psychology of trauma’ so to speak, and related issues. Here I shall also examine how the meaning of experience affects people’s coping abilities, and look at certain cultural aspects that could influence the traumatic or non-traumatic nature of events. In Chapter 8 I offer an analysis of the encounter of Ethiopian Jews with Israeli society. I shall first show how the three major themes derived from the journey, which also constitute dimensions of self-concept, corresponded to three main ethos and myths in Israeli society during the 1980s. Then I shall discuss how Israeli society failed to acknowledge Ethiopian Jews’ selfperception, thus causing considerable difficulties in their adaptation. I go on to show how Ethiopian Jews use the story of their journey in order to assert their own self-concept and identity and to find their place within Israeli society. I shall suggest that the story of the journey is in the process of turning into a myth. The book’s ‘concluding remarks’ come back in brief to some general points in the

4 INTRODUCTION

experience of journeys of the kind undergone by the Ethiopian Jewish immigrants/refugees. JOURNEYS IN MIGRATION AND REFUGEE STUDIES This study is about a journey. It is about the migration journey of Ethiopian Jews to Israel via Sudan. It focuses on the experience of the journey and its meaning for the people who made it. It thus deals with a real and difficult physical endeavour overland on foot, as well as a social and psychological journey, which included periods of marching and a period spent in a refugee camp. This is an interdisciplinary study. It is informed by social studies and the humanities, mainly the disciplines of psychology, anthropology, sociology and history (oral history), and is located within the fields of migration and refugee studies. Much of the relevant literature (other than what I intend to examine below) will be discussed at various points where applicable. Thus, the literature which deals with oral history and life story methods will be discussed in Chapter 3, which is devoted to method. This will include the appropriateness of phenomenological investigation for the research of the journey and methodological issues arising out of the cross-cultural context. The germane literature on Ethiopian Jews is the basis for the sections on history and ethnography in Chapter 2; the relationship between meaning and coping and issues related to culture and coping will be discussed in Chapter 7; and certain dynamics within Israeli society are considered in Chapter 8. In what follows, however, I wish to show that, to the best of my knowledge, there are no studies that focus on a journey, either in the field of migration or in refugee studies. This is in spite of the fact that the literature on the former is vast and that on the latter is expanding rapidly. The migration literature tends to focus on people either at one end of the migration process or at the other. That is, either while they are still in their country of origin or after having arrived in their country of destination. Researchers are thus dealing mainly with the situation of prospective ‘emigrants’ in their ‘sending country’ or, even more, with ‘immigrants’ at the ‘receiving’ end. Many studies are concerned with the ‘causes’ of migration. Theories dealing with the motivations for migration tend to be dominated by the economic ‘pushpull’ model. According to this approach the researcher distinguishes between circumstances at home that repel and those abroad that attract migrants (Petersen 1968). The former (for example high rates of unemployment in the area of origin, or problems in housing) are usually viewed as inducing migration of a conservative, security-maximising nature, while the latter (economic expansion in the host country or region) are said to encourage risk-taking and incomemaximising migration (Marshall 1994:328; see also Watson 1977a:6; Jansen 1970; Taylor 1969; Wrong 1961). Economic and structural factors formed the basis of

INTRODUCTION 5

most of the analyses within this model (Ballard and Ballard 1977; Taylor 1969; Peach 1968:93). The push-pull theories have been criticised by many. Anthropologists who have reconstructed the history of various emigrant communities demonstrate clearly that it is impossible to categorise all of the relevant factors as either ‘push’ or ‘pull’ (Philpott 1977; Foner 1977; Palmer 1977; Watson 1975; Petersen 1968). Others (e.g. Douglass 1970) claim that the push-pull approach often implies that ‘the subjects were automatons reacting to forces beyond their control’ rather than active participants (Douglass 1970, cited in Watson 1977a:7). It is also clear that an analysis of push-pull factors remains at the highest levels of abstraction and that generalisations of this nature are rarely accepted by the migrants themselves. The push-pull approach thus obscures the inherent complexity of population movements (Watson 1977a). In spite of the growing criticism of the push-pull approach, it seems that no other model has attracted the same degree of attention. An analysis of this kind in the literature is still ‘conventional’ (Marshall 1994:329) though it is more refined at times (see Kritz and Keely 1983:xvi; Teitelbaum 1980). Some researchers, however, are using more complex analyses and alternative hypotheses (or a combination of them) to explain the causes and motivation leading to migration (e.g. Kritz et al. 1983). Douglas Massey, together with a group of his colleagues, has recently done a comprehensive review of the theories regarding international migration that have arisen during the last thirty years or so. They distinguish clearly between models that describe the initiation of international movement and theories accounting for why transnational population flows persist across space and time. They argue convincingly that conditions that initiate international movement may be quite different from those that perpetuate it, and that different theories— e.g. neoclassical economics versus the network theory—may have to be applied in order to understand these different processes (Massey et al. 1998, 1996). The patterns of migration—the question of whether migrants moved through ‘social networks’ such as the extended family, the village network or the caste, thus forming a phenomenon of ‘chain-migration’, or through some other ‘patterns of migration’—were, and still are, widely discussed (e.g. Massey et al. 1998; Chamberlain 1997; Werbner 1990; Shaw 1988; Stark and Bloom 1985; Mormino 1982; Ballard and Ballard 1977; Khan 1977; Hareven 1975). Migration literature also deals with the direction and boundaries of the migration, i.e. from where to where and in what area people move. Researchers tend to group migration movements under the headings of international, regional and internal migration. While the first and the last are self-explanatory, regional refers to migrations within the continents or within common regional areas such as Southeast Asia or the Middle East (D.L.Appleyard 1992). Rural-urban and urban—rural directions of movement are usually analysed within the boundaries of internal migration (Boyle et al. 1998; Banerjee 1981).

6 INTRODUCTION

Labour migration is another focus of attention within migration literature. This topic is researched either as an issue in itself (several journals are devoted to the subject) or within the framework of the issues mentioned above (e.g. push-pull paradigm; chain migration, e.g. Basok 2000; Cohen 1997a:57–62; Vertovec 1995; Baily 1995; Stark 1991; Grieco 1987). Marriage and return-migration are also analysed in this context (as well as in others, e.g. Zetter 1999a; Chamberlain 1997; Werbner 1990; Shaw 1988; Anwar 1979). An extensive amount of research is concerned with migrants in their new country. A considerable part of that research, especially the analyses of the mass migration waves of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was concerned with the demography of migration. An example of this is research regarding what happens to the size and structure of the population in the receiving country as a result of the migration wave, as well as the impact on the demography of the sending country (Petersen 1968). The effects of immigrants on the economy as well as on the social and cultural structure and dynamics of the new society still constitutes much of the research (Portes and Rumbaut 1996; Portes 1995; Findlay 1994; Spencer 1994; HuDehart 1993). This is, together with numerous studies on changes (and/or continuity), within immigrant groups following their arrival in the new country. Studies of ‘assimilation’, ‘integration’ and ‘acculturation’ (e.g. Berry 1992, 1993), and topics such as economic organisation, marriage, religious behaviour, giftgiving, education and political organisation constituted a great deal of the research on the migrant societies. Differences in economic success of various immigrant groups were sometimes studied and related to various causes. Such was the classic study by McClelland (1961) of the ethic of work of Jewish and Italian immigrants and their relative compatibility with the Protestant work ethic prevailing in the United States (by which he tried to explain the difference in economic success of these groups in their new country). More recent studies in this area include the prize-winning book on Ethnic Los Angeles, by Waldinger and Bozorgmehr (1997). This book deals with, among other issues, cultural characteristics of Korean and other migrants and their relation to success in various kinds of businesses and/ or occupations. The studies by Light and Gold (2000) regarding ethnic entrepreneurs and those of Alexander Portes (e.g. 1995) on the economic sociology of immigration are other important examples of this area of study. The questions concerning when immigrants turn into a minority group (thus when they should be called ‘immigrants’ and when ‘minorities’) and whether the second generation should be referred to in the literature as part of a migrant population, for example, occupy some of the literature in the field. James Watson (1977a:5) relates how it took some months for the authors in the collection he edited on migrant and minority groups in Britain to agree on this and related issues, and consequently to agree on the title of the book. The fact that waves of immigrants indeed constitute minority groups in many countries instigated much research on issues connected with race and ethnic relations (Modood 1994, 1992; Rex and Mason 1986; Banton 1983; Cohen 1980, 1974, 1969; Rex and

INTRODUCTION 7

Moore 1967). Racial discrimination and ethnic consciousness were key issues in migration literature and fed many debates, some of which, like that on the various forms of black consciousness and the black-white dichotomy, have been recently highlighted (Bhabha 1994; Gilroy 1993a, 1993b; Hall 1991, 1990). Following the publication in the United States of Samuel Huntington’s and Arthur Schlesinger’s essays, which together constitute an attack on multiculturalism from two different points of view, a fierce debate is going on in the US in which dilemmas concerning immigration and ethnic relations are at the centre of the arguments (Cohen 1995b; Schlesinger 1992). At the same time, in Europe there is a debate in which, on the one hand, scholars discuss the right of nation-states to defend themselves against incoming migrants and ‘economic refugees’ coming as asylum seekers, and to create a ‘fortress Europe’; while, on the other hand, there is a more recent recognition that European societies are ‘shrinking’ significantly in numbers due to low fertility rates and an awareness of the need for specific skilled workers, such as in the computing, teaching and medical professions, and thus the need to actually invite immigration. This is echoed, for example, in recent British government ministers’ statements followed by the editorials of major newspapers such as The Times and the Daily Telegraph of 12 September 2000.4 Another angle within migration studies which has gained considerable attention in the last ten years or so is that which deals with diasporas, transnationalism and globalisation. Research and academic debate has focused on concepts such as ‘diasporas’ (Vertovec and Cohen 1999; Van Hear 1998; Cohen 1997b; Sheffer 1986), ‘boundaries’ and ‘borders’ (Lavie and Swedenburg 1996), ‘transnationalism’ (Rogers 2000; Glick-Schiller and Fouron 1999; Glick-Schiller 1998, 1997), ‘transversal migration’, ‘bi-location’, ‘hybrids’ (Hannerz 2000), ‘cosmopoli-tanism’ (Vertovec 2000), ‘globalization’ and ‘global movements’ (Cohen and Rai 2000) and ‘the global self’ (Zachary 2000). Nina Glick-Schiller, for example, has written extensively on transnationalism, transnational migration and transmigrants, where ‘persons literally live their lives across international borders’ (Glick-Schiller and Fouron 1999:344). Such persons are best identified, according to Glick-Schiller and her colleagues, as ‘transmigrants’: that is, persons who migrate and yet maintain or establish familial, economic, religious, political or social relations in the state from which they moved, even as they also forge such relationships in the new state or states in which they settle. They live within a ‘transnational social field’. (Glick-Schiller and Fouron 1999:344) Thus researchers in this field deal with transmigrants, with people who have parts of their family in different countries, or work in one country while their family lives in another, or move and return, or are ‘multiply located’ (Glick-Schiller and Fouron 1999; Glick-Schiller 1998, 1997). Others, such as the economic sociologists Alexander Portes and Roger Waldinger, join the debate surrounding

8 INTRODUCTION

transnationalism by insisting on a more precise definition of the phenomenon— how many people, how many visits, for how long, etc.—in order to form a scholarly debate on the phenomenon (Portes 1995, 1998; Waldinger and Bozorgmehr 1997). For Paul Thompson, the social historian and founder editor of Oral History, it is the life stories of transnational families that are the focus of interest in his longitudinal study of Jamaican families (Thompson and Bauer, forthcoming). Journalists, some informed in the social sciences, have also joined this debate. They have focused their attention, for example, on the ‘global self’ or ‘global soul’ (Zachary 2000; Iyer 2000, respectively). The issue of migrant women forms another growing body of knowledge, whether in the context of discrimination against a minority or in other conceptual frameworks (Willis 2000; Buijs 1993a, 1993b). Migration journeys, as mentioned above, are not a focus of research or analysis in any of this diverse literature. It could have been argued that the reason for not having any migration research that focuses on a journey is because no such journeys exist for migrants. They just board an aeroplane and within a few hours they reach their destination. While this is true in many instances, it is not always the case. Many people do undertake some sort of a journey, even if not an ordeal such as that of the Ethiopian Jews. And it has not always been the case that migrants travel by air. The historian Oscar Handlin, in his edited book Immigration as a Factor inAmerican History (1959), offers an example of a passage from Germany to the United States in the nineteenth century which could certainly be studied in itself. The journey on the boat took seventy days and included many torments and obstacles, specifically torture, humiliation and degradation by the captain and the crew. One hundred and five people, a fifth of those who embarked in Hamburg, died during the journey. In a chapter entitled ‘The perils of the crossing’ Handlin writes: For a long time, the difficulties of the voyage between Europe and America exerted a deep influence upon all immigrants. Death claimed many who left their homes with hope in their hearts; and fear of the dangers kept others at home. But even those who came safely off the ships for years thereafter were marked by the trying experience. (Handlin 1959:31)5 If individuals were marked to such an extent by the experience of the journey, it is reasonable to assume that this journey stayed as a unit in itself in their minds. It probably became a unique part of their life story and sense of self. It must have affected the way in which these survivors re-evaluated and reconstructed their previous expectations of ‘the New World’ and the new life which they hoped for, influenced the condition in which they landed in America this not taken as a unit for study by social scientists, and in particular by researchers working within

INTRODUCTION 9

the fields of refugee and migration studies? and had an effect on their following adjustment and integration. Why, then, is Handlin’s book is just one example that shows that some migrants do endure long journeys and that this was known to researchers. However, the period of the journey and its significance for the wayfarers has never been studied. In more recent times, people migrating from the continent of Europe to the US gained permission to cross through England only if they did not disembark from the trains which were carrying them from one side of the island to the other. They thus had to endure an arduous journey which in its entirety consisted of passage by lorry, train and ship before they arrived in the United States. Did it fail to be constructed in their minds as a period in itself, with specific meaning and significance for the rest of their lives? Thus, journeys are not mentioned under the term ‘migration’ in the 1933 or 1968 Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences even though the 1933 volume deals, in addition to ‘modern migrations’, with ‘primitive’ as well as ‘ancient and medieval’ migrations, certainly periods when there was no travel by air. In the valuable collection of essays edited by Watson (1977b), Between Two Cultures, which deals with immigrants and minorities in Britain, there is no mention of any journey, let alone an article on the subject, though some of the migrants certainly made one (e.g. Pakistani immigrants, many of whom were villagers). The same could be said about the now classic collection edited by Jackson (1969), Migration, and the one on Global Trends in Migration edited by Kritz et al. (1983) which deals with theory and research on international population movements. More recent collec-tions, books and articles in journals on particular groups of migrants add nothing in respect to journeys (e.g. Cohen and Kennedy 2000; Van Hear 1998). Lastly, there is no reference to a journey of any sort in the 1993 volume of the International Bibliography of Social and Cultural Anthropology. In a relatively recent publication which is (confusingly) titled On the Move, edited by Fisher and Cooper (1990), there is no analysis of the actual process of moving or focus on any journey. Rather, the various contributors to the collection take up the psychological impact of specific changes or transitions in the life of the individual or family, such as the psychological effects of moving house or home, the transition to parenthood or becoming unemployed, and look at them from an empirical or theoretical perspective. Even the two articles which deal with migrants, sojourners and refugees, Maurice Eisenbruch’s (1984) innovative work and that of Adrian Furnham (1990), deal with phenomena which take place in the receiving country, i.e. ‘cultural bereavement’ and ‘expatriate stress’ respectively. It is interesting to note that the useful study The Migration Process by Pnina Werbner (1990) does not, in fact, deal with the actual process of journeying from Pakistan to Britain but with what happened ‘before’ the decision to move or ‘after’ the arrival of the immigrants.

10 INTRODUCTION

Let us turn now to literature regarding refugee studies: how then is the topic ofthe journey treated in refugee studies? Is there a research category of a journey in that field? In 1981 it was still considered that ‘the refugee phenomenon has not been a topic of sustained social science research’ (Kritz and Keely 1983:xx), let alone a field of study in itself. Yet in the twenty years that followed such a field was certainly established, and much more research, descriptive as well as theoretical, has been generated. The research on refugee movements followed, to a certain extent, similar issues and biases as the study of migration, while at the same time developing its own directions and foci of research. Much of this research is focused on the responses, in policy and practice, to refugee flows, by states and by international organisations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the World Bank, as well as Save the Children Fund, the World Council of Churches and various other organisations. This body of research centred mainly on aidrelated issues in emergency or crisis situations (Karadawi 1999; Finney 1998b; Harrell-Bond et al. 1992; Harrell-Bond 1986). The policies of the country of origin, the host country and ‘donor governments’ were studied in this context, together with the operations of the humanitarian organisations (or ‘regime’) which was endowed with the power to make decisions in these complex political, economic and social situations. As in migration studies, much of the debate has centred on how to count the refugees, which, of course, affects policy making in relation to aid among other things (Bloch 1999; Finney 1998b; for a critical discussion see Harrell-Bond et al. 1992). The way in which refugees affect the areas in which they settle and the effect on sending areas of the outflow of population is another focus in refugee studies. An intensive debate has been taking place for some time now on the contrasting hypotheses of refugees ‘as a burden’ versus ‘as an asset’ for the states and/or areas into which they suddenly or gradually flow. Researchers following the latter hypothesis show the complexity of the economic situation which develops around refugee camps and settlements and suggest that refugees do not necessarily, or even mainly, constitute a burden on the economy of the host country. The notion of ‘dependency’ and ‘idleness’ of the refugee is then contrasted, within these studies, with evidence that portrays the refugee as an entrepreneurial person (agent), juggling with different resources within the constraints of the situation (Van Hear 1998; Black 1998; Kibreab 1993; Waldron 1987). A large part of the literature on refugees deals with policies of entry and of integration in Western countries (Schuster 2000; Bloch 2000). This is to a large extent dominated by the debate around different definitions of the term ‘refugee’ and differences in application of the same definition. The 1951 Geneva Convention and 1967 UN Protocol, as well as comparisons with the African OAU Convention, are the points of departure for many of these discussions.

INTRODUCTION 11

The critical study of the part played by governments and the humanitarian ‘regime’ is somewhat controversially linked, in more cases than one, to advocacy (Cooper 1994; Davis 1992). The dilemmas of an academic field which is so close to human suffering (which may be caused by or could sometimes be alleviated by the policies of governments and NGOs) continues to be a focus of discussion for researchers within the field (e.g. Turton 2000; Moore 1998; Zetter 1988). There is also much research on development projects which ‘produce’ refugees (M.Stein 1998; Scudder 1993; Horowitz 1991), particularly the construction of dams in developing countries (financed largely by the World Bank). The strategies of resistance by populations which are about to be displaced are also studied in relation to these projects (Oliver-Smith 1991).6 Repatriation is a central issue of discussion. In whose interest and in what conditions is this the best ‘durable solution’? This, together with many other issues of repatriation, is debated extensively in the literature (e.g. Phuong 2000 and FMR 2000). Not many repatriation schemes are implemented, even though the High Commissioner for Refugees predicted that the 1990s would become the decade of repatriation (Black 1993) and, indeed, a large-scale repatriation of Namibian refugees, for example, has taken place (Simon and Preston 1993). Highly relevant topical issues, such as the provision of the right food and nutrition for refugees, have also been studied (Vivero-Pol 1999; and a special double issue of the Journal of Refugee Studies in 1992 was devoted to the topic of nutrition). Issues of identity in exile (Kibreab 1999; Warner 1999; Stepputat 1999; Turton 1999; Turton and Gonzalez 1999; J.Bhabha 1998) and the myth of return (Zetter 1999a; Al Rasheed 1993), of repatriation (Black and Koser 1999; Simon and Preston 1993; Stein 1991), of torture (BenEzer 1999; Zur 1999; Bracken et al. 1997; Melzak 1993; Dawes 1992, 1991; Montgomery 1991), and of gender and women refugees (Indra 1999; Finney 1998a; IJRL 1997; J. Bhabha 1993) form part of other debates in the literature. Geographers have added the concept of ‘place’ (the dynamics of turning a space into a place) from human geography, which has inspired interesting research on the way in which people actually turn the space of a refugee camp, resettlement or a repatriation allotment into a place of their own, which carries meaning for them (Kliot 1987). Psychologists and psychiatrists have been able to establish, according to some observers (e.g. Shreke, in Cooper 1994), a more coherent area of study within the field of refugee studies than researchers of some other disciplines. While most of their studies have dealt with refugees after their arrival in Western countries (e.g. Ahearn 2000), an increasing amount of research is being done in developing countries, where most of the world’s refugees really are (e.g. Loughry and Xuan-Nghia 2000; Qouta et al. 1997; Boothby 1992; Punamaki-Gitai 1992; Garbarino 1992a, 1992b; Summerfield and Toser 1991; Ahearn and Athey 1991; RPN 1992, a special issue of the journal devoted to refugee children).7 Refugee children are of a central

12 INTRODUCTION

concern within this literature (e.g. Hyman et al. 2000; MacMullin and Loughry 2000). Despite all this activity, there are no research projects in which a journey is the central subject of investigation. They do not appear in the indexes of books produced on the groups of people who underwent such experiences or in the volumes of abstracts or references. Research in refugee studies seems not to have recognised journeys as phenomena or life-events which deserve thorough investigation. This is most surprising since there are clearly many refugees who make a journey from one place to another, often by foot. It was not long ago (during the 1980s) that some 25,000 Ethiopian refugees moved to the United States (ECDC 1989).8 Should we then consider the fact that they boarded an aeroplane in Khartoum airport and landed in the US as their only journey? Is it not the case that even if they made the last part of their way by air, many if not all of these refugees had made a journey quite similar to that of the Ethiopian Jews, even if (presumably) different in its meaning? And is it not the case that many other refugees arrive at their final destination by plane only after enduring a trail of suffering and heroism somewhere on their way? The Hmong people, who fled from their homes to other mountainous areas, then trekked for a month or so on the trails to Thailand where they stayed in refugee camps and only then (many but not all) were bussed to Bangkok9 and flown by air to the United States (Long 1993; Everingham 1980; Garret 1980); or the Vietnamese refugees in the detention camps in Hong Kong, who made a horrendous journey by boat (hence ‘boat people’) in order to escape political coercion and persecution in their own country (Hitchcox 1993, 1990)—all these journeys are known, and some are even discussed briefly (e.g. Lam 1996; Moussa 1993; Rutledge 1992; Caplan et al. 1989) but they do not form a focus for research. Should we assume that for the families or unaccompanied boys and girls who endured these journeys it was anything other than a significant experience in itself, one which may remain as such throughout their lives? Should we not, as researchers, at least study whether this was so? What we do find are some personal accounts of journeys (e.g. Taddele n.d.; Avraham 1986; Ha 1983), but these do not embark on an analysis of the experience. Reviewing a collection of twenty accounts of migrants to Edinburgh, Ron Baker (1990) has written that, important as it may be, such a collection should be followed by some analysis if it is to be of value for the understanding of refugee or migration experiences. Part of the experience of the journey of the Ethiopian Jews was the time spent as refugees in Sudan, mainly within the refugee camps. A number of studies of refugee-camp experiences exist (e.g. Powles 2000; Hitchcox 1993, 1990; Moussa 1993; Waldron 1987). For those who move on to another place where they finally settle, refugee camps are a station on their journey.10 However, researchers do not view the experience in the camps as part of an overall experience of a journey. Related to this is the fact that the experience is not analysed on a time

INTRODUCTION 13

continuum. Rather, research tends to focus on various issues in camp life, such as nutrition, prostitution, control, economic activity, violence and so forth. Some psychological researchers do look at distressing events, but most take an ‘outcome psychology’ point of view, trying to relate these phenomena to future adaptation (or current adjustment, if they are looking at it already within the framework of the country of resettlement in the West). Most studies of migrants and refugees do not look at the experience from the point of view of the refugee (or the specific group of refugees). As Kristene Monzel (1993:106) wrote: ‘In the last five years there has been a proliferation of writings on refugee issues. Yet surprisingly few have been concerned with how it feels to be a refugee.’ In the introduction to his edited book The International Refugee Crisis: British andCanadian Responses, Vaughan Robinson writes: What is perhaps more surprising and more difficult to rectify is the perception which some researchers and practitioners have of refugees as passive and inert victims. We describe and agonize over the circumstances which forced them from their homelands, we document how they became passive recipients of under funded or inappropriate government programmes and how, all too frequently, they silently suffer material and social deprivation and mental anguish. Rarely, however, do we point to the resourcefulness, motivation and commitment that many refugees have needed to possess in order to escape from their homelands, nor do we portray the persistence and determination which is often necessary to gain an offer of resettlement. Given the role of academics in helping shape media, and therefore public, opinion we could perhaps usefully adopt a less patronising attitude towards refugees. (Robinson 1992:8–9) In his recent Colson Lecture to the Oxford Refugee Studies Centre, Peter Loizus also stressed the importance of the refugee point of view when he asked ‘how memories of past wrongs and emergent identities are managed’ by the displaced groups and by political influencing powers to which they are exposed (Loizus 1999:238). He goes on to try and answer this question by looking at groups of people during the ‘unmaking’ of the Ottoman Empire. This study tries to fill some of these gaps in the existing literature on migration and refugee studies, first of all by focusing on a journey as a centre of ethnography and analysis and trying to understand it. I shall relate to the migration journey as one which starts in the country of origin. It begins from the moment of decision to migrate and includes the migrant’s (or migrating group’s) expectations, dreams, preparation and separation process, and so on. It continues with the journey itself —including their experience in refugee camps —which is a significant ‘inbetween phase’ where the migrant exists ‘between the two worlds’ (and social orders); and it concludes with the initial encounter with the country of

14 INTRODUCTION

destination. I hope to show that this encounter is influenced by what happened on the journey and by its overall meaning for the individual. This study uses methods of oral history. A full discussion of the suitability of oral history (as well as the ‘narrative interview’ and phenomenological approaches) to an investigation of a journey such as that of the Ethiopian Jews will be found, together with the relevant literature on the subject, in Chapter 3, which deals with methodology. Here I would like to point out that my research is not a study of an ‘oral tradition’ (Vansina 1985) or ‘oral literature’, such as those made in Africa, notably by Ruth Finnegan (1970). I am also not dealing here with the forms of memory and narrative, as in the works of Elizabeth Tonkin (1992) and Alesandro Portelli (1997, 1991). It could more accurately be conceived as a study of ‘oral testimony’ of direct experiences, such as those related and advocated in the works of Paul Thompson (2000), Daniel Bertaux (1997), Debora Dwork (1991) and Amia Lieblich (1981), to state just a few examples. There are certainly aspects of ‘oracy’ and ‘oral literature’ within the narratives in the sense that Finnegan is using it, notably some mythical elements and perhaps even the possible turning of the narratives into a collective myth, to which I relate in the last chapter of my work. It would be worthwhile to look at the narratives as a genre (perhaps of journey stories?);11 this, however, is beyond the scope of the present study. The use of phenomenological approaches and oral history methods puts the person studied at the centre of the research. The study thus places the migrant/ refugee as the actor and originator of meaning, both within the situation they describe and in the actual encounter with the researcher. The construction of meaning by the refugee him/herself necessarily makes us understand how it feels to be a (migrant) refugee from the point of view of an actor in the situation. In the same way that human beings are never simply one aspect of their experiential world (e.g. grief, thus just grieving human beings), the migration and refugee experience which is put forward by the person who experiences it is multifaceted and complex. It necessarily includes the creative and resourceful sides of the individual and of the group. THE FOCUS OF OUR STUDY: RESEARCH QUESTIONS This is above all a study of the meaning of the journey and its individual and social implications. More specifically, I shall try to answer the following four questions and to contribute scientifically to the related subject areas: 1 What happened on the journey? I hope this research will provide an ethnographic contribution. It aims to provide an ‘oral history’ of the event of the exodus from Ethiopia to Israel. This includes the documentation of the situations lived through by the Ethiopian Jews, the series of traumatic events they underwent, and the extent to which they had to struggle for their lives.

INTRODUCTION 15

The documentation of the journey is of special importance since it also constitutes a ‘salvage ethnography’, i.e. it is an account of a community which ceased to exist in its original form. 2 How did the people, the young people in particular, construct their experiences of the journey? In other words, what was the meaning of the journey from their point of view? Through phenomenological analysis I shall examine the major themes which come out of the narratives. These constitute the principal dimensions of meaning of the journey. 3 How did the experience of the journey affect the people as they were walking towards the border and during their protracted waiting in the refugee camps? What were the implications for the individual and the group? This question refers to the impact (rather than the meaning) of the journey. It relates to psycho-social processes and consequences: for example, the way in which people in general and children and youth in particular deal psychologically and come to terms with traumatic or catastrophic events. It also considers the possible influence of culture on the experience and its representation, and the changes in the structure of the families or in the dynamics within the community during the journey. 4 How did the experience of the journey, its meaning, and its individual and group implications affect their encounter with their new country? Did they construct the encounter with Israel in relation to the journey, and in what way? I shall look at the way in which the effect of the journey on their selfconcept was relevant to the interaction with Israeli society.

2 THE CONTEXT OF THE JOURNEY

Since this study deals with the migration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, I wish in this chapter to familiarise the reader with the Ethiopian Jewish people and with the historical context of their emigration. I shall, therefore, briefly discuss their existence in the Ethiopian context as well as their relations with Jews in other parts of the world and with the state of Israel. ETHNOGRAPHY: BETA ISRAEL IN ETHIOPIA In this ethnographic account I choose to focus on certain aspects of Ethiopian Jewish society in the twentieth century, namely the structure of their villages, their material culture, the life cycle and their informal and formal education. Some other aspects of their way of life will be included in the relevant points along this study (e.g. the various Jewish communities in Ethiopia, their religious leadership and leadership patterns within the society, communication codes, and so forth).1 The structure of the Jewish village A typical Beta Israel village is located on top of a hill or on a mountainside, always near a water source. There are four types of structures: dwellings (tukul), a synagogue (masgid, ce’lot bet), isolation huts for ritually impure women (mergam bet) and sheds for livestock. The typical dwelling (tukul) is a round hut with a conical roof. The walls are made of branches reinforced with clay and ashes to prevent fires. These huts are six to twelve metres in diameter, depending on the social standing of the owner, and the walls are about three metres high. The pillar supporting the roof divides the space into living quarters and areas for cooking and storage. All along the walls there are wooden benches for sleeping, covered with animal skins and blankets. The hut has one door and no windows and is furnished with a straw table, stools, hooks along the walls (to hang up belongings) and a number of very large containers. Food and kitchen implements are kept near the fire, which is used for cooking as well as for keeping the hut warm. Another type of dwelling, more characteristic of Tigray, is the square or rectangular stone house. (In Tigray, the

THE CONTEXT OF THE JOURNEY 17

round huts also have flatter roofs, since the area receives less rain.) Near the city, a more modern structure can be found: a rectangular mud hut with thicker walls and a tin roof. Every group of five or six families has its own isolation hut (mergam bet) for women at times when they are considered ritually impure. Menstruating women live in the hut for a week; women after childbirth spend a longer time there— forty days after giving birth to a boy and eighty days after giving birth to a girl. This hut is lower than the usual dwelling and is made of straw and branches. It is enclosed by a circle of stones to separate the pure from the impure. The synagogue (masgid, ce’lot bet), which is usually located at the highest point in the village, is a round structure made up of three concentric rooms. According to tradition, this design corresponds exactly to that of the First Temple. The innermost room, called ‘the Holy of Holies’, contains the Orit (Bible) and other sacral objects, and only priests may enter this room. The middle circle is made up of sections for women on the southern side, the debtara (helpers, assistants to the priest, the kess) to the west, and the ‘people’—men and boys—to the north. An extension on the eastern side contains the altar: until the beginning of the twentieth century, Ethiopian Jewry continued to offer sacrifices. The practice disappeared almost entirely around the turn of the century. The outer room is a sort of enclosure around the entire synagogue, including the altar. Building a synagogue is a ceremonial process; for example, the high priest formally blesses the site of the ‘Holy of Holies’, on which four cornerstones are laid. When the building is complete, a great celebration takes place. During the second half of the last century, the traditional type of building was gradually replaced by tin-roofed stone structures adorned with the Star of David (a symbol imported by Jacques Faitlovitch, on whom see below). The animal sheds protect livestock from sun and rain. They are made of wooden poles and thatched roofs. Economic structure Most Beta Israel villages subsisted on agriculture (mostly as tenants on the land), by means of which the men were usually able to supply the needs of their household. They would grow grain for bread and Ethiopian beer, and fodder for their livestock, as well as maize and various vegetables and legumes (including beans, lentils and oil-producing plants). Some families also had coffee plants and fruit trees, and all of them raised cows, goats, sheep, donkeys and chickens. The system of cultivation was simple: ploughs were pulled by bulls, stones were removed with hoes and the grain was harvested using scythes. After the harvest, bulls or cows were used to thresh the grain. Children were also part of the system; they would guard the crops from special watchtowers, chasing away birds and other animals with stones that they were able to throw with astonishing accuracy. During the summer months, when agricultural activity came to an end (in particular, April, May and June), the farmers would be occupied

18 THE CONTEXT OF THE JOURNEY

with other work, such as weaving or repairs. At this time, too, they would visit their relatives in far-off villages or use the time to hold betrothal and marriage ceremonies.2 The men also engaged in blacksmithing work. They specialised in the production of gun parts and agricultural implements, such as scythes, hoes, plough-shares, hammers, scissors, tongs and pliers. As a rule, five men working together were needed to mould the iron into tools. In spite of the widely accepted tradition that it was Beta Israel that discovered the iron ore in the Semien mountains and in northwest Ethiopia, the raw material used by Jewish blacksmiths tended to be scrap metal, which they bought or collected. The blacksmiths also produced the metal musical instruments used in religious rites, such as gongs and rattles (Shelemay 1988). The method of marketing the blacksmiths’ products depended on the type of customers involved. In mixed areas (i.e. areas where both Jews and Christians lived), the implements would be sold in local markets or even in the villages themselves. However, in strictly Christian areas, sales were made in a different way (Henkin 1986). After the harvest, a group of Jewish craftsmen (usually related to one another) would get together and travel to a Christian settlement. There, they would build a hut outside the settlement; the men would produce metal implements and the women would make clay utensils to sell to the local villagers. During their entire stay, the Jews would remain apart from the Christian villagers, slaughtering their own meat and resting on Saturday and working on the Sunday. The learning of work skills Children would learn their trade informally from their parents, by imitation, trial and error. In fact, this informal method was really a rather structured process of training involving specific stages, with the pupil being tested on his or her knowledge at the end of each stage. When the time came for the test, progress would be assessed to see how well a specific skill had been acquired, relative to the pupil’s age. In this way the Jews of Ethiopia were able to pass their specialised knowledge on from father to son and mother to daughter, ensuring individual and communal survival. Skills connected to independent farming, such as the rearing of livestock or the cultivation of land, were thus retained, as was knowledge of the various crafts in which Jews specialised. The women also taught their daughters to carry water from the river or spring, to make injera—the staple food made of tef flour (see below)—and to ceremonially prepare coffee, in addition to training them as potters. The role of the woman in the Ethiopian home The family hut is the domain of the Ethiopian woman. Traditionally, the man may bring things into the home but he is not allowed to remove anything without the woman’s permission. Babies on their backs, the women take care of the

THE CONTEXT OF THE JOURNEY 19

house. Preparing the flat injera bread is a particularly time-consuming process: the women take flour commonly made from tef, an iron-rich grain found in the mountain regions, and prepare a dough that is put in a clay pot and left to ferment for a number of days. When the dough is ready, water is usually added to produce the right consistency and the bread is cooked over the fire. As a rule, injera is accompanied by a dish called wot (sometimes pronounced ‘wat’), which is made of various legumes (particularly lentils) or meat, depending on the family’s financial situation. Wot is usually quite spicy. On Friday night, a special bread, called berekete in Amharic, is eaten.3 Another activity that takes up a good deal of women’s time is water-carrying. Large clay pitchers, fastened in a special way to the back or (occasionally) the stomach, are used to transport water from the nearest source. Each woman has her own special pitchers, which are usually adapted to her size and strength. Making beer and the coffee ceremony (t’alaandbuna) Ethiopian beer (t’ala) is usually quite light. Made of barley or hops fermented with water in clay vessels, it is poured, when ready, into special pots. In general, t’ala is prepared once a month and drunk before it has had time to mature. Other alcoholic drinks produced in the community include araqi (made with anise) and tej (made with honey). An important part of Ethiopian hospitality is the coffee ceremony (buna). The woman begins the ceremony by washing and roasting the coffee beans. She adds a specific scent before taking them in to the guest so that the aroma is appreciated, only then grinding the coffee beans with a mortar and pestle. The coffee is finally cooked over the fire in a special pot known as a jevena and served in tiny cups that are refilled from time to time. Over the years, the coffee ceremony has come to be a frequent social event, an occasion for open conversations and the telling of tales.4 Clothing Women are also involved in the making and embroidering of the traditional Ethiopian garment, the shamma. Here, men and women have specific tasks: the woman buys the cotton, beats it and spins the thread. She also embroiders the woven cloth. The man is responsible for weaving the shamma. The weaver sits inside the loom, his feet in a depression in the floor, and moves the spindle by means of threads attached to his big toes. Weaving usually takes place in summer, after the harvest, although old men who no longer work in the fields will weave throughout the year. The areas of Ethiopia inhabited by Beta Israel enjoy a pleasant climate, and wool garments are not needed. When the weather grows cool, clothes made of a thicker cotton are worn. A special heavy shamma called a gabi is worn as an outer garment during the cold season. The normal white shamma, about a metre

20 THE CONTEXT OF THE JOURNEY

wide, is everyday wear, but the holiday shamma is a white cloth edged with coloured stripes or made of interwoven fine and coarse threads. The woman’s garment is known as a kamis and is made of two pieces of white shamma. For young women, the kamis is adorned with a green or red stripe around the edge. A long white narrow cloth belt (mechinat) with a coloured fringe gathers the garment together at the hips. If she is seen without her mechinat, a woman is considered immodest and must ‘redeem herself’ through a special ritual (Kahana 1988). The third element in the woman’s dress is a shawl (natala or agademia) worn over the shoulders. Men wear trousers (suri) that are wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, together with cotton shirts. The shamma is worn in different ways to express special circumstances. For example, when a man is happy, he will wear his shamma folded around the throat; when he is afraid (of the evil eye), he will pull it up to his mouth or even his nose; when he is in mourning, the edges of the shamma will trail on the ground. Thus, the national dress of Beta Israel (and all Ethiopian people) also speaks a symbolic language. Female appearance and adornment In the past, an Ethiopian Jewish woman would have had to shave her head after every stay in the isolation hut in order for the priest to bless her and allow her to return to her own house. More recently, women began braiding their hair into tiny plaits close to the skull; women who are proficient at this braiding receive payment for their work. Some women also tattoo themselves, a Christian custom that has spread to Beta Israel in spite of the religious injunction against this form of self-mutilation (the proscription against tattoos, though, only applies to unmarried women). Tattoos are a substitute for jewellery, especially when the woman cannot afford other ornaments, and are thought to enhance the movement of the neck when dancing.5 Ethiopian women also adorn themselves with make-up and jewellery. Because precious metals are relatively rare in Ethiopia, jewellery is fairly expen-sive and is only plated with gold or silver. The types of jewellery worn include earrings, chains, bracelets, pendants, rings, anklets and ornaments for the hair and forehead. Sometimes the anklets are made of chains of jimma beads, worn on both legs. Basket-weaving Beta Israel’s women are also skilled in the weaving of baskets, storage containers, trays and tables of various sizes. These objects are made of natural-coloured strips of palm leaves, long reeds and juncus plants. When these materials are not available, other types of straw are used. Decoration is usually geometric and includes triangles or diamonds in red, blue and green.

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Pottery The production of pottery vessels (usually made of clay) for everyday use became a particular skill of Jewish women in Ethiopia. They became experts in preparing the raw material and shaping it into water jugs of various sizes, pots, cups and coffee dishes, as well as larger containers for produce and for the fermentation and storage of alcoholic drinks. Much of their work was sold to Christian and Muslim women, who avoid (and despise) this profession. Instead of using a potter’s wheel, the women hand-roll the strips of clay and stick them one on top of the other. They then let the pots dry in the sun, and later bake the pot in an oven or a hole in the ground. After baking, some of the pots are sealed with various materials. The women also make vessels out of gourds, which do not absorb odours in the way that clay pots do, and these vessels are used to store and serve milk products. In the village of Wollaka, women make the clay figures now considered typical of Ethiopian Jewish craftsmanship.6 These figures (ashangolit) first appeared in the Begamder region when more tourists began to visit Ethiopia. At that time, apparently, the women moved from making clay dolls for their children to producing figurines, usually of priests, of King Solomon and other religious figures, or of various animals (especially lions—the ‘Lion of Judah’). They decorated the figures with Jewish symbols and sold them in the village market. In the 1960s, potter’s wheels and kilns were introduced into the village and, with the encouragement of the Ethiopian Tourist Board, a local co-opera-tive for the production and marketing of clay figures was organised. The life cycle of Beta Israel Over the centuries, Beta Israel has developed special customs associated with childbirth, marriage and death. The principle of purity and impurity plays a prominent part in the marking of these events and to a significant extent creates a distinction between Christians and Jews in Ethiopia (Kahana 1988). I shall complement the above-mentioned three events by giving a short description of phases in childhood and adolescence in the Ethiopian Jewish community. During her menstruation period and following childbirth, a woman of Beta Israel keeps herself isolated in a special hut surrounded by a ring of stones. Contact with her during this time is forbidden. When the period of impurity is over, the woman must bathe and wash her garments7 before rejoining the regular activities and returning to her home. In most cases, there are a number of women staying together in the isolation hut, which therefore also serves as a place for further bonding of the women as well as a place where they can regularly recuperate from the heavy burdens of cooking for the family and other chores. It may be worth noting that small children are allowed to enter their mothers’ isolation hut.

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Circumcision On their eighth day, male babies are ritually circumcised in the women’s isolation hut. The man who performs circumcisions conducts the operation surrounded by other people. The priest stands at a certain distance, taking care not to approach the (impure) isolation hut; he pronounces the blessing that mentions the circumcision of Abraham, forefather of the Jewish people, and that of the other Fathers of the nation, and recites the Ten Commandments.8 However, because of the strict observance of the laws of ritual purity, the celebration only takes place after the mother has completed her forty days of isolation. Childhood and adolescence The question of Ethiopian attitudes towards developmental stages lies beyond the scope of the present ethnographic overview. Nevertheless, it may be said that various periods are delineated in the life of boys, girls and adolescents, although there are no ceremonies to mark the passage from one period to another.9 Nevertheless, a concept of different successive stages of growth and maturing does exist, and the surrounding society alters its behaviour towards young people in accordance with this concept. Table 2.1 sums up the various stages. These proceed from infancy (0–2 years) where the infant is known as chakla, to early childhood (3–5) where the toddler is known as kutara, to childhood (6–12) which is the second phase of kutara for the boy or lijagered for the girl; and adoles-cence/ puberty (13–15). According to Ethiopian culture, life as a whole corresponds to the four elements: from air (childhood) to fire (adolescence) to water (adulthood) to earth (old age). Marriage Marriage takes place at a relatively young age (12–14 for girls; 14–18 for boys), and the match itself may be arranged at a far earlier stage. Sometimes the parents come to a mutual agreement when the bride and groom are children (or even before they are born), although in most cases it is the father of the groom who seeks a bride for his son, checking that she comes from a good family and trying to assess, if circumstances allow, whether she will be a worthy wife. The father then ceremonially asks for the hand of the bride and waits some time for an answer. Occasionally, the parents of the girl will reject the proposal, claiming that their daughter has been ‘promised’ to another boy. Being ‘promised’ is a parallel status to betrothal, and indicates that the girl is already intended for another groom. At the betrothal ceremony, the father of the groom gives the bride’s father the jewellery she will wear up to the time of the marriage. At this point (even if the wedding is not due to take place for a few years), the bride moves in with the family of her husband-to-be and is trained by her future mother-in-law. It is

Source This table is an abridged and slightly adapted version of a table contained in Messing (1957)

Table 2.1 From infancy to maturity in Ethiopian culture

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24 THE CONTEXT OF THE JOURNEY

the groom’s mother who sees when the girl has reached puberty and, observing her emotional development, decides when she is ready for marriage. Sometimes a ‘bride’ comes to live with her future in-laws at the age of 7 and is only married at the age of 15. Thus, a girl may live with a boy as a sister for a long time and then become his wife.10 The marriage celebrations, which last several days, are divided between the villages of the bride and the groom. First, in the bride’s village, the kessoch11 (priests) bless the couple and ask them to sign a written marriage contract. The wedding then moves on to the groom’s village, where the couple are left alone to ascertain the bride’s virginity and consum-mate the marriage. After this has been done, the celebrations begin. Death and mourning Practices surrounding these are also closely connected to the principle of ritual purity. The dead are buried on the day of death, and those who handle the corpse are considered unclean for seven days and must purify themselves with ritual immersion and the ashes of a red heifer (see Numbers 19:1ff.). Family members mourn for seven days. On the fourth and seventh days, and once a year on the anniversary of the death, a commemoration is held which involves a meal and a special ceremony (tazkar). It is considered extremely important that the burial be conducted properly and that all the deceased’s children commemo-rate the death, so that his or her spirit may rest in peace and enter ‘the world of the dead’.12 Thus, the living are responsible for ceremonies that allow the dead to reach the afterlife. Ethiopian Jews also attach a great deal of importance to the way in which relatives—near and distant—are informed of a death. It is customary for someone who is known (i.e. preferably the closest relative and never a stranger) to first inform the next of kin about the death. Receiving the information from a stranger is considered an insult to the deceased and to the family, and the relative who hears the news from a stranger may react very badly and may even injure him/herself. Usually the relatives of the deceased are told to gather even before the next of kin has been informed, in order to provide an immediate emotional support for the mourner, since it is believed that the shock of hearing news of this sort is so serious that it may even cause death. At the time of the burial, all those who attend stand to one side, crying and wailing. Stones are then piled on the grave. After burial, people sit on the ground while the priest speaks, and then everyone is invited back to the village, where a light meal is served. This starts the days of mourning. Education Most of the education received by Ethiopian Jews was informal, i.e. children were taught by their parents and older siblings as well as grandparents and other people of the village. Children learned by imitating adults, talking with

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their parents, listening to stories, fables and proverbs which are widely used by Ethiopian Jews13 and (silently) to the conversations of adults. The goals of this informal education were: 1 to transmit social norms and ethical values such as the Ten Command-ments, respect for elders, Jewish values (such as ritual purity) and a work ethic; 2 to teach Jewish customs, such as the role of the synagogue (ce’lot bet); holiday rituals for Seged, Fasika (Passover), Ba’ala Massallat (Tabernacles), etc.; marriage customs; and rituals for burial and mourning; 3 to transmit knowledge regarding the establishment of a family and of behaviour within the family, which includes, among other aspects, taking responsibility for the family unit and traditional care for the elderly. Informal education started from the age of 5 approximately (depending on the child’s development), when boys began to help their fathers in the field as well as to perform various other tasks, and girls stayed at the tukul under their mother’s supervision and learned women’s work. If a child displayed an aptitude for learning, he (less often also ‘she’) might be sent to study with the kess, who would teach them reading and writing as well as religion. The most talented pupils in the village would be sent to study with great teachers in Semien.14 Girls had less opportunity to be sent away for formal education. However, this started to change during the 1950s and later, with the Ethiopian revolution, and an increasing number of girls entered formal education.15 Children of poor parents had little or no chance of schooling, since their help was needed to earn the family’s livelihood. Only a minority of children were given a formal education. For example, it is estimated that in 1980–1, at the height of the involvement in the education of Ethiopian Jews by the ORT (Organization of Rehabilitation through Training, see below), the children of only 22 (out of 500) Jewish villages attended school: that is, just over 5,000 pupils. Beside the fact that parents could not give up the help that children provided at work or in the home, parents also tended not to send their children to public schools for fear of assimilation. Most of the schools adjoined missions or churches and were influenced by their message. These reservations notwithstanding, the Ethiopian Jews placed a high value on education and on knowledge in its various forms (whether from informal or formal processes) and tried as hard as they could to establish mechanisms for promoting this goal. Every attempt to create an ongoing system of formal Jewish education for Beta Israel ended in failure. The first attempt was made in 1924 when Jacques Faitlovitch (see below) established the first Jewish school in Ethiopia. This school managed to educate a selected number of Ethiopian Jewish scholars, who were then meant to educate the villagers. However, the school was shut down at the beginning of the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in 1935–6. When Mussolini’s soldiers approached Addis Ababa in spring 1936, the students found refuge in the

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French embassy in the town; their books were then stolen and sold in the marketplace (Kaplan 1988:19).16 The next step was in Ambover, where a large new village was established by the Italians who first favoured the ‘Falashas’ as an ‘oppressed minority’. But in 1937, following publication of his anti-Fascist article in an Italian paper, Taamrat Emmanuel, who was a driving force in education in the area, was forced to flee again, this time out of Ethiopia. This damaged the efforts at education. A year later, Fascist racial anti-semitic laws were enforced in Ethiopia by the Italians and no education for Jews was possible at all.17 During the 1950s and 1960s, anti-semitism18 was on the rise in some areas of Ethiopia where Jews were living (Itzhak 1988:32) and the few Jewish schools that existed—set up by the Jewish Agency—were shut down. This followed an attack in which the first and largest school in the village of Wuzava was set on fire, destroying all its equipment and textbooks. From 1974, the Organization of Rehabilitation through Training (ORT) operated a system of twenty-two primary schools, but these were shut down in 1981 by the Marxist regime, which looked askance at the teaching of Jewish subjects and began to claim that the ORT teachers were agents of the United States, accusing them of holding Zionist views (Itzhak 1988:32).19 The school system The school system included primary schools, junior high schools, high schools, vocational training and adult education. Most schools had classes where students of different ages studied together. This allowed children to learn according to their individual ability. It also enabled children to adapt their hours of study to the time left from working in the field, and sometimes older students would decide to attend school (at an age that would be considered unusual in the Western education systems).20 There were three types of pupils: 1 those who studied four days a week from 6.00 to 8.00 a.m. and then went home (a walk of several kilometres) to work in the fields; 2 those who studied four days a week from 8.30 a.m. to 3.00 p.m., and worked at home early in the morning and later in the afternoon; 3 pupils who studied without working at home, a situation usually only possible for children from well-to-do families. Teachers in Ethiopia are very highly regarded by parents as well as by children. Their social status is somewhere between that of a kess and a community elder (shemagleh). There was hardly any class discipline problem. On the whole, pupils respect the teacher’s opinion, and parents have complete confidence in the ability and moral fitness of their children’s teachers.

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Historical background The Ethiopian Jews of today have a long history, though the details are still obscure in many important places, leaving considerable space for varying interpretations. The major debates among scholars still concern the question of the origins of the group (e.g. Leslau 1951; Kessler 1985; Quirin 1992; Shelemay 1989; Kaplan 1992). James Quirin (1992) suggests that most of the theories fall within three broad perspectives: 1 ‘Lost tribe’ theories suggest that Ethiopian Jews descended directly from the ancient Israelites, either at the period of the exodus from Egypt (around 1300 BCE) or at some later time (e.g. Halevy 1868, 1877, 1906; Faitlovitch 1905, 1959; Waldman 1985, 1989). 2 ‘Convert’ theories imply that they were Agaw converts to Judaism who refused to convert to Christianity when it became Aksum’s official religion in the fourth century (e.g. Ullendorff 1968). 3 ‘Rebel’ theories suggest that they were rebels or dissidents against Christian Orthodoxy and the state at various times since the fourth century (e.g. Krempel 1972; Kaplan 1992). Presenting this debate in full is beyond the scope of this study. However, it is worth noting that the official view of the Israeli government and the belief held by the Ethiopian community now in Israel is that of the ‘lost tribe’. That is, the Ethiopian Jews are direct ethnic and religious descendants of original Jewish immigrants (perhaps exiles) to Ethiopia, most probably the tribe of Dan.21 This view was the basis for permitting their immigration to Israel in 1975 under the Law of Return (see below). It is clear from recent research that at some point before the fourteenth century, when written documents first mention them, there existed groups of ayhud. To the dominant Christian culture of that time, this name meant ‘Jews’ or ‘Jewish group’ (Quirin 1992:202). Since the ninth century the Jews were believed to have had an autonomous area which amounted, as some researchers hold, to a Jewish kingdom in the Gondar and Semien region of Ethiopia.22 They functioned as a society with kings —for example, the legendary Gideon (or several Gideon kings)—and with landowners, farmers, soldiers and people of other occupations similar in status to some other societies in the Ethiopian matrix (Sabar-Friedman 1988; Quirin 1992). It was also during the ninth century that Eldad Ha’Dani (‘the Danite’, ‘of the tribe of Dan’), a Jewish traveller, brought the news of their existence and information about their Jewish religious laws to other Jews in the Middle East (Epstein 1891). The situation started to change in the fourteenth century, when a ‘period of wars’23 erupted between the Christian kings and the Jewish autonomy or

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kingdom, lasting for about three hundred years. This kingdom was finally crushed by the Ethiopian King Sosenuis in 1632. This resulted in a downturn in the conditions of the Jews. During the period of these wars, the Jews turned from ‘Beta Israel’—literally meaning ‘the House of Israel’ (sometimes used in Ethiopia as ‘Israel’)—into Falasha or Falassi, i.e. people without right to land, exiles, strangers. The term ‘Falassi’ first appears in chronicles of the fifteenth century, when the Christian Emperor Is’hak, after defeating the Jews and burning their villages, declared that only those Jews who would convert by immersion (baptism) to Christianity would have a right to own and inherit land. The others would become Falassi (Taddesse 1972).24 In the 350 years since 1632, Jews in Ethiopia, derogatively called Falasha thereafter, underwent a serious decline in their occupations and in the related social status. This resulted in a gradual yet persistent deterioration in their conditions and also in a decrease in their numbers, i.e. in their survival capacities. After losing their lands (and also the right to inherit land in the future) they became tenants in a harsh feudal system. The men at first (1632–1755) became builders and the women specialists in ornamenting the palaces and castles that were built by the new rulers of the Gondar region (Quirin 1992).25 Then, during ‘the era of the princes’ (1755–1868), Jews went through a further deterioration in status: they were no longer employed by the kings to build and decorate castles and churches, and the men became blacksmiths while the women turned into potters (Quirin 1992:126–64). Holding these trades, they became essential for the Ethiopian economy but were marginalised in their social status. It was their expertise that made them so essential. The men were almost the only blacksmiths in their region (north of Lake Tana) who produced ploughs, sickles, knives, spades and other tools, as well as musical instruments for religious purposes; and in modem times they had also become experts in the repair of weapons. Jewish women came to be specialists in making pots for carrying water. As mentioned above, these were made by a special technique which included baking the clay, and were personal, i.e. they had to be well adjusted to the size and strength of the carrier, and therefore required a high level of skill in their making. According to Ethiopian Amhara traditional belief, people who work with fire or make things out of earthen material were of the lowest social status. Furthermore, these people were believed to be able to control satanic powers. They were called buda, since they were thought to have acquired the power of the ‘evil eye’: in Ethiopian terms they were ‘soul eaters’, able to turn at night into a spotted hyena and consume the soul of another person (Levine 1965; Messing 1982; Quirin 1992; Solomon 1999). Therefore, when a Christian died or was about to die, Jewish neighbours were often blamed, persecuted and killed as an act of ‘preventive medicine’ or ‘justified revenge’. Beta Israel’s inferior socio-economic status as tenant farmers, potters and blacksmiths continued until modern days. From the 1950s onward, a small section of the rural Jewish population moved to the cities and found work in commerce,

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factories and the civil service. A few Jews had managed to acquire property, which they received as a reward for service to the army, the state or the Church. However, when the man who had been thus rewarded died, the property still reverted to its original owner. In 1974, following the Marxist revolution in Ethiopia, private and churchowned property was nationalised and divided up among the citizens of Ethiopia. Because of strong opposition from the land-owning (feudal) social stratum, the nationalisation plan was only partially successful. For the Jews the consequences of the revolution seemed favourable at first, but then exacerbated their situation and caused further deterioration in their status. A number of processes accounted for that deterioration: 1 The land reforms gave land rights to Beta Israel for the first time for hundreds of years, and some were indeed able to benefit from it, but on the whole it resulted in the landlords expelling many of them from the land they were cultivating and turning them into refugees. This was a measure taken by the landowners in order to protect themselves from the threat of their land being claimed by tenants who were already cultivating it. Even in the rare cases where Jews were able to claim the land, the kebele (the village associations) frequently allocated them only the worst parts of the distributed land. 2 The Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU) resistance group, which consisted of royalists opposing the Dergue government, targeted the Ethiopian Jews (among other groups) for fierce attacks. This was due, among other reasons, to the EDU’s strong opposition to the land reforms, of which the Jews were potential beneficiaries. 3 The Dergue’s concerted effort at secularisation and at crushing any other power centres resulted in an attack on the religious leaders of the Christian Church, as well as of the Jewish faith. The Christian (Orthodox) Church was of course much stronger than the minority population of Jews and could evade most of the measures in a variety of ways. The Jews had to comply. At one point, any Jewish practice was banned. 4 Forced conscription of minors was another factor: at a certain point, the age of conscription was lowered and youngsters were rounded up in village centres, marketplaces and wherever they could be spotted, and taken right away. They would be sent to the Somali border from where ‘no one returns …unless as a corpse or being seriously crippled’ (BenEzer and Peri 1990: 36) or they would be sent to fight in the fierce civil war. Conscription was adopted as a practice by various underground groups as well, so that many young Ethiopians, including Jewish ones, fled to the forests and remote places in order to avoid it. Jewish youngsters could rely less on Christian villagers’ support and on other fleeing conscripts, since these maintained the buda notion about the Jews.

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Relations with the Jewish world26 Some contacts between Jews from Ethiopia and Jews in other communities took place along the centuries.27 In the nineteenth century, however, following reports which arrived in Europe about the success of an intensive campaign by missionaries of the London Mission for the Jews to convert the Jews of Ethiopia, there was a growing concern in the Jewish world. This brought about an effort among Jewish individuals and communities to contact Ethiopian Jews and find out about their spiritual (ethno-religious) conditions (Waldman 1989: 130–56). In 1867 the French Jewish orientalist, Joseph Halevy, was sent by the Alliance Israelite Universelle (henceforth the Alliance), the French Jewish philanthropic organisation, to check the truth of these reports. When he returned to Europe, he issued a call to save the Ethiopian Jews, asking that the Alliance establish schools for them (Waldman 1989:161–6). Halevy’s journey was significant in renewing communication in modern times between the Jews of Ethiopia and other Jewish communities. In practical terms, however, it was a failure, since his call went unanswered and no assistance was given to Ethiopian Jews for the next forty years. During these years the community dwindled in numbers. The great famine (Kifu-qen) of 1888–92, epidemics, the invasion of people from Sudan (raids by dervish soldiers) who destroyed whole villages, and the expansion of the activities of the London Mission—all had led to a dwindling of Jewish numbers to such a degree that, at the beginning of the century, their numbers were estimated (by Faitlovitch, see below) to be only about 50–60,000 people. The visit of Halevy, who went away and never returned, shattered the hopes of Ethiopian Jews raised by his appearance for a significant renewal of contacts with their ‘white brethren’ (Waldman 1989:174). At the beginning of this century a new era commenced in the relations between the Jewish world and the Ethiopian Jews. In 1904, Jacques Faitlovitch, a student of Halevy—later known as ‘the father of the Falashas’—travelled to Ethiopia as the emissary of Baron de Rothschild and the Alliance. His journey was the start of fifty years of intensive work for the cause of the Ethiopian Jews. His first act was to bring back to Europe two village boys from Gondar, Taamrat Emmanuel and Getiah Yeremiah, with the intention of giving them a traditional Jewish and general education. Faitlovitch hoped that the two boys would then teach their own people when they returned to Gondar. Later he initiated the sending of other Ethiopian youths to study in prestigious rabbinical institutions around the world and return as teachers to Ethiopia. Among other things, they taught Hebrew and Judaism to their people. He also set up a Jewish school in Addis Ababa (1924) and initiated the establishment of several pro-Falasha committees around the world, to raise awareness within their communities as well as funds for further activities.28 In the course of his initiatives, Faitlovitch was also involved in the exchange of letters between the leaders of the Jewish

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community in Ethiopia and prominent rabbis in European countries and in Palestine. Faitlovitch’s dedicated work created a growing interest in the community among Jews around the world. He was able to enlist very influential figures in the Jewish world to participate in the international committees that he had created. As a consequence of his visits to Ethiopia and the nature of the contacts he was able to create between Ethiopian Jews and the Jewish communities around the world, the influence of the Mission among the Jews was reduced and the community’s sense of Jewish identity was invigorated (SabarFriedman 1988).29 The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 increased the hopes of Ethiopian Jews that, with the immigration of other Jewish groups, such as those from North Africa and other diasporal locations, their turn would soon arrive. The pressure to enable the community to emigrate to Israel, put on Israeli state officials by members of the Ethiopian community (including the few who were already in Israel) as well as by other Jewish organisations, was mounting. The state of Israel needed, however, to ascertain and formally (legally) recognise the status of the community as Jews in order for them to be entitled to immigrate under the Israeli ‘Law of Return’.30 Thus, the issue of the authenticity of the Jewishness of Ethiopian Jews, which until that point was a question that concerned only scholars and rabbis, became a political question. For twenty-five years this question remained undecided. A debate ensued. Some people argued that they should be recognised as Jews and brought to Israel as soon as possible. Others said that as long as there was any doubt regarding their Jewish identity it would be better to limit operations to assisting them in Ethiopia (Goren 1974). Still others recommended that until such a decision was taken, nothing should be done and Israel should not be directly involved even in helping them in Ethiopia. They explained that, in this way, hopes would not be raised in order to be shattered later (Yeshayahu 1958:64;31 see also Corinaldi 1988:182–3 and notes; Waldman 1989:261, 1992:187–91; and ORT Report 1959, cited in Corinaldi 1988:182). In addition to the religious problematics, there were political issues that contributed to the tendency to postpone a decision on the matter. These consisted mainly of concerns regarding the potential difficulties in absorption and integration in Israel (Corinaldi 1988:183), the uncertainty and therefore the fear regarding the numbers involved in possible immigration (Yeshayahu 1958, cited in Waldman 1992:180), and the anxiety about damaging the good diplomatic relations with Ethiopia that had only begun to be formed during those years (Haddas 1958 in Waldman 1992:182–3). This lack of decision and ambi-guity of goals regarding Ethiopian Jews was then reflected in the activities of the state of Israel and the Jewish Agency.32 Thus, on the whole, the twenty-five years following the formation of the state of Israel were characterised by activities which were started, consolidated with success, and then suddenly neglected for no clear reason. Since these activities nevertheless added to the historical process

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leading to the migration (thus, to the setting out on the journey) I will briefly describe a few of them below. The Jewish Agency became increasingly involved in the education of Ethiopian Jewish children, both in Ethiopia and in Israel. In 1954 it established a teachers’ training college in Asmara33 and in 1955–6 groups of youngsters (some of them from that college) were brought to Israel to be educated in the Youth Aliya education village34 of Kfar Batya. In addition, twenty-seven schools were opened in Jewish villages in Ethiopia and maintained by the Jewish Agency. In 1957 there was a sudden change in the policy of the Jewish Agency, the Asmara training college was closed, and in 1958 all schools, apart from the central one in Ambover, were shut down. The teachers were not told of the intentions of the Jewish Agency regarding future activities and remained formally linked (and in their raison d’être) to the Jewish Agency. They did not receive their salaries and were in a very bad state, but they did not know whether they should look for other work. While the formal reason given was lack of money, reducing activities to almost zero reflected, as stated above, the lack of clear support for the cause of the Ethiopian Jews by Israeli public opinion at the time (Corinaldi 1988:182). This created a major crisis in the Jewish community in Ethiopia, whose children were suddenly left without the newly established Jewish education. So great was this crisis that the heads of ORT in Geneva, who visited their villages in December 1958, wrote that ‘surely it would have been better not to teach them at all than to teach them and then neglect them’, and described the history of the Jewish Agency’s operations within Ethiopian Jewish villages as a ‘sorry story’ (ORT Report 1959).35 In their hunger for education many Jewish children decided to accept offers to join the mission schools from where ‘the way to assimilation [leaving the community] was short’ (Sabar-Friedman 1988:17). This ‘approach-avoidance strategy’ continued, in one form or another, in the following years. It was only in 1973 that the (Sephardic) Chief Rabbi of Israel recognised them as Jews, thus enabling them to receive Israeli citizenship under the conditions of the Law of Return. This was confirmed in 1975 by the government, a decision that opened the way to their immigration. THE JOURNEY: FACTS AND FIGURES The context in which they set out on their migration journey was constituted by the political, economic and social situation in Ethiopia and the long constant deterioration of the situation of the Jews, together with the intensification of their relations with Jewish communities in other parts of the world and with Israel, an intensification which culminated in a formal recognition of their Jewishness and their inclusion under the Law of Return. The cause underlying the journey, however, was the ancient dream of a return to the land of their ancestors. Geographically, the migration began with Jews from the Tigray region on the north side of the highland plateau. The smaller group from the Wolkite area to the north-west joined in, and the contiguous Jewish population from the Gondar

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region, the largest group in the community, then followed. Between 1977 and 1984, in the first stage, roughly 8,000 immigrants reached Israel through Sudan (only 2,000 of them, however, between 1977 and 1982). Then, between November 1984 and January 1985, another 7,000 were airlifted from the refugee camps in Sudan in what became known as ‘Operation Moses’. Another 1,200 or so were taken out of the camps under ‘Operation Queen of Sheba’ which followed two months later. My interviewees all came during these years. Subsequently immigration almost completely ceased until 1990–1, when Ethiopia and Israel resumed diplomatic relations. The opening of an Israeli embassy in Addis Ababa (end of 1989), among other factors, caused a flow of the remainder of Ethiopian Jews, approximately 25,000, to the capital, where they had to stay in refugee-like conditions (Naim 1991 in Waldman 1992:241; Ephros 1990; BenEzer and Peri 1990). These Jews were brought to Israel during 1990–1, mainly in a 36-hour airlift (‘Operation Solomon’) on the very last days of the Mengistu Haile Mariam regime, 25 and 26 May 1991, in which about 14,500 of them were flown in. In the following ten years the Jews of the Quara region of Ethiopia and the Fallas Mura people36 emigrated to Israel. There are altogether some 85,000 Ethiopian Jews now in Israel. Most of them are young: 80 per cent were under 35, and 60 per cent under 18 years of age at the time of their arrival. The journey to Israel was not simple. Whereas in the past the isolated individuals who had reached Israel had been able to fly directly from Addis Ababa, shortly after the revolution in 1974 the borders of Ethiopia were closed and immigration became illegal. In an effort to escape the sealed-off country every possible channel was exploited. A relatively small number of Jews—approximately 600 of them—managed to reach Kenya and were flown to Israel without any trouble. This route was not satisfactory, however, from an operative point of view and for political reasons. The numbers of Ethiopian Jews who could be taken along the dangerous lengthy route were in any case not sufficient. The Israeli authorities who dealt with the immigration of Ethiopian Jews looked for alternatives and came up with the possibility, which seemed at first unfeasible, of a migration through hostile Sudan. Israel, and leaders of other countries, invested many efforts in removing all obstacles to the Sudanese route.37 Ultimately, the vast majority of the emigrant population made the passage to Israel by this route. What does ‘the Ethiopian-Sudanese route’ imply? The Jews of Ethiopia were, in effect, responsible for the first part of the journey—that is, reaching and crossing the Sudanese border—whereas the Israeli secret service—the Mossad— was responsible for bringing them from Sudan to Israel. In this way a growing trickle of Ethiopian Jews started to flow towards Sudan. The distance to Sudan depended on the point of departure, but often people were forced to trek back and forth over hundreds of miles of minor paths. A typical journey to the border lasted for three to five weeks. It was not unusual, however, for a journey to drag out for some months and sometimes even for years. It was followed by a stay in a refugee camp in Sudan for, on average, one to two years.

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The wayfarers walked along numerous trails but they crossed the Sudanese border at three major points. Most trails converged towards the border points of Humara in the north, Abderafi in the centre, and Metemma in the south. In many cases, these crossing points determined their location while in Sudan (see map 1). This in turn affected the type of difficulties and sufferings encountered and their chances of survival. The Jews were then concentrated in four main refugee camps in Sudan: Wad Sherifat (Sherife) in north Sudan, near the city of Kassala; Wad el Hileau in the central district closer to the Ethiopian-Sudanese border north-east of Gedaref; Um Raquba located south-east of the city of Gedaref; and Tewawa camp, which was closest to Gedaref to the north-west. As the numbers of new arrivals were constantly rising, the situation in the camps deteriorated continually, especially during 1981–4, in terms of food, water, disease and employment possibilities. The year 1984 was particularly bad as drought was affecting both Ethiopia and Sudan, and famine followed. A catastrophic situation ensued in the camps and many people died of disease38 (Parfitt 1985; Rapoport 1986; Avraham 1986). As happens in many refugee camps in other parts of the world, the group’s social organisation is destabilised by the conditions. Many women have to work as prostitutes in order to survive, men become aggressive as their role definition cannot be enacted in the camps (Hitchcox 1990), and the camp itself is often controlled by gangs of youngsters who resort to violent means. This is accentuated at night, when the camp turns into ‘a different place’, a territory which is also ‘free’ of the staff of humanitarian agencies and operates by different rules than during the day, as Tudor Parfit witnessed in 1984 in Tewawa refugee camp, where his Eritrean guide and translator told him: ‘It is a dangerous place. As many people are knifed every night as die of hunger’ (Parfitt 1985:1). The Jews were even worse off since, as we shall see below (thematic chapters), they also suffered from the hostility of the other Ethiopian refugees and of the Sudanese authorities (Parfitt 1985:2–4, 49). The Sudanese experience consisted of a short or long stay in a refugee camp and/or a period (long or short) in one of the towns in the vicinity of the refugee camps. The Sudanese authorities would have preferred all refugees to be directed to the camps and to remain there. This would have enabled the authorities to manage the incoming population in a centralised way. It would also have enabled them to claim benefits from donor countries and aid agencies as well as letting the agencies (such as the Red Cross) offer direct assistance. The refugees, on the other hand, preferred the towns, where they stood a better chance of survival since they might find work as well as live in a healthier, less disease-stricken environment. The Jews had an additional reason for wanting to move to the towns: getting in touch with the Israeli ‘messengers’ (see below). This meant a better chance of quick migration to Israel, or at least of receiving the meagre financial support that was coming secretly from Israel. Indeed, in the first period the Jews had found it not so difficult to move to the towns, to Gedaref in particular. Nevertheless, after 1982 there was a concerted

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effort to contain the refugee problem in the refugee camps. The Sudanese had become stricter about the stream of refugees from Ethiopia and hence tightened the security around them. The flow of refugees continued, and in 1984 had reached an estimated number of half a million people. At that time it became more difficult for the Jews, as for many others, to get to Gedaref and other towns. They were compelled to remain in the refugee camps. During their stay in Sudan they were supposed to be gradually located by the Israeli ‘messengers’ and ‘distributors’ who were to place them in the queue for aliya (migration to Israel)39 and give them (an extremely modest) financial support to assist their subsistence while they were in Sudan. These representatives were actually Ethiopian Jews who came from the small group who had already migrated to Israel in previous years, as well as others of the community who were selected at the camps and towns in Sudan. There were a few different escape routes to Israel through Sudan. These were used in different phases of the clandestine migration process and differed in terms of the number of people who could pass through them, as well as in the nature of the dangers involved. The earlier ones were by flights through Khartoum and by boat through Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Neither allowed for many people to be taken at one time. The first was opened up around 1980 (Rapoport 1986:83) and involved the migration of no more than sixty people per week. These people were taken to the airport after being smuggled through the army posts on the road from the east to Khartoum and staying in hiding for a number of months. About 600 people came to Israel in this way during one year of operation. The second route involved taking the Ethiopian Jews from a meeting point a few miles outside the Tewawa refugee camp and transporting them by truck or bus 400 miles to a relatively secluded point in the vicinity of Port Sudan, where Israeli soldiers were waiting for them. The biggest group numbered 350 people (Rapoport 1986:83). Military and civilian boats then took them to the port of Eilat at the southern tip of Israel. The Red Sea route came to an abrupt and bloody end in early March 1982 when a group of Sudanese soldiers appeared amid the unloading of three truckloads of refugees while eleven Dabur boats were offshore. A short battle ensued, in which there were some casualties (Rapoport 1986:84). This was the last of the operations through that route. More people were then brought in through the Gedaref air route. This started with the landing of one Israeli Hercules aircraft in March 1982,40 and over the next twenty-five months six such landings were made, in which 1,300 people were brought directly to Israel from the desert point near Gedaref (Rapoport 1986:85).41 All these escape routes together were not fast enough in 1984, when the number of Jews in the camps rose rapidly and the death toll was reaching catastrophic proportions. It was then that the Mossad had to turn to the American government for help, following which Operation Moses took place. On 21 November 1984, Operation Moses began. It included an airlift from Sudan in which about 7,000 Jews were flown to Israel, mostly people who had come to Sudan from the Gondar region. Operation Moses involved international

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co-operation and the tacit agreement of the Sudanese government. The Jews were driven from the camps to a meeting place just outside Tewawa refugee camp and from there, escorted by the Sudanese secret police to avoid trouble on the way, directly to Khartoum airport, five hours away. Belgian Trans European Airlines (owned by a Belgian Orthodox Jew), which up to that date was flying Sudanese pilgrims to Mecca, was to fly the refugees, with the support of the Belgian government, through Brussels to Tel Aviv (Rapoport 1986:126–8, 136; Parfitt 1985:95–107). Operation Moses came to a halt due to a breach of secrecy by one of the high-level Israeli officials that resulted in a leak of information to the press (Rapoport 1986:137–49). As a result, many Jews were stuck at various stages on the journey: numbers of them had sold all their possessions, some were on their way to Sudan, and others were left in refugee camps in Sudan. As mentioned before, the next operation, Operation Queen of Sheba, took place two months later, and immigration then stopped until 1990/1. Families were thus separated for a long time.

Figure 2.1 Kess Menasheh, the eldest among Ethiopian religious leaders, reading the holy book

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Figure 2.2 The Orit, the Ethiopian Jewish Bible, in the Ge’ez language

Figure 2.3 Buna, the traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony

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Figure 2.4 Injera, the Ethiopian traditional bread

3 INTERVIEWING AND INTERPRETING IN CROSSCULTURAL RESEARCH

A growing dissatisfaction with quantitative methods over the past two decades has brought about a ‘quiet methodological revolution’ in the social sciences (Denzin and Lincoln 1994; Vidich and Lyman 1994; also see Richardson 1996; Boyatzis 1998). Social methodologists (R.Turner 1974; Filstead 1970; Brenner 1981) believe that the measurements of social phenomena directed by the paradigm of ‘causal laws’ fail to describe adequately the social world, and therefore most social research remains irrelevant to people’s experiences (Yanai 1986). They believe that social scientists distort the empirical world by trying to make reality fit their methods. As Filstead (1970) writes: ‘Most sociologists seem to have forgotten that reality exists only in the empirical world and not in the methods sociologists use to measure it’ (cited in Yanai 1986:66). In 1971 Goffman dismissed the scientific claims of positivism altogether: ‘A sort of sympathetic magic seems to be involved, the assumption being that if you go through the motions attributable to science then science will result. But it hasn’t’ (Goffman 1971:xvi, cited in Vidich and Lyman 1994:40). Speaking of sociological methods, Robert Nisbet (1977) recalls: While I was engaged in exploration of some of the sources of modern sociology [it occurred to me] that none of the great themes which have provided continuing challenge and also theoretical foundation for sociologists during the last century was ever reached through anything resembling what we are to-day fond of identifying as ‘scientific method’. I mean the kind of method, replete with appeals to statistical analysis, problem design, hypothesis, verification, replication, and theory construction, that we find described in textbooks and courses on methodology. (cited in Vidich and Lyman 1994:24) This growing discontent with the positivistic and statistically oriented methods, and with their claim for exclusivity in ‘doing science’ was felt in the various disciplines of the social sciences. Thus, for example, by the 1970s a dissatisfaction established itself concerning epistemological claims as well as the latent or secretive political uses of the mainstream perspectives of both sociology and anthropology (Diamond 1992; Fox 1991; Horowitz 1991; Van Maanen

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1988; Manganaro 1990; Clifford and Marcus 1986; Vidich et al. 1981). In psychology, students of McClelland (e.g. McAdams 1988), as well as leading figures such as Jerome Bruner (1987, 1986) and Kenneth and Mary Gergen (1983), have adopted the life history and life story methods and have come closer to literary critique and history in their methods of interpretation (also see Atkinson 1998; Josselson and Lieblich 1995; Richardson 1996). Erik Erikson was already using some aspects of it in his writings, e.g. Gandhi’s Truth (1969) and Young Man Luther (1958), as did Allport (1942, 1965). Even earlier, in sociology, the Chicago School (e.g. Thomas and Znaniecki 1958 [1918–20]) exerted its influence on the social sciences from the 1920s and 1930s, particularly in its debate of nomothetic versus idiographic approaches (Plummer 1983). Thus, qualitative research has a separate and distinguished history in education, social work, communications, psychology, history, organisational studies, medical science, anthropology and sociology (Denzin and Lincoln 1994:15).1 Social phenomenologists who are interested in methodological issues of the social sciences claim that the purpose of social inquiry is to emphatically understand the social world by describing and interpreting the meaning and the significance of social activity (Yanai 1986; see also Gadamer 1982; Dilthey 1977; Habermas 1971; Ricoeur 1971; Richardson 1996; Atkinson 1998). Further, they argue that the social scientist ought to use a qualitative method in order to understand the meaning of social phenomena. According to Filstead (1970), qualitative methodology refers to: those strategies, such as participant observation, in-depth interviewing, total participation in the activity being investigated, field work, etc., which allow the researcher to obtain first-hand knowledge about the empirical social world in question. Qualitative methodology allows the researcher to ‘get close to the data’, thereby developing the analytical, conceptual and categorical components of explanation from the data itself—rather than from the preconceived, rigidly structured, and highly quantitative techniques that pigeonhole the empirical social world into the operational definition that the researcher has constructed. (cited in Yanai 1986:16) A qualitative methodology, which provides a deeper sense of the complexity of human experience, seems to be most suitable for this study which focuses on the experience of the journey of the Ethiopian Jews and their encounter with Israel. The use of such a method makes it possible not to force the meaning of the journey and the following encounter with Israel into preconceived categories, or ‘pigeon-holes’, and to understand its full meaning—psychologically as well as socially. The method which was chosen as the central tool for this study is, therefore, a descriptive method based on phenomenological interpretations of ‘narrative interviews’ (Rosenthal 1989; Fischer 1982; Oevermann et al. 1979;

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Schüetze 1976; also see Riessman 1993).2 In addition, participant observation was employed. The interview The interview was carried out in the tradition of ‘the narrative interview’ (Schüetze 1976). This is basically an ‘open’ interview in which the person is asked to tell his/her story about a particular experience (or his/her entire life story) and is allowed to do so without interference on the part of the interviewer. Interventions tend to disrupt the train of thought of the narrator and to impose the system of relevance of the interviewer on to the narration. As Rosenthal, a student of Schüetze’s principles, puts it in her studies of the narrations of the Nazi period by contemporary German people: The aim of this interview method is to elicit and maintain a full narration by the interviewee, with the help of a set of non-interfering techniques applied by the trained interviewer. The method is based on the assumption that the narration of an experience comes closest to the experience itself. (Rosenthal 1991:34) This kind of interview enables the interviewee to choose those aspects which seem important to him/her in relation to the topic he/she is narrating, and to produce a ‘construction’ (a ‘product’) which is personal, and which is related both to the original experience and to the person’s present situation at the time of the interview. As Wong (1991:154) puts it: ‘In the subjective experience of biography…the account is never free of the accounting.’ This method of interviewing produces a life story which is significant, as Gelia Frank states, because it has more to offer than a list of events. It is ‘a narrative rather than a chronicle; in it resides the evaluation of one’s own existence’ (Frank and Vanderburgh 1986:74). In addition, the life story of an individual and of a group reflects a specific social, cultural and historical context, as well as being influenced by this context. Henceforth, the focus of attention in the study of life story is ‘upon the symbolic in social life and meaning in individual lives’ (ibid.; see also Leydesdorff et al. 1999:16). This method is interpretative as well as explorative in its nature. In contrast to a deductive methodology where there is a structured interview which is aimed at verifying (or refuting) detailed hypotheses stemming from a particular theory, here the methodology is inductive. Thus, through the negotiation with the subjects and on the basis of the interpretation of their stories and their analysis, the phenomenon studied will be understood and a theory will be formed. As Yoram Bilu puts it: The interpretive act is perceived as an on-going dialogue between the researcher and its research subject/text, where the ‘translation’ develops into

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a more refined and sophisticated one in a dialectical way, through repetitive movement between these poles of the personal and the general, the part and the whole. The aim is not validation of hypotheses which derive from a general theory, whose rules are context-free [where context has no relevance], but…giving meaning to an unclear text by a system of interpretations which is reasonable and internally consistent. (Bilu 1986:350; my translation) The narrative interview and life story method suits the present research for a number of reasons. This method enables the interviewee to present his/her life (or a period within it) as a unified whole which includes various ‘layers’. Thus, it exposes a general perception of the experience of the journey and its effects which is multi-dimensional. It therefore reveals the complexity, and sometimes the inconsistencies and double meanings, of the phenomenon (Atkinson 1998; Lomsky-Feder 1994; Kholi 1986; Bertaux 1981). In addition, narrated life history enables the researcher to arrive at a dynamic conceptualisation of the researched phenomenon. I would thus be able to study any changes in the perception of the journey and its meanings along different phases of the individual’s life, whether during the journey itself or in Israel. We could also learn how the wayfarers perceive (retrospectively) the influences of the journey on their lives and (in principle) the changes in this perception as they grow up or become distanced from the experience (Runyan 1984:61; Bertaux 1981, 1997). This is a phenomenological study. One of its major aims is to provide an understanding of the way the journey is seen through the eyes of the wayfarers themselves. The narrative interview enables us to learn in the most direct way about the perceptions, images, symbols and meanings which exist in relation to the experience of the migration journey and its impact on the young people. Lastly, this method is especially suitable when dealing with issues that have not been sufficiently researched (like our subject), when the central aim is to understand the major research questions and to suggest new theoretical principles rather than to validate existing theories. Thus, this is an explorative research, not a statistical study. There is no intention in this research to arrive at the statistical significance of the results. Rather, it tries to explore as many aspects of the phenomenon as possible and raise as many hypotheses as could be discerned from the text—in other words, to develop a grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967). Because of the nature of this research methodology, a few methodological issues arise. I shall not try to discuss these exhaustively here. I would like, however, to address one major issue, that which relates to the nature of truth within the narratives. Life stories are of their nature retrospective. They therefore consist of a reconstruction of events, experiences and emotional states which are ‘retrieved’ from memory and are not a precise description of things ‘as they happened’. Thus, in reading the results of such a study, it seems to me that one should bear in mind a clear distinction between the different kinds of truth within the

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narratives. This topic was treated by Spence (1982) and, in a manner more akin to mine, in Debora Dwork’s (1991) excellent study of Children with a Star, an account of the lives of Jewish children in Europe under Nazi occupation prior to and during the war, based mainly on oral sources. I wish, therefore, to discuss briefly the relation between three kinds of truth: historical, psychological and narrative truth. • Historical truth This relates to what we tend to call the ‘objective reality’ of the situation, what ‘really happened’, usually consisting of many contextual facts. Such, in the present research, would be the existence of the described routes, the camps, certain conditions at particular periods, and so forth. • Psychological truth Let me start with an illustration. In the course of the narratives many of my interviewees recalled that pieces of metal and of poison were inserted into pills (and other medications) given to Jews in the refugee camps in Sudan. This had been done, the interviewees explained, by the Sudanese workers in those camps, causing the death of Jews. While this is not recorded anywhere else, and most probably was not a ‘reality’ of the camps, it is nevertheless a perceived reality, a psychological one.3 It is treated in the same manner as most of the other facts of the situation (the contextual facts). The individual not only grasps but actually experiences this as a reality of his/her life (thus an ‘experienced reality’), and there is no imma-nent distinction between these two categories of truth. It is only the researcher who is able to do what was impossible in the actual situation: to become aware of many sources of knowledge, or even a detail of a certain situation. The researcher has the time to do the cross-checking of all these details and is therefore made aware of the possibility that a certain truth is psychological rather than an ‘objective’ historical truth. Realising that a certain truth is a psychological truth enables us to arrive at a better understanding of the emotional condition of the person at the time of the event. That is, we are able to understand the psychological state which was at the basis of the perceived facts. For example, the belief in the poisoning or metal-inserting reveals the anxiety and terror under which the Jews lived in Sudan. The Ethiopian Jews knew that the Sudanese objected to their departure to Israel (‘the enemy’ for the Sudanese) and that they would try to prevent the migration in all possible ways. They experienced this attitude of the Sudanese in their regular encounters with them as well as in incidents of extreme torture. Everything was then perceived in view of that knowledge, which gained ‘over relevance’ (see Bar-On 1991; Chaitin 2000) and the exploitation of medication for these purposes was, in their eyes, just a particular part of that policy. Furthermore, these psychological (experienced) facts also influenced the Ethiopian Jews’ behaviour, just as other facts (truths) did. The Jews avoided any treatment, thereby exacerbating their condition, and the death toll among them rose. A circle was thus closed between ‘objective’ (external) reality, i.e. the hostility of the Sudanese towards them, psychological (‘subjective’ inner) reality, i.e.

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poisoning and inserting metal pieces in the medications, stemming from a state of anxiety and terror, and ‘objective’ external reality again—their avoidance behaviour and its results. • Narrative truth This is the truth which is related to the interactive process with a particular person/interviewer, at a specific biographical and historical moment and at a certain place (including the conditions and constraints of the interview). Within this context narrative truth could be conceived as consisting of four aspects: • A chosen content This refers to what the person chooses to narrate. Here we should remember that the person is narrating a lifetime history, or an event which occurred over an extended period of time, in an hour (or a few hours) of interview. The person, therefore, always exercises choices within the interview. These choices, of course, are also influenced by the nature of memory, i.e. by what is remembered.4 Another relevant point here is the fact that people tend to give more ‘space’ in their stories to dramatic occurrences and changes in their life than to their daily routines. As Dwork pointed out, it is as if people tell a story which answers the question ‘What happened to me?’ rather than ‘What did I do?’ (Dwork 1991:xxxviii). The choice of content, in sum, is affected by all these factors. • A silenced content Narrative truth also relates to what the interviewee chooses not to tell, prefers to keep silent. This might be done for a variety of reasons. For instance, many people prefer to keep silent about those facts which affect their self-image in a negative way. The silent facts form an ‘untold story’ within the interview.5 However, some of it is revealed at times in the phase of the interview which followed the uninterrupted narration or through other aspects of the interview or the life story. The silent content is thus ‘the other side’ of the person’s choices of what to tell. It is highlighted in its own right because it is, in a sense, part of the story, of the ‘research text’.6 • The organisation of content This refers to the way in which the content is organised within the story. This includes, for example, the first thing the person relates, the way s/he chooses to open the interview, his/her ‘identity card’ for the constructed event (or ‘entrance ticket’ into the life story). It also includes the sequence of the episodes, what is elaborated and what is told in an abbreviated manner, whether a story consists of a flowing narration or a sequence of arrested/interrupted excerpts. When does the interviewee use argumentation (i.e. finding a need to justify or explain his/her behaviour or feelings in a certain situation) instead of narration (Rosenthal 1991)? Where are the turning points or even the ‘watershed’ within the story? With what does the person choose to end the story (for example, in the present research, with the encounter with Israel or with the flight or boat trip towards it)? And so forth.

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• The non-verbal text This refers to various non-verbal cues which accompany the narration: aspects of body language, facial expressions, crying or laughing, manifestations of flatness of emotions in certain narrated circumstances but not in others, posture, silences, and so on. This aspect of the interview lends itself to analysis and interpretation in much the same way as the other aspects. In the present study these are also taken up directly in Chapter 7, where narrative signals of trauma are discussed. The narrative truth provides us, in my opinion, with an additional way of understanding the experience of the life-event and its meaning for the individual. For instance, it can give us additional clues to the person’s psychological state of mind, as mentioned above. The existence of the three types of truth in the narratives obliges the researcher to be attentive to the kind of truth emerging at each ‘moment’, both during interviewing and when interpreting the material. One should ask oneself such questions as ‘From what we know from other sources, could such a thing have happened at that time?’ ‘Was this point as far from the border as described? Or is it a feeling that colours that distance and “extends” it?’ The researcher needs to cross-check historical facts and distinguish them from the psychological dimension of the narrative. I would like to stress, however, that this study focuses on the experience and meaning of the event, its construction by the individual and community. What interests me is exactly the combination of ‘objective’ (or, rather, verifiable) facts and non-verifiable facts,7 as well as the psychological state of the wayfarers on their journey (their feelings, anxieties, etc.). Psychological and narrative truths are thus a major focus of interest within my research. The cross-cultural context While using the narrative interview method I needed to take into account the fact that these interviews were set in a cross-cultural (or inter-cultural)8 context. The interviewees were immigrants from Ethiopia at their initial stages in Israel interviewed by an Israeli-born person. This raised some issues and problems, which I had to find ways of circumventing. The issue of trust and initial rapport Ethiopian culture dictates emotional restraint. Ethiopians (Amhara) are expected to ‘contain themselves’, not to share personal details of their life story with others. Feelings, attitudes, thoughts about various events, especially ‘negative’ ones like anger, envy and seeking vengeance, are kept to oneself and contained ‘within the stomach’ or abdomen. Body language, and facial expressions in particular, should not disclose what one really feels or thinks. Troubles exposed in a group, or in public, exacerbate the pain; and patience is advocated as a coping mechanism.

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There is a belief that ‘the abdomen is wider than the whole world’, hence it could actually contain all the troubles, misfortunes and feelings which are engendered in the social context (BenEzer 1999, 1992: Chapter 12, 1990). The Ethiopian (Amhara) child goes through a process of socialisation which relates, among other things, to this aspect of social life. Folk stories also emphasise the danger of naivety and the value of doubt and mistrust. Suspicion and caution are thus cornerstones in social interaction. Sharing personal experiences, attitudes and feelings in such a cultural context is done only when trust is firmly established and usually only with a particular friend or within the family. The definition of a friend in this context is interesting: s/he is first and foremost one who can keep a secret.9 On the basis of the above, one could assume that the interviewees would not readily share their personal story of the journey—which may include painful or stressful events, experiences of loss and other trauma, feelings of guilt over survival and, possibly, anger at treacherous members of the community—with a stranger they do not necessarily trust. If I wanted to enable them to narrate their story I had first to gain their trust.10 It is worth noting here that alongside the difficulties in telling the story to a stranger and a native Israeli there was also a wish to do so. This wish reflects the community’s desire that Israeli society become aware of what they went through in order to reach Israel.11 However, this communal desire does not necessarily make it easier for the individual to relate painful or guilt-provoking details. This needed a level of trust. The problem of cultural suppression/denial There is a phenomenon whereby immigrants refrain from including expressions from their culture of origin within the stream of communication in the crosscultural context (BenEzer 1992; Grinberg and Grinberg 1989:110). Two reasons for this tendency are discussed in the literature: 1 The existence of explicit and implicit pressures exerted by society to ‘become alike’ as quickly as possible, what is sometimes called ‘to assimilate’ or ‘to integrate’12 in society (Halper 1987; Deshen and Shokeid 1974). In spite of the lessening of the ‘melting pot’ ideology in Israel (and elsewhere) during the 1970s and 1980s13 and the current ‘politically correct’ pluralist and multiculturalist ideology, there is still a fair amount of pressure towards change in the direction of similarity (Goldberg 1994; Halper 1987: 125– 36).14 Ethiopian Jews were under such pressure. The pressure was especially strong on the adolescents in boarding schools and youth villages (from which about half of the interviewees in this study came). This is due to the fact that, on the whole, these residential educational settings are ‘powerful envi-

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ronments’ (Kashti and Arieli 1986; Arieli 1986)15 geared to bringing about significant change in the individuals who go through them (mainly disadvantaged or immigrant adolescents). In these ‘total’ educational environments (Arieli 1986) the ‘mainstreaming’ towards ‘Israeliness’ (whatever that means)16 is stronger than within the community. The inclination, therefore, to refrain from using Ethiopian cultural codes or to present cultural contents in a cross-cultural encounter is enhanced in these educational settings.17 As they are adolescents, hence at their ‘age of plasticity’ (Honzik 1984; Liebliech 1989), the Ethiopian boys and girls are prone to such pressures to an even greater extent. 2 The second reason for the negation of aspects connected with the culture of origin is an urge that most immigrants and newcomers share to ‘be like’, to resemble members of the receiving society; this tendency is stronger in children and the young. Being in their ‘formative years’ (Erikson 1968; Bloss 1962) they are more orientated towards their social milieu, depending on it for support and feelings of safety (Sandler 1960). Their need to belong is stronger and their tendency towards resemblance within a particular group of reference is pronounced. In a context of immigration, particularly when it involves majority/minority relations as in the case of Ethiopian Jews in Israel, these inclinations are targeted upon the receiving society. A need to quickly resemble the members of the receiving society thus becomes operative within these youngsters. They not only suppress past behaviours and cultural patterns of communication by ‘switching’ according to context, but try to quickly learn some new behaviours, attitudes and values, ones that are more similar to those of the receiving society, which would become part of their new self.18 In view of the above, there is a danger that the interviewees will automatically block any cultural aspects that arise in the course of the narration. This could refer to the content of the story as well as to cultural ways of expressing oneself. It could also negatively affect the flow of narration. It would constitute ‘avoidance points’ or ‘breaks’ in the train of thought and stream of feelings which serve as a basis for any process of narration. Choices will be affected not so much by what the individual wants to convey in relation to the experience of the journey but by these obstacles to free narration. If this happens, then the fact that a ‘representative’ of the new culture is the counterpart in the interview would play a negative rather than a creative part in the context of the interview. I could not, of course, revert the course of these powerful processes. What I did try to create in this particular interview, however, is a situation that differs significantly from most encounters of the Ethiopian immigrant youth in Israeli society. There was an effort to create a unique ‘micro-cosmos’ where there is not

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only legitimacy and acceptance of cultural norms and ways of expression by the interviewer but a genuine and active interest in these expressions. The emotional context Narrating emotionally laden life-events in particular traumatic experiences could be a painful process. Therefore, people would sometimes tend to avoid narrating these experiences in the course of their interview. This is reinforced by the Ethiopian cultural code which dictates emotional restraint and ‘containment’. In order to overcome this barrier I have devised various measures, partly drawn from my general psychotherapeutic training and partly from the communication skills developed throughout my particular experience of working with Ethiopian adolescents. I tried to establish an atmosphere of support and acceptance in which the interviewee would feel safe to enter and ‘revisit’ any pitfall, ‘downslope’ and ‘deep gorge’ within the experience of the journey. I had to find a way to convey to them a ‘promise’ to ‘be there’, with them and for them, at the difficult parts of the experience of the interview and that, if necessary, I would help them ‘get out’ of these relived painful experiences. This kind of effort on the part of the interviewer is in accord with a growing body of literature surrounding the issue of ‘testimony’ which has developed in the past two decades. The research concerned survivors of Nazi concentration camps as well as interviews with refugees and others who had been subjected to torture (see Leydesdorff et al. 1999; Agger 2000, 1994; Rose 1999; Felman and Laub 1992; J.Herman 1992; Melzak 1991; Dwork 1991; Montgomery 1991; Blackwell 1990; Buus and Agger 1988). It is worth noting that there is also a therapeutic aspect to testimonies. People feel somewhat relieved (at least temporarily) after they have shared their painful experiences with a compassionate listener/interviewer. For some of the interviewees there is also a therapeutic experience in the very fact of allowing them (even inviting them) to create a story out of their ‘pieces’ of memory of these traumatic experiences (see also Holmes and Roberts 1999; Leydesdorff et al. 1999:8). The therapeutic effect of interviewing traumatised people is also noted in the above-mentioned studies. Many interviewees who have gone through such traumatic events have noted that they had not told their ‘story’ to anyone until the research (or testimonial) interview took place. A number of reasons for this are mentioned in the literature. One important reason is the fact that the interviewees were never approached in a way which enabled them to do it. I believe that at least some of the measures related above are the needed facilitating factors. The interviewer’s success in creating a ‘safe micro-cosmos’ by conveying a feeling of support is, in my opinion, crucial for these interviews. Similar spontaneous reactions followed the interviews which took place in the current study, in which the adolescents spoke of a therapeutic effect of the interview or of some aspect of growth as a result of it.

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A culturally adapted initial phase of ‘defreezing’ and formingrapport In order to create trust, to enable a spontaneous flow of cultural aspects and to facilitate the narration of painful or otherwise emotionally loaded material, I have devised a special technique of ‘defreezing’ (Lewin 1948) which was performed during the initial phase of the interview. This phase was longer than would be necessary under intra-cultural circumstances. The phase of defreezing, as taken from the context of group work, is usually that in which people are made to realise that they are in a situation which is different from their normal course of life. In this situation the rules may be other than the usual, even created anew; human encounters may be differently regulated and one could experiment with new behaviours. Individuals are taken out of their former environment (and self), ‘defreezed’ in order that they can become open to the new situation and experiment within it, and then stabilise or ‘re-freeze’ the new learnings as they come out of the situation (ideally, staying more open to further change). This phase is where trust and rapport are established with a particular facilitator or, as in our study, with the researcher/interviewer. In short, it is a warming-up phase which prepares for the main task and in which the ‘newcomer’ to the situation is familiarised with the ‘rules of the game’. It could be a short or a long phase.19 In the present study I tried to use this phase in order to convey to the interviewees that I know and value their culture and am interested in their ‘Ethiopian side’ as well as in the much more recent ‘Israeli side’ which they have started to acquire. I tried to do that through various mechanisms such as presenting myself to them through their familial network and by beginning the interview using the Ethiopian way of initial encounter. A particular technique which I employed regularly and extensively was related to their Ethiopian names. If at the beginning of the interview they told me their name in Hebrew, I would inquire what it was in Ethiopia. Then, in what is considered a traditional Ethiopian manner, I would ask about their father’s name (‘X, maan? the son of whom?’); and I would continue to ask in this way about their father (i.e. ‘Y, the son of whom?’) relating to their grandfather, and sometimes one generation further back into the past. Most of them were at first surprised, but then responded willingly to this mode of opening the interview. In this way I addressed the personal rather than the general from the start of the interview, while at the same time connecting the adolescents to their past in Ethiopia. Another part of this defreezing phase dealt with the various names by which the interviewee was called in Ethiopia, i.e. by his or her relatives (e.g. grandmother, grandfather, aunt, big brother or sister, etc.). The Ethiopian cultural code cherishes names which are ‘relations-dependent’ (BenEzer 1988). In the same manner we also discussed the special names (or nicknames) by which the interviewees addressed their elder brothers and sisters in Ethiopia and which would usually convey their respect for them. These practices were aimed at transferring the interviewees to their life in Ethiopia prior to the journey.

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I assumed that, in general, besides helping to ‘dislodge’ the interviewee from present worries and anxieties connected with the current situation in Israel, this mechanism would also transplant the interviewee into a situation in which they felt more at one with themselves, more ‘powerful’ and ‘integrated’ than in the current immigrant situation in Israel. It also transferred them to the family setting from which they embarked on the journey. In my experience, the use of these techniques brings to the surface of the interview the extent to which the Ethiopian youngsters employed ‘cultural suppression’ in Israel, because these measures invite the person to relate to cultural aspects of the self. If I discovered that an individual employed a strong cultural denial I could then extend the defreezing phase and use various techniques to tackle these and create the necessary interview micro-cosmos. Through these measures of defreezing I also tried to assess how alert I needed to be to the possibility of the person omitting cultural aspects during the ensuing narration part of the interview, or whether this could be a reason for getting stuck along the narration. The main purpose, however, was to prepare the person for the inclusion of the cultural aspect of the self if s/he chose to do that in the course of the narration. Humour was also employed from the very start of the interview. This was in order to break, or at least lower the effect of, Ethiopian cultural codes operating towards authority figures (such as the ‘code of honour’, BenEzer 1999) which could negatively affect the interview. Humour, as I found, was a good way to work at it without negating or resisting the code as such. This is, of course, in addition to the general defreezing and anxiety-alleviating influence of humour in interviews, especially with children. For example, I started the interview by saying: ‘First, I am going to ask you a very difficult question, which I hope you can answer.’ I paused for one or two seconds and then continued by asking: ‘What is your name?’ There was a second of surprise, and then the child smiled with relief and told me his or her name. By employing this method I played into the youngster’s anxiety and tension, present before the start of any interview, raised them a little with my pause, and then relieved the child of them by the surprising contrast between the preceding sentence and the actual question. And, as stated above, I used conduct that was atypical for the way figures of authority address the young in Ethiopia. I also used Ethiopian non-verbal communication codes and body language in the encounter, e.g. the way of addressing each other in terms of hand gesture, and brief inhaling as a sign of absolute attention of the listener and encouragement to continue a story. Lastly, I used traditional ‘codes’ or ‘signals’ of ‘sharing’ such as the buna (coffee) ceremony in a creative way within the interview in order to ‘signal’ that this was a ‘sharing’ and storytelling situation.20 Part of my adaptation as an interviewer to the interviewees was not in terms of ‘doing’ but of ‘not doing’ certain things which could negatively affect the interviewee. I refer to the need to ‘positively accept’ cultural signals of various kinds, especially non-verbal, which the interviewee would certainly convey

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within the process of the interview. Even the most transformed among the Ethiopian youth would express some of these signals. I tried to accept these cultural codes so that cross-cultural misunderstandings, which might have ensued in a break of communication within the interview, would be prevented. For example, Ethiopian interviewees tended to sit at a ninety degree angle from the interviewer, which formed a problem of eye contact (and tape-recording). I would, nevertheless, not try to change it, since I knew that this posture was not a sign of any reservation, resistance or untruthfulness on the part of the interviewee, but a form of expressing respect at the start of an interview and a way of complying with cultural codes of not gazing at another person (BenEzer 1987). As an interviewer I should ‘receive’ this and other behavioural signals and adapt accordingly, both in the communication flow and in the technicalities of the interview. Thus, for example, I would put the tape-recorder microphone at a ninety degree angle to where I would assume the interviewee would be sitting, in prediction of his/her behaviour according to the code of honour (respect), and would change it as necessary at the beginning of the interview. It is worth noting that some of these considerations and adaptations in technique were relevant not only in the initial ‘defreezing’ phase but throughout the interview. Since the central part of the interview employed non-interfering techniques, however, they were more applicable in the non-verbal communication and in the receptive stance towards cultural expressions, as related above. In this pre-narration phase of the interview I also made clear to the interviewee, by more than just stating it (i.e. by actual behaviour), that s/he could change the language in which the interview was conducted, which was Hebrew, and move to Amharic or Tigrinya as s/he wished. Most adolescents preferred having the interview in Hebrew (probably since this is their general mode of expression while encountering a native Israeli). They were encouraged, however, to move freely between the languages, especially when searching for a word while recounting. It was interesting to note how, when looking for a word, this freedom to return to their language of origin in their minds in fact triggered the right word in Hebrew, as if just thinking of it in their previous language released it in the new one. At any event, when the adolescent used the original language to a significant degree, I could later cross-check what they meant with a native speaker of the language. The structure of the interview The structure of the interview thus consisted of four stages: • Defreezing and establishing rapport A longer phase than ‘regular’, as explained above. • An uninterrupted narrative The major part of the interview which is the initial story as done in the narrative interview technique.

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• Requested elaborations These are requests for elaboration made by the interviewer, which are done after the initial story had been told. They are usually concerned with aspects which remained unclear, or condensed, in the initial narration, and which, as the interviewer suspects, may have a supplementary story ‘behind’ them (and ‘hidden stories’; see section on trauma signals, Chapter 7). In this phase the interviewer may encourage the interviewee to elaborate or tell more of his/her story by phrasing the questions in the form of: ‘Could you please tell me more about…x or y?’ or: ‘I am interested in …could you elaborate on that, please?’, ‘What did you do whilst…?’, ‘Could you share with me how you felt when…’, and so on. • A set of complementary questions These were constructed within the preceding pilot study, and relate to some aspects of the journey and the encounter with Israel to which the person is asked to respond in either an informative or an evaluative way. This phase is not part of the narrative interview technique and is complementary to the storytelling. In this phase, questions are asked which are of specific interest to the researcher, and are generated from his, as well as the interviewee’s, frame of reference. These could relate, for example, to whether the interviewee was very ill on the journey and what they felt, thought or did then. Were they reminded of the journey in Israel? If so, was it at certain times? And did they feel that this journey made them stronger/weaker than before? And so forth. It is important to remember here that I did not ask about issues which were already related to by the interviewee in the initial story or within the elaboration phase. Hence this phase was at times very short or even completely missing. Complementary tools In addition to the interviews, three complementary tools were employed— mainly for the analysis of the encounter with Israel (Chapter 8): • Participant observation Being in the field impels a mode of inquiry which is not textual but existential, in which understanding grows in the course of deepening participation and in the gradual acquisition of interactive competence (Wong 1991). I was fortunate to be able to derive observations from a variety of situations which were related to my work as a clinical psychologist/psychotherapist with Ethiopian Jews, and from interactions with Ethiopian youngsters and Israeli staff, both formal and informal, in educational and vocational projects and absorption centres where I served as a consultant. I was invited to communal celebrations and festivals, as well as funerals and mourning periods, to family gatherings as well as friendly meetings of nonrelated members, to hospitals, army units, and mixed neighbourhoods. While many encounters were connected to my work, I had almost as many which were just part of my affiliation with particular members of the community.

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While I was making field notes during the whole period of my work, I was particularly aware of the need to systemati cally write entries during the four years of interviewing for the present research. At that time I also tried to observe the various contexts and ways in which people were referring to their journey from Ethiopia and its relevance to their life in Israel. During that period I had, apart from my work, 195 informal interviews with young people on their life in Israel, or particular aspects of it, and 105 such interviews with adults (including elderly) members of the community. An analysis of interviews with the media A second tool was provided by an analysis of an abundance of media interviews given by Ethiopian Jews in Israel during the 1980s, in particular during the research period between 1984 and 1988, to national and local newspapers, as well as to radio and television networks. The three major Hebrew newspapers were included in this analysis (Yediot Aharonot,Ma’ariv and Ha’aretz) as well as the major newspaper in English (The JerusalemPost), and a youth paper (Ma’ariv La’noar). Another newspaper—Hadashot—was also included for one year. All interviews in these papers with Ethiopian Jews, adolescents in particular, were analysed in relation to any mention of the journey, its content and its significance for their Israeli existence. The same was done with interviews to the four main radio stations (three of the Kol Israel network—Reshet Aleph, Reshet Beth and Reshet Gimel— and the Army station, which is, in fact, a regular and quite popular station in Israel). Also included were the special programmes for immigrants on Reshet Aleph. Television interviews researched included those by Israeli Television (one channel at that time) as well as the Educational Television channel, which includes many programmes for Israeli youth. Interviews within four longer documentary programmes shown on television were also analysed. The interviews with the media served two purposes: first, as a cross-checking of the initial assumption of the special role of the journey in the eyes of Ethiopian Jews, by their referring to the journey when asked about other topics or about themselves in general. Second, these media interviews were a source of more direct information on the relevance of the journey to specific aspects within their current life in Israel. It seems that the dynamics of a media interview differ considerably from the autobiographical monologue generated by the narrative interview, therefore producing data which add another dimension to our study. The incorporation of these two tools—participant observation and the analysis of media interviews—into the research design has been motivated by their complementarity to each other, and to the narrative interviews. Each provides access to a different aspect and dimension of the researched (individual and social) reality. Context interviews It goes without saying that I inquired about the reality of the journey from other sources as well. For example, I conducted interviews with workers at the refugee camps—Sudanese, Ethiopian, and workers coming from Western countries. These were government officials as well as staff of

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international agencies. I was privileged in being able to interview some of the people who were involved in organising the clandestine operation, whether these were members of the community or others. Interviews were also taken surrounding the involvement of other governments, particularly that of the United States, in bringing forth Operation Moses, and of individuals (e.g. Congressmen) and organisations’ representatives (e.g. AAEJ) who were involved in some aspects which led to the journey. People who were operating in central positions within Ethiopia whereby they could observe (or were part) of the initial phases of the mass movement were also interviewed. These interviews were carried out in Israel, Ethiopia, the United States, Canada, Italy and England. It can never be overstated, however, that while the information provided from these interviews was important in order to understand the contextual facts of the journey, it is the experiential account of the people who underwent the journey which is the focus of this research. Interpretation How is the textual material to be read? This remains highly problematical, especially since this is a study of a migrant population. I had first experimented with different methods of analysis which I shall not detail here (e.g. Gabriele Rosenthal’s method of textual analysis and hermeneutical reconstruction based upon Schüetze, Oevermann and others; see Rosenthal 1989, 1991). I then chose the phenomenological analysis employed by Giorgi in the United States (Giorgi 1970, 1975) as well as by others who followed his work (e.g. Yanai 1986). This technique of reading the material was found particularly suitable for eliciting meanings out of a text, in their subjective phenomenological sense. It keeps as its centre of attention the interviewee’s (as opposed to the researcher’s) point of view in relation to an event or a concept, while using information elicited from the subjects in a direct way. Giorgi’s method is based on interpretations of verbal reports. In his method essential themes of the phenomenon are delineated from the experiences described by the interviewee. According to Giorgi, the first important principle for analysing protocols is to remain receptive to the phenomenon. By keeping our minds open and by using our intuition, says Giorgi, we can identify ‘natural meaning units’ in the text. Once the natural meaning units are identified, the researcher can delineate central or essential themes which dominate them. The natural meaning units are divided without accounting for the specific aim of the study, and they reflect the natural divisions in the text itself. The central themes, on the other hand, are delineated in relation to the particular goal of the study. When the essential themes are recognised, Giorgi recommends summarising them in general descriptive statements. The accounts in this study were therefore rigorously treated along the following guidelines:

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1 Carefully read the interviews and get a sense of the whole. Try to remain as open as possible to the experiences described. 2 Divide the text into the natural meaning units as expressed by the interviewee, without altering the text and without accounting for the specific aim of the study. 3 Look at the natural meaning units with regard to the specific purpose of the study, and state as simply as possible the central themes dominating the natural meaning units by asking oneself, ‘What does this statement tell me about the phenomenon?’ If there is nothing explicit about the phenomenon within a given natural unit, which is possible, then leave it blank. 4 Once the themes have been named, tie the essential, non-redundant themes together with a general descriptive statement, which centres around those general themes of the phenomenon that have emerged in most interviews. The researcher, following Giorgi’s instructions, delineated natural meaning units and essential themes of the walking journey up to the Sudanese border, of Sudan, and of the encounter with Israel (when the interviewee related to it in the initial story). A question was related to each of these phases, i.e. ‘What does this statement tell me about (the experience of/meaning of) the journey?’, ‘…about (the experience of) Sudan?’ and ‘…about (the encounter with) Israel?’ From the non-repetitive, non-redundant essential themes, the researcher delineated a few general categories/meanings of each phase and for the whole journey to Israel. General meanings were extracted also in relation to the encounter with Israel. A second person delineated themes in four interviews, and then assigned each theme to the general categories/meanings of each phase. The ratio of agreement was 85. Interviewees/subjects Selecting the interviewees The selection of interviewees followed the principles of ‘theoretical sampling’ (Glaser and Strauss 1967), which is the process of data collection for generating theory whereby the analyst jointly collects, codes and analyses his data and decides what data to collect next and where to find it in order to develop his theory as it emerges. This process of data collection is controlled by the emerging theory, whether substantive or formal. (Glaser and Strauss 1967:45; see also Richardson 1996; Glaser 1992)

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It might be worth mentioning again that this technique is suitable here since the main purpose of the present study is, as in the grounded theory approach advocated by the above authors, to generate theory and not to establish verification of the facts. I started sampling with two criteria in mind, which seemed relevant to the experience of the journey: one related to area of origin in Ethiopia and the other was sex of interviewees. The former determined the distance to Sudan, and thus possibly the length of the trail. It also determined the period in which they set out and therefore the conditions on the trails and, even more so, in the refugee camps in Sudan. Thus, for instance, the Jews of Wolkite were closer to the border than the other two groups; Gondari Jews, on the whole, set out last and therefore might have had different experiences in Sudan than the Tigrean and Wolkitian Jews, in particular the many who arrived amidst the famine situation and the flood of refugees. In relation to sex I assumed that the experience of the journey might be different for members of each sex. Thus, the first step in sampling was to interview people who fitted these categories. During the process of interviewing, some ‘groups’—in the sense used by Glaser and Strauss—began to emerge (we should note that a ‘group’ in that sense could consist of one person; see Glaser and Strauss 1967:47 n.3). For example, I realised that there was another area of origin from where people set out on the journey—Gojjam—and that people who started their journey from there might have had a different experience of the trek since they went first to the Gondar region (some youngsters did it by bus) and later trekked to Sudan. I have also discovered that a possible significant category was the social support of the individual along the journey. So I looked for people who walked with their families, and then for those who made the journey among their peers, and then for others who walked in mixed groups of relatives and strangers. Another example of a relevant category were people who were known to have been severely traumatised, such as those who lost a close member of their family. It is worth noting that I tried to be ‘theoretically sensitive’ to emerging groups which seemed (theoretically) relevant to the experience of the journey rather than to any aspect in which these people would differ from each other (Glaser and Strauss 1967:46, 48–9). I stopped interviewing when I arrived at a ‘theoretical saturation’ (Glaser and Strauss 1967:61) concerning the journey, i.e. when it seemed that no more groups were emerging and that the narrated experiences started essentially to repeat themselves. At that point I also felt that I had a good notion of the experience of the journey for the Ethiopian Jews.21 Locating the interviewees Most (95 per cent) of the Ethiopian adolescents in Israel aged 12–17 at the time of my research studied in boarding schools and youth villages. This is partially due to the fact that many children and adolescents had arrived in Israel without their

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families, and partially due to personal preferences among the Ethiopian young people (see Chapter 8). Thus, in order to locate potential interviewees, I contacted a number of boarding schools and youth villages, and worked with the teachers in charge of the Ethiopian pupils, trying to locate suitable candidates. I first asked for certain pupils to be included: these were those with whom I had had previous contacts in the community or in the educational setting or whose close relatives I had known. This ensured that some of the potential interviewees already trusted me to a degree, which is an important aspect in the cross-cultural research context as stated above. They could ‘transfer’ my ‘trustworthiness’ to other potential interviewees in the group, in accord with Ethiopian cultural codes where trust is mediated by familial contacts or after some testing of the stranger. A list was suggested to me, out of which I then selected those who suited the various criteria stated above. In addition I asked the teachers to suggest to me pupils who, apart from the criteria stated above, would in their eyes be as different as possible from each other, even if they could not always explain what the difference was or on what they based their judgement. I also asked them not to select youngsters with severe emotional problems. This was mainly because I feared it might be too difficult and cause greater distress for the emotionally disturbed to relate and re-experience events that can be emotionally very painful. It is interesting to note here that this request was often not easily accepted, because sometimes the co-ordinator for the immigrant youth, or the head of school, would try to use the opportunity of their students being interviewed at length by a psychologist for diagnostic purposes. Thus they encouraged me to interview some of the more disturbed students. While theoretically the interview setting could have been used for diagnostic purposes, I had to resist these requests and insist, for the reasons stated above, on a choice which did not endanger the well-being of interviewees or make them enter a situation which included a ‘hidden agenda’ unknown to them. After a group of candidates at a certain school had been located, I conducted a group meeting with all of them in which I explained to them at length the purpose of my research and encouraged them to ask me any question they thought was important for them to have answered prior to the interview. I made it very clear that they should not feel obliged to join in the research and that I would respect and accept anyone who chose not to be interviewed. I then had a series of individual meetings with the candidates who had agreed to join my study in which I began by giving them the opportunity to ask in private about the purpose of the research, stressing again that they could withdraw at any time. I also allowed them to stop the tape-recording if they wished to do so at a particular point along the interview and let them become familiar with the technical way to do this.

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The pilot study Sixteen full journey interviews were conducted during the pilot, nine of them with boys and seven with girls. The pilot study also included an extended interview with four youngsters, two girls and two boys, which was aimed at investigating at length the areas of their lives which the journey had affected. These related to areas of psychological functioning as well as those of integration in Israel. These interviews were conducted with adolescents with whom I had had previous acquaintance and with whom trust was already established. Each interview was, in fact, a series of meetings which took about eight to ten hours. The main goal of the pilot study was to find the best way to conduct an interview about the journey. In the course of the pilot study the specific form of the ‘journey interview’ was devised. Two versions were experimented with: the first, a structured interview, which included guiding questions; and the second version, an ‘open-ended interview’ in the tradition of the narrative interview, which included a phase of requested elaborations, to which later I added a phase of complementary questions. The second version was chosen for eliciting the ‘journey stories’ of Ethiopian immigrant adolescent girls and boys. This open-ended uninterrupted version was found to elicit data in a form which seemed to be a better expression of the way the Ethiopian adolescents constructed the events of the journey and the way such occurrences, including traumatic ones, were made part of the person’s life history. During this phase I also created the initial categories for the theoretical sampling that I was going to conduct (e.g. boys and girls, different geographic areas). The pilot study was also used to try out various tools for defreezing an interviewee who comes from an Ethiopian cultural background. A certain method of pre-narration warming up was then developed. The phase of complementary questions, which included evaluative judgements following the journey story, was also built up during the pilot study. I experimented with various questions: some were found to be not very efficient and were adapted, while others were found irrelevant and were dropped altogether. Description of the sample Forty-five interviews were carried out, focusing on the journey and on the initial encounter with Israeli society. Twenty-nine of the interviewees were males and sixteen were females. They came from different areas of origin in Ethiopia: twenty-six were originally from Gondar, nine from Tigray, seven from Wolkite, one from Gojjam and two from Addis Ababa. They also differed in their age of setting out: seventeen were 13–16 years old, twelve were 17–20 years old, eleven were 9–12 years old, and five were 21 years old or more. In terms of their level of education in Ethiopia, seventeen interviewees had no schooling, six went to

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school for one to six years, ten were in school for seven to twelve years, and eight had more than twelve years of education. These were mainly high school graduates who had undergone an additional teaching course, usually for less than a year. The number of school years for four of the interviewees is unknown. As for the number of years in Israel, twenty interviewees had been between one and three years in Israel at the time of the interview; nineteen interviewees between four and six years; and six interviewees between seven and ten years. Their place of residence in Israel at the time of the interview was either within the community (twenty-three interviewees) or living in an educational setting, a youth village or a boarding school (twenty-two of the interviewees). For a detailed description of the sample see the Appendix.

4 THE THEME OF JEWISH IDENTITY

Jewish identity is a major theme within the young people’s narratives. It is experienced by the individuals in relation to themselves and their group as well as in relation to non-Jews. I shall attempt to discuss these experiences and their manifestation in four separate phases of the journey: 1 The phase of decision, which includes the context in which the decision to set out occurred and, at its centre, the motivation for migration or the reasons for flight. 2 The phase of setting out, during which Ethiopian Jews actually left their homes and villages. Here I shall examine how Jewish identity and relations with their neighbours determined the type of leave-taking. 3 The phase of the walking journey, during which they were trekking within Ethiopia towards the border with Sudan. I shall examine whether their passage was influenced in any way by their Jewishness, i.e. beyond the experience of regular trekkers or even of other Ethiopian refugees fleeing to Sudan. 4 The phase in Sudan. Here I shall consider the Sudanese experience, trying to assess what were the major aspects of that phase and whether the fact of being Jews coloured their time in Sudan in any significant way. In particular, I shall try to explore the extent to which their Jewish identity was a risk or a resource for survival within the context of Sudan. The phase of decision Jewish identity played a crucial role in the decision to migrate. This decision is described as a fulfilment of the ancient dream of the exiled person to return to Jerusalem. The Jews of Ethiopia perceived the return to Israel as a rectification of the situation of exile. They felt themselves to be a part returning to the whole, a drop, a stream or a river that will join the sea, so that no one could ever distinguish between river and sea. Henceforth, they believed that once in Israel, among their brethren, they would feel more ‘complete’. This migration dream of their return from a long exile to Israel, to ‘Yerussalem’ as they called it, and of reuniting with their brethren, was

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fundamental to Ethiopian traditional Jewish society. In the migration stories I collected, the dream appears as a cross-generational message. It was handed down from one generation to another. Through a total integration of that dream into their family and community life they succeeded in keeping it so much ‘alive’ that it served as a blueprint for action. Shmuel describes how the dream was kept alive in his family. When he and his father were ploughing their field together, his father would tell him: ‘You know, my son, the land that we are ploughing is not our land. Our land is far away, in Yerussalem.’ Shaul, a 17-year-old shepherd from Wolkite, tells of the ways in which the message of the dream was transmitted through the generations in the villages: And the grown-ups, the parents, always used to give us a blessing, if we did them some favour [service for them]. Instead of saying, ‘Thank you’, or something like that, or giving sweets [smiles compas-sionately]1—not many sweets to give2—they would then say to us: ‘May you reach the country’, ‘to your country’, ‘to Zion’, or something like that. Daniel, aged 16, a student from a village near Gondar adjoining the exquisite Lake Tanna, refers to the beauty of ‘Yerussalem’, and other aspects of the crossgenerational dream: It is known, to the one who is in exile, the land of Israel, Yerussalem, this is the most beautiful country in the world…our parents had told us that, so we accepted this thing and it was in our blood… At home, at celebrations, everywhere, everybody would say: ‘Soon the time will arrive, to ascend, to walk to Israel.’ This word, ‘to ascend’, is how we say it now; but to walk to Israel, they would always speak about walking to Israel, always! [emphasis follows his intonation] And he continues: The older people would say, ‘Next year to3 Yerussalem.’ I myself knew this word. We had a synagogue, on the Day of Atonement we would have a celebration;4 we would go to the synagogue and then we had that song, which was ‘Next year to Jerusalem’. So I knew. So that is how they would always tell us, and we believed our elders. Another mechanism of integrating the message into their lives was through the interpretation of children’s dreams. Since, according to Ethiopian culture, dreams are perceived as a prediction of future events, particular dreams were interpreted as a prophecy of reaching Israel. Esther recounts:

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Once I dreamt that I went to the sea and was drowning. I was getting deeper and deeper into the sea and could not get out. I told my mother of the dream and she said to me that I would get to a big country— Yerussalem —and stay there. I shall not leave that country and I shall be satisfied with it. Lastly, it is worth noting that some of the Ethiopian Jews used the practice of naming a child ‘Yerussalem’. The name clearly conveyed to the child the intent of the parents and what was important for them. Israel, as seen through the narratives, was conceptualised in idyllic-Utopian terms, both spiritually and materially. One can identify three major dreams that were translated into expectations about Israel. First, the concept of ‘Tzion-Yerussalem’ was drawn in metaphysical terms of splendour and holiness. Ethiopian Jews believed that only righteous people of brownish-black skin colour, dressed in white gowns, lived in Israel. Sarah recounts: My father used to say, ‘We shall ascend, the day will come when we shall go to Jerusalem.’ We would hear him tell these stories about a country for Jews only, where we could live peacefully. Yet we did not know when… I becamé very attached to this country. I was curious to know what this country looked like, whether it was true that people there were living peacefully, and whether only Jews were living there… I used to imagine a city where there’s always light, that has everything. Shaul explains: In the village no one had ever been to a Western country: no one had ever travelled even within Ethiopia to Addis Ababa or to Asmara, any place relatively more developed from a technological point of view. They were all villagers telling these wonderful legendary stories, so that …we expected that all people in Israel were religious people. This is Yerussalem [stressing the word]. Israel also signified an end to any economic difficulty, since this is ‘a land flowing with milk and honey’. Therefore even well-to-do Ethiopian Jews, who prepared money and other means of payment for the way, did not imagine or think that they should prepare themselves for economic struggle when they arrived in the Promised Land: I think that…every Ethiopian Jew tells more or less a kind of a similar story in terms of the expectations concerning Israel. These were many, because people did not know exactly…especially in the remote villages, like my own, where there was no communication, and nobody came who had been

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to Israel, nobody reached us from Israel…everything was through the stories that the older people used to tell from the Bible, and legends that were passed on. And also the true story that we were told , that Israel is a land of milk and honey…one was told that there was a lot of milk there, all kinds of stories… Once it happened that I heard on the news, and I told them, that there was a city called Tel Aviv, and that I had heard that it was the largest in Israel. They [the older people] said to me: ‘What?! How come? Jerusalem is the largest!’ And the name ‘Israel’ was not familiar, but Zion5 or Yerussalem. Their third expectation was that in Israel they would be enlightened through education. Since for most of the last three hundred years or so Jews had been forbidden to have their own educational system, they believed that in Israel they would close this gap of knowledge no matter how much they needed to learn or what age they were. In their words: ‘There we shall study from morning to night, and overcome our deficient education.’ An essential element within that dream was the concept of ‘the time will arrive’. Ethiopian Jews nourished this concept, which conveyed a belief that there would be a ‘right moment’, a specific point in time at which it would be appropriate to go to Jerusalem. They believed that when this moment came they would have the means to recognise it as the right time. They would then start on their way and God would lead them towards the land of Israel. As Elazar, We did not start this whole thing [of migration]; rather, our time has arrived… No one told us, other than the Blessed God. A feeling seized us that called to us: ‘Go! Go! These are God’s words’. Thus the concept which defined the timing of migration had the power to activate the ancient dream—of getting people to begin their migration journey. As far back as 1862, a distinguished Ethiopian Jew called Abba Mahari announced that the time had indeed arrived, meaning that they should go to Jerusalem. Thousands of Jews gathered around him in the Gondar region and started the long march towards Jerusalem, in the direction of the Red Sea. The attempt failed. Most of the migrants died on the way, in the mountains and desert. Some continued until they arrived at a big river, probably in the Tigray area, where Abba Mahari, like Moses (the Jewish patriarch, 3,100 years before him), pointed his walking stick towards the river waiting for God to part it so that the Jewish people could cross. When this did not happen, the remaining survivors turned and walked back to their villages. This story shows the power and the vividness of the dream of getting to Jerusalem, and the readiness of Ethiopian Jews to leave everything behind and go at once, ‘when the time comes’. Although the 1862 exodus is presented as a disaster by written and oral sources, the legendary tradition about that journey developed in quite a different direction. The generations after the event (as became clear from discussions of the

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event with the elders of the community of the present time) viewed the failed exodus as a sign for the future. As one elderly man said recently: ‘Since he [Abba Mahari] had a very strong belief [in God], the hope that he had, what was revealed to him in his dream, was [a reference] to the future’ (Ben-Dor 1987: 30, my translation). There is some information about individuals who tried in later times to announce that ‘the time has arrived’, yet the community had become more cautious and reacted by prayers and fasting for the sake of that goal, rather than setting out on the way (Ben-Dor 1987:30). Abba Mahari’s failure and the longing for actualisation of the dream became a spiritual asset that was then transmitted from generation to generation. As Kess Avraham said: A person thinks [wishes] all the time to arrive. Until our time arrived, all the time we thought about going to Jerusalem. They [elders and parents] would say and tell us, if we have [the right time], we shall arrive at Jerusalem. If not, then this story should reach our children. (Ben-Dor 1987:30, my translation) The crucial role of the old dream in the decision to set out on the journey finds a special expression in Shlomo’s story. He explains how the current events in Ethiopia, as well as the proposed direction of the Jewish migration through Sudan, finally convinced him that the story was true, that the time had indeed arrived: When the elders talked, I liked to listen, to get close to their feet and listen to what they said…they used to say that, in Ethiopia, a very formidable war will take place, there will be a Gog and Magog,6 meaning one shall eat the other, there will be a civil war,7 and there will emerge people who can judge near a tree, yes, as if their office is in the tree, under a big tree, there they shall carry out justice; so as [the elders] used to say—a war did actually happen, all kinds of underground groups came about in Ethiopia, and father fought against son.8 This had come true, and those who administered justice, they were actually representatives of the villages, selected for the underground,9 and they were judging under a tree, judging people. All these things had actually taken place. So the elders also said: ‘At that time the Jews will come out [of Ethiopia]. If they do not come out at that time, there is no chance that they will [ever] come out.’ And they did not say ‘by aeroplane we shall come out’ [but] ‘we shall come out through Sudan’. I am quoting this as I have heard it with my own ears! The social context: a sense of non-belonging In addition to the Ethiopian Jews’ yearning for the return to the land of Israel, there was also a very strong feeling of non-belonging and estrangement within

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Ethiopian society which seems to have influenced their decision to start on their journey. This relates to their social situation and to relations with their Ethiopian neighbours, Christian Amhara in particular. Insults and curses directed at Jewish children at school, or at Jewish adults at the market and elsewhere, were a common phenomenon in Ethiopia. The most regularly used was the term buda. As we have seen above (Chapter 2, ‘Historical background’) this could actually constitute a real danger to the ‘accused’.10 Baruch tells about his feelings in his social environment: In Ethiopia I felt cut off, I didn’t belong. Also at school, in geography classes, the teachers paid no attention to the land of Israel and I was afraid to ask. I was frightened of what they would think about me. I was a Jew in a Christian school, and also the curses against Jews made me feel bad. Shlomo portrays the relations with their Christian neighbours, including the cursing-accusation practice, through his mother’s words, when she responded to these insults and allegations: The Christians that were coming to buy her things [household pottery], they would argue about the prices, and then she always used to tell them: ‘You’ll see, these things that you claim to be worth just two bir11 you will have to buy these for fifty bir. You won’t find it!’ What she meant was that ‘since we won’t be here, because we shall leave you, then no one else will do it for you’,12 and because they were cursing us,13 then [she told them:] ‘And you…this curse that we get, well, you’ll do it again, this kind of work, since you will have no choice you will do it.’14 Migration to Israel, in this context, is viewed as an act of taking revenge. This was due to years of constant insults and accusations directed towards them, as Jews and as holders of occupations they were driven to because of ever growing restrictions. Another peculiar accusation made towards the Jews is related in Elazar’s narrative with an undertone of vengeance: ‘After we arrived [in Israel], there was no rain in Ethiopia, there was drought. And this is what we heard from the Christians, even on the radio: “It happened because the Jews had left Ethiopia.”’15 Jews were thus perceived in Ethiopia as a source of evil, and were accused of spreading death, whether by their presence or by their absence.16 Jewish identity in Ethiopia was thus associated with the causation of evil. Even if we treat the Christians’ accusations about drought as an exaggeration on the part of the narrator, something which ‘cannot be true’, it still shows the feelings of the Jews in Ethiopia, and the way they conceptualised their situation among the Christian Amhara. Describing his feelings about leaving Ethiopia, Elazar narrates:

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A place that you were born in—you miss and long for. Nevertheless, in our situation, there was nothing to long for, since we felt oppressed: even if we would mend their agricultural tools they were still cursing us for this occupation; and when we were in public, they used to say: ‘Look, this person is Beta Israel, agovai!’ and they would try to humiliate us. Shaul experienced it from the point of view of status relations: ‘They looked down on us. They had this view that the Jews were inferior to them, not on the same level.’ The phase of setting out The moment when Ethiopian Jews decided to realise the dream of the return by setting out on their journey to Israel was a critically important and highly significant time for them. They experienced this period as bringing to an end centuries of exile, of feeling displaced and non-integrated in society, and many years of waiting. It is the moment when they were convinced that their generation was the one destined to fulfil the dream of their forefathers, and when they actually set out to fulfil this dream it was the moment of ‘the arrival of time’. The Jews started on their migration journey and a snowball effect began to take place. Groups, families and individuals went out from different villages and at various times. The very fact of the start of migration and the growing trickle of Ethiopian Jews which started to flow towards Sudan enhanced the feeling that the time had arrived and that others should go as well. The fact that the Jews of Tigray were moving, at least in part, through Jewish villages in Gondar region added to this process and made the Jews of these villages realise that the time had indeed arrived. It awakened the desire to go too, ‘before the way was closed’. Another aspect which comes up frequently in the narratives is the role of the letters which started to arrive from relatives who had set out and had already reached Israel. These served as a more immediate piece of evidence that the route to Israel was open. These letters are mentioned in the stories as having had a particular effect on children, but for adults too they enabled them to digest the fact that Israel, or rather Jerusalem, did exist in reality and was not only a concept or a dream. The letters changed their view of what was possible. Like the dove setting out from Noah’s ark, they brought back the message of the open route to Israel to the villagers. Daniel recounts his experience in relation to this correspondence: And there were the letters—people who went before us, when they reached Israel, they sent back letters. I did not know them, but my friends visited their relatives who got the letters. And so we gathered all sorts of evidence, so it drove us to go and that is how we decided to set out.

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Yoav was sent as a scout on behalf of his family in Tigray. His letter assured his father that there really was a passage through Sudan. It proved that the trek was surmountable. The letter was sent as an olive branch, a proof of a hoped-for change on earth that determined—together with other signs of the ripeness of time —the setting out and the opening of a new era. Shlomo recounts how he read these letters and understood that they portrayed ‘a tunnel to Israel’. At first he was not at all convinced that this could be employed as a way for the community as a whole, thinking it suited a few individuals only. But then, ‘step by step these things continued to roll and one started hearing more information’. The beginning of the migration also affected their relations with their Christian neighbours. It brought about an escalation in the hostility and harassment of the Jews. The relations between Ethiopian Jews and Christians in modern times, particularly during this century, were already quite complex. The attitude of the non-Jews of Ethiopia towards the Jews was comprised of three major facets that were not necessarily consistent with each other: 1 The Jews were perceived as part of the Ethiopian nation, partners in centuries of history. In the Ethiopian tradition, in which social cohesion is highly valued, the Jews were perceived as an integral part of the Ethiopian social fabric. 2 The Jews were regarded as an inferior element within the Ethiopian people. As I have mentioned earlier, many regard them as buda , meaning ‘eaters of souls’, and ‘Falasha’, exiles, strangers, people of lesser rights. 3 The Jews were part of Israel and Israel is an object of admiration to many Ethiopians, in both its ancient and its modern forms. The Ethiopia-Israel connection is an old one. Most Ethiopians have a profound and basic sympathy for Israel. Orthodox Christianity, which predominates in Ethiopia, is the closest to Judaism of all Christian denominations in terms of its religious practices. Ethiopian Christians pray to the ‘God of Israel’, maintain groups called ‘Youth of Zion’, and in many cases aspire to reach Jerusalem— if not during their lives, then at least for burial. (Jerusalem, some believe, is ‘where earth and heaven meet and where the horizon ends’.)17 Ethiopians at the present time also identify with Israel because of their objections to the surrounding Arab world, which has designs on Ethiopian lands for the purpose of creating Arab and Muslim territorial continuity in eastern Africa.18 The relations between Jews and Christians in Ethiopia during the 1970s and 1980s became even more complex. Ethiopia at that time was engulfed by serious economic and social hardships. Years of previous imperial rule, which employed feudalism, coupled with very slow technological change have left the country almost entirely agrarian (95 per cent). The Marxist regime following the 1974 revolution, run by the Dergue and headed by Mengistu Hilè-Mariam, was unable to change the economic situation in a major way. Its per capita gross national

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product (GNP) stood in the 1980s at around $125.19 The so-called ‘province’ of Eritrea was clamouring for independence, and the province of Tigray demanded autonomy or a change in the way of governing the country as a whole. Underground organisations in both areas were fighting the government (Sorenson 1993; Cliffe and Davidson 1988; Lefort 1983; Firebrace and Smith 1982; Halliday and Molyneux 1981). Another war, on the Somali border, was claiming massive reserves of energy and manpower (Schwab 1985). During this period, due to the socio-economic hardships in Ethiopia, many citizens of the country were looking for ways to better their situation and find food for their families. They resentfully noticed the desire of the Jews to leave Ethiopia. A lot of them felt that the Jews were abandoning them at the worst time. This was a time of distress, and they believed that the Jews displayed an unwillingness to share the country’s burdens with them and survive the hard times together until they all arrived at a situation of socio-economic well-being that was expected to emerge at the ‘end of the tunnel’ (BenEzer 1990). Also, the Jews were performing an essential economic function for the Christians as a professional caste (Quirin 1992) in Ethiopia, and in some areas they were either the only ones—or the best—at producing metalwork and clay crockery as well as mending weapons and agricultural tools. The Jews were not only resented but also envied for their ‘imminent’ departure for Israel. This is because many Ethiopian Christians also wished to emigrate to other countries, even if for different reasons (quest for affluence, higher education, etc.). Many others, as noted, at least dreamed of visiting ZionJerusalem. Many Ethiopians were asking themselves why the Jews alone, of all the people, were deemed worthy of the option to migrate to a country that would welcome them. In what way, they asked, were the Jews ‘superior’ to them? These feelings of resentment and envy frequently found expression in the way the Jews were treated by non-Jews when the community’s migration had started. It was manifested in recurrent assaults, humiliations, verbal insults, forceful confiscation of property, bullying of small children, and so forth. They were frequently pushed away from their lands or homes and had to leave. The complex relations between the Jews and Christian Amharas in Ethiopia brought about specific reactions by both the government and their immediate neighbours to the beginning of the community’s migration, as comes out in the narratives. At that time it was illegal to leave Ethiopia. The Marxist regime, which has prevailed since the revolution of 1974, has made emigration impossible. Escaping illegally, especially while having some emigration scheme in mind, was regarded as an act of ‘treason’. It was considered as a declaration against the ‘correct’ political ideology implemented by the government (see Wagaw 1993; BenEzer 1994). Anyone who tried to leave and was caught faced harsh punishment. Even moving between districts was not a simple matter: one needed a permit even to leave one’s own area of residence and move to another district within Ethiopia. When the government learnt that the Jews were actually migrating to Israel, they tried to prevent a snowball effect of mass Jewish migration from taking place.

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Government officials initiated meetings with Jewish villagers in different areas as well as with Jewish students at schools. All were threatened that they would be intercepted en route by government patrols and punished in various harsh ways, including long imprisonment and even sentence of death. Also, their future in Israel was painted in grim colours and contrasted with an ideologically bright future if they stayed in Ethiopia. Rammy was a student at a school in town. He recounts: They warned us, the people working for the government. They said: ‘What will you find if you go to Jerusalem? There is no country like Ethiopia. There isn’t a better one! So why would you go? You are black, you do not belong there at all!’ and so on, they kept warning us. In some areas (such as the Gondar region in the early 1980s under Major Malaku’s reign), local authorities took further measures, announcing, for example, that they had a particular interest in the fleeing Jews and that anyone who intercepted them on their journey and turned them over to the authorities would be given their belongings and property. This, of course, made their escape even more dangerous. Being Jewish, therefore, meant (at least in these localities) being hunted for a prize, which made it essential to set out in secret as a measure for survival. Baruch recounts a story of the Jew-hunting: At that time they were looking for Jews, because the government announced that everyone who caught a Jew on the way would get all their belongings as well as a prize. So everyone at that time, Muslims and Christians, was searching for Jews. Even the opposition groups, the Underground and Fronts that controlled some of the areas and were generally more receptive to people’s wishes or sometimes even favourable to aspirations of self-determination, were against the movement of the population. People constituted their major resource against the government, producing food, joining the fighters, voluntarily or by force, and so forth. The Jews needed the permission of those Fronts and local resistance organisations in order to leave, or at times had to set off without such consent and had to dodge their patrols as well as those of the government. Their neighbours’ reaction to the beginning of emigration was, in general, negative and hostile. For reasons stated above they strongly opposed it. The Jews’ neighbours co-operated with the government in trying to prevent them from leaving Ethiopia. They watched the steps of Jewish neighbours and tried to catch them when they escaped and return them to their villages. Jonathan tells how he was with a large group of Jews who gathered in a certain area, which made the neighbours react by attacking them and not letting them proceed. In the morning, as Jonathan tells, the group started to walk. They were so many that the line was

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very long. The people of the area watched that long procession with amazement, saying to themselves: ‘Why suddenly? What happened? Why are all these people leaving, shutting up their houses, selling all their property, what has happened to them? They must be out of their minds, are they crazy?’ Soon they moved into action, as Jonathan recounts: Each of them had a gun, so they all took their guns and ran towards us. When they reached us they said: ‘If you move on we shall fight and hurt you.’ But we went on as if we did not hear them. Then they went to the forefront of the group, stopped, and told us: ‘That’s it! We shall fight and kill you. You had better move yourselves back to your area. Ask for forgiveness of the authorities. They might forgive you. Go back!’ Well, we did not have a choice. Thus we can see that the situation of the Jews when beginning the long process of migration to Israel was not a simple one. On the one hand they felt that they were at last fulfilling a historical-mythical dream: by bringing the drop of water back to the sea they were correcting the wrong done many generations ago. On the other hand, they were becoming refugees, having to leave their country because of fear for their lives due to certain political and social circumstances. Thus, the exodus of the Jews had started as an ideological migration but soon turned, at least in part, into fleeing as refugees. When it became known that they were heading towards Israel and not just going to Sudan, people stopped seeing them as part of Ethiopian society, part of the struggle for a better life in Ethiopia, and began to consider them as ‘Israelis in transition’. So, even when a group of families from a certain village started leaving peacefully, those who were left behind were in many cases expelled from their homes or persecuted to such a point that their lives were endangered and they were forced to run away. In any case, on their journey and in Sudan the refugee experience of the migration became even stronger. However, it should be borne in mind that, from the point of view of the Jews themselves, they never ceased to be ideological migrants. They were returning for ethno-religious and spiritual reasons to their land of origin.20 In addition, there was the problem of shifta, bands of outlaws who lived independently in the forests and desert areas. These groups flourished during the years of civil war in Ethiopia, when many people tried to escape forced drafting to the government army or to one of the rebel groups. They were living ‘outside the law’, subsisting on the proceeds of robbery. They would raid the villages or attack trekkers on the trails. The Jews were easy prey since they were not protected either by the government or by people in the villages along the trek. If it became known in the area that some individuals, even a group, were planning to leave, the shifta might lie in wait for them on the way. They expected the Jews to carry large sums of money as well as all the gear needed for such a long journey.

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The Jews responded to all these dangers by keeping their plans to depart as confidential as possible. To do this they used various measures, as detailed in Chapter 6 which deals with the theme of bravery and inner strength. Here may be noted the words of Sarah in relation to hiding the plans for migration from their Christian neighbours. She described her father’s way of selling their property: ‘He did not sell everything at one time. Because if he sold everything at once, then the Gentiles, our neighbours, would sense that we were planning something.’ At times the Jews kept their plans secret even from relatives. This was done partly to protect the relatives from being accused of concealing information or of being accomplices to a criminal conspiracy if they were caught and interrogated by the authorities. Yoav recounts not telling his Christian friends: ‘I did not tell my Christian friends because they might have spread the information, and then robbers and others could wait for us on our way. I kept silent. I revealed it to no one.’ Excluding their non-Jewish friends from their otherwise shared secrets also had emotional implications. By realigning their affiliations they actually started to separate themselves from their social environment and native country. It also stressed, even for small children, the distinctiveness of their Jewish identity. There were, however, cases in which the Christian neighbours tried to persuade the Jews to remain in Ethiopia. In such cases a process of renegotiation of social identities ensued. These instances took place in areas where the relations between members of the two groups were somewhat better or where the Jews were badly needed economically for their special professional skills. While in most cases this ended up with the frustration of the Christians’ request and hence in enhanced hostility and attempts to prevent their departure by force, in some cases it ended with a friendly parting. Shaul recounts how their Christian neighbours were active in trying to prevent them from leaving. He tells how his father, who was a blacksmith in the Wolkite area, started selling his things, and parting ‘in a nice and polite way’ from his Christian customers. He recounts how in their area they were less cursed as buda and there was somewhat less intimidation of the Jews. He continues to tell how their neighbours tried to persuade them to stay: Several times they came and tried to talk with us: ‘Stay. Why are you leaving? You don’t know what awaits you there. Stay here, we shall help you. If you wish, we will plough your fields, we will help you in any agricultural task, we will do everything for you.’ But when they saw that it didn’t help, that they were not succeeding, then there were many of my father’s and my brother’s customers [his brother was a weapon repair specialist] who came to say goodbye on parting. These were Gentiles! This was moving. And there were even tears. Elazar recounts a much more heated discussion over the migration whereby group boundaries were restated and major affiliations renegotiated. In this instance

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they had to struggle for permission to leave from the authorities of the area, which happened to be one of the rebel groups, the last to conquer their region. An elaborate debate ensued, as he recounts: First, we asked the rebels for a permit to leave. They told us: ‘What have you got to do there? There is war there as well!’ So we told them, ‘We are not afraid of the war. Our desire is to return to our homeland. And what you are telling us now, that we should stay, is like trying to build a house out of children’s marbles, which is impossible. Also, we have become so determined that even if you murder us we shall continue to set out on the way. We did not raise the whole thing [of migration]; rather, our time has arrived.’ ‘Tell us who told you,’ they said. We replied: ‘No one told us, but the Blessed God. A feeling got hold of us, which called out: “Go! Go! These are God’s words.”’ Then they said: ‘You will die on the way.’ To that we answered: ‘Well, this is God’s justice. Forget your justice. Our will is that those who are to die, die, and those who are left will arrive. Our aspiration is to reach a place called Yerussalem, even if it is for one night and then die.’ They continued arguing with us: ‘But that Yerussalem belongs also to us.’ We replied: ‘Yes, but you are divided into several parts, both politically and religiously. Some of you believe in Jesus, while others believe in Muhammad. As for us, we continue to believe and to observe the Orit [Tora, i.e. Law], this is the difference between us.’ These were the answers that we gave them in a general assembly that had taken place. Then they issued an order that everybody could leave, and we started preparing ourselves for the journey. The Jews then had to reaffirm their priorities of affiliation. The phase of setting out included this process of renegotiation of social identity. When nothing could move the Jews from their plans to go, some of their neighbours resorted to inventing and spreading stories about the tragic fate of those who had already left. In order to prevent those who were still in the villages from following their brothers and sisters, parents or children, the Christian neighbours would relate how these had been arrested or killed on the way or in Sudan. There were also more than a few cases where the response by the Christians to the Jews starting to emigrate was quite different: they saw it as an opportunity to force the rest of them off their land, or out of their homes, and get possession of everything they owned. Since those left behind were weakened by the fleeing of their relatives and friends, especially of the young ones, they could not defend themselves as before. As Daniel related: ‘When a tree falls down, even the insects go on the attack.’ They could not respond to the persecution and hostile attacks by the Christians and had to flee.

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Jewish identity on the journey The Jewish identity of the wayfarers is an important part of their experience during the third phase, that of the walking part of the journey. Some of the aspects described above continue to play a central role within that experience, while other elements are added to it. The belief in God As we have seen, the Ethiopian Jews perceived their exodus as part of a divine scheme to bring them back to the Promised Land. It was thus taking place as had been prophesised, at a time of a great civil war and along the route by which their ancestors were believed to have arrived in Ethiopia. Undertaking the journey was thus perceived as acting under God’s guidance and protection. They believed that He would show them the way and defend them against any serious danger, as Yehuda recounts: I needed money for the journey but I didn’t ask for any. I knew that if I asked my parents they would forbid me to leave. I kept quiet, but to my brother I said: ‘What we have we have, and God will help us.’ So one day I stopped going to school. Another adolescent remembers how they appealed to God to protect them against any harm, as if reminding Him of a ‘promise’ made within the dream about walking to Yerussalem. This belief in God’s guidance and protection acquires a dimension of ‘reality’ after they set out. Hence, many of the events that they experienced are interpreted as God’s intervention on their behalf and they have no doubt of His power to make things happen. God is perceived as directing them as well as being their shield, protecting them against any potential harm on the way. He prevents them from excessive stumbling and falling, makes their food last, sends people to save them when money is short, leads them through hostile people to the safety of the family, supplies them with ideas for survival, and finally gives them the necessary power to actually complete the extremely demanding trek to Sudan. Tena and her group, for instance, were abandoned by their guide in the middle of their trek. They had no clear bearings and were walking through what they knew was a hostile environment. Yet they seemed to have had guidance from above which gave them a sense of direction. She recounts: ‘They left and we went on. With God’s help, there would be two ways, and we would decide [to take one] and walk on, and it would be exactly right.’ She refers to it again later in her narrative, when she relates: ‘We went with the help of God; we did not ask people to show us the way. Only God directed us.’

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Jonathan recounts how, after being caught by Christians right at the start of their journey, they somehow managed to escape. They then ran away in a direction that they knew nothing about, yet: I can say that God arranged it for us so that in the area we reached, the girls among us had some family [relatives]. It was incredible, when these girls suddenly said: ‘This place is the place where we were born, so we [know that we] have family here and maybe we should go to them.’ Then we said: ‘This is really an idea that has come from “above”’… [and the fact] that instead of going towards Sudan we accidentally went in this direction which was neither towards Sudan nor the path back to our place…it was just walking in the clouds…and we arrived at our family. In Jonathan’s case, then, the idea of the girls seemed to them to have been ‘planted’ by God who directed their path so that, though they were walking ‘in the clouds’, they arrived at the safe haven of their family. The next day these relatives supplied them with two guides who would take them to a point beyond which they would again have to count on ‘God alone, He would then take care of us.’ Marito, who was less than 10 years old when she left with her family on the journey, narrates how they had lost their way somewhere on the trek. They then had to cut through the bush, with no traces of the trail. When they finally found their way out and were on the slope of a mountain above the main path they realised that soldiers were tracking them. They refrained from going on to the path and waited for the soldiers to disappear, soon taking another route. It was the act of God, they believed, that by losing their way they had been saved from those who had tried to track them down. The role of God was not only in directing the wayfarers on to the right way. It was also to help them deal with the physical difficulties of the journey. Tena recounts: ‘We had been falling over constantly, but with God’s help it did not happen so much any more, and we also had enough food on the way until we reached Sudan.’ Katchil, a girl of 17 when she started on the journey and a student from the Gondar region, attributes God’s presence to the strength needed for the actual trekking on the extremely difficult mountainous path: We walked quickly. That is why we did that [part of the] way in only four days. I was not used to walking. We walked so fast that we were deadly tired. Who could have dreamt it? I don’t know, He, God, gave us the power. He really helped. Truly, this is not possible for a human being [to make that journey and] to reach Israel in that way. Really impossible. But God gave us the strength. Who would think that we could get along that path? If you saw the path! I haven’t seen such a trek in all my life.

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Another function of God was to send special people to save them from a tragic end. Katchil continues to relate how she and a few of her student friends ran away from an area where they were partial captives. They went without knowing the path to Sudan, yet as shé tells it you can see God’s intervention: God guided us. Directly after climbing down from that mountain we found an Ethiopian. Now, we did not have any more birs [Ethiopian money], not even one. Yet this person, with his own money, he ordered a kind of taxi, and sent us in such a taxi to…this was really a miracle. It seems that their belief in God helped them endure the hardships of the trek, as Elazar recounts: It was difficult. When you walk for a month on such a path, with children, in a place where there is no water or bread, it is difficult. But God, to every Jewish person He attaches a shadow behind him. So His shadow never left us. Observance of Jewish laws and customs Ethiopian Jews on the journey were concerned about the need to keep the Jewish laws and customs. The journey put strains on their ability to observe their religious laws. Keeping these precepts, however, gave them a sense of continuity in terms of their identity and a psychological feeling of safety. The narratives reveal three areas about which they were particularly concerned: 1 observance of the Sabbath and the Jewish festivals; 2 adhering to the Jewish food restrictions (kashrut); 3 keeping religious commands related to purity and impurity. The observance of the Sabbath comes up as a major theme in the stories of the journey. Sabbath is the holy day, a time of rest, a day in which people refrain from any work, including lighting fires or carrying weighty things. Boaz, a 17-year-old boy, tells of how they tried to observe the Jewish Sabbath while encountering the natural hurdles of the trek. It was winter, and the rivers were full… So then suddenly it was Shabbat21 and we did not have a choice. It was a place of Christians… and it was difficult…we were near a river which was so full that people were continually making a bridge out of some trees, but the bridge never survived the night, the water would take it away. The water would not level down. Suddenly, we arrived there and it was Shabbat, and these people said to us: ‘Come, young people, you are young, come…there …there is a

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tree…let us make it like a bridge, so that we can cross the river.’ So I was really fearful [to do that] on a Shabbat. Never in my life had I worked on a Shabbat. So I said: ‘Just a moment. You! You! Come here!’ And I was guiding them, the Christians [instead of doing the work myself]. Then, only —only to pull the tree I helped them, but not to actually cut it. Because I was really concerned about the Shabbat. The Jewish festivals included a need for special arrangements in order to observe their special customs, commands and prohibitions. Marito narrates: We went on the journey a week before Pessach.22 We had our Pessach on the way. We took things so that we could make it…[we took] half for Pessach days, and half for regular days…and also all the [special] crockery, because of hometz23, etc. Another concern was the strong wish to observe Jewish food restrictions [kashrut] on the journey. Elazar relates such a case. They had been walking for a long time without food or water. They had only one canteen of water, out of which they moistened the lips of their children. They walked at night so that the sun should not make them even more thirsty. Then they were close to the Sudanese border. They arrived at a water reservoir so they were relieved. They let their children drink and were very happy. Then they met a Sudanese person whose language they could not understand, but The God of Israel does not neglect His people. So we found someone who knows our language, Tigrinya, and he translated what the Sudanese told us about the food that we could get. So he gave us flour and we boiled water and cooked. He also gave us fish. Among these were prohibited fish, those which we should not eat. We selected those which we are allowed according to the Tora [Law, Bible]. That food gave us some strength. Beside the need to observe the holy Shabbat and keep the food restrictions, they tried to observe religious duties concerning rituals of purification and pollu-tion. In most cases this was impossible for a variety of reasons. They still tried, however, as much as they could. Elazar tells how observing those duties could sometimes lead to trouble. They were eight people on the trek, looking for a place to rest when they noticed a shallow tukul where Ethiopian women sit during their menstruation period, while they are considered impure. ‘So we said: “How can we sit in an impure place? Let us sit away from it.”’ It was then that they realised that there was someone with a machine-gun waiting for them there, and he robbed them of everything they had. The wish to preserve Jewish customs was especially evident in the case of the religious leaders of the community, the kessoch.24 To begin with, they were more strict in their religious observance. Also, there are specific restrictions for these

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persons ensuing from the fact that they act on behalf of the community, restrictions that made it even more difficult for them to endure the trip. Of course, they also had to serve as models for all the others. Shlomo tells of such a problem for a kess, amidst the problems of the whole group trying to cling to Jewish customs on the journey. He narrates: It was night. Suddenly, killing has started. So now, Kess Mesganaw was here and the horse was here [shows a very close distance], and I was beside the kess, and there were other people sleeping around him. It was dark so no one could see anything. The attackers could probably only see the white horse (of the kess] and that is how they discovered us in the area where we were. So they started shooting at the horse, and they knocked it down. The horse fell, yet we could not get up because if we got up, they would hit us [with their shooting]. So we stayed where we were and the horse was knocked down. Yet the horse is tied with a kind of string, and if it died, then it would be defiled. And the kess, he is connected to it…the string is tied to the things [belongings] of the kess, so that the kess had to release [unload] the horse before it died. So the kess got up—I was present there just beside him—he got up amidst the shooting and untied the string of the horse, in case he would have to discard all his belongings afterwards since the horse would be contaminated. So he did it in spite of the shooting. And in the morning we stood up, we had not slept that night, so we stood on our feet and saw that a few donkeys and the horse were dead. This was Shabbat, we could not move. Our guide was furious, but he could not leave us there. He would have endangered us if he left us there. So he said: ‘I should have gone back. I shall catch them [the attackers]. But if I leave you here it would be worse, very dangerous indeed. So let us continue. Though I know that you don’t move on a Shabbat.’ We refused. Then when it was noontime he said to us: ‘Come, let’s move! I want to take you as fast as possible.’ Yet we refused to move. But finally there was no choice. He forced us. He forced us to walk on a Shabbat. We refused, especially the kess, but there was no choice, as they say here [in Israel] it was pikuahnefesh. There [in Ethiopia] people did not know pikuah nefesh.25 There was no such thing. But what we have done is actually what here would be pikuah nefesh. So the kess, he is forbidden to walk on foot. Yet on a horse it could be regarded as if he was not doing anything.26 So then, some time in the afternoon, we started again on the journey. Relations with non-Jewish populations on the trek Ethiopian Jews experienced their passage out of Ethiopia as a crossing of a very hostile environment. Jewish islands on the way, whether based on the familial or the community (ethno-religious) bond, served as a source of food, warmth, shelter and guidance. They also served as a source of emotional and mental

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support on a journey that seems to have been felt as a crossing of hostile human territory. Eighteen-year-old Boaz, who belonged to the first group of students to arrive in Israel from the Gondar region, tells of how they were left by their guide in the middle of a winter storm, in a place with which they were not familiar. They sat down there and were praying to God for help. Suddenly, Jewish people appeared —three men with guns—and saved them. They fed them, and after the rain had stopped they made a fire there to warm them. In another incident Boaz tells how they were saved from Christian captors by Jewish rescuers: We were walking in the woods. It was sunny, then suddenly raining hard, then again beautiful sunshine, and again rain. This is how it is in the forest. Then we walked some more until we found the place where the relatives of the person whom we had helped before were living. So we were taken there by the elders and we sat there. Suddenly, a group of Christians, five or six of them, arrived with Kalashnikov machine-guns. They started going around us and taking the girls. Looking at us, observing us and circling us. Suddenly—there was a Jewish village somewhere that we did not know about—so Jews came with all kinds of weapons and rescued us from there. Moreover, the Jews experienced the gap between them and the Christians as growing. They felt that they could not trust any non-Jew any more since they had been betrayed even by the people with whom they grew up. Thus, during the journey their identity was reshaped. They further separated themselves from their Ethiopian identity that included Jews and Christians (as well as others). They reconstructed their identity with a fresh and stronger emphasis on their Jewishness. One can even detect an emerging sense of Israeli identity. Yoav tells of his shock when he discovered on the trek that those who were previously their neighbours, with whom they had grown up, could turn into enemies when encountered on the journey: Then we saw a Christian who we knew, he grew up with us, in our neighbourhood. He was a merchant who goes to Sudan to sell cows. The minute he saw us he tried to hide himself, because he knew we would recognise him. But we had already seen him there. Yet he covered his face with his shawl, until we passed. Then he went back; it was a kind of desert but there were places where people were working in agriculture, and they had guns. So he went, and we continued to walk, until it was evening. We stayed there for the night. At that time, he brought a gun from these people, and ran after us. In the morning, when we started to load our things, they arrived and passed us with their cows. We followed on the same route. Then he waited for us on a kind of hill, loaded his gun and told us: ‘Unless you give me your money, you cannot go on!’ So people said to him: ‘What

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happened to you? We grew up together and you do such a thing to us?’ He then said: ‘No way! If you don’t give me your money, I shall not release you and there will be bloodshed. I shall kill the horses or I shall kill someone.’ We asked, even begged him, but he just refused us and insisted on having our money. So each one took out his money and we gave it to him. Jonathan narrates how, after the last guides had left them, they went through a village where people started gathering around them, coming from the whole area, scrutinising them and then intending to rob them. They started to search them for money. They asked Jonathan and the other Jews to remove their shoes so that their captors could see if they had hidden their money there: Then they said: ‘It is good for you that you reached us. We shall take care of you, we shall take you, we know where you are going and we also know who you are. You are Jews! You are Beta Israel. We already know even where you are going: to Sudan and from there—well, they have somewhere to go, they are not Ethiopians any more!’ I really got scared because of what they said. How did they know? So we started to lie and deny that we were Jews going to Israel. We said that we really wanted to go to Sudan. ‘Why are you going to Sudan?’ they asked. We answered: ‘The government is not good, we can’t live in the conditions that we had, so we want to stay in Sudan for a few years. If things get better with the government here in Ethiopia, we will come back to… our country.’ That is what we said, but they insisted…they really knew. So there was no choice. Amos recounts how, after being arrested by soldiers on their trek, they were interrogated: They asked: ‘Where are you going? Are you running away? You intend to leave your country? Where were you heading?’ We then said: ‘We are not running away. We want to go to Humara’ [a place near the Sudanese border, on the Ethiopian side]. We did not want to tell them the truth. They said: ‘So you want to go to Humara?’ We said: ‘Yes.’ ‘If you want to go to Humara, we will take you there,’ they said. Then we were there for three days, if I am not mistaken. Three days, something like that, we were there. They interrogated us, as to where we were heading, and then took us to Humara. When in Humara they took us to an army officer, who said: ‘You are going to Israel! You are going to Israel!’ He was cursing us, oh, you know, one could not believe the kind of curses that he used at us! And we, what could we do? All the weapons had been taken away from us, we are… empty. Empty! We have nothing! We are caught, and are being held, well, as if we are not alive… Then, at the end, they put us into…it was a bank a long time ago, but now it was a toilet. There they put us. For three months we were there.

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In a different section of the journey, Jonathan and his party were again stopped and asked for their money. They were so exhausted and sick of the repeated robbery by Christian villagers on their way that they replied: ‘You can do with us whatever you wish. We came here without any guide or help, so we are left with no money and no strength. So now you can take us wherever you wish, even back home, we are ready to go.’ Then they said: ‘We know you, you tricky people. We also know what you are doing and what you are going to do. We know everything: that you have a place [a country], that you were born here but your religion is not ours, and the place that you were born in is not yours, and that is how we know where you are heading!’ Jewish identity in Sudan The very fact that they reached Sudan was perceived as a realisation of a central part of the prophecy of the return mentioned above (see ‘The phase of decision’). The Ethiopian Jews saw it as a ‘proof’ that there was a divine intention behind their return and that they were indeed being guided to God’s land. As we shall see below (Chapter 5), they did not at all expect that they would have to stay in Sudan and live as refugees for a long time. Relations with non-Jews What had started on the journey as an experience of ‘Jewish islands in a sea of (Christian) Gentiles’ was intensified in Sudan and became the most fundamental aspect of the Sudanese experience. The Jews experienced themselves as a minority amidst an ocean of hostile Christians and Muslims. As Shaul describes it: ‘In Sudan we were enwrapped by Gentiles.’ Furthermore, they were regarded by the non-Jews as Israelis in transit. This was in an Arab country which was (and still is) in a state of war with Israel. This aspect exacerbated the hostility towards them, since the Sudanese local authorities were either not favourable or not privy to the deal made by their central government, according to which the Ethiopian Jews could move from Sudan to Israel. The Jews were taunted and harassed by the Ethiopian Christian refugees residing in the little towns and in the refugee camps in Sudan, who continued to believe that the Jews were the source of the ‘evil eye’, the buda, and hence the cause of diseases in the camps. They feared the Jews, attacked them and tried to expose their identity, thus causing them to be arrested by the authorities. One girl recounts: The [Christian] Gentiles were accusing us, ‘You eat human beings [souls].’ I remember what happened to our Jewish neighbour in the refugee camp.

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The Gentiles told her that she had eaten some Gentile people. They were going to kill her. Much distress was inflicted upon the Ethiopian Jews by the Sudanese authorities. The more extreme cases of torture and humiliation are discussed further on in this work in the section on trauma (Chapter 7). Here I would like to mention the many instances of suffering inflicted by the Sudanese. These included beatings, incarcerations and terrifying threats, especially towards children and adolescents: for example, threats of being drafted to the army, sent back or abused in various ways. They were intimidated, screamed at, harassed, and endured other distressing experiences. Alamnesh recounts how the group of fourteen Jewish adolescents to which she belonged were reported as being Jews to the Sudanese police. They were caught and jailed by the Sudanese. They were accused simply of being Jews who were planning to go to Israel. At a certain point the boys were taken to the prison yard and severely beaten. Then they were ordered to remain standing in the middle of the yard, under the omnipresent sun, without being allowed water or anything else to drink. The girls were brought to sit on the steps of the yard and made to watch their friends’ misery while becoming dehydrated, wretched and dispirited. It was a terrible scene for the girls to watch. Alamnesh still cries when recounting it. In another part of her story, Alamnesh narrates how she was brought by the Sudanese to see whether she could identify a jailed youngster who was believed to be her brother. The Sudanese, who had already discovered that she was Jewish, tried to prove that he was Jewish too. His face was crushed and other signs of severe beating were apparent. He was bleeding profusely. He was indeed her brother. Nevertheless, she said she did not know him. She knew that his fate could be even worse if the Sudanese were absolutely sure that he was Jewish. Yoav recounts the fate of the Jewish community, the young in particular, following an incident when operators of the migration process within the community were identified by the Sudanese: Once something was discovered and the whole process was stopped. The Sudanese caught some people who were acting as links between people [the ‘operators’]. They put them in jail and beat them to the point where they were almost dead. When they couldn’t take the beating any longer, the Sudanese brought them to the neighbourhoods where many of the Jews were gathered, and started searching everywhere. That evening they took my brother. He was younger but looked bigger than me. And they took my older brother, and my brother-in-law, and many cousins of mine, and others whom I did not know very well, but they were neighbours and friends. They took the whole population of the neighbourhood, sparing only the old people. The young ones were there all night, being interrogated and beaten. They asked them: ‘Where do you want to go?’ No

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one wanted to tell them that we were going to Israel since we knew they wouldn’t let us go. So they told the Sudanese that we had come to work in Sudan, because of the problems in Ethiopia. The Sudanese insisted that they should tell them the truth, but they did not want to tell them…so they continued to beat them. As mentioned earlier, the fact that they were going to Israel turned them, in the eyes of the Sudanese Muslim population, into Israelis in transit. Hence they were held responsible for the deeds of their fellow Jews in Israel. Jonathan recounts how they were identified with Israel and treated accordingly: We were in Um-Rakuba where we suffered from the weather and from the Sudanese people. There were many [Ethiopian] Christians and Muslims there. We disguised ourselves so that we were inconspicuous amongst them, since if the Sudanese had known that we were Jews we would have been in trouble. Those who were indeed discovered to be Jews, the Sudanese used to take and beat and sometimes kill them and dispose of their bodies thereafter wherever they wanted to. They would say: ‘You Jews want to go there [to Israel]. We know what you do to the Arabs there! We know what Israel does!’ The Ethiopian Jews then became aware of the way in which they were involved in the conflict between Israelis and Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular. They realised that they were already perceived by others as part of this conflict, and were being taken to account for it. Indeed, they then became aware of the presence of Palestinian soldiers in Sudan. As one of them recounts: ‘We then realised that, in fact, there were Palestinians there. We were shown who they were by those who recognised them by their special army uniforms.’ The accusation of ‘actions’ against the Arabs in Israel was thus reflected in the reality of the social environment of the Ethiopian Jews in Sudan. The sight of the Palestinian soldiers made the accusation appear more real. Their ‘enemy’ took form and shape before them. The threat to their lives was also experienced as being more real. At the same time, it added another dimension to their emerging Israeli identity (cf. previous section on the journey). It made them identify with the Israeli cause while they were still on their way to Israel. The atmosphere of fear and suspicion resulted in various phenomena. One such phenomenon was the rumour, which turned into a strong belief (a subjective truth) among the Jews, that the Sudanese and Ethiopian Christians who worked at the refugee camps’ clinics were attempting to harm them rather than to help them through the treatment provided. The actual signs of hostility on the part of some of the clinic workers, and the general attitude of the communities they came from, were thus taken one step further in the minds of the Ethiopian Jews. A widespread rumour related that these workers were trying to kill them by poisoning the medications they were giving the Jews who approached the clinics.

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Others strongly believed that this was done through pieces of metal (parts of shaving blades) which were inserted into the pills given to them by the hostile clinic workers. Telaynesh recounts: The medication was not good. People [of the Ethiopian Jewish community] did not know about it and were therefore taking it. I know, for example, about my sister who died in Sudan. My father was with her at the hospital. My father was hungry. I told him: ‘Father, please go and eat at home and then you can come back.’ He went home. Suddenly, my little sister said: ‘Telaynesh, my tummy aches.’ I thought that she was just talking. Yet she continued to say to me, time and again: ‘Telaynesh, why don’t you go and bring me pills?’ She was crying and I started to cry too. I went to the nurse. She asked me: ‘Why are you crying? Are you ill?’ I told her: ‘I am not. But my sister is [ill].’ She gave me some pills and told me: ‘[Give her] one now and one at night.’ I gave my sister the pills to swallow. I think that what the nurse gave me were not good pills. They included poison. Then my sister died. As a consequence of Sudanese hostility and the danger of being arrested, being tortured or disappearing into the unknown, from the moment they crossed the Sudanese border the Jews lived in dread of their identity being exposed. They felt that they had to disguise their Jewish identity. Hiding their identity thus became a crucial factor for their survival. They had to get their wits together and devise ways to prevent their exposure. A further discussion of these efforts will be presented in Chapter 6, which deals with bravery and inner strength. Maintaining a Jewish way of life The Ethiopian Jews experienced their Jewish identity in their struggle to maintain Jewish laws and rituals even in the very hostile environment in which they found themselves. They tried to keep the Sabbath, to observe Jewish food restrictions, to keep the holidays and to bury the dead according to their customs, among other things. Baruch tells of the struggle to preserve Jewish laws: It was very unpleasant…one had to live amidst the Gentiles as they were… Nevertheless, in terms of food, we tried to keep kashrut no matter what or how we did it. You had to observe it. And also in terms of Pessach [Passover]—we were obliged to observe it. So we needed to eat matzot there, while being among the Gentiles, and we had to prepare it in secret so that they would not see us or sense anything. Esther, a girl of 11, recounts their efforts to keep Jewish rituals:

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We told the Sudanese Gentiles that we were Gentiles from Ethiopia [Christians] so that they wouldn’t kill us… They would bring us their food and we could not eat it. They would bring us a cooked chicken, and we were ‘dying’ [eager] to eat it, but it was not our thing [it was not prepared according to Jewish law, not kosher]. So we did not eat it. I remember that every time they brought us food people would hide the children. They didn’t let us see, so that we would not be tempted to eat it. So they would take it and throw it in the toilet. The Gentiles used to check to see if we ate it or not since we had told them that we were Gentiles. Until one day the toilet got clogged up, and they opened it and found all the bones and stuff… They said, ‘You are Jews!’ Well, it meant trouble… But afterwards there was somebody who rescued us. A kind of representative, someone from Israel. He paid money on the side [bribe] and got us out. Marito recounts other ways in which they tried to observe the Jewish law: They [the Sudanese] used to come on purpose to our house on Shabbat and tell us ‘Let’s eat!’ They did it in order to find out whether we were Jews. The things they did in order to know [whether we were Jews]! So the elders used to leave the house on Shabbat. All the grown-ups used to disappear from home…while we, the young ones, went to play somewhere. Burial rites were particularly difficult to observe, they felt. However, they did what they could, as Baruch recalls: And we had to cope with many other things, like how to bury our dead in a Jewish way. This was the hardest of all. We had to do it at night. There was no other choice. Otherwise they would have discovered that we were Jews by the way we buried our dead. Marito adds details about ways of observing burial rites: We did not have anywhere to bury our dead. At night we used to hide them and bury them…and if it was not possible, then we would bury them within the house [tent] and that was that. Then we would move to another house. That is how we would do it… It was very difficult… otherwise they would have known that we were Jews. There were many other instances where, out of fear for their lives, the Jews had to transgress Jewish laws. Often they felt distressed and sometimes guilty about having sinned. For some, it constituted a traumatic experience (see Chapter 7, section on trauma). Elazar recounts:

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We were in a lot of trouble in Sudan. There were many who died and we buried them according to the Christian custom, mentioning Mariam [Mary] and so on when burying them so that others around us would not suspect that we were Jews… And whenever there was a search for Jews, we would light a fire on a Shabbat in order not to be identified. We would light it but not cook on it… In addition, we were not able to observe the purity ritual, the niddah [whereby a woman had to stay out of the house for seven days]. We couldn’t do it for fear of being discovered as Jews. We felt very bad about it, but what could we do? And one girl adds, about those times when they did not succeed in escaping the inquisitive visitors and had to light a fire on a Sabbath: ‘We had to do it but we were deeply sorry that we sinned.’ A specific psychological problem that resulted from burying the dead in a nonJewish way was the guilt related to the method of burying without proper respect. The feelings surrounding such experiences could be viewed as a particular form of survivor guilt. The specific method of burial is an obligation on the kin of a deceased person, which is supposed, according to Ethiopian culture, to express respect towards the dead person and to make sure that his/her soul can actually separate itself from the world of the living. It is the responsibility of the children in particular to ensure that the person is buried in a way that expresses the honour and respect the person deserves so that the goal of the separation of the soul is achieved. Sudan was no place for Jewish Ethiopian burial procedures. In the first place, people did not want to identify themselves as Jews by carrying out a Jewish burial ritual. They also did not want to expose the fact that there were so many Jews in Sudan, which could be traced by the number of bodies of declared Jewish persons. This would have created a safety problem and could have risked the whole rescue operation. Thus, there was no Jewish cemetery as such.27 They would bury their dear ones together with all the other dead, in a Christian ‘graveyard’ or just anywhere. Or they would bury them within their tents or huts and then try to find another place to live in. At times they were so exhausted that they would not have the strength to dig a deep grave and the dead would just be put somewhere with the traditional pile of stones covering them. The burial would frequently take place in secret, at night, in the fear of being noticed as being Jewish. The Jews would thus be ‘choking on their shammas’ so that their crying would not be heard. The psychological effect of all this was the ‘burial survivor’s guilt’, i.e. the guilt experienced over surviving the refugee camps while not carrying out one’s duties towards one’s dead kin. As in survivor guilt, the fact that one had no control over what actually happened, or choice in the situation, did not matter at all. The survivor feels that by his/her very struggle for survival he/she has made it happen, or at least that they are guilty of not doing enough to save their dear ones from such a shameful fate. The Ethiopian Jewish survivors, the children and the young in

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particular, feel that they should have done more to prevent such a sacrilege. They feel guilty for what they have ‘done’. Being unable to bury their dead had a negative effect on the individual as well as on the community in relation to important aspects of their functioning. First, if the individual had been able to perform Jewish rituals and practices in spite of the struggle for survival, it would have served as an affirmation of social identity. This in turn, as will be elaborated below (Chapter 7), is known to be of help in coping. It can provide, among other things, a sense of purpose, continuity and control amidst a chaotic situation. Burial was one of the most important rituals of Jewish life in Ethiopia which also served to distinguish the Jews, in their own eyes, from other groups, and thus had a special place in asserting their identity. Second, following burial rituals helps the individual in separating themselves from the dead. It also enlists the support of the community in the painful process of separation and the beginning of the process of mourning. Preventing the Jews from carrying out such customs made it impossible for them to fulfil these important duties. Third, through the performance of burial rituals the community as a whole could go through a process of acknowl-edging its dead members and of separating themselves from them as a group. It is also important because during ritual practices of burial the community reaf-firms its social order and its power. People are then asked to play their traditional or newly elected roles and exercise their relative position within the social system. Not being able to carry out these rituals added to the disintegration of the community and diminished its powers. This, in turn, affected the individual. While a strong and cohesive community can help its members, a weakened one is unable to do so, thus increasing, or at any rate not alleviating, the individual’s suffering. Contacts with Israel Contacts ‘with Israel’ in Sudan, either directly or indirectly, further enhanced Ethiopian Jews’ sense of belonging to Israeli society. For most of them, it was the first time that they had encountered Israelis. These were messengers, operators and agents of various kinds, as well as the soldiers of elite units of the Israeli army (e.g. marine commandos). The Ethiopian Jews became aware of the efforts the state of Israel was making to rescue them from Sudan, where death awaited many of them, and to bring them to ‘the land’. The fact that representatives of Israel were endangering their lives in order to do this made them feel that Israeli society regarded them as part of itself, thus strengthening their emerging sense of Israeliness.28 It is worth adding that many of the Israeli representatives sent to Sudan were actually veteran Ethiopian Jews who had arrived in Israel in previous years. This exemplified for many within the community the possibility of successful integration into Israeli society: of becoming an Israeli-Ethiopian. The heroic nature of their actions, which gained from the mythical quality ascribed to any clandestine operation, also added an element of pride to the self-image of the

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community, as will be elaborated elsewhere (see Chapter 6). It also constituted an example of transformation, not only into a simple member of Israeli society but into one who is a subject of general admiration and glorification. Through its messengers the Ethiopian Jews also received financial and other support from Israel, which was crucial for their survival. This took the form of some financial aid as well as help, when possible, in rescuing them when they were exposed as Jews by the Sudanese authorities and in some severe cases of attack by others in the camps. Jewish food restrictions prevented them from using some of the products distributed by the Red Cross and other organisations in the camps, or available in Muslim shops in Gedaref and elsewhere, a fact which placed their lives in even more danger than those of other refugees. The Israeli complementary support, even if small in volume, was essential in compensating for this situation (by buying replacements) and other aspects of their special vulnerability in the camps and towns. In view of all the above-mentioned factors, it may be concluded that being Jewish in Sudan was experienced not only as a risk factor but also as a major resource for survival. It was clear to them that, unlike most other Ethiopian refugees, their identity ensured them of an option for getting out of the Sudanese situation, an option of hope. It was, however, Jewishness within a new context: that of becoming Israelis, acquiring a stronger sense of an Israeli identity.29

5 THE THEME OF SUFFERING

Suffering is a major theme in the stories of the exodus from Ethiopia. In this chapter I shall consider both the physical and the psychological suffering experienced during the journey. I shall describe these within the three phases of the passage of the Ethiopian Jews: those of setting out, of the journey within Ethiopia, and the experiences in Sudan. The phase of setting out A major source of pain and distress which many of the adolescents relate is that of separation. The different aspects of the separation, which were experienced as painful, are discussed below. The first and most painful aspect was the rupture of the bond with their parents. Parting with their mothers and fathers, and sometimes with other relatives with whom they maintained very close contact, was felt to be hard and the cause of great grief. They knew that it was a separation that might last for a longer period than they had ever experienced before. They were hurt at the prospect of being far away from their parents, from their love and protection. This was especially hard in view of the fact that familial relations in Ethiopia, parental in particular, are extremely intense and a person without a family feels incomplete.1 As Daniel recounts: ‘Separating from our parents, parting from our loved ones, this was very hard. We parted in tears!’ And Isaiah narrates: Separating from one’s parents at the age of 15 was a very difficult thing. Hard and hurting! My parents accompanied me a bit. At that time I cried… everyone was crying. My mother—I could not separate myself from her. I could not go forward. I would turn round, see her and cry. I turned round, saw her and wow, wow! The second aggravating aspect of the separation was the disintegration of the families. Since the family is the social unit which Ethiopians consider the most important and in which they invest the most emotion, its breaking up during the process of setting out was experienced as greatly upsetting and emotionally disruptive. Agonising decisions and impossible choices within both nuclear

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and extended families accompanied the departure. In many instances families could not all set out at the same time and members had to decide whether they were going to go ‘now’, with certain relatives, ‘or later’, with others. Couples would face difficult choices between breaking up for the journey or leaving behind people who needed them, such as their parents, brothers or sisters. A mother would have to choose between her old parents and her own children. And youngsters had to determine whether they would go with friends, hence separating themselves from their parents and other relatives, or wait for them to go, which might never happen. Sometimes they would join an elder brother who was setting out from another village, thus being separated from their preferred sibling, who could not join them. Some fathers had to stay due to their position within the government administration, for fear that relatives would be harmed if they escaped. In other instances it was the mother who had to stay. Even children, infants and toddlers in particular, had to be left behind, especially when one parent or both had to suddenly run away. The suffering of separation was thus felt in relation to the break-up of families, as Nili recounts: My father couldn’t leave. He had an important job in Ethiopia. If he left with us, they would kill his brothers. He tried to tell my mother not to go, to convince her. But she had to. Her parents wanted to go to Israel, and there was no one to go with them. They were old, so she had to go with them. So my father paid the guides extra money to take special care of his family. My father wept.2 Another account of a saddening experience of separation within the family appears in Nurit’s narration: ‘My mother didn’t want to go to Israel [yet] because her brother was sick; his condition was very bad. But my father insisted. She was sad.’ Painful decisions were sometimes made by parents who for various reasons thought that it would be better for their children to leave without them. They therefore persuaded the children to leave. Some adolescents experienced this as a premature separation, as if they were being ejected from the womb. The image of the parents which comes out of the narrative, then, is a firm one, almost aggressive and cruel. Devorah recounts: My mother had parents, my grandmother and grandfather, who were very old. They could not ascend because they could not negotiate such a path. My mother then told me: ‘You go. And I shall come later.’ But I did not want to leave. Because I did not wish to separate myself from my mother, I wanted to come together with her. Then my uncle said: ‘It would be a pity if I leave you here.’ Because they were very frightened of the Christians, who did not like us, and they [mother and uncle] were afraid of what the Christians would do after my uncle left. My mother then made me go.

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Daniel narrates his experience of being expelled from the family into the dangerous outside world: My friends left but I did not want to part from my parents. I thought of it as the end of the world. If I separate myself from them, when shall we meet? This is not a thing to do lightly. It is not like going from one town to another here, like from Jerusalem to Haifa or even from Haifa to Beer Sheva, setting out for one evening to visit one’s parents… My parents, however, insisted that I set out. They told me that it was better to go soon, since later the path might be blocked, and maybe there would be trouble… They said to me: ‘God knows, but you shall go.’ So they persuaded me. And then it was hard. Separating from one’s parents without knowing when we shall meet again is a kind of a trauma. [Silence.] It is hard to explain. We couldn’t even talk. We were sitting and just looking at each other, sometimes crying… We parted in tears [long silence]. For Jonathan, being forced out by his father meant that he was made to leave his brother, with whom he lived. It was experienced as leaving his ‘nest’ and painfully flying away. Jonathan recounts: I knew that at a certain time I would make aliya to Israel but it happened when I was not prepared for it and when I did not expect it at all. All of a sudden it materialised. My father came to where I was living [at his eldest brother’s place, where he was also studying] and told me that my friends in the village, those who were born with me, had left. He said: ‘Your friends have left already. They are not in Ethiopia. They walked to Sudan in order to ascend to Israel and that is the reason why I came to fetch you and tell you what is going on. You should also go.’ I was startled and shocked to hear that all my friends had already escaped. And then my older brother, with whom I lived, he did not wish me to go. Because I was—I was his only family, the only one who lived with him so that he regarded me as an entire family. He said that maybe I could stay at his place and the rest of the family, if they wished, they could set out [whispers, in agony; remains silent briefly]. There was—there was an argument between my father and my older brother. It wasn’t that my brother did not want me to ascend to Israel but he was afraid of staying alone. At the end my father won the argument. He told my brother that he should set out too, that we all had to leave. But it was impossible for my brother to do so. His work was such that he could not move away, and he has not succeeded in doing it yet. He did not succeed in getting me to remain with him and nor could he go with me either. Both he and I had no choice but to separate. [Remains silent for a few seconds.] Then [pauses] my father wanted to take me with him but I told him that I needed to remain with my brother for a few days. I mean, until we parted. Because this separation, it is not the kind of separation in which

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we shall see each other tomorrow, or after a week. [Silent again.] So my father said: ‘Fine. I shall count on your promise to come. In the meantime I shall go.’ And he went. Mourning the loss of their old world constituted a third dimension to the pain of separation. Those leaving agonised over losing what they had known all their lives. Homes, animals, scenery, even culture were hard to part with. Some were grieving over their familiar village, others over a much loved stream, and still others tell of the pangs of separating from the specific point where youngsters used to meet on the Sabbath to sit together and talk. Shaul tells of those lost parts of his world which caused him most grief during the separation: As a child [setting out as part of a big family] I did not have to worry about preparations for the journey. What was hard for me, though, was when they started selling the herd. At that moment—well, I don’t know [pauses], I was the one who took care of them and I was, somehow, more attached to these cows than the others were. This was also a source of pride among the children of the village. I mean that in Ethiopia, in our village, a person is considered rich or poor by the size of his herd. So we had a relatively big herd of bulls, cows, calves, etc. When you have that many, it is a status symbol [smiles] and you have a special place among your friends, with all that comes with it. When they start selling these things…well, maybe I was also attached to them because they supplied me with status. Moreover, there were some among them who were more beautiful than the others. You know, when one gets attached to them then certain colours, or other things, may be more to your liking. When they started selling them it was very saddening for me. I was upset. I remember in particular some calves. People usually pay attention more to the calves because at a certain point they would become the ones who give birth, right? And the ones who give milk, and so on. So I had a special bond, I mean fondness and so forth, for these; because with us, well, people tend to prefer those who are giving fruit, who are the future. And suddenly a certain rich person came and bought them, three or four of them, and was taking them away. He—he separated them from the rest of the herd and started to take them away and, of course, these calves were—they resisted going away. Because they were used to this place, and also, separating them from the [mother] cows and the rest of the cows to which they were attached, it was—very, eh—I think it was—it was sad. Also my mother found it very painful to leave. What to sell? What not to sell? She had a feeling that all the things in our home could be taken with us. But one had to give up many things. So what to give up? What not to give up? What to take? What to throw away? This was hard.

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And Shaul continues to tell how he, like many others, tried to memorise his village while they were setting out: One pays attention to particular places when one leaves, being aware of the fact that one is not going to come back… Then you turn your head back time and again, to see your place, trying to put things in your memory, as if making a kind of a sign, for if you ever come back there … And from the scenery [one had to separate] as well. Ours was a forest area and we were going westward towards a desert area where there were no trees, no vegetation. Slowly, slowly one started getting away from the green countryside and entered a desert. Another aspect of the separation experienced by some of the adolescents was their inability to say goodbye and to separate in a proper way from their loved ones— parents, relatives or close friends. This left them with a feeling of an unsatisfactory separation, as if it was not actualised in emotional terms. This was a disturbing experience for those who had to live through it. This form of separation was caused either by the secrecy surrounding their setting out or because they tried to avoid their parents’ refusal to allow their departure, or even their parents’ heartbreaking tears. Baruch recounts: That day my mother went with me to Gondar. When we got to the city I went to school and she went off in another direction. I did not tell my mother that I was actually going to Israel. I did not have the courage to tell her because if I told her I knew that she would cry and that it would be so painful for me that I wouldn’t be able to leave. So I didn’t tell her and she thought that I was coming back home. Afterwards they wrote to me in Israel that on that day my mother waited for me until the evening. She waited for me to come home from school. Esther, then a girl of 11, narrates: My mother told me that we were about to go to Jerusalem; then she added: ‘Do not tell anyone!’ But I wanted to say goodbye to my friends, the goyot [Gentile girls], because I was very much attached to them. We were the only Jewish family in an area of Gentiles and these girls were my best friends. I could not say goodbye to them as I wished. At last I told them that I was going to a faraway place [within Ethiopia] and that this is all that I had been told by my mother. An additional tormenting aspect of the separation concerns cases in which the adolescents realised after they had departed that they had not estimated correctly their ability to cope with the separation from their parents. They regretted having

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left home and set out on the path, and wanted to go back. They felt that they had not done the right thing for themselves. In many of these cases some feelings of guilt for having left their parents behind were also involved. In most of these cases, however, there was no real opportunity to go back, or they were persuaded to continue by their fellow wayfarers. Hana recounts: At the beginning I did not want to set out. I did not wish to part from my parents. And to separate myself from my brothers and sisters, from the family… In the end I decided to set out with my older brother. He had completed twelve years of studies and would have had to go into the army. In Ethiopia this meant service for life. So this, and the letters of our friends from Ateyeh, our village, who had reached Israel, made us decide to go at that time. Naturally, we wanted to ascend to Israel, a place of Jews, and a holy country. Ten of us students went out, most of whom were 14 or 15 years old… We thought, and our parents had told us, ‘We shall follow you.’ I thought that I could [easily] come back… I did not think at all that I would remain like that, without my family. Then all the way I was crying. After two days we wanted to go back. But some of the boys said: ‘Why do you cry? First you wanted to come and now you cry!’ They were encouraging us, saying that our parents would soon follow, but we just kept crying, all the way to Sudan. We were walking slowly because we were thinking of our families. Tigest also remembers: I separated from my family and then I was crying day and night. It was really agonising for me. Very hard. Half of the way I was weeping. I could never forget how I set out. And I thought it [Israel] was close. Suffering on the journey The journey out of Ethiopia typically started at night. This was done as a preventive measure lest they be seen by people who would inform the authorities of their—often illegal—escape, and also in order to avoid the heat of the sun. Most of the wayfarers were not used to night trekking, so they found it very hard to manage in the dark. The path was extremely difficult, consisting mostly of mountainous trails, sometimes bare rocks and at other times deep forests. While walking they were therefore constantly in fear of getting lost, tripping over unseen obstacles, being afflicted with cuts and injuries, and in some areas, anxious about wild animals. Yehuda, aged 15, recounts the difficulties of moving at night: The first night wasn’t so hard. We walked slowly with the man who acted as our guide. The second night was very difficult. We had to walk quickly.

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It was very hard to keep up. You can get mixed up and get left behind on the way, and you can get lost. I thought that if we had to walk like that another night I couldn’t go on… When you walk like that at night, what can you see? You don’t see and you are not familiar with the place. And that’s the problem. Jonathan elaborates the fears and dangers of trekking at night with no moon: We had no choice but to walk in that darkness. We couldn’t see a thing, though I really tried to force my gaze through it. We were falling down and getting up and falling again. We were wounded all over, we were covered with blood; yet we were so frightened that we did not feel the pain of our bodies…for all that time we heard around us the sounds of wild animals, like that of the wild boar which could kill human beings. It was a large and dense forest that we were in and there were no human voices there, just the sounds of the wild animals…and the sound of falling water, which was equally frightening at night. It is a very strange sound. In spite of these difficulties, in order to increase their chances of arrival they had to walk incessantly, night and day, and as quickly as possible. They could not stop often for rest. This required extreme physical effort, and was an exacting experience to which many of the wayfarers were not accustomed. Baruch narrates: We walked quickly. The pace was fast. In three weeks we got there [to Sudan]. I remember the first day of walking, I’ll never forget it. The morning after, I could not move a muscle or feel the same as when I started. I told them, ‘That’s it. I am not going any further!’ Crossing rivers was another concern on their way. This was especially so if the journey took place during the winter season, when the rivers overflow and passage through the strong current is either impossible or extremely dangerous. These conditions sometimes forced them to sit on a bank of the river and wait for the water to subside, sometimes without shelter or food. They were then also at risk of being discovered by government patrols or falling easy prey to robbers. This delay also prolonged their journey. Boaz narrates how they arrived at a river that was impossible to cross. They had to wait until some local villagers got organised and erected a very provisional bridge. It was made of tree trunks and was thus rather narrow and not very well balanced. The rushing river, they knew, could suddenly carry this kind of bridge away. They just hoped and prayed that this did not happen while they were on it. Food was another major problem along the journey. The wayfarers had to rely mainly on dried food like kolo and tubunia—dried chick-peas or fried bread (and other kinds of grain and pulse). These were the only kinds of food they could carry with them that would last the journey. Eaten on their own, however, they

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were hardly nutritious enough to sustain them through the demanding conditions of the journey. Moreover, on many occasions they went without any food whatsoever. This came as an unpleasant surprise to some of them, as Isaiah narrates: I had not expected at all that I was going to suffer from hunger on the journey. When we started on the way we had some food, but it was quickly finished. Then we couldn’t stop to find food and I was very hungry. I was in pain from hunger… There were many days with no food at all and I was trying all the time to forget my mother’s food, not to think of it. Shlomo, who survived on dried pulses for many days on the journey, was once given some flour by one of the members of the group he had joined on the way, in return for some service. He recounts how he waited his turn to use a piece of iron above a fire to cook his injera from that flour. Having no relatives in that group he was the last one to be allowed to cook. When his turn finally arrived, a torrential rain suddenly poured from the sky. The fire was extinguished and the flour was soaked. Even when the rain soon stopped he knew he would not be able to do anything, since it was late Friday afternoon and the holy Sabbath was approaching, when fire was forbidden. The precious flour he had received had to be thrown away and he had to remain hungry. Shlomo remembers how he was squatting on the ground, in the rain, his tears of despair falling down his face together with the raindrops. Water also was not easily available on the trek. Often the wayfarers had to go out of their way in order to reach a water source and for this they were dependent on guides. Baruch narrates: The man who took us knew where there was water, the source of every spring, so most of the time we didn’t have any problem about water. But we were forced to do extra footwork. I mean, instead of going straight ahead we would make all kinds of detours in order to get to a place where there was water. If we had been by ourselves, without that man, I think we would have been in great danger. Others were not as lucky, as Yoav told me: ‘At times there was not enough water. It was hard. We felt the thirst and we were very weak. It is not easy without water.’ The water problem was especially serious during their walk in the desert area of the Armatch’ho region, which is close to Sudan. The wayfarers had to prepare jerry-cans full of water for the long hours of walking in the desert. Often, though, through their lack of knowledge of the trails or the misleading guides, they were left without any water and suffered extreme thirst. Mekonen narrates his experience of crossing the Armatch’ho:

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Then the guides told us that we could proceed by ourselves and in four hours we would reach Sudan. We poured out all our water and gave them the jerry-cans, and they went back. We continued to walk all that night and the day after and also the following three days. I shall never forget the hunger and thirst of these days. We almost died. Unfortunately for Ori, a boy of 12, that area of Armatch’ho is exactly where he and his friends were caught by shifta. He tells of the unforgettable experience of dehydration: We were close to the Sudanese border. We arrived at a place where you have to walk for almost two days without drinking water. There is no water at all. There is no sense in looking for it there, you won’t find water anywhere. You therefore prepare a large amount of water, take it with you and go on. We started in the evening… When we were half the way some robbers stopped us. Ori was in a group of twenty youths, boys and girls, who were part of a larger group of 113 people. The robbers caught them and led them off their trail several kilometres into the desert. There, in the ‘burning sun’, the robbers checked each of them from head to toe while they used up the water and food the people were carrying. ‘They made it like a café,’ Ori recounts. ‘They took our jerry-cans from us but not without hitting us. The robber slapped you several times and then took your jerry-can.’ In the end all the wayfarers were left to dehydrate in the desert: ‘The whole desert was full of people’s cries.’ Dejected, Ori attempted several times to get up on his feet: ‘I started to get up, got up and immediately fell down. I couldn’t manage to walk. I lost hope. I knew that tomorrow, that would be it! The sun would come up and I would die!’ Getting lost on the way was an additional source of suffering. The routes were unfamiliar to them and the night trekking made it even more difficult to find the right path. The wayfarers walked in large groups, often on narrow paths, so it was not unusual for an individual or a small group of friends to find themselves suddenly separated from the rest of the group, unable to find their way back and to be reunited with the larger group. In addition, sometimes their guides left them in the middle of unfamiliar territory. Therefore, as one of the adolescents concludes, ‘It was always better to walk very close to others, attached to the group, as well as looking after your friends so you could make sure no one got lost.’ Jonathan relates how their friends disappeared and how they tried to find them: Then we found a fork, the way suddenly divided in two directions. So we took the road going left, but it so happened that our friends, arriving there earlier, had taken the road to the right. This was really incredible. As if we went to Eilat and they went to Tsfat.3 They were waiting for us and we

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were asking ourselves: ‘How come they have not arrived by now?’ We sat there, waiting for them, not realising that they had gone by a different path. The day was coming to a close and we got really worried. So what did we do? There were no children with us and we had no clothes to carry or anything else, so we went back. There we found a man who had a very scary look and who had a gun; he immediately said: ‘Stand still! Do not move!’ So we stopped there, and he asked us all kinds of questions, like ‘Who are you? Where did you come from? What are you doing here?’ and so on. We told him our story, and that we were looking for our friends with whom we had been travelling, but that we had somehow got parted, and we asked him whether he had seen them and if he had, would he please tell us where, and he would then be doing a mitzva [charitable deed] for us. This man was merciful. We thought he was going to catch us and kill us, or beat us, but instead he helped us. He said: ‘If you go towards the Queen’s road [main road], which is wide and at a certain point comes to a fork, at that point you’ll see a piece of paper. I do not know how to read but someone wrote something on that paper. I do not know who wrote it. Maybe you could go and read it and it may concern you.’ We understood immediately, because there was no one in this area who would have paper and would be writing. We started running there. We ran for at least an hour, but at that time, with all our fear and worry, it felt like one minute. We arrived at the point we had passed before, and there indeed was the piece of paper. Now, where had the paper come from? We prepared for the journey in great haste, so of course we did not take any paper with us, but this was a piece of a cigarette packet. So someone had written on it and hung it on one of the trees there. Immediately we took it and read it. It was really incredible. They had drawn a map, with the curving road to the right of the fork, which they had taken, adding: ‘Please join us along this way.’ So then we started moving, running, we ran and ran and ran. We were running almost the whole day. We did not allow ourselves time to rest. Then, in the far distance, we saw them like…small dots; because they were dressed in white we were able to spot them. Yet we still thought that while they might be our friends, they could also be just people who lived in the area. In spite of that we kept running towards these dots, and when we got closer we were able to identify them. And so, after some more running, we found them. They were sitting near a river drinking water and washing to cool themselves. For it was so hot, like fire. They were washing and waiting, though they did not think that they were going to see us any more. They were crying, each looked at the others and then would burst into crying. So when we suddenly arrived there, it was for them as if we had landed from heaven. As if we were angels. And each of them was hugging us. We then sat there a bit, drinking water. All day we were without water or food, our stomachs ached, but it wasn’t a problem at that time. They did not believe, and nor did we think, that we would meet again.

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Descending from the high mountains, where most of them lived, to the lowlands of Ethiopia in order to cross to Sudan, had also meant contracting diseases which are prevalent in these lowlands, especially malaria. Those who could, prepared by taking anti-malaria pills and other preventive measures for their journey, but these pills were not always available and were often lost or stolen on the way. The travellers were particularly vulnerable to diseases when they reached exhaustion point and generally through their often very weakened physical condition. For some, being ill and therefore unable to cope was also a blow to their self-image as strong and able people. Shlomo recounts: I went on the journey by myself… I did not have enough food, just chickpeas, nothing more. After some days of walking I started feeling the effect of that diet, I felt weak and it was hard for me to cope with walking on such a path, and then I started getting terrible malaria attacks. I couldn’t ask for food since at that time each one struggled for himself, or at least that’s the way I understood it to be. So I felt uneasy to ask for food and I just tried to keep on walking, until I simply collapsed on the path. Me, a person who was in the underground group, as I have told you, who was used to walking, who trekked great distances in the past, by day as well as by night, here I was, unable to cope. I just couldn’t make it. I was falling off my feet. I couldn’t move on. At that time people started passing by me and I began to lag behind. Swellings of the legs, inflammations and injuries were another major cause of sickness. Rivka’s neck was badly hurt and permanently damaged on the journey. Yoav’s cousin broke her leg. Ruth’s leg became swollen, probably due to a fracture related to excessive walking. Aryeh tells of a young woman who became disabled when a stray branch of a tree hit her and thus she was thrown off the back of the horse she was riding. The horse dragged her on to the rocky ground. In yet another incident Aryeh describes how his little brothers fell from the horse they were on. They were both badly wounded, the youngest one in particular, by hitting his face on a rock. Jonathan describes the effect of the laborious journey: When we finally arrived in Sudan, where we could rest for the first time, I tried to get my shoes off. It was as if my flesh had got stuck to them. It was very painful. You see, for thirteen days I had walked with no opportunity of removing them. You could imagine what happened to my feet. Then, slowly, I succeeded in peeling the shoes from my legs. When I looked at my feet—well, it is difficult to describe, the huge blisters, and the inside of the foot could be seen. Then the real pain began. It was better to go on walking and not to feel the soreness. It was when we started to rest that it became a throbbing unbearable pain… After one or two days the pain became even worse. It took us a week to get back on our feet.

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Katchil narrates how she was disabled on the journey: Suddenly there were shots. We thought soldiers were coming to catch us and all of us ran in different directions. I stumbled over a big stone and fell down. My friend, who was right behind me, fell over me and a third friend fell over her. Being first I was hit very badly and broke both my legs. The second friend also got injured, while the third escaped injury. I couldn’t continue the journey. We couldn’t even move from there… afterwards, when everything was over, people tied my legs together and did the same with my friend. Then they put us on a horse and brought us to the nearest village. It took me a month there. I thought I was dying. During the daytime they would hide me in the forest, out of fear of government patrols, and at night they would bring me back to the village. Then I wrote to my brother, who came from far away to take me to his place. It took me another five months to recuperate and set out again on the path to Israel. Mothers of little babies found the trek even more laborious as they had to take care of their babies, to breastfeed them, to see that they did not make a sound when the group was hiding, to pacify them, while they themselves were struggling tooth and nail with the trek. Tigest recounts: We were travelling at night so that people should not catch us. Because … they knew that we were running away and they were part of the government. My son was still a baby and I was breastfeeding him all that way. This was very hard. When I think of it, really… I think that it was not me who did it. I remember it as a very difficult thing. I was scared that if I sat down to breastfeed him, I would be left behind. So I was carrying on like that and breastfeeding him as I could. This was very trying. It was very difficult… I remember! Tena had to flee while leaving her two children behind. As well as the psychological effect of this event, which I will return to elsewhere (see Chapter 7), she relates the pain of having to stop breastfeeding so suddenly when she set out on the trek: My child was two years old but I still had a lot of milk. Then, on the journey, it hurt me so much. How I suffered! I had a lot of medicines, and I tied up my breast so that it would stop the milk. It is not surprising that on such a difficult journey, after suffering many hardships and calamities, the wayfarers experienced deep tiredness. Katchil tells how, when they got close to the Sudanese border, there were people who were coming from that direction, telling them that the border was closed and that the Sudanese would not let anyone pass. These people suggested that Katchil and her friends

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would do better if they turned round and retraced their way back home. Yet, as Katchil relates, ‘By then, we were so drained that we felt that we would prefer to die there rather than going back or heading anywhere else.’ Many of the adolescents experienced a renewed pain of separation from their loved ones at times of personal crisis. These were the times when they felt most vulnerable and in need of their parents. The lack of such a support system made the trek even more difficult to endure. Shlomo, cited above, who felt alone on the path, experienced the journey as a passage where he could not ask for help and where he might easily be left behind to die. Isaiah recounts that when he became ill on the journey he also felt homesick: I got malaria on the way and then, while we were walking in the sun, I started to cough, my hands became heavy and I couldn’t walk any further. People around me noticed that I was sick… At that time I thought I would not arrive. I asked myself why I had set out at all, and I was thinking I would rather be at home with my parents. Katchil tells how, during the six months she was recuperating from her bad injury and when she thought she was dying, she kept thinking of her mother, wishing she were beside her, soothing and comforting her. When Yehuda became very sick the first thing he thought of was his mother’s food and how he missed her. The pain of separation was thus felt to a higher degree at times of misery and misfortune. Death also took its toll on the journey. Some were killed by the shifta or by government patrols. Others died of illnesses contracted along the way or of accidents during trekking. Still others died of sheer exhaustion. They buried them in haste, en route, which added the dimension of grief to the suffering of those remaining. As far as possible children and young adolescents were kept away from the actual scene of dying or dead bodies on the journey. In their narratives they thus recount the death of a person on the journey but do not give descriptive details. This, however, was not always possible, and some did come to acquire these unfortunate memories. As Brehano narrates: Before we were captured someone died there. It was a relative of mine who lived not far from us in the Wolkite area. She was quite young, around 35 years old, yet she had a heart attack and died. I saw her when it happened: she said that her heart ached, then she clutched her hands against her chest, and after five minutes she was dead. All of us started crying. Then we buried her. We continued to cry, both because of her death and because we had to bury her just by the wayside and not in a cemetery. I felt deeply sorry for that. Her children were very small and they were crazed with grief. They couldn’t take it. They were left with an old grandmother who was there, but she was in a state of shock and kept wailing. My heart went

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out to them. All of them were weeping during the rest of our journey and for months and months in Sudan. Besides the physical hardships on their passage, the wayfarers suffered the torments inflicted by other people. I refer here to three main sources: the Ethiopian authorities represented by the soldiers; the shifta (bands of outlaws); and the guides. Two other sources of distress which are mentioned in the narratives, though to a somewhat lesser extent, were the villagers in the areas they were crossing and the underground groups or Fronts in some districts. As explained earlier (see Chapter 4), when it had become known that the Jews were leaving the country, people began to ‘look for Jews’ and, when they had caught them, handed them over to the authorities. Jews who were captured were punished in a variety of ways, from being beaten up and sent back to their villages, to long incarcerations, sometimes leading to their disappearance. Their family members who remained in the villages were also harmed. At other times they could save themselves by posing as other (non-Jewish) people, or by paying a heavy fine. This was accompanied by a promise that they were not going to ‘run away’ again and by signing a document that said that they knew that, if captured fleeing out of the country once again, they could be executed with no further trial. Sarah tells what happened when they encountered soldiers: There was somebody who saw us there, near the water source where we were resting, and he went to the Gentile soldiers and told them that there were a group of Jews who were going in the direction of Sudan. Then, after we had finished eating, drinking and resting, just when we were starting to get organised to continue on our way, the shooting started… We all scattered in panic. I was so frightened that I immediately ran away looking for a place to hide. I got into some small shelter with a few more people. I was sure that they were going to kill us. I did not think that they would have any mercy on us. Then someone in our group shouted at them that we were merchants. They stopped the shooting, their commander interrogated us, and then he took us in the direction we said we were going. But when we arrived there he simply arrested us. We were there for a long time. He intended to get all the young people back to Gondar to be ‘educated’.4 A common problem, causing much suffering on the journey, was caused by the shifta. In many of the young people’s stories the encounter with the shifta is associated with apprehension and fear. Many recount how afraid they were when they thought of the variety of dangers involved when encountering shifta. Besides their fear of being robbed, they were concerned about being beaten, abused, wounded or even killed in the attack. Some recount their dread that the shifta would kidnap them and sell them as slaves. The encounter with shifta was

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particularly associated with the danger for the girls and young women of being kidnapped and raped. The terrifying anxiety in itself seems to have constituted, at times, a traumatic experience. The women, of course, were particularly frightened, but a very significant fear was also revealed in the narratives of the boys and young men. Apparently, empathy with the women’s plight as well as feelings of helplessness in such circumstances, and not being able to defend the girls and women, played a role in bringing the boys and young men to narrate these instances as part of their own suffering on the journey. Rivka narrates: We were walking at night. Then one day it was difficult for us to find our way, so we decided to go by day. Then we were caught by the robbers…we were frightened. These are strange people. They had knives and rifles…they wanted to take the women. As for the men, they would just kill them and that would be it. They were frightening. Then they beat us and searched our pockets, looking for money. Rammy narrates how the shifta attacks affected their fate: The first time we set out on the journey, we had walked quite a distance on the way when the shifta caught us and took our food. We were fourteen students, and we didn’t have any money to buy other food to replace it. Without food we couldn’t reach Sudan. We then walked back to our village. Later, we tried to set out again. This time we went first to my relatives who lived somewhere along the way. We sat there, the whole group of students. Someone had probably told the shifta that there was a group of Jewish people there and that these Jews had probably sold all their belongings so they would have a lot of money which could be stolen. When we set out again they waited for us on the trek, which was the only possible trail to take. In order to dodge them we tried to walk at night. But they were waiting for us day and night, and on the fifth day they caught us. They shot at us. Running away in different directions we got scattered in the forest. But they surrounded us and [when all were caught] they told us: ‘Anyone who has money should put it here!’… Then again we had to return to our village… The third time we paid the shifta in advance, so that they would escort us. The desert area of Armatch’ho was an area which was particularly prone to shifta attacks. This may have been due to the fact that the area was less tightly controlled by the Ethiopian government or to its closeness to Sudan, which could serve as a safe haven if soldiers pursued them. Another reason was the relative easiness of catching people in a flat and bare desert area where sound travels long distances. Gideon, a boy from Tigray who was 11 years old while on

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the trek, recounts how they were attacked four times in a row during their crossing of this area: Then we arrived at a place which is a desert, a real desert called Armatch’ho. There we were robbed several times. About three hundred of us were walking in a long line of maybe a kilometre from its beginning to its end with all the cattle and stuff. I was in the middle when the shooting started. Shots in the air. Then everyone stopped and we realised it was shifta. Though we had some people with guns, we knew that it was better not to challenge them. They don’t care. They can kill a few and run away. We gave them our money… The last time [the fourth time that the shifta attacked] they took the horses as well. The Jews needed guides to lead them towards Sudan and to help them dodge particularly dangerous villages, government posts and patrol routes. The guides also took it upon themselves to defend them from the shifta. It was customary to hire the services of local people and to agree on their payment in advance. The guides, in return, promised to direct and protect the trekkers. Unfortunately, in many cases the guides did not keep their part of the contract. They often exploited the travellers, abused their trust, betrayed them and deserted them along the dangerous trek. There were those who evidently did not know the way they were paid to lead and just used the Jews as an easy way to make a quick profit. As Rivka narrates: ‘They simply lied to us that they knew the way. They told us in Gondar that they knew how to reach Sudan but they did not. We missed the right trail.’ Others just left the Jews in the middle of the journey in spite of the payments they had received. Jonathan recounts: We had to pay him an enormous sum of money because he threatened to turn us in to the government who would then kill us. He then forced us to walk through a dense forest in spite of the fact that there was no moon that night, so we had to walk in complete darkness. Jonathan and his friends begged the guide to wait until morning arrived but he wouldn’t listen to them. Later he abandoned them in the forest: There he left us, saying: ‘You shall pass the night here. There is nothing to worry about here. I have to go because I am busy with many things. The whole area needs me.’ We said: ‘Look, there are no people around.’ Even if we do not know them it feels better to see people. Although they do not help you [at least] they speak to you. But he wouldn’t listen. He said: ‘There is no other option. I have to go back to my place. People are waiting for me there, and that’s the end of it!’ He was not at all worried about trekking by night in a forest of this kind. How he did it I couldn’t

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understand. He left us there and went away. We had no choice. We stayed in this forest listening to all those frightening sounds. Nevertheless, the night came to an end and morning finally arrived. Then we started to look around and realised that we were on a huge mountain. We had to climb down from an incredible height. If you looked to one side, it was like looking down from the eleventh floor. If you looked to the other side, it was the same. At least he should have left us in a place where we could move on. But no! We couldn’t get down. We would fall and crash down and die… We were so scared. The Jews could not rely on the guides’ promised protection: when trouble arose the guides either ran away or surrendered to the demands of the attackers. In many cases it meant that the Jews were forced to pay more money to the attackers or to be taken as captives. The guides felt that while the Jews were on their way out of Ethiopia, they themselves were staying in the country and should therefore not put their fate at risk in order to defend the Jews, even though they had agreed to do so. Yoav tells of the guides’ reaction to robbers attacking them: The guards, those who escorted us, one of them wanted to fight back. He said to the robber: ‘We are not going to give you the money.’ But the other guard, because they were going to remain there [in Ethiopia], said to his friend: ‘If we kill him there will be a “blood feud” and he will be avenged. It is better to give him the money he wants.’ So the first one said to him: ‘What happened to you? Are we women, or what? We came to escort them, so how come this one comes to get their belongings?!’ Nevertheless, the other one convinced him and they gave the robber our money and he went away. Many of the guides repeatedly demanded more money from the wayfarers along the journey. Time and again the people would be stopped and asked for money in order to continue their guided trek. The guides used various measures to ‘persuade’ the Jews that they would do better to pay them. They brought them to desolate places and threatened to leave them there if they would not pay more; or they left them alone for a few hours, using some excuse, and arranged with someone else to rob them during their absence. Ruth narrates: We were a group of young students. We paid the guide a lot of money to take us to Sudan. I myself paid 220 bir. Then, after one day of walking, he brought us to a cave in a big mountain where he left us in the hands of his brother and went back for some reason unknown to us. We soon realised why he had put us in that cave: his brother then demanded more money, and as for us, even if we shouted for help no one could hear us from that cave. We wept. We did not know what to do. It was night and we wouldn’t be able to find our way on our own. Anyway, he wouldn’t let us

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go. He even fired shots at us, above our heads, in order to frighten us so that we would pay him. We were very scared. We felt that our lives were going to end there. We had no choice. We paid him all that we had. We had to put the money on the ground for him to collect it. He wanted to make sure that we didn’t grab his gun or something. Then he still wanted more money and kept shooting at us… Finally, he went away. We were left there. It was night and it was not possible for us to find our way from there. We just sat there, some were crying. Furthermore, in many cases the guides co-operated with the shifta on the journey, and even initiated contacts with them so they would come and rob the Jews, and the two groups would then split the loot between them. As Avner says: They—the guides and robbers—did business with each other. The robbers would say: ‘This is my land, you can’t pass. You have to pay me to cross.’ The guides would then pay them money that they would later demand from the Jews. But when the guides returned through that place, the ‘robbers’ would give them back most of the money. Noah narrates: Strange things happened there. People whom we trusted, who were supposed to guide us, after agreeing on terms said that they had to go home and would return soon. Then they went home and arranged for other people to wait for us on the way. They told them where to wait, in this or that place, and then they would wait for us at that place. They would act as if they were at odds with each other. Once we arrived at a place where there was water and our guides called on all of us to rest there and suggested we unload everything. When we did, the other group suddenly appeared and shouted at us: ‘Stop! Stop!’ At that very moment our guides sneaked away. Down to where the water was. We were shocked. These other ones said: ‘Bring us your money! Bring us your clothes!’ They took my shirt and a nice sweatshirt which I had and my father’s over-dress [shamma] and my mother’s dress and many clothes from other people. And. our money! We knew that our guides had brought them because afterwards we saw them together again. Yet we could do nothing. We were not equipped with weapons or such things. And we were with children and many people and domestic animals. These were local people and you can’t fight them. They could rob you as they liked. Suffering in Sudan The Jews of Ethiopia reached Sudan expecting to be immediately transferred to Israel. In fact, in the minds of some, reaching Sudan was equated with reaching

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Israel. They certainly did not think of, nor prepare themselves for, a long stay there. These expectations were frustrated: instead of a quick move to ‘Yerussalem’ they had to stay in Sudan for an unknown period of time; instead of ‘heaven’ and a safe haven there was something like ‘hell’. They found themselves in an unknown, strange and hostile environment where they embarked upon a struggle for survival. They became refugees and had to submit to the state of refugees. The encounter with the reality of Sudan caused a major psychological shock to the Ethiopian Jews. This shock and disappointment dominated their Sudanese experience. Time and again, when facing the various ordeals in Sudan, they compared them with their expectations that the journey and their sufferings would end once they crossed the border of Ethiopia. They repeatedly experienced the shock of being there and living in such harsh conditions instead of already being safe in Israel. They were in an emotional state that could be described as a continuous shock or chronic surprise. This mental state made it more difficult for them to cope with the hardships in Sudan. They found it emotionally difficult to gather their strengths and resources for the period that lay ahead while they were still expecting the heavenly Promised Land. Baruch recounts: When we got to Sudan, I thought I would be able to go to Israel straight away. All the time on the way, I was looking forward to getting there. All the descriptions they gave of the land of Israel—every moment, every day, I thought of that, and it helped me to survive the journey. And suddenly…I didn’t expect that it would take a month, two months, a year, two years in Sudan. In another part of his narrative Baruch adds: [Arriving in Sudan] I felt that I had really arrived in Jerusalem…and right away I wrote a letter to my parents saying that I had indeed arrived ‘home’ [laughs at himself]. But in the end I stayed there a long time. Daniel tells of the significance of the gap between their expectations while walking and the reality of reaching Sudan: Then we were taken to a place in Sudan called Um-Rakuba. There they interrogated each of us, they put down our names and asked for our personal details, why we had come, all kinds of things… Then they told us: ‘You are not allowed to go out of this place. You must stay here, at UmRakuba, and we shall take care of you. We shall give you a place to live in, and so on, all kinds of things that we did not expect at all when we were going towards Sudan. We were given a tent there that we ourselves put up in a field, and we got a piece of bread and a cup of soup each day… There

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was hunger5 in Sudan, there was barely enough food to stay alive… So then we realised that we had not arrived at the place that we thought of and to which we so aspired on our journey. Two other factors in addition to the state of continuous shock seem to have significantly influenced the psychological well-being of the Ethiopian Jews in Sudan: the prolonged experience of uprootedness and non-belonging; and their living in a state of constant uncertainty regarding the length of their stay in Sudan. The state of uprootedness was shared by all refugees but was much exacerbated because they were Jews and on their way to Israel. First of all, since the Jews, in contrast to many other refugees at that time, did not envisage a long stay in Sudan they did not wish to integrate in the area, even to a minor degree. They viewed their stay in Sudan as extremely short and transient, and therefore strongly objected to any action that would indicate to the contrary. Thus, at least initially, the adults did not look for work and the children did not worry about schooling or anything other than getting ‘on this very day’ to Israel. Nevertheless, when they began to realise that they were not simply on immediate transit to Israel as they had expected and that their stay in Sudan was to be prolonged, they needed and wanted to work and some of the children started thinking of possibly even studying in Sudan. This would have meant integrating to a certain extent into the social structure of the refugee camps or of the towns where they resided. However, none of these was simple or straightforward for the Jews. First of all, local Sudanese regarded them as Ethiopians, thus strangers and alien. They were looked upon as people who, though let in by the government, did not belong in Sudan. Elie narrates: There was a conflict and the Sudanese person leaned down and picked up some sand off the ground, held it in his hands, and said to me: ‘Smell this sand! Do you recognise the smell? No! This is not your land! You do not belong here!’ As has been explained elsewhere, they also faced a constant threat of being exposed as Jews in transit to Israel by Sudanese local officials. These Sudanese did not always know or approve of the deal made by their government. They would therefore persecute the Ethiopian Jews and inflict all sorts of punishments on them, from beatings and tortures to incarcerations. Having to hide their Jewish identity and being persecuted because of it meant that they had to limit their contacts with the Sudanese local population and the authorities. Looking for work, or going to school, had thus become dangerous and risky for the Ethiopian Jews. In this way, being forced to hide their identity, as well as limiting their integration into the environment to a minimum, exacerbated their sense of uprootedness. Second, functional integration with their refugee milieu was not easy. In fact, more often than not it was actually impossible, because the other refugees, mainly

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the Ethiopian Christians, were extremely hostile and aggressive towards them. This animosity towards their compatriots was carried over from Ethiopia into the refugee situation. As elaborated in Chapters 2 and 4, the Ethiopian Christians regarded the Jews as outcasts and soul-eaters, and thus as the source of diseases and death in the camps. They feared the Jews’ evil eye and were ready to attack them as the lowest stratum of camp society. In addition, once it became known in the camps that the Jews had a country that would accept them and would give them financial support while in the camps, envy occurred and the risk of harassment was increased. This made it difficult for the Jews to try to find work, either in the refugee camp itself or with more established Ethiopians in the area, and thus enhanced their sense of displacement. Third, the way in which the escape process was conducted dictated a certain way of life in Sudan which prevented most of them from integrating into normal camp or town life. The system operated in such a way (before the mass operation) that whenever an airlift was possible the operators used to quickly summon people who were on the list (queue) for aliya, gathering them into groups who would secretly either walk or travel in lorries to the aeroplanes. It was essential to keep the operation secret from the Sudanese and other refugees, so the time between the announcement of aliya and actual departure was kept short. It depended, among other factors, on the possibility of a plane landing secretly somewhere in the desert, where the situation could change rapidly. This time became even shorter when the operators realised that more Jews were turning up at the agreed point of departure for the lorries than had been invited. It was thus necessary to keep it secret even from the Jews whose turn for rescue had not yet arrived. It became a matter of only a few hours between telling the people and the actual embarkation. In such conditions people could not risk being away for a whole day or more, working somewhere where they could not easily be reached. Whether this was within the camp or out of it, or even out of the house (if living in the town), they could not take a chance lest they miss their turn to get out of Sudan. Such cases indeed occurred. If someone’s turn to leave arrived but they were at work at that time, then they would be left in Sudan until the next airlift took place. Families were painfully divided because of their wish to save whoever they could when an option to leave was available for a few hours. They were never sure whether they would have another chance. If one parent was away at the time of the operation and the turn of that family came up, the other parent would at least send the children ahead while waiting him/herself for another time when he/ she would go, together with their partner. However, if the children were very young and thus could not be sent alone to Israel, and no one else could take them, then that one parent would have to go with them, leaving behind his/her spouse. All this led the Jews to limit their movements within the camp and to refrain, as much as they could, from finding a job in Sudan or integrating in any other way. The fact that they could not work or integrate socially enhanced their feeling of uprootedness.

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Uncertainty concerning the end of this state of affairs and their whole Sudanese ordeal also played a role in their suffering in Sudan. They did not know if and when they were going to leave Sudan, and this was out of their control. Living with no clear concept of a future is a psychologically disturbing experience. When it persists for a long time it affects the way people perceive the present (Lewin 1948; Peri 1983; BenEzer and Peri 1990; BenEzer 1992). In other words, having no clear future makes for a chaotic experience in the present. This in turn affects the ability to cope, since coping mechanisms are strongly related to expectations.6 Against this psychological background—living in a state of chronic shock that made it all the more difficult to regain the strength needed for the struggle to survive as refugees, and feeling strongly uprooted, with no sense of a certain future and a somewhat chaotic present—Ethiopian Jews were forced to face the harsh conditions in Sudan. The physical conditions in the camps were a major source of suffering. Like other refugees, the Jews were given tents to live in, which in the Sudanese climate meant that during the day they suffered from the terrible heat and at night they were forced to sleep on the ground.7 Fourteen-year-old Yossi, originally from Addis Ababa, recounts: When I reached Sudan I had a blanket with me. Yet when I was on the truck that took us from the border area to the refugee camp it moved so fast that the wind blew away the blanket that was on my shoulders. It left me with nothing to sleep on in the refugee camp. It was very uncomfortable to sleep on the ground, and of course I had nothing with which to cover myself from the wind when it came. Overcrowding constituted another hardship. It was hard to accommodate the many refugees who kept arriving in Sudan. In the refugee camps, tents and huts were overpopulated. In towns there were not enough houses for rent. Having to stay in hiding, lest the Sudanese authorities caught them, exacerbated the situation for the Jews, especially in the town of Gedaref. They were thus huddled together in small spaces, which constituted appalling housing conditions. Yossi narrates: Then we arrived in Gedaref and for four months we did not go out of the house. We were hiding inside. People would go out to bring water for cooking, but not for anything else. We wouldn’t even sit outside or take a risk by opening the door and sitting near it… Many of us were hiding there. There would be thirty-five or forty people in one house. It was crowded and hot. It was very difficult. Shlomo narrates: The weather is very hot in Sudan and we were many families in one house because there were not enough houses. People settled for what they could

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find. So we gathered, all of us, in that house, and at night it became so hot and dense…because of our bodies. And, forgive me for saying so, but we were so smelly that at night one could choke from the stench. There wasn’t enough water for showers. We didn’t even have enough water for drinking, let alone proper washing. So the other young ones and I preferred to sleep outside, just lying there on the ground. Alas, we were then facing another problem: there were robbers in Sudan who would come and take our clothes, leaving us naked; or the Ethiopian Christians would come to hurt us, as if to take revenge for their dead; and other dangers. It was not only living in overcrowded conditions but also feeling extremely restricted in their movements that was trying. Many felt this to be a trial on their patience. Mekonen narrates his experience: I felt as if I was in a prison. We were not allowed to go out of the house. It was very hard since we were fifty-two people in one house. Even what we ate we did not taste because we spent all the time thinking about what would happen if the Sudanese caught us, whether we would indeed be caught or whether we would be saved…everything was suffering in Sudan. There was also the pain of hunger and thirst. Refugees were flowing into Sudan in ever increasing numbers and there was not enough food or water for all of them. Telaynesh, an adolescent girl from the Gondar area, narrates: And then we all came to Um-Rakuba and we had a very hard time. There was no water. We would go to get some water and wait in line for five hours until they brought the water. People were thirsty. Daniel refers to the lack of food: There was famine there…we were hungry. Each day we got something like soup and sometimes maybe a piece of bread. There was not enough food, and we barely survived. Sometimes there was just tea and a little roll in the morning and at times we got the same at lunchtime. Then that was it for the day… I was there for four months. It was very hard. The long stay in Sudan is interlaced, in the young people’s journey stories, with a high frequency of sickness and death, which was a major source of anguish and distress. Being huddled together in unsuitable housing, undernourished and drinking dirty water, their chances of outbursts of epidemics and of contracting diseases were very high, and these did indeed happen. Particularly frightful conditions prevailed at a certain period in 1983–4 in the refugee camp of Um-Rakuba. People then died at a rate of fifteen a day. Around 1,300 Jews died

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there within a few months. The overall number of deaths of Ethiopian Jews was much higher, around 4,000 people. Jonathan narrates his experience of disease in Sudan and of being rescued by the Red Cross: Then, after a week in Ticha, we were taken to the Um-Rakuba camp. There were lots of people there. And I mean really many people! The Red Cross people were rushing from one place to another, distributing medicine, food and other things which were needed. We were also given a place, but what bothered us was the weather. Because of the weather, I think, we had no appetite, and it had an effect on our bodies… We also saw that people who were actually treated by the Red Cross were still dying of hunger and diarrhoea, so it was terribly frightening. And it was terrifying to see their suffering. Many people died there… Then I became very ill. I almost died. But the Red Cross, who were doing the difficult job of saving lives there, took me in an ambulance to their clinic where they gave me glucose and all these liquids… At first, they couldn’t locate a vein in my hand to insert these medicines, so they did it through the foot. Anyway, I was in a state of mental confusion so I was not aware of what they were doing… After I got a bit better, at a certain point I heard that my family had arrived in Sudan, and was actually in this camp. I was not at all happy to hear this news since so many people were dying there, and there was so much suffering. I did not wish my family to be among them. Indeed, it was a horrible and emotionally exacting period for many of them. Many of the adolescents confronted death for the first time and in great numbers. The agony was immense, and it often affected their motivation and power to keep going. Devorah describes how [t]he rain would fall, then it would stop, and then malaria would start … So many people were dying there then. It hurt me. Maybe twenty a day. On a certain day thirty were dead! There were houses where no one was left. I remember a family of twelve people who were all dead there, not even one of them survived. I saw a girl carry her mother to be buried. One day my cousin died there. She was very close to me. We lived near to each other in the village… It was hard… And then I myself got sick. I was very ill. I thought I was going to die there. I thought about my mother. On the one hand I felt good that she had not come with me and that she was therefore safe; on the other hand I wished she were beside me then, since I felt that I was about to die. And I regretted coming to Sudan. Telaynesh recounts the experience of death within her family:

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After that there were diseases and people were very sick. My brother’s wife got sick and we waited for three months for her to get better. Then she died in Um-Rakuba, together with her three children. Also two of my other brother’s sons died. Altogether, seven people died among us, and my mother was very sick too. I thought that all of us were going to die. I didn’t believe that we would leave Sudan. Eleven-year-old Esther narrates how distressed she became when her dearest little cousin became ill in Sudan: He was the one I cared for on the journey. When he cried I would be the one to attend to him and soothe him. I did that along the whole journey from our village of Shirala. Now we were in Sudan and he seemed to be dying. He started having diarrhoea and became extremely thin—as if he was not a human being any more, as if he was going to die within the next half an hour… I was very sad that he had to leave us and felt pity for him for not making aliya [ascending] with us to Israel. This issue of dying without achieving their goal is mentioned more than once in the narratives. For many of the youngsters the experience of death around them was all the more painful because it meant that their dearest ones died before they were able to fulfil their longed-for and much cherished dream and desire to arrive in Israel. Mekonen recounts: The situation in Sudan had deteriorated and it became increasingly hard to stay alive. There were many people who died there of lack of food and diseases. There were too many sick people to care for and they [camp authorities and medical services] just couldn’t cope with it… It hurt me so much to know that the Jews, like my uncles and aunts and many other relatives of mine, who were always saying ‘Yerussalem, Yerussalem!’ and dreaming about being there in Jerusalem—as I myself had been told ever since I was born—all died there, in Sudan. It was the death of his friend from the underground which seemed meaningless for Takaleh: In my case, it was a very good friend. We were together in the rebels’ group. We went through some difficult times together and we pulled through these, and we had become very close friends. And here we were, at the refugee camp, and he was very sick, dying in front of me… It was so sad to watch him… It wasn’t only the fact of dying. When you fight in such an organisation you are prepared to die for the cause. But here he was dying, and indeed many others from the underground, not for the cause he

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wished to achieve and was fighting for, but just like that, from disease in a refugee camp. Related to the high incidence of death in the camps was the suffering caused by the incorrect and disrespectful manner in which they had to bury the dead. This issue and the psychological consequences which ensued were elaborated in Chapter 4, which deals with Jewish identity on the journey. Within that chapter we also discussed the suffering inflicted on Ethiopian Jews by the Sudanese authorities and by non-Jewish Ethiopians in the refugee camps and towns in Sudan. For the Ethiopian Jews, the suffering in Sudan was thus experienced as an attack on all of their senses. They were shouted at, and had to listen to the cries of dying relatives, friends and other people and the weeping of the mourners. They encountered intolerable and unforgettable scenes of hunger and sickness as well as seeing numerous dead bodies. They had to eat unpleasant, non-kosher food and drink polluted water. The disgusting smell and stench of the places they stayed in assaulted them. They suffered from irritations of the skin caused by parasites and ‘by the heat of the earth’ when squatting to relieve themselves because of diarrhoea-related diseases. Their muscles were stretched or contracted and their bones ached from sleeping on the ground. Their stay in Sudan exacerbated the pain of separation from their families. The new environment, the hostility and—at the height of the famine and death —the horrific sights around them all made them long for their loved ones. Many of them recount that the longing was especially strong when they were sick, thinking at times that they were dying. They then wanted the comforting touch of a mother or a father to soothe and support them. The extended stay in Sudan also made them realise how complete and potentially final the separation was and the emotional price which had to be paid for it. They realised more deeply than ever the meaning of separation from the family members who had been left behind and were not going to join them for some time, if at all. It also often aroused or intensified their feelings of guilt at having left them behind. Rammy recounts his pain of separation in Sudan: While I was in the refugee camp in Sudan I once had a dream: that I was with my family, in my place, talking to my uncle, we were sitting all together. I felt good. Then I woke up, there was no family, no brothers, emptiness! [Pauses.] I became very sad. The long stay in Sudan was experienced by the adolescents as a painful waste of time that could otherwise have been used for studying. It is interesting to note how important this aspect was for many of them. This might have been because of the great significance children in general ascribe to the school system, which indeed organises a major part of their day and gives a structure to their lives in the same way that work does for adults. It was particularly painful, perhaps, since the

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opportunity for education was not universal in Ethiopia and was thus highly regarded. For an Ethiopian child, let alone a Jewish Ethiopian child, just being given the chance of studying was very much appreciated and cherished. It did not involve the wish of the individual alone but was a decision taken by the family, who in most cases had to give up the work-power of that child and even find some extra money to pay the expenses related to schooling (see Chapter 2, ethnographic section). The child had therefore already experienced such a decision as an exceptionally important achievement. Sometimes it was also a sign of self-worth, since he/she would be chosen from among the children of the family as the most talented and study-oriented child. The chosen children would thus expect to benefit significantly from it, as well as to better the conditions of their families, whom they felt they ‘represented’ and for whom they had become messengers. Stopping these studies, for those who were lucky enough to have begun, in order to move to Israel, was experienced by the adolescents as a painful and not at all simple matter. Nevertheless, they, as well as those who had not yet started their education (a significant number of them), heard that in Israel they would gain an even better education, and moreover that it would somehow be inculcated into them more quickly. Because of this they were eager to arrive in Israel as quickly as possible and to continue (or begin) their studies. In that respect they felt that ‘each and every moment’ of their stay in Sudan was a painful waste of time, and they mourned the loss of their chance of studying. As Baruch narrates: When I was in Sudan I didn’t feel good at all. I didn’t go to school so I felt I wasn’t doing anything. I set out in the middle of the school year in Ethiopia and here I was, stuck in Sudan. I felt bad. I thought about signing up at a school there, but every day I thought that maybe that evening I would leave for Israel, or the next day. Or the next… So I couldn’t do a thing. I wasted two years there. Alamnesh tells how, when in Sudan thinking about how they had left school, she would start crying. Takaleh summarises the Sudanese period plainly: ‘Time is not a clock. You cannot turn its hands back. It was wasted for ever.’8 Adolescent girls and young women were particularly vulnerable to specific aspects of the situation, and suffered accordingly. The major danger that girls faced was that of being kidnapped for domestic slavery or for sexual abuse. The border zone was a particularly sensitive area in that respect. The Sudanese soldiers were very clear and non-secretive about their intentions concerning the girls. At times they would not let them, or the accompanying adolescent boys, pass, unless they were allowed to use the women of their choice. It might have been the influence of the border zone, which, like border zones in other parts of the world, sometimes arouses the feeling of a social noman’s land. It then instigates an atmosphere that allows or facilitates nonnormative behaviour, especially in relation to sexual restrictions. In any event,

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whether it was this or some other reason, the fact remains that adolescent girls and young women learned to fear the border zone, and rightly so. Ruth tells how frightened she became when the Sudanese soldiers came to select the girls they wished to take. She narrates: It was on the Sudanese border. We were gathered there, a group of seventy-two young people. About half of this group were Gentiles. Then there were the soldiers [pause] who wanted to take the girls. They talked with the Gentiles who were with us…so we knew that at night they would come to get us… So during the day there were many soldiers around us… We were sitting as a group. It was not a large place anyway, just a big tree, and we were sitting underneath it. So then we slept there. We talked, sat and said that all of us would sleep close together. I was with my brother… Then, as we had thought, they came. At night. With a torch. They wanted to take only those girls among us whom they had chosen during the day. That is why they were parting the…[clothes covering our faces]. We were sleeping, and my brother suddenly said to me: ‘They are coming! They are coming!’ He whispered…and then: ‘Why, are you afraid?’ Because when he told me that they had come, I started to tremble, like that. So because I was trembling so much my brother said to me: ‘I was lying to you. They have not come.’ When he told me that, I started shouting at him. All that time they were down there, and people were trying to escape up the hill. It took them five minutes more to arrive. At that time I was shouting at him: ‘Why did you say that they are coming? Why did you say so?’ And then they came. They came and saw me… I was shouting as well as trembling greatly. Then everyone was shouting. We were wearing our clothes over our heads [faces] so they [the soldiers] were parting them and looking, and wanting to take away the girls that they desired… I was very frightened. The danger of abduction continued beyond the border zone and constituted a serious threat inside Sudan. Marito recounts: For example, I had a friend, the Sudanese kidnapped her. They then transported her to Saudi Arabia…they abducted many children like that. Not as many from ours as from the Gentiles… But us too. My friend was kidnapped around Gedaref… We tried not to walk alone as it was dangerous. If someone was walking alone, that’s it! She would be taken. My friend walked alone only once but it was enough for the Sudanese to abduct her. She was a good girl. She had completed her studies in Ethiopia. She would be 20 years old by now… Her parents heard about what happened to her. They are still in Ethiopia. They can do nothing about it… I have another friend here [in Israel], and last Saturday we thought again of our friend, how miserable she must be, and how beautiful she was, and… I don’t know, maybe because of that they had taken her… ‘The best people,’ we say, ‘why are the best people taken?’ And we also say: ‘Why do the good people die first?’ So we were discussing all kinds of things, and how

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hard it was, and how unfortunate she was. No one will ever find her…she will be like that all her life! Many girl students went like that. The need to look for work exposed the young women to various offers of jobs that were actually ways of looking for domestic and sexual slaves. Tena tells her story of fear and horror at the dangers of rape and potential domestic and sex slavery. She was already 24 years old when on the journey; nevertheless, being a goodlooking woman she experienced the danger of abduction which was more typical for younger girls. She narrates: We were sitting in that place [refugee camp] when an Ethiopian man came along with two other men, one Sudanese and one Arab. The Ethiopian was translating: ‘Who wants to work?’ All of us said that we wanted to work, but that the place was still new to us so we meant to go around a bit, see the place and then get some work. So later, from among twenty students, he calls our names, me and my [woman] friend. He took us, and I had a wonderful feeling…yet I was trembling, so he told me that everything was all right; I did not even believe that he was Ethiopian. He took us to a big house; there were many Arabs, big and fat, and he was translating: ‘You want work to “serve” at a certain house?’ My friend did not speak at all. She was in shock. I spoke a bit and said: ‘I—I have a husband, it is hard for me to be separated from my husband. If I find a place [to work together] with my husband, then I could work, if not—I can’t work.’ Then they asked the translator: ‘Does she have a husband?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ So then they said they did not want me, they wanted only unmarried girls, and I said that my girlfriend also had a husband. So we came back. It was good that I said I had a husband. I was really terrified. I feared that I would not arrive in Israel. If they had taken us, we wouldn’t have been able to go out of the house, and they would have done [to us] whatever they wanted. Out of Sudan At last the time came to ‘ascend’ to Israel. Alas, even at this last minute, before the final actualisation of the dream, more tragedies took place. I refer mainly to the fact that, during this last stage, families that had already suffered death and disintegration during the journey and in Sudan disintegrated further. The cause of this was partially related to the nature of the secret operation and the way the Jews were taken out of Sudan. As we have already seen, the need to inform the Jews about their departure from Sudan only at the last possible moment had brought about unexpected separations within families. The dangers of the secret operation made it a necessity that after informing the people about the embarkation everything should be carried out at an extremely rapid pace. This caused everyone to go into a kind of ‘escape frenzy’. Leaving Sudan was, of course, what everyone desired, and since

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no one could be sure that tomorrow he or she would not be dead, everyone wanted to be among the first to leave. People waited for their turn to come. Pressure on the Israeli agents mounted, and they, without bad intentions, were hard put to make sure that whole families made aliya together. In fact, the criteria for choosing people to make aliya often contributed to the separation of members of a family. There was also, of course, the fact that, as frequently happened, various members of the family arrived in Sudan at different times and were put in different places in the queue for aliya. But there were also other considerations. Some related to the people’s physical condition, as in the case of dying persons and others with specific problems of personal security which arose within Sudan. One criterion that was implemented at a certain time during the rescue operation and further influenced the completeness of the families (or lack of it) was the age factor. From the point of view of keeping the operation easier, safer and more efficient, it was best to group the young together and put the old in separate groups. As one of the adolescents narrates: ‘It was hard for the old people and little children to make aliya with the young, because the young pushed when they climbed on to the trucks and that was dangerous.’ Tragic separations then took place, as one girl recounts: One day they decided to send the young people. Our turn came. They said to us: ‘Come!’ At first, I didn’t want to go because if I went who would cook for Mother? Who would bring water from the waterhole far away? You see, my mother was sick. She couldn’t do anything. My mother wanted me to go. I was worried about who she would stay with. Her uncle was there and also her uncle’s son. He used to distribute money to enable people [to] stay alive [probably one of the ‘distributors’]. He said, ‘If you stay, Heaven help you!’ And he pressed: ‘You don’t trust me? In no way will I come without your mother!’ Then I agreed to go. All of a sudden we arrived in Israel. My mother hasn’t come to this day…my mother never came. Another cause of further disintegration of families and sorrowful events was the actual embarking onto the lorries. The process of getting on the lorries was experienced by many as a struggle for survival. This was especially hard for the little children and the old. Many more people appeared at the embarkation point than were summoned. Under such conditions the young and the fit found it difficult to let the old and the children be first to climb into the lorries. They were terrified of being left behind, as this could mean death instead of life. They did whatever was in their power to climb into the trucks. A fierce battle for life thus ensued. From the Israeli operators’ point of view, embarking had to be quick lest the Sudanese spotted the lorries. This made it impossible for them to monitor the process in any relaxed way or to take the time needed to sort out the situation systematically. The young then pushed their way through, always trying to be among the first to embark. People also ignored the fact that the number of persons

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allowed on a lorry was limited and tried to push more in. They knew that no one would risk the whole operation by starting an argument in this secret and potentially explosive situation. Chaos characterised this stage, and tragic accidents happened. Children fell out of their mothers’ arms, were lost and were stepped on in the darkness of the night, resulting in tragic deaths. Old people were injured or pushed out and so forced to stay behind. Yossi narrates: They [the operators] used to arrange it so that old people would go separately from the young people. I felt ‘Not again! They are going to leave me here for the third time.’ I started crying…at the end they decided to open the trucks for young people as well. They opened them, but then the old could not climb aboard fast enough. We would run and the old ones, when they finally reached the trucks, those of us who were already up there would give them a hand and pull them up. Only then, when they were already on the truck, would they realise that the whole family was not on it, that half of them were here and half were there, that a son was on this truck while his mother was on another. No one could actually know where everyone was, let alone control it… There were many people…and the young children… well, everyone ran quickly in the dark towards the vehicles, one couldn’t see a thing or know where anyone was. Some children were killed [remains quiet for some time]… I remember what happened in our vehicle. There was a mother who was shouting, ‘My son! My son!’ It didn’t help. Her boy was stepped upon. People were climbing up into the lorry forcibly in the dark. The child was crying, ‘Mummy, Mummy!’ but no one could actually lift him up…so when we arrived at the place where we were supposed to wait for the aeroplane we climbed down from the truck and then they found this child. They asked: ‘Whose is this child?’ And one woman said softly: ‘He is mine.’ They took him, probably [in order] to bury him on their way back. Or maybe they just had to throw him somewhere, I don’t know. I felt that this was horrible: for a mother not to be able to protect her child, to control what happened to him. Her son! This was really awful… And he was not so big! But at that time we did not pay attention to each other, everyone cared only for himself. Each of us wanted to save himself, not thinking of others…not even being able to save his or her child. This was very grievous indeed. Yossi tells of an unexpected hardship even at a later phase: that of getting on board the aeroplanes on the provisional desert runways. Because of the secret nature of the operation, and the wish to be as short a time as possible on the ground, the aeroplanes did not turn off their engines while people were trying to get on. This created a wind that was blowing against them, against which the exhausted refugees had to struggle. This wind also carried the desert sand into the air and into their faces, blinding them by getting into their eyes. Yossi narrates:

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We arrived at a certain point in the desert after several hours of standing in the four lorries which had driven in a direction which was not clear to us. It was dark there, and we were told to sit down in that place. Those who needed to could go aside to relieve themselves. Otherwise, we were told to wait there. The only thing we saw there, when we arrived, was a kind of yellow light on the ground, which we understood later to be a sign for the pilot. There were people on the ground, but we did not know that at the time. There was also a little car that was patrolling around our trucks to check that no enemies were in the area. We disembarked, were told to sit down, were sitting there, and we saw that they had something with which they were communicating with the aeroplane. When the plane arrived above us they [the operators] saw it, made some signal to it, and it lowered its flight path and made one round, then another, and in the third round it landed. Now, when it was landing there was a lot of wind there. Then we were told: ‘Now run and get into the aeroplane.’ It was impossible to enter. The plane’s engine was turned on and it was blowing a wind that we could not prevail against. We were repeatedly blown backwards. Sometimes we almost succeeded but were still pushed back by the wind. Then there were [Israeli] soldiers there, and they held our hands and helped us…it was difficult to get into the aeroplane. For Isaiah it seems to have been not only difficult to embark upon the plane but also a frightening experience: Finally we arrived at a remote and deserted place where there was really nothing. It was bare, without any trees or anything. It was just an open area with nothing in it. We disembarked from the lorries there, and…the Israelis talked on the wireless communication apparatus, directing the plane, I think. The planes couldn’t have been far away since immediately after they had communicated with them two of them landed there. But it was hard to embark in them, since they did not turn off their engines and a lot of sand was being blown towards us and into our eyes. We could not even see where the entrance was…so the soldiers sort of pushed us, and somehow got us into the planes. I did not want to get in at all, since I couldn’t see a thing. I almost ran away because at that time I was not myself at all. I thought, I shall not reach Israel…you see, I had never been in a plane, it was my first encounter with one, so I was nervous.9 And also this sand was getting into my eyes and troubling me. So I despaired and gave up. I said to myself: ‘I shall sleep here today and then go all the way back by foot.’

6 THE THEME OF BRAVERY AND INNER STRENGTH

,The theme of bravery and inner strength brings together those aspects of the narratives in which the interviewees express a feeling of great achievement, or relate to acts in which their powers and potentials were brought to a maximum or were stretched even beyond that. I shall attempt to describe the different manifestations of this theme within the three sub-phases of the journey. Before that it is important to understand the concept of bravery within the Ethiopian culture. To do that we have to acquaint ourselves with the concept of gobez,1 which is a core symbol2 in Ethiopian culture. In Wolf Leslau’s Amharic-English dictionary, the entry for gobez is defined as: ‘young man, fine young man, manly (like a man), smart, brilliant, clever, strong, brave, quite a fellow’. Rosen writes that ‘Every Ethiopian boy (and girl, in her own way) desires perhaps more than anything else to be considered gobez. It is the great Amhara virtue that, traditionally, embodied bravery, fierceness, hardi-ness and general male competence’ (Rosen 1987:58). In regard to actual behaviour, this term would be used for someone who had trounced an opponent in a stick fight, or had beaten him in some other kind of battle. Even more importantly, it is someone who has trekked many days through the mountains, subsisting on a pocketful of dried chick-peas or occasional snacks of small bread-balls.3 He is ‘someone able to stay awake the entire night praying, or spend the whole day fasting’ (Rosen 1985:76). The two latter aspects are related in my mind to the ability to endure against all odds. In his book Greater Ethiopia, Levine discusses at some length the readiness to kill one’s enemy within the framework of the concept of gobez. He states: ‘Amhara and Oromo cultures alike, then, laid stress on military courage. Amhara …warriors were motivated by fierce desires to slaughter their enemies’ (Levine 1974:154). In another context, that of hunting, Levine writes: Indeed, masculine aggressive prowess as displayed by killing wild beasts and human enemies represents a pre-eminent value in most of the cultures of Greater Ethiopia. The killer typically enjoys a privileged status marked by special insignia and perquisites… Many people set up formal occasions at which the killer can boast of his achievements, and they distribute rewards according to the number and fierceness of the beasts and humans he has

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slaughtered. They also cultivate special genres of verse which are sung to goad the killer and celebrate heroic exploits. (Levine 1974:53–4) How does this value tally with the value of Christian love among the Amhara, or, even more relevant to our focus of discussion, the Jewish traditional restraint from unnecessary killing, which, we may assume, existed among the Beta Israel of Ethiopia? Concerning the Amhara, Levine addresses this question in a direct manner. In his earlier work on the Ethiopians he writes: Attitudes concerning the use of violence represent a clear instance of conflict of norms. The precepts ‘Do not kill’ and ‘Love thy neighbour’, though not regarded as constituting the crux of Christian ethics, are known and acknowledged in Abyssinia. The rare priest or elder who embodies the classic ideal of Christian love is appreciated as a man of the higher virtue. The fearless killer, on the other hand, embodies another ideal ofno less importance— that of being gobez, brave and manly. The peasant who assaults his neighbour because the latter has usurped his land, committed adultery with his wife, injured his zamad [kin], or insulted him grievously is following an ethic of cardinal importance in Amhara culture. (Levine 1965:83, my emphasis) Ethiopian Jews share many values with the Amhara; thus, it seems to me, they have the same tension between those values. However, this tension may be somewhat weaker for Jews, since on the one hand the prohibition regarding killing is very strong, as human beings according to Judaism are created ‘in the image of God’, thus having something of Him within them. In addition to that, another aspect feeds the reservations of Jews about the value of ‘killing your enemy’. I refer to the fact that Beta Israel in Ethiopia lived through the experience of Falashas, which is also that of the outcasts (Messing 1982; Quirin 1992; cf. Chapter 2), people of lower status, who would be at a disadvantage if they were to take action against the majority culture. Therefore, while holding on to the value of killing your enemy, and in certain areas and times even acting upon this value, they were more careful about it in their regular dealings with the ‘ruling majority’—the Christian Amhara in Ethiopia. Another dimension of meaning to the concept of gobez relates to the person’s resourcefulness. Although this dimension is not mentioned by researchers cited above, it is implicit, in my mind, within their usage of the term. Leslau, for example, refers to the gobez as ‘smart, brilliant, clever’ and Rosen refers to the craftiness of Ethiopian Jews in making their tools so that they worked for them. Chemtov and Rosen (1992) also bring the example of the gobez farmer in Ethiopia who will stop monkeys and baboons from raiding his crops ‘by building a strong fence and by being a good shot’. Resourcefulness, it seems, is an essential

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aspect in all these achievements, and is thus embedded within the concept of the gobez. In its broader sense, the concept of gobez, seems to stand for any performance of excellence in an area valued by society This is, in fact, hinted at in a footnote Levine added to his own definition, and in his reference to Hike Haberland’s definition which questions such performance of excellence (Levine 1974). This wider sense is also embedded in Rosen’s elaboration of the concept. He writes: In another context this person would be able to memorise all of his lessons, and start at the forefront of his class; or he might be adept at coining a beautiful phrase, whether as part of a spontaneous poem or as a veiled insult directed towards some unsuspecting personage. (Rosen 1985:58) At the heart of the concept, it seems to me, there are two elements: the existence of a skill and potential for a successful action, in combination with the readiness and courage to act upon this potential. These capabilities and daring aspects result in the achievement which brings about the praise for being gobez. The former relates to competence while the latter is represented by the person committing him/herself to action, e.g. facing a challenge or confronting an enemy. The tendency to move from the defensive to the offensive, from being attacked to standing up to the attacker in accordance with the concept gobez, is even more pronounced during adolescence and young adulthood. Adolescence and young adulthood are symbolised by the elements of air and fire respectively, among the four major elements of nature which stand for the various phases of the life cycle within Ethiopian culture (cf. Chapter 2). Adolescents and young adults are thus perceived as prone to pick quarrels and fights. The adolescent is ‘flighty, never settled’ while the young man is as ‘hot in picking quarrels as he is hot chasing after women’ (Levine 1965:79). Thus, the value of the gobez is enacted even more within the context of adolescence and young adulthood. Furthermore, for adolescents and young men it seems the presence of authority figures is in itself a motive for heroism. This can be inferred from Levine’s finding in relation to different groups in Ethiopia, notably the Amharas: The presence of the king or lord on the battlefield typically made a great difference in how bravely Amhara soldiers were inclined to fight … [conversely] if the relevant lord was killed, or if there was no chance of his learning about a soldier’s bravery, the latter was likely to feel that there was not much point in fighting. (Levine 1974:154) Considering this point from a slightly different perspective, one might argue that for a young person to assume leadership in times of need is in itself an act that requires personal strength. This is because in Ethiopian society leadership roles are

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extremely structured. Such positions are held by the elders, and are never just assumed or ‘taken’ by the young. Thus, from an Ethiopian cultural perspective, for a young person to assume leadership or initiate action requires, among other things, conquering the fear of authority and overcoming the obedient stance of the young in Ethiopian society. The analysis of the narratives shows four major aspects of bravery and inner strength: (1) courage and heroism; (2) endurance and determination; (3) resourcefulness; and (4) leadership. These correspond to the various aspects of gobez as described above. It thus constitutes an actualisation of an important value in Ethiopian culture. I shall now present the different aspects of bravery and inner strength as they are expressed in the narratives, within the different phases of the journey. Bravery and inner strength in the phase of setting out The decision to set out on their emigration journey was experienced by many as an act of courage and determination since it meant being prepared to confront great dangers. First, they decided to go in spite of the knowledge of the difficulty and dangers of the trek to Sudan. Their narratives show that although they sometimes perceived the dangers in general terms, most of them were aware of the mountainous trek and desert areas, of wild beasts and human hurdles. They mention, for example, that they thought about snakes, lions and elephant herds as well as about the villagers and the shifta awaiting them along their way. Nevertheless, they decided to set off on the journey. Elazar recounts: We set out on the way with a clear decision that whatever happens to us, we are going to go anyway. We knew, of course, that there was hunger, thirst, robbers and more along the journey. But we had that clear resolve… whoever dies will die, and those who are left will arrive. In Chapter 4 we noted that leaving Ethiopia was illegal and whoever did it took the risk of a harsh punishment. We also mentioned that the government tried specifically to warn the Jews in the villages and schools against treason of that kind, and threatened them with the dire consequences of such leave-taking. Finally, we referred specifically to the Gondar region where the settlement of Jews was encouraged by Major Malaku, the ruler of that district, and noted that the underground movements as well were not always favourable to population movements and tried to prevent the Jews from leaving. A particularly dangerous situation faced those adolescents who tried repeatedly to escape. They set out but were forced to return for some reason. Upon their return they were caught by the authorities, imprisoned and interrogated as to the purpose of their departure and their destination. At times they were tortured as a

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punishment for their act of treason and desertion of their country. Yet if no proof of their plan to emigrate could be obtained they were released. However, they had to sign a document which allowed their execution without trial if they were caught deserting again. Against this background the Jews perceived their setting out as a courageous step. The threats and the tortures did not deter them, they felt that they were standing up to the authorities in order to actualise their own aspirations. As Rammy narrates: We were captured by shifta on our way and they robbed us of everything. We were left without money or food and had to walk back. When I returned to my village, they captured me, the government. If the government caught you it was very difficult. Very unpleasant indeed. They asked me where I had been and I replied: ‘At my grandmother’s place’, ‘At my uncle’s place’, and so on. They interrogated me harshly for a long time. Finally, they released me…but I had to sign that if they caught me again they could kill me. I signed but after a while I ran away together with my friends. And elsewhere he explains: We wanted to go to Israel. My father was always talking about returning to Yerussalem. And people started to go and were already passing through our village. We also got some letters from those who had arrived in Israel. So then we got organised…and ran away. Other manifestations of courage and determination by the young were connected with overcoming traditional cultural codes, which regulate relations with parents. Many parents desired, on one hand, that their children would actualise their own dream of ‘the return’, yet they were nonetheless fearful of letting them go by themselves on the dangerous trek. They were concerned for their safety, and feared that they would get caught by government patrols or killed on the way. Many of the young, therefore, preferred not to ask for permission at all. They feared being explicitly forbidden to set out. Baruch says: I needed money for the journey, but I didn’t ask for any. I knew that if I asked my parents they would forbid me to leave. I kept quiet, but to my brother I said: ‘What we have we have—and God will help us.’ At other times they did seek their parents’ consent, were refused, sometimes even made to promise not to run away, yet went off nonetheless. In order for us to understand the meaning of such an act undertaken by the young people and the demand it put upon their inner strength, we must consider the status of the child and the young in the Ethiopian social order. Respect is a central value in

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Ethiopian culture, and the young are expected to obey and serve their parents and the old at all times (BenEzer 1987). From the age of 6 or 7 the child learns special communication patterns to address adults, and manners of serving others in what is considered as a code of respect and politeness (chawa) (Rosen 1987; BenEzer 1987). In addition to that code, all decisions, including those about matters which concern the individual, are ultimately made by senior family members (the familial authority). There is a strong norm of obedience and submission to authority figures. In this cultural context, refusal to obey an authority figure is a rarity and is subject to punishment or results in guilty feelings (Levine 1965; BenEzer 1987). Escaping without their parents’ consent, or against their will, was therefore experienced as a daring step. It was perceived as an act of inner strength and mental vigour. As they would later put it, the pull towards Jerusalem surpassed relations with parents and others and was a source of the much-needed strength in making such a decision. I would like to mention here that by escaping without consent, they in fact obeyed and fulfilled a calling of a higher order which was also conveyed by their own parents: the need to return to Israel, to fulfil the ‘myth of return’. This dream has been embedded in Ethiopian Jewish culture and was transmitted along many generations.4 Some children and youths felt their power in their ability to persuade their parents to join the process of emigration sooner rather than later. These children sensed their parents’ hesitation, which was due to the fear of an unsuccessful journey. They feared they would get ‘stuck in the middle’ and therefore lose out in both worlds, Ethiopia and Israel. The children’s single-mindedness served as the final incentive for their parents to set out. As Aryeh recounts: We always hoped to reach Israel. At our home, we never stopped fermenting our dream. Yet the grown-ups were afraid. On the one hand they wanted to make aliya to Israel. But they were not sure that they would actually arrive. So they said: ‘If we sell all our belongings here, leave and then not reach Israel we would get nowhere and lose all.’ They wanted to go but it was a problem. It was the children’s role then to be clearly on one side. We started telling our parents that we wanted to go. Then they started thinking: ‘If this child is so determined, then when he grows up a bit more he will use his first chance to run away towards Israel.’ It made them decide to go at that time rather than wait some more. I know it sounds unbelievable that the children influenced their parents’ decision but that is how it was. Overcoming the great pain of separation was experienced as another aspect of their strength. For many young people, leaving their parents behind was a most difficult thing. They knew that it was a separation that might last for a longer period than ever experienced before. This is especially hard in view of the fact

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that familial relations in Ethiopia are extremely close and a person without a family feels incomplete.5 Resourcefulness A different aspect of their experience of bravery and inner strength was the actualisation of resourcefulness. This was expressed, first of all, in planning and carrying out the practicalities of setting out. The journey was a complex operation that included much preparation. First, they prepared all sorts of equipment: they got hold of jerry-cans for carrying water en route, which would not be too heavy to carry and would be manageable on the mountainous trails and in desert areas. They needed special clothing for the cold weather of the higher altitudes as well as lighter clothes for hot conditions prevailing in the desert sections. They had to buy medicines, such as malaria pills, that were not always available in their villages and for which they would need to travel to the town. They prepared dried food that would last the long journey, like dried grain, chick-peas or bread-balls. Some took chewing gum ‘which helps when one suffers from thirst’ and ‘so the children do not get dehydrated’. Others tell about their financial preparations and various ways of hiding money in case they are caught by shifta: We then changed our money into bigger notes and used all kinds of methods for hiding it. We sewed it into our shirt sleeves, or into the shoes. We even put it into our walking sticks. I took out the inner core of my stick, rolled the money, put it inside, and then filled in the stick with some other material. The adults included some grave responsibilities in their preparations, such as razor blades for treating sick people with metaftef (the practice of blood-letting) which is believed to have a curing effect (Nudelman 1990; BenEzer 1992:149). They also prepared for the worst, as Elazar recalls: ‘We prepared a shovel in case someone died and we had to bury them.’ If they could afford it, especially if they went in a large group, they prepared donkeys for carrying some of the gear, and horses to transport the old and the very young along the journey. Another practical matter was locating people who could serve as guides and lead them to Sudan. Finding people who knew the trails to Sudan and were trustworthy, negotiating the prices as well as arranging meeting points and dates, were all, they felt, a trial of their resourcefulness. Some members of the community felt their strength and resourcefulness lay in successfully preparing the logistics of the escape for many others of the community, as well as mechanisms for spreading the word that ‘the time had actually arrived’. One of these people tells how they set about building a Jewish school in Tigray, which was later to be used as a mechanism for helping the young in their escape. Another sees it from an even broader perspective,

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connecting his involvement with the agricultural settlement in Abderafi, and its role in assisting Jews en route to Sudan, to the plans to emigrate later to Israel. Most important of all, Ethiopian Jews felt that they were tested for their resourcefulness and inventiveness in putting together a plan for leaving which ensured that they would not be caught. Secrecy was a key element in such a plan. Whether they went as individuals, youth groups or as families, they had to use cunning and subtlety in order to ensure that their plan to escape from Ethiopia was kept secret and their extensive preparations were not exposed. As was noted in Chapter 4, government officials as well as their neighbours were on the lookout, trying to catch them as they escaped. We have also mentioned that secrecy was needed lest the shifta would be waiting for them, expecting to rob them of large sums of money prepared for the long journey. We have seen how the Jews kept their plans secret from their own relatives in order to protect them from accusations of complicity by the government. Besides the confidential nature of their plans for leaving Ethiopia, they also employed various measures to disguise the fact that they were leaving. They had found ways to make it appear more natural. Thus, some just left all their belongings behind, in their closed homes, to be discovered long after their taking leave. Others sold their property slowly in order not to raise their neighbours’ suspicions. In their effort to give a facade of legitimacy to their escape, various plausible excuses for going out of the village or area were endorsed. They also invented a convincing story to tell if they were stopped en route and asked why they were on the move and where they were heading. Some used the false excuse of a wedding in a faraway village to which they were invited. Others, the young people in particular, pretended that they were going to the local market to buy and to sell things. Students used the fact that other students were returning from town to village at weekends. They blended in with this crowd as if they too were returning students. Tigest recounts yet another mechanism of escaping: It was not even night, but there was some Christian festival and we said that we were going there, that we were invited. That is how we were able to set out on the trail. Nobody knew that we were actually leaving. Ruth recounts: We were students in Gondar. So we went out on a Friday. On that day all the students who came from the villages are returning home [for the weekend]. Hence we joined the stream [of people], thirteen of us, in our students’ clothes, and went with no gear, just like that. In addition to selecting a proper excuse and inventing a convincing cover story for setting out, the youths, students, and town dwellers in particular used certain measures to further protect themselves on the journey. One of these measures

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was changing their style of dress into the local one. Dressing as villagers meant less suspicion upon setting out, as well as later on during their journey. It also lowered the chances of being targeted by shifta on the way, since these were keener on catching town dwellers who might have more possessions to be looted. Girls and young women also tended to dress in their dirtiest and least appealing clothes in order to disgust potential aggressors on their passage. The grave danger of sexual assault or kidnapping for sexual abuse had made them invest special and careful thought as to how they appeared on the trek and how they could best avoid these dangers. Bravery and inner strength on the journey Once the Ethiopian Jews were away from their birthplace, courage and resourcefulness continued to play a significant part in their experience. However, a central aspect of strength on the journey is that of endurance and determination. Endurance and determination The analysis of the narratives reveals two important aspects of this walking experience relating to endurance and determination: the first is the capacity to walk incessantly and the second relates to walking in spite of physical deprivation. Their capacity to deal with the journey consisted first and foremost of an ability to make progress on the trek to Sudan. Everything else was subordinate to this. In this respect it can be argued that the essence of the journey was this need to keep going, to advance. This was not an easy task since they had to cope, among other things, with mountainous treks, strong currents and desert areas.6 Many of the Jews lived in villages high up on the Simien mountains and they needed to climb down from as high as 13,500 feet. This involved difficult, sometimes dangerous, slopes and passes. The ability to surmount the hurdles and challenges of the trek, and to go on walking, expressed, in their mind, a combination of physical resources with strong determination, and was conceived as a great achievement. Moreover, Ethiopian Jews felt their powers in their ability to endure a shortage of basic needs, mainly food, water and sleep, while walking ceaselessly. Advancing despite these deficiencies, and in particular the survival upon dried chick-peas alone, is, as we have seen, one of the central images symbolising the gobez. Shlomo, for example, recounts: I went out on my own towards Israel. I started from Simien [mountains] in the direction of Wolkite. I knew most of the way towards Sudan. For that goal I had nothing. I just took a handful of dried chick-peas and with that I went on the journey and arrived at Wolkite by myself. This aspect of his experience, i.e. subsisting only on chick-peas while walking, comes up repeatedly in Shlomo’s journey story, which indicates also how

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significant this experience was for him. We may also note his emphasis on the fact that not only did he survive the path on chick-peas, but that he walked alone, which he seems to consider as another form of bravery. Isaiah, a young boy of the Gondar area, also recounts: ‘There were days in which we did not eat anything. I was very hungry but this hunger did not harm or immobilise me. I kept walking.’ Elie augments this on the subject of going without sleep: ‘At night…sometimes we even fell asleep while walking but we kept on going.’ Isaiah elaborates on his and his friend’s resoluteness in relation to sleepless walking: ‘We were young, so we could run for the whole night, which was no trouble for us…we did not rest at all. For five days we just ran, all of us … we hardly slept.’ Mekonen relates an experience of perseverance in the face of a different deficiency: We walked for six days without stopping. Day and night. And on the last day, in the desert, everybody got tired. Not because of lack of strength but because of the lack of water. We were so thirsty… Nevertheless, we did not give up. We continued walking! Yehuda summarises briefly: ‘The power we had! How forceful and determined we were. I can’t grasp it even now!’ Many of the young people not only survived the difficulties themselves but also helped others, mainly the elderly and young children. They supported them, often carrying them on their backs, or built provisional stretchers to lift the elderly. They carried children on their shoulders across rivers or sat them on a horse in front of them and held them while advancing. Yehuda detailed such events: The young have strength. They could make the journey by running it. They have a lot of energy so that even if they were thirsty or hungry they kept on walking…thus, with a journey of two weeks, we, the young, could have made it in one week. Yet we were helping the grown ups, those with children who could not walk so quickly… We assisted them so that they would not die on the path…I helped. I would lend a hand to the little children, share my food with them when needed, or would assist in bringing water when we did not have any more… The water was often very far so only those who could make such a distance would run and do it. I did it. I ran two or three times and brought water, and gave it to the people. I would like to mention here that assisting others made the youths experience not only their strength but also their importance. The realisation that they were essential for the survival of others—elders, grown ups and little children—redefined their role within the community and the extended family during the journey. We shall return to this subject later in this study.7

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Nevertheless, many of the very young and the elderly proved able to endure the Herculean trek. By watching their endurance and determination the young people were invigorated and motivated to go on. In their stories they describe small children jumping lightly over rocks, holes in the ground and other obstacles, sometimes overtaking their parents. Also, one would see very old people continuing on the pathway without rest, not showing their exhaustion, crossing rivers with almost no support, persevering with no food or sleep. It is with a sense of amazement and profound appreciation that the youths recount these observations of the power of the children and the old. Shlomo recounts: You would look at the little children, wearing no shoes—and it’s not a flat country. There were slopes to climb up and to climb down, there were thorns of all sorts, and these children just walked on it with their naked feet. It was unbelievable. I can’t believe now that this is how we had come. When I recall it, it seems implausible, as if it couldn’t have happened. Such small children, three or four years of age, how they went! It is unbelievable. And they had no shoes…nothing. We nevertheless succeeded in reaching the Sudanese border! This observation of the children’s strength had apparently been quite an experience for Shlomo. He comes back to it later on in his journey story when he refers to a specific child who stands out in his memories of the journey: ‘I saw a child, what shall I tell you, very young. And I watched him, and it seemed as if he was not walking but running, overtaking his father. Now this was sheer power!’ In another instance the power of the old is stressed: My grandmother for example, she had, of course, a problem in walking. She was around 80 years of age. [For] someone that old, to go not by horse but on foot, and not for one day but several weeks, this is not easy! But there was a certain desire which gave strength, tremendous strength. There was something ahead—Yerussalem—which pulled us forward. Because of that, these older people, who did not have the physical strength, were able to make it. Old people, very old indeed, I saw them, going on foot, using immense mental power. When people are able to endure hardships and deprivation to such an extent, a question arises concerning the sources of their powers: what has motivated them? What makes them keep on walking incessantly? Where do they find the strength to persevere? In fact, these questions are asked and sometimes answered by the young people themselves while recounting their experiences. Some of these sources of strength are related to interactions within the group, whereas others are related to the inner world of the individual (such as ideals, memories of past experiences, desires, dreams, etc.).

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We have already seen how the group served as a source of strength specifically through inter-generational observations and relations. However, the fact that they were walking together was important also in other ways. The young were helping each other by various kinds of verbal and non-verbal communication. One such way relates to an aspect of the Ethiopian style of coping: the inclination to refrain from verbal expression concerning difficulties. Ethiopian culture dictates, among other things, containment of feelings, especially those connected with difficulties and hardships. The tendency is to ‘keep things in the abdomen’ or stomach because, as the Ethiopian proverb claims ‘The abdomen is wider than the whole world’, i.e. it is perceived to be able to contain all of a person’s sufferings (BenEzer 1990, 1992: Chapter 12)8. When they walked the trails as a group, the young people in particular tended to refrain from complaining or verbally expressing any difficulty in enduring the trek. As Aryeh narrates: ‘There was plenty of pain in the feet, and an ache in the head was common. Nevertheless, we did not talk about it.’ Therefore, the individual wayfarer was usually surrounded by others who seemed to be coping successfully with the difficult journey and heard less about the strain and toil involved in it.9 It assisted the individual in focusing on enduring the hurdles of the trek and in paying no attention to their difficulties. The more they succeeded in overcoming the hardships, the more powerful they felt. Their perception of themselves thus changed, a fact that in itself influenced the way they coped with the next obstacle. This bias towards strength and triumph over the elements served the aims of perseverance and successful coping. Sometimes, however, they did relate the hardships of the journey, but it was by viewing them in a humorous way. When they fell down they laughed and got up; they smiled and joked when they lost their way and found themselves returning again and again to the same point along some strenuous trail. Many tell how they found humour and laughter to be very valuable for ‘reviving the tired and the exhausted’ among them and for encouraging those who were on the verge of collapse, and motivating them to keep on walking. When they saw someone dragging behind, tired and about to break down, they used to make them laugh by telling a story which was related to this youngster, which brought a smile to their face. Their ability to relate to the obstacles and hardships of the journey in a humorous manner made them aware of their inner strength and invigorated them for what was still ahead. Among the sources of strength that relate to the individual’s inner world, the image of manliness (within that of the gobez) seems to have played an important role. Endurance and determination on the journey was frequently felt to be part of that image. Thus, the ability to adhere to one’s goal without getting stuck on the way, to persistently continue moving towards it, and to maintain a calm and selfcontained reaction to emergencies, such as getting lost in the mountains, all are examples of the ideal of manliness which they strove to achieve. For example, a young boy recounts how when he realised that he had lost the trail and was suddenly alone in the forest he thought about the fact that he was a man (he was

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11 years old) and that he had to behave like one. He felt, then, that he should not panic but should try to do what was required in such cases. He therefore tried to skilfully find his way back to the group. He took a few steps, stopped to listen, trying to locate sounds of human beings, then went a few more steps, stopped and listened again, and so on. When he finally found his way back to the other people who were walking on the trail he perceived it as a confirmation of his manhood. Enduring the challenges of the journey brought up, by association, past experiences of successfully rising above such challenges. The young people were reminded of ‘learnings of power’ which they had acquired in their villages and of people with whom they identified, who had served as models for their behaviour. Memories of childhood teachings were revived, their fathers’ teachings in particular. These had taught them how to deal with similar challenges: how to behave when one is surprised by a beast in the woods or by hostile people on the way, how to use a gun and other weapons, and so on. These memories many times served as a source of inner strength, motivating them to further endurance and perseverance. Another mechanism which assisted the wayfarers in enduring the trek and the continuous walking was their active concentration on the goal rather than on the dangers. They recount how they tried to avoid thinking about the dangers and to focus instead on arriving at some point on the way. Many centred their attention on reaching Sudan, believing that this could actually mean a swift transfer to Israel. When unpleasant things did happen, one of the ways they coped with them was by putting them in the perspective of their overall goal, i.e. getting to Israel. Above all, however, it was the desire to reach Israel, Yerussalem, which served as a source of strength and motivation for enduring the trek. This will be discussed later, in Chapter 7. Courage and heroism On their journey towards Sudan the Ethiopian Jews experienced themselves as being courageous and hardy, at times even heroic. This was especially true when they stood up to attackers en route, whether these were Ethiopian soldiers or shifta. This courage was expressed, among other ways, in a refusal to obey the Ethiopian soldiers, at times even to the point of defiance. Brehanu, for example, recounts his conduct when soldiers captured him and his group: They confiscated everything, and, of course, took our weapons. The soldier ordered me: ‘Bring your rifle over here!’ I saw a big stone near me so I lifted it up and brought it down on the rifle. I broke it. The soldier then slapped me on the face. My father also shouted at me then: ‘Why did you break the rifle?’ I said: ‘They will take yours as well, so instead of letting them have it, why not destroy it?’

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Others relate their steadfastness and boldness in facing up to interrogations without revealing the secret of their final destination. When they were captured, the Ethiopian soldiers interrogated them harshly about their destination, sometimes under the threat of the gun. The wayfarers insisted that they were just heading somewhere nearby, or towards a place which was close to the Sudanese border (such as Humara). If in fact they were already past such a place, they would claim unwaveringly that apparently they had lost their way. They would stand firm against humiliation and torture and deny any possibility that they were Jews on their way to Israel. In keeping their goal confidential against all odds, they felt that they were not only defending their own fate but protecting the secret of the entire Jewish community. Their courage and daring was then perceived as playing a role in the service of the group. This in turn strengthened their perception of the journey as a communal as well as a personal experience.10 Some were also ready to confront the shifta stout-heartedly and even to challenge them. Thus, for example, when one of the groups was suddenly faced with the shifta threatening to shoot if they did not submit, the Jews presented them, as one of the youngsters tells, with a daring challenge: ‘Shoot, if you have the guts! Let’s see if you dare!’ The shifta then retreated, and the youngster explains: ‘They thought that since we were with women and children we wouldn’t fight. But the people were intent not to give in.’ As can be seen in the examples above, part of the experience of courage and bravery in these contexts was that of fearlessness. Brehanu dauntlessly broke his gun; many faced up to their interrogators and defended their secret destination without consternation; others boldly challenged the shifta. When they reacted to a situation with no fear or trepidation, they lived through an experience of personal powerfulness and inner strength while at the same time acting in accord with the value of gobez. In fact, the wayfarers frequently identified standing up fearlessly and defiantly against their aggressors with manliness. In that respect it is similar to their experience of endurance and determination. Shlomo, for example, narrates his sense of manliness and identifies it with his willingness to fight those who attacked them: After another two days of walking we encountered shifta again. These shifta were very powerful. All of them were well armed, with automatic guns. Now the Jews were well equipped too. We had about thirty or forty people with their own rifles, and a few guides with automatic guns as well. And our leading guide was a very famous person, who had been known for his powers and abilities. Anyway, I walked very near to him. I was feeling full of manliness. I felt that if anyone got injured I would take his gun and fight. I know how to fight. I kept close to those with the guns in order that if any of them got hurt I would fight.

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Courage and indomitability were also part of their emotional experience when they tackled natural obstacles and hurdles. The struggle against the elements challenged their ability to rise above their fears and anxieties. Such tests occurred when they had to slide down an extremely steep mountain slope on their bottoms with small children on their shoulders; when they lost their track at night and, in the morning, found themselves on a dangerous point without being able to retrace their steps; and, again, when crossing high rivers with strong currents. Boaz narrates: There we arranged it so that we could cross the river. But it was very frightening…we were crossing on a log over the flooding river that rose at times to the level of the log. We were taking one step at a time, and, what shall I tell you, we passed, and then the girls were left, and, we were very anxious. If any of us fell off the tree trunk that served as a bridge, no one could help them since the current was going down like a waterfall. On one side it was like a mountain of water, but when you looked down it was like a huge void and the water seemed like ropes dangling downwards. It was even hard to look down. Nevertheless we crossed and continued to walk. Their courage become heroic while performing daring acts where they saved the lives of others. Some youngsters, for example, ran amidst the shifta who were shooting, ‘paying no attention to the bullets flying between our legs’, to call for help against an attack on their families. In another case of heroism a young person had suddenly found himself with his old aunt alone on a mountain. He slowly carried her on his back down the slope, dauntlessly persisting on the trail while ignoring the possibility of being caught by the soldiers in the valley below. Heroic conduct is recounted by Amos: After three months we ran away… There is a place called Hamdite which is on the Sudanese side of the border. Only the river separates [Ethiopia from Sudan] there, and this is called Takaze… So then, well [hesitates for a moment], at that time we were only three. Three of us …one was my cousin, one was my brother. His wife—of course we were afraid that the river would take her. The river was flowing rapidly. The river was rushing, was something [pause] what shall I tell you?— was whirling powerfully, and we left her with her parents. She was supposed to go with us, but we said: ‘Only us three shall go. If we take her, she will remain in the river.’ So the three of us went out and…we realised that the soldiers were on guard there [in a low voice]. They were watching the area. All of a sudden, ‘What’s that?! what’s th-a-t?!’ The soldiers shouted: ‘Komo!’ It means ‘Stop!’ in Amharic. We did not want to stop. If we stopped they would kill us. But my cousin, where did he run? Towards where they shouted ‘Komo!’ And my brother went into the sea [river]. He…he completely drowned. He was drowning indeed! He was drinking water, I saw him, oh [in pain], only his

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head I saw. Where shall I go then? My cousin went where the soldiers are and my brother is drowning! [Looking from one direction to another]…so I went into the river to save my brother. What shall I tell you? I went to save him and got drowned myself. But later, because of my clothes, the river took me up, it lifted me upwards. I floated. And then I succeeded in grabbing my brother, pulling him, heaving him…and he crossed the river, I mean to the Sudanese side of the border. He passed and then the river took me. It took me some distance away. I know how to swim but it took me far away. Very far. Because, as you know, when there are big clouds the river fills up. So at the end God helped me. I shall not boast that I am a hero and that I went out by myself. It was God that helped me so that I came out of the river. Yet I couldn’t see! Where was my brother? [I thought:] ‘Where am I going to find him? Almighty Ruler of the World, where am I going to find my brother?’ It was better that I stayed in the river [than lose my brother], that is how I decided [felt] then. At the end I climbed up like that [shows how, on all fours], up the bank of the river. Up, up I climbed. I then returned to where I heaved him out from the river. Then I saw something [whispers]…black. Very black. Because he was in the river all his clothes were black. I thought that it might be a soldier. Maybe he would kill me if I got near him. So I called him [whispers]: ‘Who is it? Is it you, David?’ He was called Desta in Ethiopia. Desta means joy. So, ‘Yes,’ he answers me and —do you know how joyful I was? All my body trembled out of joy. Really! Then we rested there a bit. But that was not the end of their experience. Landing on the Sudanese side of the river, they soon realised that the border guards were trying to hunt them down and they had to continue running away. Amos continues: They lit the Bauza ‘What’s that? What’s th-a-t?’ Do you know how we ran?! What a run by both of us! I gave him one shoe. His shoes were gone in the river. So each of us had one shoe. And there were thorns there. These thorns got into our legs. We ran, ran and ran. Without any idea where the place was [the right direction]. We didn’t know… If we headed towards the Sudanese border guards we would be killed. So we were escaping. And the darkness of the night was absolute. And, do you know, it was hills. Hills. But all of it is full of thorn bushes. So all our body was [covered with our] blood. You know, all was blood! If the thorn caught us we pulled it out by force, and half of it was left in our legs or part of our flesh was left there on the tree [bush]. And we— what a run! Do you know what a run! And then, there are those who are called Lehawi. The Lehawi—they kill people. If they find people, they have a knife, what shall I tell you, it can be one metre long. So if they find you, that’s what they do to you [shows me a throat-cutting gesture]. It’s your end. You are turned into pieces. And we

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got there. All that running—yet at the end we arrived where the Lehawi were. Then I heard: ‘Oh-oh!’ So I said to my brother: ‘What’s that?’ Now, he fell down at the area where the Lehawi were. And I couldn’t hear him because of his throat, we didn’t have water so his throat got hoarse. It was night. We were running all night, you know, so his throat was completely dry and I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I told him: ‘I am OK, I am fine. I shall seize you by your hand and run. I shall pull you. I shall run forward.’ And I grabbed his hand and—what a run! You know, I made him fall as I dragged him. We were running and running. We wanted to move from where we were, to get away from there. Nothing else mattered. Then he said to me: ‘Our cousin, they probably killed him. We shall die here too. Why do you think that we shall get out of here alive?’ And I said: ‘We shall live! With God’s help we shall live! I shall just grab you and run.’ Then he started telling me again: ‘Our cousin, for sure they killed him. We heard the shots. We heard it. Certainly he was killed. So we shall die too.’ I shouted at him: ‘Come! Let’s go! I shall pull you.’ What a run, you know, once I made him fall, I didn’t care. I just ran forward. Where we shall arrive—I didn’t know. I just continued running. What a run it was! Amos was running the whole night, dragging his brother. Finally, when the sun came out they found themselves on a certain path. They then saw a person walking on the same path. They approached him and asked for directions to a small border town towards which they had thought they were running. He told them that they were already past it and were actually quite near to Gedaref. They were amazed. ‘Is that so? Is it really so?’ Amos kept uttering in amazement, realising that he had saved both of them. They just had to make the last leg of the road and enter Gedaref. Amos tells a story of heroism, but it is interesting to note that he ascribes his heroism to God. This is not uncommon. In many of the narratives the interviewees tend to ascribe the successful outcome of their brave behaviour not to themselves but to God. It is He who was strong enough to protect them while they were enduring the distances, facing the challenges and tackling their enemies. Whether they saved their own lives or rescued others, their bravery was just in the service of, or even secondary to, God’s ability to make things happen. The tendency to attribute the ultimate outcome of their actions to God could stem from a number of sources. Religious belief is the most obvious of these. Yet it could also be related to the Ethiopian cultural dictum, which discourages expressions of self-satisfaction, vanity and arrogance. Thus, children would be considered well mannered when they refer to their abilities with an understatement. In the same way, when interviewed, adolescents would always downplay their achievements at school. In their stories, then, the Ethiopian youngsters tell about their brave conduct and inner strength, referring to it, however, in an understated way. In accord with Amhara tradition of the warrior culture, they wish to make it known that they are gobez, but they refer to God as their source

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of power in accordance with another Ethiopian code that dictates refraining from boasting about personal abilities and achievements. There are other sources of courage that are mentioned in the interviews. Many refer to the fact that by deciding to set out in spite of the known dangers, they were already putting their lives on the line. Acting courageously and bravely on the pathway was, in a sense, just a continuation of that first decision. In addition, their decision to emigrate had separated them from things cherished and loved, and thus brought about a mindset in which people tend to be more prepared to risk everything for their goal, causing them to perform heroically. Parting with things dear to them, paradoxically, made them more prepared to risk their lives, the only thing they were left with. This resembles the same way people who are separated from friends, career and property following a decision to move from one town to another will find it easier to move on, or to take more risks in their new situation. People describe themselves as feeling ‘lighter’ in these situations, having less to lose, being less attached to things, and so on. It resembles, to an extent, people going to war, which is probably why this exact image came up in the narrative of one of the youngsters when he tried to explain to himself, as well as to me, what facilitated their acts of courage on the journey. Their performance of courage and even heroism fortified them along the rest of the journey. They then perceived themselves as hardy and fearless, and thenceforth their coping abilities were invigorated and they were able to perform in a brave or heroic manner again. Resourcefulness Resourcefulness continued to be part of their experience of bravery and inner strength on their journey, as it was during the phase of setting out. It seemed, however, to be somewhat less central on their way than during the phase of setting out. During the journey they continued to use their cognitive faculties in the service of coping and survival. These included the ability to think, plan, invent, be imaginative, be shrewd and cunning, and to be able to find original solutions to difficult situations. Ethiopian Jews experienced themselves as resourceful when they succeeded in avoiding hostile encounters, be it soldiers, government officials, shifta or hostile villagers. In order to avoid such encounters, they used various measures: they tried to walk mainly during the nights, hide when they had to cross populated areas, or walk in complete silence in other areas.11 They refrained from walking on central trails, taking instead roundabout paths and making long detours, so that they could successfully dodge army posts, camps and areas of strong government control. They also tried, as much as possible, to walk in small rather than in large groups.12 They were aware of the fact that larger groups might raise suspicions, and that therefore there would be a lot of questions concerning why they were on the trail to Sudan, where they were from, whether they had permits for leaving, etc.

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Sometimes they even posed as Christians and ‘affiliated’ themselves with a Christian village on their way in order to escape army units which were patrolling the area. They needed a considerable amount of inventiveness and subtlety to succeed in coping with, as well as later escaping from, the complicated situations caused by such a disguise. At times they had to use cunning in order to avoid being detected as Jews by people on the way. Tamar describes one such incident: We were four days or so into the journey when, one morning, we met two Christians who were passing us on the trail. So people asked them about a place where, we could sleep as well as eat. They told us that we were close to such a place. Now this was a very dangerous location for Jews. My uncle knew about such things. For that reason, we told them: ‘Sure. We will come there shortly. We might even pay you a visit when we arrive.’ They then showed us the direction, and we said, ‘OK.’ Yet after they had left we retraced our journey. If we were to follow these men we would have put ourselves in danger. They did not mind that we would have been killed. That is why we said to them: ‘Sure, we’ll just wash a bit in that stream here, and then we shall follow. You’d better continue in the meantime.’ Then we went back almost all the way, and took another trail towards Sudan. Many times, although they could not avoid hostile attacks they used their resourcefulness in coping successfully with the unfortunate and frequently dangerous ensuing situations. They often used different aspects of the political situation in Ethiopia in order to stop any attack upon themselves, or to subsequently prevent themselves from being arrested (while at the same time not revealing their true destination). One girl tells what the grown ups did in order to stop the soldiers from shooting at their group. They called out to the soldiers and told them that they were just simple people on the trek, merchants going to sell and buy things, and that, in fact, they were with women and children, thus testifying to their innocent intents. When the commander ordered the soldiers to hold their fire and then started to interrogate them, they claimed that they were on their way to Humara, a common goal of many Ethiopians during that period. At other times they used knowledge of the hostility between different factions in Ethiopia in the service of their own survival. Ori, for example, tells how they used their knowledge of hatred between the shifta and the authorities by telling the shifta how much we suffered from the government, and stories like that, so they would sometimes beat us a bit less than the others, or search less for money on our bodies, so we would have something left for further survival on the journey. Others would use information about the conflict and hostility between the Sudanese guards and the shifta, especially in certain areas, in order to save them-

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selves. There was, for example, a group of Jews who had noticed the shifta approaching from the distance. Some youngsters quickly put to use their knowledge that the Sudanese regarded this zone as within their control (though on the Ethiopian side of the border), and hence wouldn’t allow people with guns in that area. The youngsters hastily decided to escape and run in the direction of the Sudanese border to inform the guards, and by doing so they succeeded in saving their relatives. In this and similar situations the youths felt that quick thinking and acting was instrumental in saving their group. Inventive thinking was also used to devise methods for facing up to possible attacks. Brehanu describes their method of defence if danger occurred on the narrow mountainous trails: When we set out we did not go all of us together. Some went in the front, with a gun, others followed behind…the women and children as well as the old walked in the middle of the proceeding line on the narrow trail. The young, with our sticks and guns, then marched at the front, at the back, and some on hidden paths on the right and left sides. Therefore, if we tackled shifta and they told those at the front to stop, they would, yet by the time they finished arguing and so on the others would arrive and surprise the shifta [laughs]. [Many times this was assisted by a pre-planned system of warning along these lines.] We had a code call to communicate in case something happened. It was a name. If I heard that name shouted in the distance, I knew that these were my people in trouble. If, however, they were caught, they devised plans for escape. One large group, for example, was intercepted by the army in an area close to the Ethiopian border. They were arrested and imprisoned in Abderafi. The group consisted of a few extended families who had set out from Wolkite. Since there were so many of them they were imprisoned in a special big building outside the regular prison. The group was told that a decision had been made to return them to Gondar as soon as some means of transportation for such a large group became available. In spite of that, as one of the members of this group relates, ‘while they were making plans in one direction we were devising plans in the opposite direction. One night we succeeded in getting organised quickly and escaped.’ They then went down the river to a point where it was not likely that anyone would try crossing and where the guards were less vigilant, and crossed the border to the Sudanese side. Others relate how they used cunning and inventiveness in order to escape from captivity by local people. A group of six youngsters, for instance, were captured on their way towards Sudan. At one time, a relatively young person was put to guard them for a while. They saw this as their opportunity to run away. They crouched under a table and devised a plan, and then, with the excuse of having to stretch a bit and move their ‘bones’ around the place, they suddenly disappeared into the forest, leaving their guard shocked and helpless behind.

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Others used Ethiopian cultural codes as well as known local norms to save relatives or friends from various attackers. Elazar used his knowledge of what was ‘acceptable behaviour with the Wolkite Christians’ in order to save his niece, who was kidnapped by a local person. Elazar approached the kidnapper in a respectful manner and told him that, as far as he knew, the Christians of Wolkite did not use the practice of taking someone else’s wife for sexual purposes. The Christian then asked if she was Elazar’s wife, the latter lied unwaveringly, and so his niece was saved from her captivity. Bravery and inner strength in Sudan As life in Sudan was in some aspects so different from that on the trekking journey, there was also a change in the expressions of bravery and inner strength which took precedence: resourcefulness became central, and leadership a significant aspect of their conduct. Endurance and determination Inner strength was experienced in Sudan through the Jews’ ability to endure a period of severe dearth. This took the form of a significant and sometimes extreme shortage of food, water and medicine, culminating in the period of the Ethiopian famine in 1984/5, but building up to it in the preceding years. Whereas the journey towards Sudan had activated one of the core symbols of the gobez, i.e. that of the young person who can endure the mountainous Herculean trek subsisting on chick-peas alone, a different image constituted a gobez in relation to endurance in Sudan. This was the image of the person who can survive periods of dearth.13 Unlike the Ethiopian part of the journey, where strength was needed to run long distances, in Sudan it was required in order to stand for hours on end, in spite of thirst and exhaustion, in the long queues for water; and then to be able to cross hostile areas in the camp where the water could be snatched from them by others, bringing it safely to the family or the youth group. After a period of holding on while enduring the severe shortage of food, where even what they ate was at times unsuitable and far from nourishing, they were weakened to such a degree that the carrying out of this task of water supply was considered an exacting exercise. Success in such an endeavour meant an experience of robustness and toughness. Their endurance was tested for the final time while walking through the desert outside Gedaref, secretly escaping from Sudan. This was a somewhat similar experience to walking on the journey (even if for a shorter distance), and as they were particularly exhausted after a long period in the refugee camps in Sudan, overcoming this last phase of their passage tested their ability to endure.

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Resourcefulness Ethiopian Jews needed to develop ways of surviving while living among a hostile population. Mainly, they had to find ways of hiding their Jewish identity as well as their final destination and of locating and connecting with the Israeli support and escape network. Since the Sudanese experience necessitated innumerable interactions with other people, the Jews were involved in many more verbal encounters; thus, high survival value was attached to the way they managed them. Words seemed to be more powerful in Sudan: one needed to think and answer quickly, to be able to lie with no hesitation, and so forth. In addition, the need to keep their identity secret forced them to disguise themselves as people from different ethnic groups. In that respect, they employed the complexities of the situation and its chaotic nature in an intelligent way to their own advantage. Crossing the border to Sudan was, as they perceived, a special test for their resourcefulness. It was there (in the more official border points) that they had to reply to inquisitive questions, in particular those relating to their reason for coming to Sudan. Some posed as very ill at this point, hoping that the Sudanese would take pity on them, refraining from sending them back to Ethiopia and letting them enter Sudan. Many others felt aware of their intelligence in being able to tell the right cover story. One of the young people depicts how people of different age groups invented different stories. The students used to talk about disruption of their studies due to ideological differences or forced conscription; the older villagers usually employed stories connected with the war in their area, their houses being burnt, their fields and property plundered or confiscated by one or the other of the warring camps.14 Some said they were going to visit a Muslim friend and would mention the name of someone they actually knew or make up a name with a Muslim sound to it. Being considered Muslims, they believed, meant being better received by the Sudanese. Employing a Muslim identity was also used beyond the border point, within the refugee camps and in Gedaref. Marito, for example, used the Muslim period of fasting to avoid eating meat (or anything else) in the home of rich Ethiopian Christians in Sudan where she worked for a while. She told them she was a Muslim and therefore was fasting during the day and would eat at night. Others disguised themselves as Christians. Daniel recounts an experience related to such a disguise. They were sitting with Tigrean Christians in one of the refugee camps. The Christians were telling them about the Jews. They said: Many Jews came here. They are leaving. They have a country, we do not know where or what is the country’s name. But one day a thousand Jews arrive, the next day they are not here. We do not know where they escape and how they disappear. These are dangerous people.

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Daniel continues to tell how he and the other Jews who posed as Christians listened carefully while trying to remain as inconspicuous in their reactions as they thought suitable in such conditions: ‘And we said: “Yes. You are right. How interesting.” And they thought that we were Christians like them.’ In the Sudanese context of secrecy the Jews were resolved not to admit their Jewishness to anyone. Many families used their knowledge that non-Jews were familiar with some Jewish customs in order to disguise themselves and pose as non-Jews. They would let people see that they were doing things that are not allowed by Jewish law: they would buy non-kosher food, even meat which was not killed in the Jewish ritualised way. They would afterwards find ways of secretly discarding it. They would accept visitors on a Saturday, sometimes people who had come with the purpose of checking on their identity, and they would light fires, prepare coffee for the visitors, even heat some food, in order to convince their visitors of their Christian or Muslim identity. Most difficult of all was burying their dead in a Christian way in order to disguise themselves. This point was further discussed in the chapter dealing with Jewish identity (Chapter 4). Some recount how they cunningly asked Sudanese officials about schemes for getting out of Sudan to destinations other than Israel, such as Canada, the United States, Germany and even Saudi Arabia. They used it in order ‘to confuse them’, as well as to get information without giving away their true identity. They felt themselves resourceful when they succeeded in these roundabout actions. At times they would ask about family reunification schemes, claiming they had relatives in such a destination, casually mentioning a relative in Israel as well. Some times this actually got them on the right track to their escape. Occasionally, however, it was important that they reveal their real identity. I refer to the fact that in some cases relief workers and Sudanese individuals were sympathetic to their cause and willing to help. These people were motivated by a variety of reasons. A major reason was the conviction that if a refugee had a country that wished to admit him/her then everything should be done to help them reach that country, no matter which country it was. Some of the relief workers were Jewish themselves, which made them particularly understanding to the plight of the Ethiopian Jews (Gold 1992). Others observed that the Jews were the most wretched of the refugees and should particularly be helped. Finally, there were among the Sudanese a handful of individuals who were paid to help. A situation ensued whereby while in most instances revealing their identity meant trouble, at times it meant a possibility of being rescued. This formed a communication challenge: one had to discover whether there was a hidden agenda in one’s interrogation, and then decide whether and in what way to act upon it. Aryeh was interrogated by an official at Wad el Hileau refugee camp trying to find out whether they were Jews. Aryeh suspected that the interrogator was himself ‘a white Jew’ from Europe or North America. In order to find out, the boy, 11 years old at the time, threw in hints in the form of one or two Hebrew words amidst the Amharic and English ones. He hoped that if that person was indeed Jewish he would pick up on them. As it happened he was right, and this

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became a crucial point in the boy’s survival. Aryeh perceived this ability to infer something from something else and to plan quickly how to react as a manifestation of his resourcefulness; as he recounts: ‘I wasn’t scared…! I like to talk. My father was amazed how I managed to do these things, to speak in such a way.’ Excelling in their verbal ability was thus a part of their experience of resourcefulness. Locating the Israeli support and escape network was another challenge that demanded resourcefulness on the part of the Ethiopian Jews. For reasons stated above, the arriving refugees did not identify themselves as Jews. This caused a problem for the Ethiopian-Israeli messengers trying to locate them among the Ethiopian Christians and Muslims in the crowded camps. Also, as some report, they would not stay in large groups when they arrived, but spread around in order to remain inconspicuous within the camps. Even families would sometimes split up and live in different parts of the camp. The messengers tried to walk around and see if they could locate relatives and familiar faces and then contacted them at night time. This procedure was, however, difficult to manage, mainly because the messengers did not want to wander around for too long and thus become too conspicuous themselves. In addition, when the number of Jewish arrivals grew it became much less practical. It then became the task of the arriving Jews themselves to locate these messengers and connect up with the financial support system as well as to join the queue for aliya. This was not an easy task. The Sudanese would sometimes use Ethiopian agents to expose the Jews and catch the messengers. These Ethiopians would pose as Jews and try to make others believe them and admit that they were also Jewish. This meant that there was no point in a person belonging to the community identifying himself or herself as a Jew to someone else s/he had recognised as a Jew, because this person was most probably going to deny his/her identity You therefore needed to recognise someone whom you had known personally, such as a relative or a neighbour from your village in Ethiopia. This, of course, meant that if you were the first of your village to arrive in Sudan, or just a youngster who had joined a youth group and thus knew no one in Sudan, you would need to be quite resourceful in order to get to the messengers. Moreover, if anyone came from a remote village and was known to no one, they would not be put ‘in the queue’ for aliya until someone recognised them and confirmed that they were one of the Jewish community. At times it was sheer luck that they succeeded in doing so. At other times they used some imaginative ways towards this goal. Takaleh, for example, tells how, after a long time without success, he finally thought of going around photo shops in Gedaref in the hope that some of the Jews would visit these shops. He hoped that Jews would come into these shops either to send their photos to relatives back in Ethiopia to show that they had arrived safely, or to get the passports they needed in order to get out of Sudan (through the Khartoum route). After a few months he indeed succeeded in locating a family he had known from Ethiopia as they were coming out of such a photo shop. Fortunately, they were already connected to the Israeli system, and through them he was able to get the support he needed.

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Shaul tells of how he succeeded in locating the Israeli agents in Khartoum: Somehow, we managed to overcome all these [previous troubles] and to arrive in Khartoum. We disembarked from the bus which took us for the last seven or eight hours from Gedaref, and the plan was that the Jews [operators—Israelis of Ethiopian Jewish origin] were supposed to wait for us and to take us to apartments they had pre-arranged for us. We came down but no one was waiting for us. Our life was darkened. Nobody was there for us. We just sat there expecting someone to come but no one showed up. After some time they decided there was no point in waiting any longer and somehow managed to find a cheap hotel for the families. The next day Shaul and his brother returned to the station to try to locate the people who were supposed to meet them. Shaul continues: Now, it was difficult for them to identify us as the Jews. Both of us were a bit dressed up because of my work in Gedaref, and also—we were without any children or anything else. It was only us two who had come to look for them. Now, you try to locate them but they are apprehensive of anyone who tries to find them. Suddenly I realised this and then I told my brother: ‘We should sit aside and wait. When people [the Jews] arrive from Gedaref, the operators will come to receive them. Then we shall spot them and catch up with them. Otherwise we shall never succeed in finding them among the many Ethiopians who are around here.’ We were sitting there the whole day… We sat there until evening, when, luckily, a group [of Jews] arrived from Gedaref. They were just disembarking from the bus when out of nowhere some people appeared. They had come to receive them. Well, I…we [Shaul and his brother] approached them, these operators, and told them: ‘We are also Jews. We were looking for you.’ Unfortunately the operators did not believe them. Shaul tried to convince them by telling them of his previous trip to Khartoum, in which he escorted a cousin of his and had brought her to a certain place where Jews lived in disguise. The operators, still not convinced, said that if he had been in that place once he should go there again and that someone would wait for them there. Fortunately, Shaul managed to locate the place, and thus saved his family—who by that time had been thrown on to the street by the owner of the hotel—from ending up in big trouble in Khartoum. Through his way of dealing with the whole situation, Shaul proved his resourcefulness both to himself and within his immediate social milieu. Gradually, it became known in the camps that Jews were getting some support from outside Sudan, probably from Israel or ‘America’. Because of the existing conditions in the camps, and even in towns where many refugees were residing and trying to survive, having some extra money constituted a danger.

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Unless individuals belonged to a major group in the camps, or to a large group in the neighbourhood who could retaliate when harassed, people were exposed to assaults that could lead to their death. The Jews were spread about in the camps, for reasons stated above, and were considered by others, Ethiopian Christians as well as Sudanese locals, as easy prey. They were less ready to defend themselves as a group or to complain to any authority lest they were exposed as Jews. Therefore, those among them who succeeded in getting some financial support tried to hide this information. Even those who were alone in Sudan, with no family to support, and therefore could subsist somehow, went to look for work like other refugees. Some of them tell how they were toiling hard in all kinds of work which they were not accustomed to in order to prove to their Christian neighbours that they were not getting money from any source other than their work. The Jews needed to be resourceful in order to enhance their chances of getting on to the queue for aliya as quickly and as easily as possible. They used all kinds of measures in order to manoeuvre themselves as close as possible to what they believed was the best (geographical) location for setting out. They used information which flowed along family ‘grapevines’ back to Ethiopia or was shared upon arrival at the border. This information was not always accurate, and was sometimes based on rumours alone, but nevertheless it made them try to get to these places. Some declared at the border that they had their own means for travelling into Sudan, believing that this would allow them the necessary freedom to avoid being sent to a refugee camp and so allow them to get to Gedaref instead. They thought that it would be easier to locate the messengers in Gedaref and thus they would be put in the queue faster than from the refugee camp. This was in fact true during a certain period. There were challenges which did not relate directly to their Jewishness. For example, the soldiers and officials used to charge them for transferring them to the refugee camps or trick them into changing their currency with them, giving them a fraction of its value in Sudanese money. Most of the people succumbed to this practice unknowingly. Some, though, tell how they realised what was happening and found ways to circumvent it. Elie, for example, claimed that he had no money. When the soldiers threatened that he would not be transported to the refugee camp he replied: ‘I have no money. What can you do? I am willing to stay here and work to earn the fare.’ The soldiers did not answer and continued to load the people on the lorries. There were four or five hundred of them. When everyone else was on the lorries the soldiers told Elie: ‘All right, you clever guy! Climb up with the rest of them.’ Elie felt that his quick grasp of the situation and his ability to think of a suitable solution prevented him from being abused and helped him secure his money for a more important need: the survival struggle in the camps. Others used all kinds of excuses in order to avoid and escape the Ethiopian Liberation Front’s representatives, who were actively enlisting people in the camps. The Jews had to avoid being drafted to their ranks without raising the question of

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identity. They did not use blunt refusal but delayed the time of their joining by explaining, for example, that although they were sympathetic to the Front’s cause, they would first like to recuperate from the long and taxing trek, which sounded a reasonable thing to do. In many cases they were able to stall being drafted into these Fronts. Sometimes, though, the pressure was unbearable and they had to flee the area and look for another place to live. Courage and heroism As the whole Sudanese experience was influenced by the fact that the Jews were living among people who were hostile to them and to their cause, courage and heroism were also affected by this situation: it involved, in the most part, standing up to others in Sudan. This had begun on the border and continued in the refugee camps or towns. The young people recount how they resisted the soldiers who tried to kidnap the young women or take their money. Others narrate how they opposed the constant harassment and intimidation by gangs of Ethiopian Christians or Muslims in the camps. These gangs would not let them get their rations of food, or pushed them from the water queue, or just robbed them of their share on their way back to their hut or tent. In order to overcome these hostile acts, the Jewish youngsters would sometimes get organised into defence groups. Boaz relates: After a short time we started to behave bravely…and people started to be afraid of us. We began to act like others around us, lifting up a stick [for fighting], and so on. We started to get control over the situation, to be active. People then became fearful of our small group. There were times when they felt they came close to killing those who were between them and survival. Mostly, however, it did not reach that point since, as they report, when they acted firmly it was enough to deter those who bullied and attacked them. Some describe situations where, when families were attacked, a child would run to another part of the camp to call his relatives for help and they would rush to their rescue. With stones and sticks they would then try to scare off the attackers. Yossi recounts how a Jewish man near him even slapped a soldier in the face when the latter entered his house and tried to take his money. The soldier was surprised and then ran away ‘which made us think that he might have actually been a robber disguised as an army man’. Another form of bravery was verbally facing up to harassment. In one case a youngster recognised the leader of a gang who used to attack them as someone who was claiming another identity in Sudan. The boy confronted him in front of his group declaring: ‘I recognise you. I know exactly who you are. So you do not frighten us even a bit!’ The leader was taken aback. He first checked whether the boy really knew him, and when he realised that it was true he immediately took his group and hurried away. This gang stopped harassing the Jewish young people.

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Others refused to obey orders or instructions which they perceived as putting them in danger or preventing them from improving their chances of survival. Yossi narrates how, when a fire broke out in their area of the refugee camp, the guard at the gate would not let them get out. The boy felt he was not going to comply and stay in the dangerous area. He went further away along the fence that surrounded their area, found a spot where it was dark so that no one could see him, and then climbed the fence and jumped over to the other side. In many other cases they would defy orders which restricted their movement or their travel from the refugee camps into the towns. At times they would be caught, sometimes tortured or humiliated, but nevertheless tried to escape again. One of the youngsters reports how he was caught, together with his friends, and was beaten and ridiculed by the Sudanese commander of the camp. Then he was ordered to present himself daily in the commander’s office so that he could not run away. After a few months of this the commander had to go away for one day; the youngster seized the opportunity and, together with some of his friends, ran away again. At other times their courage and bravery was expressed through saving others, relatives in particular, from the camps where conditions were very poor at times, and smuggling them into the towns where they stood a better chance of survival. Bravery also reached the level of heroism when they participated in the rescue operation in which the community was brought out of Sudan. Aryeh was one of these youngsters, and he portrays how they disguised themselves as Arabs, wearing galabas15 and other costumes, and led a large group of people in lorries hundreds of miles to the north. They headed towards a certain point near the town of Port Sudan, on the shores of the Red Sea. They drove at night, sometimes using side roads and then paths in the desert area. Arriving at a pre-planned point near the beach, they met with Israeli marine commandos who were waiting for them. At this point a problem arose: they were suddenly faced with two Bedouins who had spotted them by chance. These Bedouins first threatened to shoot the people and then tried to force them to pay ransom money for keeping silent about the reason the fleeing people and the commandos were there. The boy tells that they had no other alternative but to kill them. They could not endanger the lives of everyone and that route of escape by trusting that the Bedouins would not try to doublecross them and to make more money by reporting their whereabouts to the Sudanese authorities in the area. He narrates how one of the community, together with one Israeli commando, tricked them. They told the Bedouins that they were going to pay, yet swiftly and silently overcame them. Then they signalled quickly to boats in the sea, whereupon rubber dinghies approached the shore with more commandos, providing the wayfarers with lifebelts and taking them in small groups to the larger boats that awaited them. They were hidden until all came aboard, and then the boats sailed to the Israeli Red Sea port of Eilat. Being part of this network of rescuers, swift operators and commandos boosted Aryeh’s self-esteem and made this adolescent boy feel that he was a hero risking his life for what was most important of all—getting the people to Israel.

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I may add that even younger children would sometimes share these heroic sentiments. These were children who joined their older brothers or their parents, who were acting as operators; nevertheless, from their point of view (probably through identifying with their kin) they were part of the heroic operation. A different kind of heroism was experienced when operators or messengers were caught and tortured by the Sudanese and still did not reveal the details of the secret support and escape network. Their instructions were to try to protect their secrets for just a day or two, to allow the network to reorganise itself and move people around. Yet they knew that even two days would not be long enough, that it would be impossible for all the distributors and operators to disappear from the area so that the Sudanese would not catch them. Nor was it possible in many cases and at certain periods for whole families to find a new home fast enough. Hence, the captured operators would try to hold their secrets as long as they could, sometimes even for months, enduring the stupefying torture. Their experience was highly valued and appreciated by others and the community indeed considered them to be heroes. Leadership Another aspect was the ability to find within themselves enough mental powers and resourcefulness to be able to lead others. I here take the point of view, following a central approach in social psychology, that leadership is an expression of the interaction between personal skills and the situation the group is going through (as opposed to theories which view leadership only as a personality trait). We may then be able to consider the leading roles undertaken by young people during the journey. These will be seen, according to such a theory, as the ability by different youngsters (and others) to bring in a particular skill relevant to a specific situation with which the group was faced at that time. The group would thus let this individual lead it out of the condition. Leadership played a greater part in their experiences of Sudan than on the journey. The adolescents would take responsibility for others—parents, grandparents or women and small children—and lead them to safety. They would direct their relatives from a refugee camp to a town or from points near the border to places further on the Sudanese route towards Israel, or they would initiate actions to secure other people’s survival. Elie tells that when the death toll rose in the camp of Um-Rakuba he led his family and others to Gedaref, where he intended to rent a house for all of them. It so happened that on that night they were caught by the Sudanese, and were taken to a refugee camp closer to the Ethiopian border with the intention of deporting them back to Ethiopia. The camp authorities were told by their captors that these were Jews trying to escape to Israel and thus should be watched. The Jews were warned that whoever tried to escape would be severely punished. Elie remembers one soldier even telling them that ‘We will cut off your right hands if you move from here.’ However, Elie was not deterred. He insisted that they

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should try again to reach Gedaref, where they stood a chance of being taken to Israel. When other family members expressed concern over the soldiers’ warnings he argued insistently that they would not survive where they where and that they just had to go on. He then found a local person who, for a significant sum of money, would take the risk of showing them a part of their way back. At night Elie organised the crossing of the river in a small boat and led his relatives from the camp to Gedaref, and later to Israel. His courage and bravery as a leader were felt not only by himself but by his relatives, who congratulated him for saving their lives and enabling them to arrive in Israel. Referring to his role as a leader in this and other instances, especially in relation to his peers and the younger children, Elie explains: ‘They did not have a father and mother there. They saw me as a parent or an older brother to them. So I took care of them as much as I could.’ At times when the situation became emotionally unbearable, one of the youngsters would take a leading role and cheer others up. Almanesh recounts how at one time suffering became intolerable for her and her adolescent friends. Death was ruling the camps and the conditions were extremely difficult. Following the loss of sisters and brothers, parents or grandparents in Sudan, all of the youngsters were very distressed. They were sitting and wailing. But then one of them stood up among the crying group and said: I am proud of what we have come through. Look how we have coped, how strong we are. We should all be proud of ourselves for our resilience and inner strength in going through the bad and the good, living through happiness and hardship alike. Almanesh continues in her account: ‘Somehow, his words carried us through the situation and we started to look at it in a new light.’ Their ability to lead was also experienced when the young people succeeded in arranging medical help for the very sick among the community within the refugee camps. Hospitalisation in the camp’s clinic was a complicated issue for Jewish people. The Jews learned that approaching the clinics also meant that they would be asked for personal details and some family history for diagnostic as well as administrative reasons. They dreaded the possibility of their identity being exposed by the Sudanese, Ethiopian or even the European workers in the clinics. They believed that it would put them and their families in even more danger than their illness. Therefore they usually refrained altogether from approaching the clinics for help, a fact that resulted more than once in death. Some of the young people, however, tell how they took the initiative and managed, in one way or another, to secure a safe hospitalisation for a sick person: a little girl and her mother, a delirious friend or a pregnant woman. In these cases these adolescents organised a round-the-clock vigil of a few assertive young Jews near the sick person so that she or he would not have to be concerned about dealing with the clinic’s staff or other camp authorities. When such an operation was successful,

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especially when a very ill or even a dying person was saved, it enhanced their perception of themselves as being capable of leadership. Another aspect of leadership in Sudan was expressed in the ability of adolescent boys to protect the girls and women from the dangers that awaited them, mainly the constant threat of being kidnapped or sexually abused. On occasion, when someone needed to return to Ethiopia to bring out the rest of the family, he would put an adolescent boy in charge of the women and little children. In Gedaref, most girls refrained from walking the streets in fear of being kidnapped or otherwise attacked, and so the boys had to take care of buying food and managing the other aspects of their survival. Those who were selected to be part of the secret support system and had become distributors experienced a leading role within the community. They realised that they were indeed providers of an important service, one which was essential for the group’s survival. Their closeness to the Israeli source, and the fact that they had access to some privileged information concerning the Sudanese situation in general and the progress of the rescue operation in particular, made them feel that they were privileged members of a highly select leading group.16 Some of the young people led others during the last phase of the ‘Sudanese period’, that of escaping from Sudan. I refer in particular to those whose escape route was via Khartoum. Adolescents were selected to lead others on public transport to the capital. Moreover, the operators in Khartoum needed people who could lead the groups of Ethiopian Jews throughout their flights to Europe and represent them within the aeroplanes and in the various airports. The operators were looking for young persons they thought would be up to the task. The adolescents were sometimes chosen on the basis of their conduct during the few days in close compounds before being transported, or were pointed out by the Gedaref operators. At other times they were just picked in haste during the few hours of cautious waiting in an area near the airport. More often than not they were spotted in Khartoum, either because of the way they handled themselves in a situation or according to some special resource at their command, such as English, which was very important for that last part of their journey. These adolescents were given specific tasks: they were in charge of all the passports, responded to questions .addressed to them by the crew, explained to the old and the very young how to use the aeroplane toilets and other facilities. They would also, upon arrival, lead the group in the European airport and were responsible for showing the pre-agreed sign which identified them as a Jewish group to the operators on the European side. Obviously, these young people had never previously experienced flying in an aeroplane. As happens in situations of uncertainty, the members of the group they were supposed to lead felt very dependent on these young leaders and therefore directed any question or problem to them to solve. The adolescents who succeeded in leading the people in Khartoum, and in bringing them safely to Europe and then on to Israel, won the admiration of the operators as well as of the group, and felt sure of their powers and their ability to lead.

7 THE IMPACT OF THE JOURNEY Psycho-social issues

Meaning and coping As we have seen, there are three central themes within the Ethiopian Jews’ narratives of the journey: Jewish identity, suffering, and bravery/inner strength. These themes constitute the major dimensions of meaning of the journey. It is interesting to see how these themes are brought together under one image which is developed and consolidated during the journey and which turns into a core symbol of it: that of the Israelites’ Exodus out of Egypt. The Ethiopian Jews perceived that they were reliving the myth of the original Exodus of their ancestors the Israelites out of their bondage in Egypt. Shaul describes a particularly moving experience when he had already been some years in Israel, and was invited—though he was still very young—to lead the Passover ceremony for fellow Ethiopian Jews who had just arrived. A major aspect of this ceremony is the reading of the Haggada, the mythical story of the Exodus of the Israelites. At a certain point every person present is asked to feel as if he or she were the one going out of Egypt. When Shaul reached that passage he said to them: ‘I don’t have to explain to you what it means to go out of Egypt.’ He then continued: ‘In their faces I saw full agreement to that sentence. They had really felt the Exodus out of Egypt. There was a lot of excitement and emotion on their faces.’ Other interviewees associated various experiences on their journey with those of the Israelites in the desert. Brehanu recalled: When we went out of Ethiopia, the haste in which the food was prepared reminded me of my father’s stories of how the Israelites prepared their matzot [unleavened bread]. I said to my father: ‘This is like the Exodus out of Egypt.’ He replied: ‘This is true, and it is good that you recalled it. It is exactly the same.’ Marito, a 9-year-old girl, recounts how they had been safe on their way because the clouds covered them:

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It was summer then, a very intense summer, yet all the time that we walked, whenever we were out of the bush, we were covered by clouds so that the sun never touched us. We said: ‘God is making this happen.’ The ensuring of safety by means of clouds is a known theme in the original Exodus story: for example, God puts the cloud between the Israelites and the pursuing Egyptian army so the Egyptians cannot find them, and the Israelites cross the Red Sea in safety. The story of the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt to Israel is considered by many to be the central myth of the Jewish people, of their passage from slavery to freedom. The Israelites wandered for forty years in the desert, during which time they encountered enemy attacks, hunger, thirst and epidemics. According to the Bible, this long period of wandering and suffering was designed by God as a test of faith, for all those who doubted God’s power would perish in the desert. Some Bible scholars also interpret it as a process of transformation from the mindset of slaves to that of free people. It was during that time that the Israelites ‘encountered’ God and became a people, His chosen people. In essence this is a story of becoming, and it is a process of selection of those who deserved to enter the land of God. Thus, Ethiopian Jews saw themselves, like the Israelites, as walking through an unknown land, facing obstacles, enemies, sickness and death. They too were on their way to becoming Israelis.1 They also saw themselves as ‘a drop, a stream or a river, on its way to the sea, where no one would then be able to distinguish between river and sea’. In Israel, among fellow Jewish people, they would ‘feel more complete’. They believed they were led and guarded by God while going to His chosen land. They leaned on His power to make things happen, while at the same time, like the Israelites, they committed acts of bravery and showed their inner strength in making the journey. As in the ancient myth, Ethiopian Jews too believed that their journey served as a process of selection and purification. It ensured that only the righteous, those who are deserving, would enter the land of Israel. This belief seems to have developed on the way, in response to the suffering and misfortunes of the journey. They had set out with the Utopian image of Israel, handed down over the generations, as ‘a land of milk and honey’, where only righteous people, black people dressed in white gowns, lived: a place where all troubles would come to an end. They made better sense of the obstacles on their way, as well as of the harsh conditions and loss of life in the refugee camps in Sudan, in terms of a process of selection and purification. Since the right to enter ‘Yerussalem’ was reserved for the righteous only, the hardships were seen as a system of selection and purification through which the worthy cleansed themselves of sins and wrong-doings and proved their righteousness. In my view the special place given to this aspect of the ancient myth derives from the central role of purity and impurity within Ethiopian Jewish culture. Purity/impurity rules played an important role and were, according to some

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researchers, one of the major characteristics separating Jews from Christians in Ethiopia (Kahana 1988; Trevisan-Semi 1985, 1993). These rules affected everyday familial relationships. For example, women used a special hut during menstruation and were separated from the rest of the village, according to biblical rules. Jews returning to their village after contact with Christians or other non-Jews were expected to observe the attenkun custom of purification through immersion (literally meaning ‘do not touch me’). Hence the Christians called the Jews ‘the people who smell of water’ or, pejoratively, ‘stink of water’.2 Many researchers and practitioners have indicated that ideologically motivated people cope better with difficulties and stressful life-events. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning (1970), Victor Frankl describes how people with some motivation to live—whether it be a cause to fight for, a political ideology, a vision of the world they wanted to achieve, or some other goal—fared better in Nazi concentration camps than those who had no such cause. The supportive and protective function of ideology is also illustrated by Bruno Bettelheim in TheInformed Heart (1970) and by Jerome Frank in Persuasion and Healing (1961). Recent research and observations in refugee camps in different parts of the world have shown that adolescent refugees show less symptomatology when they belong to an ideological movement, and can use this to explain to themselves their encountering of hardships, in contrast to those merely trying to survive in the camps, who cannot use this reasoning (Punamaki-Gitai 1992; Summerfield 1992; Summerfield and Toser 1991; Reynell 1989; Dynes 1991). It has also been argued that enduring pain and loss is facilitated when conceptualised as part of a group experience, in contrast to an individualised perception.3 It seems to me that their Jewish identity and the image of the Exodus served as an ideology for Ethiopian Jews. This ideology, which helped them make better sense of the harrowing hardships, also helped them in coping with these hardships. The symbol of the Israelite Exodus, which wove together the three themes of the journey, also served to connect them to their origins during a time of great change, a time when they were ‘going out of their known structure’ (Turner 1969: Chapter 4).4 It reconfirmed what was most important to them in this situation of liminality (Van Gennep 1909) and the reason for their migration, i.e. their Jewish identity. Their suffering thus acquired the meaning of confirming their identity. The meaning of the journey and their capacity to cope with it thus became interrelated. Trauma The concept of trauma does not have a straightforward definition. Psychologists, psychoanalysts and researchers use it in a variety of meanings (Levine 1999; Sandler et al. 1991; Dawes 1992; Furst 1967). I shall not attempt to add theoretically to the concept or even to discuss in full its lack of clarity. For the purposes of this study, suffice to say that psychoanalysts and psychologists use the term to denote two main meanings:

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1 an event that happened in the external world together with the way it was subjectively experienced;5 the external and internal reality are put together through the common reference to a ‘traumatic state’ or ‘situation’ which is their nexus; 2 some pathological consequences which are interpreted—through extrapolation backwards in time—as having been initiated by the trauma. These dimensions of meaning (Sandler and Sandler 1983; Sandler et al. 1991) can also be found in the literature on refugee trauma as, for example, in Mollica’s Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ) (Mollica et al. 1992) and in many others (Agger 2000; Ahearn 2000; Zur 1999; Leydesdorff et al. 1999; Lacy-Rogers et al. 1999; BenEzer 1999). The concept of trauma can be conceived in the context of the present study in the first sense mentioned above, but, as will become apparent later in this chapter, also in the formulation which relates to its pathological consequences. The meaning employed will become clear, I hope, within each context. Ethiopian Jewish adolescents experienced traumatic events on their journey. Either one event or a series of painful events constituted these traumatic experiences.6 For some adolescents, the whole journey experience was coloured by their traumatisation, which was accordingly perceived mainly as a traumatic experience. How are traumatic experiences detected in this study? As it is a study of narratives, traumas were detected through their narrative signals. I would like to suggest that when an interviewee is recounting a traumatic experience, even if it is an experience with which they had come to terms, it will still produce particular forms of expression in their narratives. In other words, traumas are related differently from the rest of the story. These signals of traumas within the narration are listed below. However, no claim is made here to have a mechanism for ‘diagnosing’ trauma through narratives. It is merely a detection of the ways in which traumas are expressed within them. It is worth adding that in many of the cases there is a combination of two or more of these narration signals of trauma within the account. Eleven of these narrative signals of trauma were identified within the present study: • Self-report A report by the individual that a certain event was traumatic (carries a traumatic significance through its related emotions, meaning, or consequences), e.g. telling of its special painfulness, pointing out an event as being extremely distressing or wounding, or referring to its particularly negative (and/or long-term) unsettling effects on the individual. This may also take the form of reporting an ‘image of ultimate horror’ (Lifton 1979)— an event or a ‘scene’ which serves as a symbol of a series of traumas experienced or

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witnessed. These traumas are thereby represented by one which is related as being the most horrifying of them all, due to its particular meaning for the individual.7 A ‘hidden’ event An event which was not narrated in the main story but comes up during the probing phase, accompanied by emotion/s of a distressing sort which were not previously expressed in the story, such as crying, grief, shame, guilt, etc.8 Long silence A long silence either before or after the narration of a certain event or a particular part of it, which seems to have a particularly painful or tormenting quality for the individual. Loss of emotional control Sudden loss of control over emotions relating to an event which is being narrated—sobbing, rage, etc. —which is not a characteristic of this person’s recounting.9 Emotional detachment or numbness Reporting a series of events, or one event, which seem to have had a horrifying quality or consequences for the individual, but with no emotions involved in the narration, as if there is a ‘forced detachment’ due to its traumatic quality, isolating it from the emotional life of the individual; the individual then seems to be staying rigorously within the verbal mode of reporting (frequently with constancy of tone of voice and ‘frozen’ facial expression and body gestures), not engaging their feelings at all in this act, as if suffering from what has been described in the literature as ‘psychic numbness’. Repetitive reporting Retelling a distressing experience in its entirety, or an extraordinary reiteration of its minute details, time and again, as if the narrator is unable to move on, which is in contrast to his/her style of narration in the rest of the account. Losing oneself in the traumatic event ‘Disappearing’ from the reality of the interview amidst narration of a traumatic event, as if ‘falling’ into oneself, being submerged and overwhelmed by the event in the middle of recounting it. Also not being able to emerge without the help of the interviewer; or without some ‘shaking’ of themselves (sometimes physically as well as ‘emotionally’), as if trying to climb out of a hole, maybe a ‘mental hole’ they fell into because of recounting the trauma. This is often expressed as an extraordinarily extended period of silence. The difference between this and the long silence described above is that this one seems to be without an end, and there are clear signs that the person ‘is not here’, ‘not with his current self; rather, he or she is completely immersed in the traumatic event. Intrusive images Scenes or images of a traumatic event, or a particular fraction of it, which come up involuntarily throughout the process of narration as a kind of quick ‘flash’, clearly distracting the person’s train of thought and interrupting the intended flow of the narrative. The person sometimes ‘apologises’, or verbally expresses uneasiness, while admitting the recurrence of that image.

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• Forceful argumentation of conduct within an event Arguing the reasons for behaviour within a situation instead of telling the facts, as if the traumatic quality of the event is connected to the person’s conduct in that situation which s/he feels s/he should justify. The argumentation seems to reflect a wish to prevent an independent conclusion by the interviewer about what happened.10 • Cognitive-emotional disorientation Characteristically, blurring the boundaries between the event being recounted and the situation of participating in the interview. This may be indicated in relating to the interviewer as if he or she were a figure within the story, without the ‘as if quality that is sometimes used in recounting, (i.e. shouting at the interviewer as though in answer to an interrogative figure within the narrative; or by the narrator’s loss of sense of exactly where he/she is, within the story as well as in reality, yet continuing to recount the event or uttering unintelligible words in trying to express oneself until breaking down in tears or coming back ‘to their senses’, or until comforted and relaxed by the interviewer).11 • Inability to narrate a story at all Wishing to narrate it but getting stuck, typically at the starting point of the narration. If repeated attempts at narrating fail, one has to resort to a question and answer mode of interview. This mode of questioning will also circumvent the particular contents of the trauma (unknown to the interviewer at first). The process underlying this inability to narrate could be understood as follows: as long as a trauma remains alive, active, not processed, the person will have difficulty in placing it as part of his/ her life history. In such cases this will also affect the life story as a whole. The person will find it difficult to construct a story for him/herself that will include the trauma in a ‘manageable’ way (so that s/he can successfully ‘sail through it’). The trauma will still be too emotionally (psychically) charged for that to happen, and will interfere with any recounting of the event to others. Roy Schafer (1981) argues that when we tell our life story to others we are always telling it to ourselves as well. An inability to tell it to ourselves therefore prevents us from narrating it to others. What he means is that the boundaries between the experiencing self —that of the event—and the constructing self— that of the present (in fact a reconstructing self)—cannot be maintained; they will keep dissolving. In such cases, therefore, the life story cannot be narrated.12 Changes in voice and body language The narration of trauma is often accompanied by changes in voice and body language. The tone of the voice, its pitch or its ‘colouring’ will change while narrating a traumatic event. It may turn quiet, it may become hoarse, or the opposites of these, but at any event it will be different from the person’s voice while telling the rest of the story. Facial expressions and body posture may also change while recounting a traumatic event. A person may ‘turn into’ him/herself by

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adopting an ‘embryonic’ posture on the chair, signifying pain (a universal genetically based posture of humans when experiencing pain; see Morris 1977). Or they may cover their trembling lips with their hands, trying to control their emotional expression, but then give way to crying. Some may clutch their legs strongly together, as if ‘wrapping one around another’ during the whole recounting of the trauma and then release them again. Specific gesticulations of the hands also appear sometimes during the telling of traumatic experiences, and end when the narration is completed. All these serve as additional, non-verbal signals for detection of a traumatic event during the act of narration. The use of the above-mentioned methods to detect traumatic experiences in the Ethiopian Jews’ journey stories reveals that these were brought about by a range of situations. These include: life-threatening situations; suffering the loss of someone close; experiencing a total inability to walk any further; subjection to hunger, thirst or what seemed to be fatal disease; suffering persecution and torture; witnessing any or all of these in others, whether as a single incident, jointly or repeatedly. Before discussing specific traumatic experiences in detail, let me underline two aspects of the journey which were both sources of trauma and raised the overall level (‘base-line’) of pain, thus lowering the threshold for traumatisation. The first aspect was the separation from parents, and the second was the shock following the realisation that they had to stay in Sudan for a long period. Separation affected them because it made them experience the journey without the particular and almost irreplaceable support that the proximity of parents normally gives to children (Bowlby 1980, 1960, 1951; Mahler 1979; Robertson and Robertson 1971; BenEzer 1985).13 Besides protecting them against real dangers, parents supply children and adolescents with a feeling of safety which affects the way they deal with events and whether events are experienced as traumatising. Moreover, by their verbal and non-verbal responses parents also interpret the environment for their children. Parents supply the children with the meaning of occurrences, and thus of their traumatic or non-traumatic signifi-cance.14 Parents and family served as an even stronger protective and supportive layer for the individual child in the Ethiopian context, where decision-making is maintained by familial authority. Children therefore were not accustomed to handling their social (multigenerational) world and making decisions by themselves regarding things of major consequence. Moreover, they are more emotionally refuelled15 within the intensive relations of the Ethiopian family and, as stated above (Chapter 5), the individual often feels incomplete when separated from his or her parents for a long time. Separation, therefore, exposed the adolescents and made them more prone to traumatisation. The shock of arriving in Sudan and discovering that it was not Jerusalem was a second factor affecting their vulnerability to trauma (cf. Chapter 5). It turned the immediate gratification of getting to Israel, which they were expecting when they reached Sudan, into the matter of dealing with postponement, which demoralised them significantly. It also raised questions in relation to the wisdom of their initial

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decision to set out, and put the sacrifices they had already made in a new light. Separation from parents and the shock suffered on arriving in Sudan were therefore not only sources of trauma in themselves for some of the group, but also lowered the overall resistance of the adolescents to potentially traumatising events occurring on the journey and in Sudan itself. Many of the events of this journey would have traumatised anyone who had experienced them. Traumatisation, however, is related to, and imbued with, the meaning of the event for the individual (Garbarino 1992a; Klein 1976). The meaning given to any of a series of events is related, among other factors, to one’s life history and personal biases, priorities and sensitivities. Following are six examples of trauma experienced by the young persons. These include experiences of death within the family, separation, family disintegration, trauma related to Jewish identity, humiliation and violation of body boundaries. While illustrating these major areas of traumatisation I shall try to clarify the subjective experience and meaning of the traumatic event for each individual. Tena was constantly ‘on the edge’ in Sudan as she had previously gone through a traumatic separation from her two little children. They had to be left behind in Ethiopia. She was constantly worried about what might happen to them in Ethiopia and was feeling terribly guilty about leaving them, even though she had had practically no choice. Following an incident where she was in danger of being sexually abused (although this did not actually materialise), she broke down completely and had visions of her children falling into various places and getting killed. She refused to eat anything16 and spent six months ‘between death and life’. ‘I went crazy,’ she says, and perceives her mental state as a direct result of the enforced separation from her children. Tena’s case is thus one of cumulative trauma, based mainly on the tormenting separation with its taxing of emotional energy due to its unresolved nature. The meaning of that separation for her had become unbearable in Sudan, so that an additional traumatic experience had brought her beyond her breaking point and very close to death. Marito exemplifies a traumatic experience that is connected to the spiritual aspect of life. She was a devout Jewish believer. God was a significant presence in her young life. Since the age of 7 she had fasted on Astessaryo (the Day of Atonement) and other Jewish dates in the calendar, although she was not obliged under Jewish law to do so at her young age. She did it, as she explains, ‘so that I would deserve to arrive in Jerusalem’. She was 9 years old when she started the journey with her family. Along the way she continuously and strongly felt that God was watching, guiding and protecting the group of walkers. At one point ‘He sent us His cloud in order to shield us from the burning sun.’ Marito continued to observe Jewish laws throughout the journey, although it was not at all easy. One day, when they were already in Sudan, some people were trying to expose their identity as Jews. They came to visit them on the holy day of the Sabbath, knowing that in order to host them properly and respectfully, the suspected Jews would have to light a fire on the Sabbath, which is a very serious sin for a Jew. Marito and her family had no choice. They wanted to

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survive. They lit the fire. For Marito, however, this incident has become traumatic. While telling me about the experience she conveyed a deep sense of guilt and remorse which she finds hard to overcome. When we think of the significance of Jewish belief in her young life, of her devoutness and of the constant presence of God in her life, this should not surprise us. It is interesting to note that this experience would also be the yardstick by which she would measure her encounter with Israel and whether it was worth this sin. Yoav, a 13-year-old boy from the village of Keftah, Wolkite, went through the traumatising experience of death within the family. He lost his nephew during their stay in Sudan. He did not recount it at first; apparently it was too painful. The story only came up in the probing phase of the interview. When asked about deaths on the way he became silent and then recounted: My sister’s son, he was three years younger than I [pauses]. I was there [in Sudan] when he died. I do not know the cause of his death. It is hard [silence]. Hard. A child, you grow up with him, are fond of him, and suddenly—[silence] especially to the family, they do not have [another] son, only girls. Yoav stops his story. There is a very long silence; his eyes become wet; he begins to sob. After a long cry he ‘rolls’ into himself and keeps silent. At times he still rubs his eyes as if trying to block another tide of tears. A very long silence ensues. I try to help him by gently asking a question, but he is still very much immersed within himself and does not hear it. He just raises his head asking: ‘Eh?’ [Pardon?] I repeat myself, but he still seems far away and answers a different question. After another long silence he seems ready to continue. He remembers: ‘We needed to bury him. There was a problem, one had to look for a place and so on. I do not know, I do not think…’ Yoav stops. He cannot continue his story. It is not surprising, it seems to me, that this event was not recounted in the first phase of the interview. Yoav grew up with the boy, loved him and, most distressingly as he perceived it, the boy was his sister’s only son— she had not had another child since. He empathised with her pain at the loss of her only son among six girls. A different kind of traumatic experience is connected to the disintegration of the family that resulted in changes of roles and responsibilities. Rivka was 24 when she started on the journey. She was married but had no children of her own. When she set out on the journey her eldest sister asked her to take her 13year-old daughter (Rivka’s niece) with her to Israel. The sister was very attached to this daughter, who was very beautiful, and she found the separation very difficult. Nevertheless, she wanted her daughter to have a chance at a better life in Israel and was unsure when she herself would be able to set out because her husband’s parents were old and sick. As it was a request from her eldest sister, whom she respected almost like a parent, Rivka agreed to do it. She knew how special this girl was for her sister, and she also loved the girl as if she were her younger sister. It was a grave responsibility and Rivka was determined to look

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after the girl during the journey and guard her from all harm. Arriving in Sudan, they found a chaotic situation: refugees everywhere, famine and disease. At night the camps turned into ‘a different place’, and she witnessed people being knifed and killed daily. Prostitutes were all around, and even during daylight the situation was dangerous, especially for the Jews, who were the least organised group there. She tried to manage as best she could, attempting to confine herself and her sister’s daughter to the tent or its immediate surroundings. The heat was unbearable and they had to go looking for water, which was always filthy and of which there was never enough. One day, coming back from the water-carrier, the girl vanished. Rivka asked some people around what had happened and they told her they saw the girl being led away by some fierce-looking young men. It was later assumed that they were of the Tigrean community in the camp. Nevertheless, this knowledge did not help to bring the girl back. What could Rivka do? She could not complain to the Sudanese police because she feared that it would mean exposing her Jewish identity. She had no one to turn to. She kept looking for the girl, doggedly, through the thousands of refugees. She searched the camp up and down. At the end, the girl was discovered but could not be recovered. These Tigreans would not let her go. She was too beautiful and they had sexually abused her. Rivka waited in hope. Her turn to go to Israel finally arrived but she wouldn’t go. Then people were dying around her in great numbers and she herself became sick as well. Her turn came for the third time and, fearing that she would soon die, she decided to go. The girl was left behind. Rivka exemplifies what seems to be a condition of psychic numbness following an extremely traumatic event. She told her story with no emotion at all —no emotional expression on her face or in the sound of her voice, just the repe-tition of the verbal uttering: ‘Difficult. Difficult.’ And this repeated word expressed it all. She would not let herself pause on any moment of her journey. Restraining her emotions in relation to the trauma is her central inner task and she keeps to it like a dedicated guard to her post. At the end of her narration, when the taperecorder is not working any more, she mentions, as if in passing, that her brotherin-law has never written to her since, because he was so angry at her for leaving his daughter in Sudan. Daniel experienced a trauma related to humiliation. During their stay in Sudan, he tried to escape with a group of friends from the Um-Rakuba refugee camp to the town of Gedaref. Unfortunately they were captured by the Sudanese and imprisoned. Daniel was shouted at, beaten and accused of being head of a shifta gang. He continues his account of the event: Then, on the second day there, the prison commander came, called me, and when I approached him, he took out a pair of big scissors and told his people to shave my hair. I was frightened but even more I was angry. Because…the commander said all kinds of things to me [insults related to his Jewishness]. And so they started, two of his men, one started here [points to one side of his head] and the other—[silence] they took off all my

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hair! On that day I was…on that day…[finds it difficult to go on] I went inside myself [quiet]…[I realised that] if I said anything, if I let out one word, then they could do as they wished. So, eh—I shut down my mind. They cursed me with all kinds of curses [talks very quietly] and so on—and later [long pause] the sun was, what shall I tell you, the sun was strong and I was thinking of the sun [being] without hair [whispers]… I shall never forget that day [keeps quiet for some time]. This is the worst—I suffered worst, I suffered very much. They made me bald, they did [unclear]. So I became enraged. On that day I thought of my parents. Why had I come? How had I come to be separated from them? What did I have in Sudan? and so on. I had a day…[which was] very sad [very long silence]…they were laughing at me while they were cutting my hair, they were making fun of my hair. It seems to me that the shaving of his hair was a severe narcissistic blow for Daniel, one which affected his self-image and therefore was experienced as traumatic. Some biographical facts which were related in the narrative interview add to this understanding. Daniel used to be an excellent pupil. He was nicknamed ‘the star’ by his aunt. His parents expected him to behave in the manner of a gobez, which they expressed, among other ways, by giving him a name at birth that conveyed this meaning. Against this background of intellectual and perhaps other excellence, one could understand the significance of the humiliation he had gone through and appreciate the blow to his self-esteem. As he puts it: ‘My parents called me “Gobez”…that is the opposite of what I am.’17 Humiliation was therefore at the heart of his traumatic experience. In his mind he could still hear the laughter of those perpetrating the shaving, and feel his helplessness against it. This humiliating experience was for him a ‘disproof’ of his highly prestigious image. It has destabilised and scarred his self-concept. In my view this subject of humiliation as a distinct source of trauma is insufficiently dealt with in the literature on children in war, refugees, and migrants in their transition process. In this study it comes out as a common source of trauma, perhaps because they were refugees—people without status and protection, and also culturally different, but even more so as Jews—members of a despised professional caste in Ethiopia, as well as, in Sudan, belonging to an enemy country (Israel) and to a rival ethno-religious group. The experience of intended humiliation by another human being constitutes for many individuals a ‘narcissistic hurt’ of an immense magnitude which trau-matises them. Their self-image and self-esteem are affected and the person finds this blow difficult to absorb and recover from. As the (freely translated) Ethiopian proverb claims in relation to verbal abuse: ‘Curses [insults] are of such a nature that, once uttered, they keep being [hurtfully] spoken in your mind.’ Of course, it is not curses alone that we are concerned with here, but also with other humiliating measures.

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When verbal abuse includes insults to one’s ethnic group it adds another dimension of suffering and traumatisation. The reason for its significant effect is not clear to me. Why do people, adolescents in particular, care more when their reference or ethnic group (or parents for that matter) are humiliated than when one of their personal characteristics is devalued? Is it because the ethnic group is felt to be the origin of the person (self) and the foundation of identity, so that the humiliating situation is experienced as an attack on the person’s identity? Or is it because it emphasises our inability (and helplessness) to protect the group’s good name, which one feels expected to defend? Or, still, is it because in such situations we rely internally on our reference group as a hidden support group, a kind of shield and source of comfort unknown to the perpetrator? Yet the insults expose that hidden support group, include it within the situation, make it available for attack, and hence leave the person with no support. Whatever the reason may be, the fact remains that a hurt to the image of the affiliation group, commonly the ethnic group, has a powerful capacity to destabilise, anger and psychologically wound the victim. Adolescents may be particularly affected since their self-identity is still ‘in the making’, thus rendering them more sensitive and vulnerable. The last kind of traumatising experience which I wish to emphasise is that of violation of the boundaries of the body-self through torture or sexual abuse. The former applies mainly to boys and men, and the latter to girls and young women. The fact that young women were under constant threat of sexual abuse or rape was discussed in another part of this study and so I shall not elaborate on their fate here. I would like to stress that the dread of such occurrence was in itself psychologically very unsettling and certainly one cause for trauma. It is worth noting that actual incidents of rape and sexual abuse were recounted by the young women almost only in relation to girls other than themselves, and even these were narrated in a somewhat abbreviated manner. Nevertheless, at least two girls in our study hinted that they did go through such an experience themselves. They made it clear, however, that they did not want to talk in detail about it.18 Their disinclination to narrate these incidents might reflect the intensity of the trauma, and hence an inability to retell it. As in many other cases of rape (Agger 1994), it left the girls feeling so contaminated and tainted—and, paradoxically, guilty and full of self-blame—that it made the experience almost impossible to narrate (see also van der Kolk 1996; Leydesdorff et al. 1999:14). It might also be that the difficulty of recounting the experience stemmed from the fact that, even in the safest of interview environments, no Ethiopian girl would like to disclose a fact which could affect her marriage prospects (or, if married already, risk the unpredictable response of her husband and immediate social circle). It might also be due to the fact that the interviewer was a man, even if a trusted one, which made it more difficult for them to share such an experience, especially since it was not within a clinical setting. I would argue that some combination of the above factors, with special weight placed on the intensity and emotional complications of

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such a trauma, caused personal experiences of rape to be just hinted at but not fully narrated in the journey stories. A major aspect in these traumas is the violation of body boundaries. In this respect they shared the fate of some of the Ethiopian Jewish boys and young men. The fate of adolescent boys and young men who were physically tortured often occurs within the stories. I also draw here upon my experience as a psychotherapist with Ethiopian Jewish victims of torture. In many cases youngsters were hung from their legs, heads down, from the ceiling of an Ethiopian or Sudanese prison, and falakas (i.e. hard blows to the bare soles of their feet) were delivered until their feet were so swollen that their skin burst and their flesh was exposed. One person I worked with was partially castrated. Another had an elec-trical source connected to his penis many times. Another had both his legs broken in a number of places by his Sudanese captors, several times in succession. Other adolescent boys were raped in prison, which as well as being a violation of body boundaries added another dimension to their trauma, one that was related to their maleness and has later complicated their development into manhood. Following these tortures the adolescents suffered from physical disabilities as well as various functional and emotional disturbances.19 I would like to point out, however, that apart from the above-mentioned effects on boys and girls who suffered these traumas, the penetration of body boundaries was followed by the individual feeling a deep sense of worthlessness and a marked reduction in the wish to continue living (the ‘drive for life’). This reaction was observed among my interviewees as well as in the clinical cases of both male and female adolescents and young adults.20 This seemed to be connected to the fact that the invasion of body boundaries affected the body-self, and this in turn influenced the self-image (self-representation) and individual feeling of worth. The relation between body-self (body image; body schema) and self-image (representation) has been widely studied by developmental psychologists and psychoanalysts (Sandler 1962). Self-image is believed to be built upon, as well as to a large extent dependent on, the body image (body-self or schema). This continues to be true, to a certain degree, throughout our entire lives, thus leading to the consequences observed above. Traumatisation is frequently followed by pathological consequences which appear either immediately after the event or at a later stage. Such phenomena were indeed observed among Ethiopian Jews, adolescents in particular, in Israel. A full discussion of the mental state of the adolescents in Israel as a result of the journey’s traumas is beyond the scope of this study. I shall, however, schematically portray here the major psychological problems. Before doing so I would like to discuss the question of whether an event could acquire a traumatic significance depending on the sort of encounter experienced in Israel. This is based on Keilson’s research (1979) of 200 child survivors of Nazi concentration camps thirty years later, in which he found that the period after the event, in particular the kind of reception the children encountered in England, was a decisive factor in whether they were traumatised. In the context of our study, two

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factors within this period should be mentioned: (1) whether the adolescents had met with first-degree relatives in Israel from whom they could receive social support, or whether their parents arrived soon after they did (which was rarely the case); and (2) the kind of reception they received from Israeli society as perceived by the individual, i.e. acceptance vs rejection. We shall see below (Chapter 8) how the ‘rough face’ encountered in Israel, as reported in the narratives, threatened to render the events of the journey traumatic. The pathological consequences took the form of one or a number of symptomatic phenomena. These included sleep disturbances, concentration difficulties, intrusive thoughts and images, nightmares and other functional, physiological and neurological problems. Among the symptoms were also eating arrests, a condition in which the person stops eating because of a ‘full abdomen’ resulting from emotional stress (BenEzer 1990). This in some cases necessitated hospitalisation.21 Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSS or PTSD, as defined by the DSM-IV-TR 2000) was detected among many of the adolescents, although a full-scale epidemiological study of this was not carried out. Many experienced a sense of lowered self-esteem or feeling of worthlessness. There was a significantly heightened incidence of medical complaints of a psychoso-matic nature—mostly headaches and chest pains.22 These complaints reached their peak about eight months after the arrival of the youngsters in Israel, continued at that peak level for about a year and then started to abate, but were still high, involving a great number of the adolescents, for the following five years.23 It is worth noting that trauma could remain ‘active’ (‘alive’) for a long time following a difficulty by a particular person in ‘processing’ or coming to terms with it. This may lead to the continuation or exacerbation of the symptoms and impacts stated above, or to a fresh appearance of some other pathology at a later stage (van der Kolk 1996; Caruth 1995; Leydesdorff et al. 1999; ISTSS online). In the case of children it can also adversely affect their development (Sandler etal. 1991; Herman 1992; Ager 1992; Terr 1992). Lastly, I would like to refer to one non-pathological outcome of trauma. I am referring to the possibility of processing a trauma in such a way that it results in personal growth. In such cases people grow and develop through the trauma itself, through what they take out of it. They can use it as an agent for change, thenceforth becoming a different person. Unfortunately, this way of dealing with trauma is not very common. There are, however, cases in our study that can illustrate this. Tena (previously mentioned) had suffered a sequence of traumatic events, starting with having to separate herself from her two very young children and leaving them behind in Ethiopia, and ending by almost being sexually abused. Together with the tremendous worry and guilt about her children, these triggered a psychological breakdown, an eating arrest in Sudan that brought her to the brink of death (‘I was virtually dead,’ she says). Nevertheless, at the end of her narration she reports on how she has made the trauma into a vehicle for helping others:

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I tell my story to people, and try to encourage them, so that they will become less anxious, especially about what is going to happen to their relatives who are still in Ethiopia. [I say to them] that step by step, everything will be all right. That is what I tell them. She sums up the moral of her story for the other person: ‘Look! I am the one who was brought to Israel to be buried! And I am alive! Do not lose hope!’ In this way she uses her traumatic experience and personal story of suffering as a resource and as a comfort to others. It is the kind of development Victor Frankl writes about, development that depends on the meaning each person gives to the traumatic event or, more accurately, takes out of it. Frankl suggests that a traumatic event may include a mission for the person to fulfil, an action to be taken, depending on the person’s ability to extract that meaning from the event. As long as we are alive, he claims, there is always a possibility of such a meaning for action. We may even apply it to our own death or to the process of dying, for example, from a terminal disease. We can determine the way we construct it, the meaning we give to it, and thus how we die.24 Tena, it seems, has dealt with her trauma in the best possible way: through the processing of the very essence of the traumatic experience itself. In this she exemplifies the positive side (pole) of the assertion that a trauma forever changes a person’s inner world as well as his/her way of life (Brull 1974:33).25 Personal development and growth An important aspect of the journey is the fact that for some of the adolescents it constituted an experience of personal growth. This resulted from successfully standing up to the journey’s harsh demands. The strenuous journey had forced them to strain their powers and abilities to their maximum. Some of the difficulties were perceived by the adolescents as challenges, situations they should rise to, and as ‘performance tests’. They also needed to cope actively with changing conditions and to react to extremely complicated situations. When they were able to do that, when they drove themselves beyond their normal limits and coped actively and resourcefully with these challenging situations, it brought about a new perception of themselves. They realised that they were going through a process of self-discovery and personal growth. Many felt that they had left their old self behind and transformed themselves on the journey into a new person, one with broader experience, horizons and ways of managing the world. They have developed and matured. It is worth noting that the readiness for change as a result of living through situations and challenges such as those of the journey has been shown to be particularly high during adolescence, which is an ‘age of plasticity’ (Honzik 1984; Lieblich 1989). At this developmental phase, life experiences make a stronger impression and put a lasting mark on the individual. The journey experiences thus had more of a shaping capacity for the Jewish adolescents. This

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phase of life is also a period of discovery through action and that is exactly what the journey supplied them with—ample opportunities for experimentation through action. The experience of personal growth along the journey consisted of four major dimensions: 1 2 3 4

experimenting with new types of behaviour and fulfilling adult roles; ‘hatching’ from a child’s worldview; lessons for life; increased confidence in their ability to solve problems.

Experimenting with new types of behaviour and fulfilling adult roles The adolescents experimented with new types of behaviour and discovered new ways of acting in familiar or unfamiliar situations. They stood up to enemies as well as venturing into friendships, and they attempted to behave in caring and helping ways. Boys faced up to people and situations which made them experience their manliness, and many girls had to manage households and cook for many people for the first time. The latter was especially common in Sudan where, in the absence of their mothers or as a consequence of their sickness or death, girls catered for their old fathers or siblings in the chaotic situation of the refugee camps, or for large groups as in the secret houses in Gedaref. Girls also experienced their own capacities beyond their role definitions: they walked or ran for days shoulder to shoulder with the boys; and some girls, the stronger ones, helped carry the sick on improvised stretchers or on their backs along the journey. Some of the boys also had to experiment with traditionally female functions such as cooking. Others (in Sudan) looked for work in gas stations, building sites and restaurants as well as in the nearby agricultural areas, or just helped the richer women in Gedaref to carry their groceries or other heavy merchandise to their homes. Some were paid in food while others experienced being paid in cash for the first time in their lives. Some girls, particularly before the mass refugee crisis, found work minding children in affluent Sudanese households. Adolescents fulfilled the roles of adults. It meant a sudden increase, for many of them, in autonomy, responsibility and leadership. It was the first time that they needed to decide for and take care of themselves. They realised that they could do it, over an extended period of time. They also had more responsibility for other people, including (while walking in mixed aged groups) the old and the very young. And they often performed leading roles within the youth groups or in relation to others. Shaul was 15 when he suddenly had to take on an adult role. His older brothers, uncles and cousins, nine in all, had to go back to Ethiopia just after they arrived at the Sudanese border. It forced him into the role of ‘eldest son’ within the nuclear family and into a leading role within his extended family. It was up to

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him to represent the family to the Sudanese authorities, speak to officials (authority figures), lead his sister-in-law from Gedaref to Khartoum for her suddenly essential departure for Israel, arrange the family’s permit of leave from Gedaref later on, and to take on other roles which he had not previously performed. It affected him significantly. He felt that it had transformed him from a child into an adult, a sort of parent. ‘The fact that I had to do things, of course, made me more responsible.’ A special dimension to his feeling of being a grown up was added by the fact that, upon leaving, one of his departing uncles had put the future of his five children in Shaul’s hands. If something happened to him, he told Shaul, he wanted him to be responsible for their education and proper upbringing in the Ethiopian style. Shaul recounts how he felt differently from the moment of the departure of his older brothers and uncles, and how his role within his nuclear and extended family was never again the same. Jonathan had a leading role in the last phase of leaving Sudan. It was a new experience for him, as he recounts: ‘All were counting on me since all the responsibility rested upon my shoulders. Everyone else was relieved of it.’ And with some pride he reports what he was told upon arrival by the people he had led: ‘Without you we would have been lost. That is how a man should behave! You deserve our respect!’ ‘Hatching’ from a child’s worldview In this process their childhood system of beliefs and ways of looking at the world had become conscious and was then tested, shattered and renewed. A more complex view of the world replaced the old one. This included, in many instances, an acknowledgement of the existence of power, self-interest, dishonesty, betrayal and cruelty in human relations. This new dimension to social reality replaced the more naive conceptualisation of human relations as based on intimacy-seeking alone. Yet it is not only the grim reality of the social world that the adolescents awoke to as a result of the experiences of their journey. They also became more aware of and accessible to the wisdom of their parents and elders. They recognised certain truths, which they had been told earlier but had not listened to at the time. They went through unique experiences, met special people, and out of it they developed their personal wisdom. Tena recounts how she became more accessible to her grandmother’s teachings as a result of her experiences on the journey. She tells how, when she was young and was confronted with people in misery, she used to laugh at them: Once it happened when I was with my grandmother, and I saw people who were almost without clothes, people who had nothing, who were begging for money. And I laughed at them and said: ‘Why do they ask for food like that? And they have no clothes!’ Then, my grandmother told me: ‘You should not say such things. You are still young and many things await you. You have yet to go through many events. If one has, one gives [to others]; if not—keep quiet. Do not utter harsh words.’ She told me so but I wouldn’t listen: ‘Why don’t they work and earn money?’ I would insist. Now

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[following the journey], I have learned what hunger is, what thirst is. I do not laugh at such people any more. Even in my house I do not throw [food] away. I keep some [to give]. Elsewhere in her narrative she adds: ‘Before [the journey], I did not know what bad things were. Now I know everything.’ The acquired knowledge of the journey is epitomised for Tena in her grandmother’s wisdom. It is interesting to note that while the journey takes Tena physically away from her grandmother (who was left in Ethiopia), it brings Tena closer to her spiritually and emotionally, through her teachings which were called upon and confirmed during the journey. Yoav was 13 years old when he went on the journey, and he recounts at the beginning of his story that he was in a state of astonishment and amazement at the wonders of the world. Soon he was destined to see its worst qualities. One day as they were walking they met their neighbour. He was a merchant and so travelled a lot. Instead of the happy meeting that Yoav had expected, he ordered them to stop and at gunpoint robbed them of their money. Yoav found it difficult to grasp: ‘This is someone who, although Christian, in fact grew up together with us! How come he threatens us with a gun?’ And, having gone through this and perhaps other experiences of that kind on the journey, he tells how his views concerning human relations had changed. From a perspective of relations motivated first and foremost by a degree of familiarity and intimacy, he had shifted to a worldview in which power and greed have a very significant place. Human society certainly appeared fundamentally different from what he had believed when he was setting out on his journey. Lessons for life During the journey the adolescents did not only hatch from previously held perceptions but formed new judgements and gained insights about themselves, about society and about life in general. These concerned issues which they had not necessarily addressed before, or about which they did not have sound knowledge or opinions. It was as if the intensive experience of the journey, where life was fragile and death was abundant, brought about various conceptualisations that had wider implications than for the journey itself. A more generalised wisdom emerged. They became aware of their patterns of emotional response to extreme situations, as well as of their attitudes and behaviour, and gained new insights into their own nature and boundaries. These ‘lessons for life’, as they put it, included realisations which were concerned with the importance of mutual help and communal cohesion at times of extreme difficulty and distress; with not looking back once a decision was made; with relations between the individual and society; about friendship; lessons about fear and courage, dependence and autonomy, etc. Two examples will serve to illustrate this. Takaleh learned of his need to belong, to be part of a place in which one would feel ‘at home’, as he recounts:

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I learned what it is not to belong, particularly in the refugee camp in Sudan. It made me realise how hard it is to be away from your homeland, in a country where you feel incomplete, where you constantly feel that something is missing. That feeling accompanies you all the time and it makes you more tense and edgy… You become easily and frequently irritated. For example, if you get into or witness a fight or dispute between an Ethiopian and a Sudanese person—and there were many fights like that— you then observe that the Sudanese takes a handful of sand off the ground and shouts at the Ethiopian: ‘Smell! Is this your place?’ It immediately makes you feel that you are in a country that does not belong to you. There is then no—no value to life. It hurts you. So you become tense… In Sudan, this is not Ethiopia any more, and it is not Israel yet. So it leaves you in a vacuum, in absolute emptiness. Then I learned what it is not to belong, to exist in a state of non-belonging. A painful feeling indeed. Yeremyah tells of another sort of learning, one which is related to his ability to achieve his goals in life: The thing that mattered most, which determined the success [in completing the journey] was my will-power. The fact that I wanted something very badly…[And he elaborates] Because I had a desire, a goal, even when things bothered me I did not pay attention to them. I wanted something very much and to bring it about I went through all kinds of difficulties and overcame them… I learned not to be spoiled and to rise up to a challenge. I learned who I am, why I am, and why I do this thing. And how to cope with all kinds of problems without despairing. If you want something good there is always something bad on the way to it, a problem to overcome. Increased confidence in their ability to solve problems An additional dimension to the experience of personal growth is related to the building of confidence in their ability to solve problems. The constant need to cope actively with changing situations or react to extreme complications was experienced as a test, and when they were successful it led to an expansion of their sense of competence and was experienced as a process of development and personal growth. In other words, when dangers were circumvented, when they succeeded in getting out of trouble even after it had started, or when they overcame difficulties, they became increasingly confident of being able to solve such problems. They became aware of their cognitive-capacities and intellectual faculties by successfully putting them into action. They learned about their inner strengths and ability to endure a painful trek and difficult periods. Baruch recounts: I think that on the journey I learned how to deal with all kinds of problems. Today I know what a problem is. I know! I lived through it. I

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saw it. And I coped with it… I don’t think I shall ever meet with any problems like…the kind I lived through on the journey. Baruch’s experience on the journey had clearly influenced both his knowledge of problems and his confidence in being able to solve them. He had also acquired a perspective on the more ordinary difficulties in life, which, he thinks, would be less exacting and hard to overcome than those he had successfully encountered during the journey. The relation of culture to trauma and personal growth In the previous two sections we have seen how the journey caused certain traumas while at the same time provided opportunities for personal growth. Whether the experience resulted in the one or the other depended, of course, on more than one aspect of the multifaceted and complex situation. I would like, however, to suggest that one of the factors which had an influence on whether an experience turned out to be traumatic or resulted in personal growth is that of ‘culture’. Here I shall refer to one aspect of culture, that of role expectations within Ethiopian culture, and more specifically to gender roles. Adolescents and young adults, as mentioned earlier, are in an age of ‘plasticity’, and are therefore highly susceptible to change. Following Erik Erikson (1968), I would argue that they are also more susceptible to cultural influences. One of the mechanisms through which culture strongly affects adolescents is that of role expectations. I would argue that different cultural expectations in relation to gender roles may have modified the ways in which adolescent boys, as contrasted with girls, experienced and were affected by particular situations during the journey. According to Ethiopian culture the role of the adolescent boy is defined in relation to a few concepts of which the main ones are goramsa (a virile youth) and the gobez (Levine 1965:100–6 and passim; Rosen 1987). These include: an expectation of the capacity to endure physical as well as mental hardships; selfdiscipline; emotional containment; patience; responsibility for oneself; responsibility for others when one is put in charge of them; and taking a generally active approach, when alone or with no authority figures around, towards problematic incidents connected with hostile people, wild animals or natural hazards. It also includes a capacity to keep a secret to oneself, to be economical in verbal expression, to coin beautiful phrases or talk in parables or through proverbs. The adolescent boy is expected to be courageous and commit himself to acts of bravery. He is supposed to care about affronts to familial and communal honour and to react to such insults (cf. Chapters 2 and 6). The role expectations of the adolescent girl are, to a great extent, different from those of the boy (Tarbus and Minuchin-Itzikson 1983). She is expected to be gentle and polite. She should show respect for others and portray it, among other ways, by a set of behaviours which can be considered as modesty (or

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prescribed embarrassment). These may include such non-verbal behaviours as lowering her gaze and looking away from anyone of authority (or a stranger) who approaches her, covering the mouth area with her hand and giggling, never answering in the first instance when asked a question, and when she does answer doing so in a low voice, even a whisper (BenEzer 1987).26 The girl is expected to stay around the house, work close to her mother, and never walk outside by herself. She is supposed to know how to cook in a way that resembles her mother’s cooking and satisfies her father’s taste in food (and later, her mother-inlaw’s and husband’s tastes). She is expected to be passive in relation to problemsolving and dependent on others, males in particular. She is not expected to have the same self-discipline or emotional control as boys have. Although the social demand to keep a secret applies to her, it is common knowledge that ‘women are not capable of doing so’ and there are folk stories which exemplify it and warn men against such expectations. Women are also not expected to be able to tolerate pain or endure physical and mental hardships in the way men can. In such a cultural context it may be argued that the journey constituted a different experience, and thus included a different potential for trauma or for personal growth for the Ethiopian adolescent boys as opposed to the girls. The journey, the walking in particular, provided many situations where boys were expected to perform according to the cultural requirements connected to their male role. This relates to situations in which they had to be physically strong and courageous, able to fight their enemies and at the same time to protect the more vulnerable—the women, small children and the old. They had to endure pain and to live without the basic necessities. Thus the journey presented boys more than girls with situations in which they were expected to react in a certain way, that which accorded with the definition of their social role. I would suggest the term ‘cultural syntonic’ to describe situations in which the individual is required or given an opportunity to perform in ways that are consistent with his/her cultural codes and social norms, in this case those related to gender roles. I will then use the term ‘cultural dystonic’ to refer to situations that require a behavioural mode which is inconsistent with one’s cultural codes. These terms refer to the specific relation within the triangle of culture, actor and situation. Thus a certain situation would be syntonic in relation to one actor, say an Ethiopian male adolescent, but dystonic in relation to the Ethiopian female adolescent. If the actor came from another cultural background the relation within the same situation would have changed, thus resulting in a different experience. One could thus argue that the journey presented boys with many cultural syntonic situations, whereas for, females it comprised mainly cultural dystonic situations. Thus, as young males had more opportunities to act in accordance with their cultural code regarding gender role, they had more opportunities to experience personal growth; at the same time, however, they were also more prone to traumatisation. The determining factor was their success or lack of success in fulfilling these cultural expectations. Success—e.g. performing in a

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way which is regarded as manly—would lead to personal growth, whereas failure — e.g. being helpless when they were expected to perform bravely—might exacerbate their pain within a situation to the point of traumatisation. On the other hand, the journey (again, the walking part of it in particular) presented adolescent girls mainly with cultural dystonic situations. The kind of situations that materialised along the journey were not related in any way to their gender role. Therefore, they were not expected to perform successfully in these, and if they did so at all it went against their role definition. Girls were thus less prone to trauma from that point of view. They could, however, experience personal growth if and when they succeeded in coping with these cultural dystonic situations, i.e. when they acted in ways which fell ‘beyond’ their role definition. In other words, when a young female cannot cope with the hardships of the journey it would be ‘just as expected of her’, but when she does stand up to these hardships she would gain more self-esteem as well as praise from her peers or significant others, as well as experiencing that she had expanded her selfboundaries.27 The journey as a preparation for life in Israel Some experiences during the journey could be viewed, as they were indeed perceived later by the travellers, as preparation for what they were going to encounter in Israel. The first aspect of the preparation was the fact that during the journey they experienced cultural differences and became somewhat accustomed to the idea of cultural adaptation. This refers mainly to the time spent in Sudan where they encountered a different society and culture. Since they lived there for an extended period of time, these differences became transparent and came to the fore, and to some extent forced them to adapt. They could not just pass through the culture as tourists do; they needed to deal with these differences, both because they were there for a longer time and because it bore upon their chances of survival. They realised that such a difference existed, that it affected them, and that there was a need to adapt to it by actively changing themselves (as well as passively getting used to it). In Israel, they would need to cope with a similar though much more intensive situation.28 The differences they encountered in Sudan related to skin colour, food, clothing, language and, as elaborated below, technology and health belief system as expressed in the medical care at the refugee camps. Most of them were villagers for whom the encounter with urban centres in Sudan was, among other things, a first encounter with some aspects of modernisation. Technologically, Sudan presented them with a more developed society than rural Ethiopia: roads, traffic lights, cars and a variety of options for the individual Sudanese citizen in terms of products, spending and leisure opportunities. Especially for those who came from the remote Ethiopian villages, this was a new experience which could be viewed as a step towards coping in Israel.29

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The encounter with Western medical services at the camps was, on the other hand, more complex and did not constitute a simple straightforward preparation for Israel. The wayfarers came across these new services but the experience was in many cases a negative one. They realised that these Western methods could not help them much when they were dying in great numbers in the refugee camps. They became suspicious and wary of these services. Added to that was the rumour mentioned above (Chapter 4) that the Sudanese (and the Ethiopian Christian) workers in the clinics were using these methods in order to poison the Jews. Nevertheless, they did encounter the underlying assumptions and beliefs associated with the Western system of diagnosis and cure, a system which they would later find in Israel. And for those who did recover after being treated by these methods, it certainly formed a stage in their transition to a different belief system.30 A second aspect of the journey which prepared them for Israel was the changes in the structure of roles within the family and society. Two specific elements are relevant here: first, the fact that adolescents were awarded more autonomy along the journey; and second, the fact that the girls and young women extended the boundaries of their social role. Both changes are in line with the processes which the family, and different members within it, would find necessary to accept in adapting to Israeli society.31 I may add here that, although it had an adverse effect on the wayfarers on their journey and in Israel, the fact that in most cases the extended families were not functioning as such along the journey was in accord with what they were later to experience in Israel, mainly for bureaucratic reasons. A third aspect of the journey which prepared them for life in Israel relates to the fact that on the journey the wayfarers went through a process of emotional separation from Ethiopia. This concerned various aspects of life in Ethiopia. People who move to a new society go through a separation process in relation to their previous country. A considerable period of time is needed for the process of mourning before the person is entirely free to relate and adjust to aspects of the new society. This includes a process of ‘cultural bereavement’ whereby the person mourns the cultural and spiritual aspects of the old society (Eisenbruch 1984, 1991). In view of the prolonged period of time Ethiopian Jews spent on their way to Israel, I suggest that this process of emotional separation from their country of origin had already started to take place on the journey. This should have facilitated somewhat their adjustment to Israel since it paved the way for the emotionally exacting process of adaptation. Finally, as we have seen, the journey fortified their Jewish identity and added a dimension of Israeliness to it. This strengthening of their Jewishness and their emerging Israeliness caused them to arrive in Israel in a state which more strongly resembled that of the Jewish majority in Israeli society, a fact which should have helped them in integrating into the society. In the following chapter I shall turn to this process of integration in the light of the journey experiences.

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ENCOUNTERS AND PORTRIATS IN ISRAEL, 2000

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8 ETHIOPIAN JEWS ENCOUNTER ISRAEL

Ethiopian Jews arrived in Israel with a heightened sense of Jewish identity and an already emerging Israeli identity. They felt that as individuals and as a community they had been tested, selected and purified through their suffering and had therefore earned their ‘right’ to enter Israel, God’s land, and to participate in Israeli society.1 They had developed and consolidated a self-concept of a brave and resourceful people who had successfully stood up to the many challenges of the journey. They saw their arrival in Israel as a return, as a restoration from the state of exile, and viewed themselves as a part joining its main body, to become a ‘whole’ again. In Israel, they believed, among their fellow Jews, they would feel more complete. Myths in Israeli society The above developments in self-perception corresponded to the ethos and myths central to Israeli society: the ethos of Jewishness, the myth of suffering, and that of bravery and heroism. In extensive surveys by Simon Herman (1970, 1979), it was found that a sense of Jewish identity (‘Jewishness’) was very important among Jewish Israeli youngsters. In fact, it was rated second only to their overall sense of ‘Israeliness’. It seems that in the Israel of the 1970s and 1980s (and probably to the present) there still existed a heightened sense of the relevance of Jewishness and the importance of its role in the lives of many Israelis. This is in spite of the fact that most Jews living in Israel (more than 80 per cent) are secular Jews (sometimes described as non-religious, non-observant or non-practising Jews). It seems, then, that the ethnic identity of Jewish Israelis is connected to their Jewish origins, even if it is felt and expressed in the form of a continuation of cultural heritage rather than religious practice. Notwithstanding, official holidays are celebrated according to the Jewish calendar and working days are arranged accordingly The Sabbath is the state’s official day of rest during the week. The national airline, E1-A1, does not fly on that day, nor on the Jewish holidays, and there are streets or whole neighbourhoods which are closed for traffic on the Sabbath. In the state education system, Bible studies are obligatory for all children up to and including matriculation examinations. Jewish law is integrated in part into the general

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courts, and at least one judge within the supreme court of Israel always comes from an orthodox (though not ultra-orthodox) religious background. The Jewish law, through the institution of the Chief Rabbinate, controls marriage and divorce for most Israeli Jews. In short, it is not only a country for Jews but it is still, to a large extent, a Jewish country. It is fair to say, therefore, that there is an important ‘ethno-religious’ dimension related to Judaism within the identity of Israeli Jews.2 Suffering is another ethos in Israeli society. It is connected, in part, to the legacy of the Holocaust, which has become the heritage of all Israelis and not only of the survivors (Segev 1992:475). It is also related to other issues in Israeli society, such as the ‘religion of manual work’ of the pioneers of Israel, as will be explained below. Tom Segev writes about the heritage of the Holocaust and its role in determining current Israeli identity: The more they realised that their secular Israeli existence alone cannot offer them a rooted identity—the more Israelis gave themselves to the heritage of the Holocaust as a kind of popular ritual and a sometimes bizarre kind of worship of the memory. At a certain point the Holocaust turned into one of the sources of their collective identity as it was for the six million victims. That is why I called them ‘The Seventh Million’. (Segev 1992:9, my translation)3 The Holocaust was connected, in the minds of Israelis, to thousands of years of suffering during exile, from the exile period of biblical times to the present, and served as its ‘ultimate image of horror’ for Israelis. This was clearly expressed in the Eichmann trial of 1961. Adolf Eichmann, a senior Nazi official responsible for carrying out the mechanism of ‘the final solution’ by which millions of Jews were murdered, had been located in 1960 by Israeli intelligence agents in Argentina, where he was hiding under a false identity, and brought to Jerusalem to be tried. The second paragraph in the opening sentences of the Israeli prosecutor’s speech4 included the following excerpt: The history of the people of Israel [meaning the Jewish people everywhere] is full of suffering and tears. A trail of blood has accompanied this nation since its appearance on the historical stage. Pharaoh in Egypt decided to torture them and throw their sons into the river. Hamman [during the Persian exile] ordered their extermination, killing and destruction; Chmielnicki massacred many of them; Petlura carried out Pogroms. But throughout this blood-trail of the people—from its becoming a nation until today—there was not a person who succeeded in perpetrating what the evil regime of Hitler did and what Adolf Eichmann carried out as the arm of the Nazi regime committed to the extermination of the Jewish people. There is no other example in the history of the world where a single person can be accused of anything like what is included in these charges. Even the most

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horrific deeds— deeds that make one’s blood freeze and hair stand on end— of people like Nero, Attila and Genghis Khan, those horrifying characters of barbarism and bloodthirstiness who became symbols of evil for the world forever—their deeds are nothing in comparison to the horrors and revulsion of extinction which will be presented in this trial. (Segev 1992:328, my translation) For Gideon Hausner, the prosecutor of the Eichmann trial, and henceforth for most Israelis (as was expressed in numerous newspaper reports and articles during the time of the trial and afterwards), the suffering of the Holocaust was a continuation of the suffering of the Jewish people during various periods of exile, but at the same time represented an act of the utmost evil intent which had the most horrific results. Its heritage was carried over into Israeli society. Israelis thus perceived themselves as the bearers of this burden of suffering, as representatives of Jewish suffering, both as the offspring of the ancient people in its periods of exile and, even more, as the ‘seventh million’ of the Holocaust’s victims. Although they did not want to see themselves as the continuation of the people of the Exile, as we shall see below, they certainly took upon themselves, especially from the 1960s onwards, the heritage of suffering of the Jewish people. As Gideon Hausner said in the opening paragraph of his speech: Where I stand today before you, judges of Israel, to prosecute Adolf Eichmann—I do not stand alone; with me are standing here, at this hour, six million prosecutors. They cannot stand on their feet and raise an accusing finger at the glass booth [where Eichmann was sitting] and say to the one who sits there: ‘I accuse thee!’ Because their ashes were piled between the hills of Auschwitz and the fields of Treblinka, and were washed in the rivers of Poland, and their graves are scattered over the length and breadth of Europe. Their blood screams out but their voice is not heard. I shall, therefore, be their mouth and speak in their name the terrible accusation.5 The trial became a turning point in relation to the inclusion of Jewish suffering, and the suffering of the Holocaust in particular, in the Israeli subjectivity. The trial, which was the only one of its kind in Israel (until the Demaniuk trial in the 1990s), was carried out with a didactic purpose in mind, concerning the education of the Israeli public—especially the Israeli-born youth—in relation to the Holocaust. Hausner made it clear later in his memoirs that he had these youth in particular in mind when he wrote his opening speech, and in the choice of testimonies out of the hundreds who could testify in the trial. Indeed, the trial was broadcast continuously on the radio, and in many schools the regular studies were cancelled in order to let the students listen to the trial (Segev 1992:330). At the end of the trial, David Ben-Gurion, the prime minister of Israel at the time, called that year ‘the year of Eichmann’s trial’.6 There was for the first time a process of identification of Israelis with the suffering of the murdered victims as well

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as that of the survivors. Many youngsters started, indeed, to take interest in the Holocaust.7 This process of identification found its extreme expression when Menachem Begin became prime minister in 1977 and throughout the 1980s. He made the Holocaust central to his policy, and it figured in many of his speeches. Whether he was speaking with Israeli youth, veteran and newly arrived immigrants, or the presidents and prime ministers of other countries, in Israel or abroad, he would make the Holocaust a hallmark of his standpoint.8 The suffering of the Jewish people over the generations as epitomised in the Holocaust was at that period a peak point in the Israeli psyche. This was also the time of the arrival of the Ethiopian Jews.9 The myth of bravery in Israeli society was created, at least in its main part, around a few symbolic images. These were the halutz, the tzabar and the new person, which was actually the basis of the first two terms. The halutz, translated as the ‘pioneer’, was a key term at the beginning of Israel, relating to those who had left their comfortable homes in the Diaspora and came to Israel to build a new country. This term is loaded with symbolic imagery. Robert Paine writes: ‘Emphasis was put on self-defence, reversing the Diaspora condition of dependence, even helplessness’ (Paine 1993:225). The emphasis falls less on ‘individuality and daring and go-gettism’ than on ‘liberation, exaltation, expedition, rescue’ (Elon 1981:111–12, cited in Paine 1993:224). The tzabar is the native-born Israeli, who carries cultural connotations of being close to nature, to the land, being a free, steadfast, non-submissive, proud and brave person (plural tzabarim and also sabras), a partially untamed (and untameable) individual, who loves life but will go towards death with no fear if it is ‘for a cause’.10 The Zionist ideologists who were involved in the building of the new Israel resisted the image of the Jews of the Diaspora (exile) who were portrayed as submissive and accommodating, compromising themselves and their self-respect. For the founders of the new Israel, this image was epitomised in the way the European Jews went to the Nazi gas chambers ‘like sheep to be slaughtered’ (Weitz 1989:174; Yablonka 1998). This derogatory description was contrasted with the new person, the Israeli halutz and his offspring—the tzabar. This was also reflected in the choices of Hebrew names signifying firmness, toughness, strength and courage (Elon 1981:126, cited in Paine 1993:231).11 Another expression of the efforts to form an Israeli identity, which differs from the image of the Diaspora Jew in relation to bravery, could be observed in the fact that the day of remembrance of the Holocaust was named ‘The Day of Holocaust and Heroism’. The myth of bravery is further expressed in aspects connected more directly to acts of heroism within the army, or of ‘defenders of the land’. This could be observed in the concept of ‘battle heritage’ (Almog 1993, 1997) and in the inscriptions on memorials and tombstones in Israel (Almog 1991). The latter is related according to Almog’s semiological analysis to a development of a ‘civil religion’12 in Israel in which the myth of bravery is an important aspect. Almog shows how the memorials for those who ‘fell’ on duty are not just a vehicle for local remembrance but important pedagogic mechanisms within the

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ideological system created by Israeli society.13 Some are placed at major road junctions which are then called after the memorial.14 Lastly, it is shown how a special form of bravery appears in the Israeli context, that of ‘defence bravery’: that is, the person who is forced to fight against his wishes, which is different from the ‘triumphant bravery’ presented on war memorials in most countries (Almog 1991:199). It is interesting to note two Israeli experiences which fed into the myth of suffering and also, to an extent, the myth of bravery. I refer to the ‘religion of manual work’ and to the experience of massaot—trekking—in Israeli society. These experiences were very central at the beginning of the Zionist endeavour and after the establishment of the state. Their derivatives, however, continued to exert significant influence well into the 1980s. The ‘religion of manual work’ (Almog 1993, 1997; Paine 1993:225; Elon 1981: 113; Near 1971; Eisenstadt 1967) was part of the civil religion (Bellah 1964; DonYehiya and Liebman 1983) developed by the ‘Zionist church’ (Almog 1993:45, 1991:180, and 1995; Shapira 1992) in Israel at its pioneering stage. In its essence it propagated the ideology of labour: the halutzim’s (pioneers) ‘key to a true perception of self was physical labour… In conquering work they were conquering themselves’ (Elon 1981:13). It refers mainly to the Second and Third aliyot (immigration waves of 1904–23), who embodied the notion of pioneering and arrived with a sense of urgency for ‘new solutions to broader social and national problems’ and ‘saw their own practical activities as symbolic expressions of such solutions’ (Eisenstadt 1967:9–19). This ‘religion’ is associated with the mythical ideologist and manual worker A.D.Gordon. Like some other Zionist myths, it explained mundane action (manual work) in metaphysical deterministic terms. The suffering that was demanded of the halutz and tzabar was bound to bear fruit—the building of a flourishing and thriving country. At the same time it created the ‘new person’ that the Zionists were dreaming of, one who was disconnected from the occupations of the exile generations and growing out of and in harmony with the land. Suffering was thus ‘purifying’ and a major aspect in this transformation process.15 The second experience which contributed to the myth of suffering (as well as to that of bravery, to a certain extent) was that of massaot—trekking within Israel. The massa (singular) was used in educating—building, socialising, and tough-ening —the native-born Israeli—the tzabar—within the Zionist religion. In the years leading to the formation of the state, an interesting distinction was developed between two kinds of journeys: one was the tiyul designed for leisure, while the other, certainly much more important and common during those days (and, to some extent, until this day among Israelis) was the massa (plural massa’ot), which was aimed to ‘torment, strengthen and put to the test…as a ritual surrounding the crushing physical effort’ (Almog 1995: Chapter 3, my transla tion). The massa was a test of mental resilience which in Hebrew was called seviluut, from the root sevel, i.e. ‘suffering’. Voluntary suffering was added to the harsh conditions of these journeys—the young Israelis (the tzabarim) took upon themselves not to

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drink water while walking in the desert, or to drink only very sparingly.16 Torments and physical wounds were considered to be an insufficient reason for stopping the massa. It was even thought of as a desirable thing. Passing out from exhaustion was very common and was viewed as an ultimate expression of persistence in the face of suffering. The encounter with Israeli society These three central aspects of Israeli identity—the ethos of Jewish identity, the myth of suffering, and that of bravery and heroism—corresponded to the three important dimensions of the identity of Ethiopian Jews as crystallised on the journey. It could have been expected that this would facilitate the immigrants’ entrance into Israeli society and identity. It would make Israelis ‘embrace’ the Ethiopian Jews as part of themselves, as people sharing the same kind of consciousness and self-conception. In that sense, these constructions of selfhood would serve as ‘bridges’ into Israeli identity. However, the reality of the encounter of the Ethiopian Jews with Israeli society was not as expected. From the point of view of the Ethiopian Jews, it might be summed up precisely as a failure to feel the sense of completeness and belonging they had expected; instead, they experienced a continuing struggle to realise their identity and self-concept. Unlike many migrants from the Third World to the West, Ethiopian Jews came with official state support. The Israeli authorities had prepared absorption plans in various areas, which sought to avoid what are known in Israel as ‘the mistakes of the 1950s’ (Halper 1987)—that is, the rapid and massive secularisation of traditional societies in accordance with a melting-pot ideology.17 Thus Ethiopian Jews were put into special absorption centres for their first twelve to eighteen months. These were usually headed by a social worker. The objective was a gradual integration of Ethiopian Jews into Israeli society,18 as the period spent in the absorption centre would give sufficient time for learning the new language, finding a permanent place to live and a proper job, and, most of all, finding their way in Israeli culture and society. There were certainly some successes, notably through a number of educational-vocational projects in various parts of the country designed specifically for the Ethiopian immigrants. Unfortunately, however, due to housing shortages (partly created by unsuccessful governmental strategies) and certain bureaucratic conflicts, most Ethiopian Jews remained in absorption centres longer than intended. Thus, what was planned as a transient centre in many places turned into a permanent home. When they could finally leave these centres many of them felt reluctant to do so. After being uprooted for so long, having settled in the absorption centre many Ethiopian immigrants did not wish to move yet again. Another problem in leaving ensued from the fact that the absorption centre in itself, as a ‘total institution’ (Goffman 1957, 1968), by taking care of all the immigrants’ needs made them fear the ‘outside world’, as they called it, where they had to fend for

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themselves. Many of them explicitly expressed their anxiety about leaving the allembracing services of the absorption centres. Most of the absorption centres were cheap apartment buildings in the most problematic areas of Israeli cities. The presence of the Ethiopian Jews for long periods of up to seven or eight years inevitably created social problems. These areas already had their own difficulties, being mainly populated by Israelis of lower socio-economic status suffering from social marginality and the characteristic disadvantaged social services. The Ethiopian Jews were seen as competitors for limited resources, which made for a difficult start in social relations. In addition, finding employment was a major problem for Ethiopian Jews. Since most of them (95 per cent) came from agricultural backgrounds, few had a profession which they could immediately exercise; hence they found themselves very quickly with unskilled work, typically, low status and underpaid jobs. Many found themselves living in areas where unemployment was already very high and it was difficult to find a job at all (Donyo 1982:20; Ben-Zvi 1989). Employment is a crucial factor in integration, since it determines whether a family can muster the resources needed to move to a neighbourhood where children can have better opportunities for education, and hence a chance for social mobility. It is equally important as a constituent of self-respect and the feeling of worth, which is so significant in times of migration, as well as a crucial ingredient in family cohesion. An equally fundamental problem affecting most of the newcomers was the separation from their families, which were stranded in Ethiopia. As mentioned in Chapter 2, on 5 January 1985 a leak to the press caused Operation Moses to come to a halt. An estimated 35,000 Jews were left in Ethiopia or were stuck somewhere along the way.19 In Israel, some 1,500 Ethiopian children were unaccompanied by parents. Many others were missing their relatives, left in Ethiopia. Young people, themselves longing for their parents and struggling with their new conditions, had to become substitute parents to their brothers and sisters. The situation of the children influenced the entire Ethiopian community. It is not only that, cut off from their kin, they lacked completeness as families and a sense of completeness as individuals (BenEzer 1990), but also, in practical terms, young adults could not concentrate on their studies. Adolescents could not feel at rest knowing that their departure had left their parents more vulnerable and prone to harassment in Ethiopia. In addition, decisions in Israel, such as choices of profession or marriage, were held back through waiting for the families to arrive. There were some who developed the Ethiopian pathogenic condition of the full abdomen, whose ‘stomach got filled up with troubles’, which led them to stop eating. They had to be treated in hospitals. Some even committed suicide, stating a direct connection between their despair and their condition of familial separation.20 Another major problem for integration was skin colour. Being black in Israel aroused prejudices and various stereotypes, as well as, on the psychological level, primitive fears of the strange and alien.21 Shaul narrates: ‘And this word cushi

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[‘black’, but also ‘a slave’]22—when I first heard it I did not understand; and when I realised what it means, I couldn’t believe it. Am I someone’s slave? I was hurt.’23 Another aspect of being black in Israel relates to the fact that in a highly security-conscious society such as the Israeli one, there is some suspicion and fear of anyone in the street who cannot be easily and straight-forwardly identified and ‘categorised’ into one of the Israeli sub-groups or ethnic minorities. Such categorisation makes it easier to identify who belongs to ‘Us’ and who is part of ‘Them’, the latter being Arabs who could be potential terrorists. Ethiopian Jews broke stereotypes and social categories in Israel in the 1980s, and it was not until the beginning of the 1990s that Israelis developed a clear social category of ‘Ethiopian-black-Jewish-immigrant’. Only then did this particular suspicion and fear begin to gradually diminish.24 Their encounter with the Israeli education system was also problematic. Prior to their arrival a decision was made that Ethiopian children and adolescents would be directed to the religious state education system (Weil 1988:125–6).25 This decision applied to their first year in the country (but was carried out throughout the period of education) and was based on the assumption that, given their background, the children would adapt more easily to the religious school framework, even if the forms of Jewish observance practised by Ethiopian Jews were not identical to ‘mainstream’ religious practice in Israel. The problem was that referring the children to the state religious school system created certain difficulties that had to do with the school system itself. For example, fewer than 20 per cent of Israelis are religious, therefore not every community had adequate religious school facilities to allow the absorption of immigrant pupils. Furthermore, educational institutions belonging to the Habad religious movement,26 which are part of the state religious system, refused to recognise the Ethiopian children as Jews. They would not accept Ethiopian immigrant children in their schools, which meant that even fewer appropriate educational institutions were available. Many of the state religious schools are small. The presence of immigrant pupils was therefore felt immediately; at times they even made up the majority in a particular school—a situation that produced unforeseen difficulties. First, it constituted a problem from the point of view of those educationalists and parents (Ethiopian immigrants and veterans) who believed immigrant children should have models of the absorbing society studying with them in order to facilitate integration into society. In other words, this view advocates that they should learn with Israeli children if they want to become Israelis. The attain-ment of such a goal is put in question if more students in the class are immigrants than not.27 Furthermore, this situation created resentment among the veteran children themselves, to whom a majority of newcomers posed a social threat. It also brought about hostility among veteran Israeli parents, and even some of the teachers and heads of schools resented such a situation. They feared that the Ethiopian children would need special resources, and that they would become a

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burden on the schools and lower the achievements of other students (they were to realise later that Ethiopian children in fact improved the academic achievements of many of these schools). There was also an uncertainty related to whether these children would actually stay in these schools, in view of the fact that the families were not living in permanent residences but in absorption centres which were planned to be transitory arrangements. Thus the officials within the municipality (as well as teachers and veteran parents) would have to consider whether they wanted to invest in the Ethiopian children as if they were ‘their own children’. Social tensions rose high in places and hostile reactions towards the Ethiopian children and community were not uncommon. This affected the initial phase of integration, and the Ethiopian children felt socially rejected and were obviously hurt and disappointed. In addition to that, the academic level of the state religious schools was in many areas lower than that of the secular schools (Schwartzwald 1990:68–82). Teachers tended to have shorter training courses and were, in many cases, less equipped to deal with complex teaching situations (such as the multicultural context). The location of the absorption centres amid deprived neighbourhoods had meant that the Israeli students in these schools were, on the whole, low achievers, thus creating a situation which was certainly less favourable academically and socially for Ethiopian Jewish children. Post-primary education, aimed at pupils aged 14 to 18, offered Ethiopian youngsters two main types of frameworks: religious day schools and boarding schools run by the Youth Aliya organisation. The local religious secondary school system attracted only a small number of Ethiopian pupils. In contrast, Youth Aliya schools attracted 90–95 per cent of Ethiopian adolescents. A number of reasons led to that situation. First, the absorption centres were not designed for hosting unaccompanied adolescents who arrived in increasingly large numbers. A second reason was the lack of religious post-primary schools in the towns, or their lowered quality due to a gradual but significant process of depletion of their best students, who increasingly tended to choose the elitist religious boarding schools outside the community. A third reason was the belief, among Ethiopian adolescents and parents alike, that post-primary (and for some even primary) education in Israel was actually taking place only or principally in Youth Aliya frameworks. This belief was probably connected to the Kfar Batya project of 1955/6, whose graduates later became teachers in Ethiopia (cf. Chapter 2). It might also be that the adolescents and the parents lacked awareness of the special characteristics of the children educated in these frameworks. The fact that many Ethiopian families (38 per cent) were headed by women (Weil 1991) who were, following Ethiopian cultural codes, less able to stand up to the pressures of their adolescent children, especially to the pressures of adolescent boys, could have added to that tendency. And a final reason was the very significant economic help constituted by this type of education, whereby all expenses, including food, clothing, travel, etc., were paid by the system (which is funded by the Jewish Agency and the government).

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However, the Ethiopian adolescents in these schools faced problems of the same nature as those in the primary schools. The Youth Aliya educational institutions and villages have shifted, since 1971, from educating mainly immigrant youth who arrived unaccompanied from Nazi Germany, and later from other areas of trouble, to caring for ‘disadvantaged’ adolescents, mainly the second and third generation of Middle-Eastern immigrant origin, particularly North African, and those from ‘broken homes’. Thus, Ethiopian immigrant youth have again found themselves in a less academic environment with low achievers as their peer group (Peri 1985). The fact that a whole layer of the community—the adolescents between 12 and 18 years old28—was in boarding schools created a further complication for the community, both academically and socially. The adolescents who could have helped their younger brothers and sisters in their studies were continually disappearing from the community to the boarding schools, leaving their siblings in need of help from outside the home environment, which was not always available. The younger children lacked immediate role models for studying (which encouraged even more children to join Youth Aliya boarding schools as soon as they could). In addition, the gap between the immigrant youth and their parents, which is typical of groups of immigrants, widened as a result of that situation. The adolescents were changing even more rapidly than if they were living at home, because of the ‘powerful’ Israeli environment (Kashti and Arieli 1976, 1986; Arieli 1986) at the boarding schools. Many of the Ethiopian adolescents experienced a loss of parental guidance, and there was often an increase in tension, if not actual disagreements, with their parents. Some teachers at their religious schools thought that they could change the parents’ religious behaviour through the children. This enhanced the adolescents’ sense of an ever widening gap between themselves and their parents. For those who had arrived in Israel aged between 18 and 30 years old, there were two main options in terms of education. The first was ‘the youth project’, operating between 1985 and 1987, which targeted those who had between one and nine years of Ethiopian education. It was aimed at supplying them, in two years of study, with vocational training, as well as with the equivalent of eight years of Israeli education.29 The main problem with the programme was that the vocational training they received was not planned according to their apti-tudes or even according to their chances of employment later on, but as a function of what the system could offer at the time. So it was a purely administrative decision. It turned out later that most of the students could not find work in the area in which they were trained—for example, some were trained as car mechanics, which was an over-supplied job in Israel. The second option for the over-18 age group was to register for studies in Israeli universities. But the academic institutions are particularly universalistic in their admission criteria, which are in fact culturally biased and advantageous for students who had previous Western (some would say middle-class Western) education. These institutions did not change to accommodate Ethiopian students, either in their admission criteria or in their academic support system for those

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who did get in, support which proved to be crucial for their success.30 Most students, including some very talented ones who could have certainly graduated if given a fair chance, either did not get in or dropped out shortly after beginning their studies. Having been left with no qualifications to carry them through the Israeli vocational and employment system, they were, of course, deeply disappointed.31 Finally, the aspect of the encounter with Israeli society that Ethiopian Jews have found most wounding of all was the fact that their identity and self-concept was disputed: the authenticity of their own Jewish identity had been put into question, and their suffering was not acknowledged and appreciated. Instead of acquiring an image as being brave and resourceful people, they were (and still are) viewed by Israelis as helpless/dependent/resourceless people who were saved from starvation by the Israelis. Thus, the heritage of their journey has not been confirmed and even acknowledged. The doubt regarding the authenticity of their own Jewish identity was carried over from their time in Ethiopia into the Israeli context. Religious authorities have declared, on the one hand, that there was no doubt that they were Jews, a declaration which was instrumental in bringing them to Israel under the Law of Return (see Chapter 2, ‘Historical background’). Yet on the other hand the Chief Rabbinate demanded a process of ‘symbolic conversion’ to Judaism by Ethiopian Jews upon their arrival. This decision of the Chief Rabbinate, and its line of reasoning, was unintelligible to the Ethiopian Jews, as to many Israelis. A major conflict ensued, in which the whole issue of ‘Who is a Jew?’ and who is to decide on it in Israel was rekindled. The ‘dormant’ issue of state and religion in Israel came into the public eye again, and the rabbinate came under unprecedented attack, both in Israel and from Jewish leaders in the Diaspora. Basically, it was a struggle about the future of Israeli identity. Nevertheless, the decision remained unchanged and Ethiopian Jews had to go through what was in their eyes a humiliating ceremony of symbolic conversion. Many of them refused. The doubt then remained. A respected elder of the community once shared his frustration with me at having to go through this symbolic ceremony. He said: ‘We suffered so much on our way here and they question our Jewish identity!’ One cannot fail to notice the ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’ distinction raised in his words, reflecting a painful recognition by the Ethiopian immigrant community that not only had they not achieved the expected sense of completeness by the act of joining their fellow Jews in Israel, but also that their fellow Jews seem not to accept them. Second, their self-concept as resourceful and brave—even heroic—people found no resonance in Israeli society. Approximately 8,000 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted from Sudan in Operation Moses in 1984/5. This was the time when famine was at its height in Ethiopia. The famine and political strife had driven hundreds of thousands of people out of Ethiopia towards the refugee camps in Sudan, where people were dying of hunger and disease in vast numbers. Television pictures of the starving Ethiopians in the camps were broadcast to

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millions of homes around the world, including in Israel. These were powerful messages which brought about the greatest ever response by the West in the form of relief operations. Bob Geldof’s ‘concert for the poor’, with the participation of scores of celebrated artists, took place in Britain, with hundreds of thousands contributing to ‘the hungry people of Ethiopia’ (Pankhurst 1992; Smith 1994; Oxford 1994). This extensive and extremely powerful media coverage inscribed the famine and its ensuing misery in the minds of many Israelis. Despite the fact that Ethiopian Jews were regarded on their arrival as ‘the last Zionists’ (as some newspaper headlines ran at the time) and in opposition to the fact that before Operation Moses had taken place there were already 8,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel who had arrived during the previous seven years, before the famine had even started, the more powerful images, the ones which became ingrained in the Israeli psyche, were those of the television pictures of starving people in the refugee camps. Thus Ethiopian Jews were viewed as refugees escaping starvation rather than ideological migrants who had chosen to come because they were Jewish. In that sense, it seems that their Sudanese existence prevailed in the minds of Israelis and overshadowed their earlier journey. In addition to the powerful television images, it was, I believe, the selfperception of Israelis as brave rescuers of troubled Jews around the world (Troen and Pinkus 1992) which contributed to the negation of Ethiopians as brave people. Thus the Israeli myth of bravery, instead of extending its boundaries to include the Ethiopian Jews within it, was simply consolidated among the veteran Israelis, who saw themselves as those who saved the Jews of Ethiopia from hunger and a disastrous future. This definition of relations, of the veteran Israelis as ‘givers’ and of Ethiopian newcomers as ‘receivers’ of help, persisted from that point onwards in the minds of veteran Israelis. This view of Ethiopian Jews was reinforced by stereotypes related to their black skin colour and to their African origin. They were seen as coming from a primitive backward country and as being helpless and ignorant rather than resourceful people.32 It must be borne in mind that the state of Israel had given years of agricultural instruction and industrial support to Ethiopia, sending out many Israeli experts in the 1960s and early 1970s. At least some of it was still a living memory when the Ethiopian newcomers arrived in Israel, so that once again people perceived it as the duty of Israeli society ‘to teach them everything’, ‘to educate them’, ‘to raise them up’ (BenEzer 1992: Chapter 2). Conversely, the Jews of Ethiopia were expected to be satisfied with and grateful for everything they received from the Israelis.33 The words of the Ethiopian elder quoted above also convey, it seems to me, the feeling of Ethiopian Jews that their suffering on the journey was not acknowledged by Israeli society. This was in contrast to the Ethiopian Jews’ own feeling that they have earned their ‘entrance ticket’ (visa) to Israeli society as Jews whose suffering was caused by their Jewish identity and their particular wish to reach Israel.34

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Certainly, the image held by Israeli society of the Ethiopian Jews as helpless/ dependent/hungry people conflicted with the immigrants’ self-image as being strong and able. Their sense of this ‘unjust’ contrast, this wide discrepancy, created a tension that often became emotionally unbearable and functionally disruptive. This is because, in general, people need a degree of confirming (positive) feedback from the social environment, which serves as an affirmation of their self-perception and construction of identity. This sort of feedback also constitutes ‘narcissistic supplies’ (Sandler 1960, 1982) which are constantly required for the regulation of our emotional life. When the social environment reflects back to an individual or a group an image of themselves which is distorted and ‘untrue’, there is a danger that this image will eventually be internalised and will replace the person’s self-image or alter it to a significant degree. This can result in self-doubt and self-depreciation, which can bring about a reduction in the level of achievement motivation. A vicious circle may establish itself, whereby fewer efforts are made to function in a way which corresponds to an image of an able intelligent person, and this in turn brings about a reduced level of performance. The result could be an impaired functioning of the individual in various areas of his or her life. Newcomers who are trying to join a society are particularly prone to such a vicious circle. Since in most of the cases they constitute some sort of minority— usually in terms of their culture but at times also of skin colour and other aspects —they perceive others as a homogenous majority which possesses a certain similarity and knowledge which they lack. Children in particular exhibit a heightened tendency to be alike and to conform to the group, which can be psychologically dangerous for them. This seems to be especially true in the case of Ethiopian immigrants, since they have arrived with a concept of the Jews of Israel being ‘righteous people’, the kind of people who should serve as their models. Thus, if the culture they wish to join rejects their self-image and conveys an image which is derogatory in its essence, it could affect the psychological wellbeing of individuals in the present and also become a cross-generational message. Furthermore, the fact that Israeli society did not fully recognise their Jewish identity had a tremendous psychological effect upon the immigrants. It threatened to re-frame (Watzlawick et al. 1974) the events of the exodus and to strip them of their meaning as part of a collective selection and purification process. Losses through death of a parent or a child can suddenly become meaningless, stripped of their previous significance. Adaptation is in itself a stressful process, a process which requires coping abilities and emotional resources. We may assume that Ethiopian Jews are helped in their present struggle for integration by feeling that they are joining their fellow Jews in Israel. Conversely, destabilising their Jewish identity and self-concept deprives them of the element which, according to Erik Erikson (1968), is most needed as an integrating principle during the stressful time of resettlement. The initial encounter with Israel as experienced by Ethiopian Jews could thus be summed up in the words of one of my interviewees: ‘We arrived—yet did not

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arrive!’ Other Ethiopian Jews repeated this message in more or less the same words. They felt that they had actualised the dream of many generations by returning to their country, to God’s land, and had thus re-established the fundamental bonds between people, God, and country.35 In this sense they had a feeling of deep satisfaction and self-fulfilment. However, in terms of joining Israeli society they feel that they have not yet arrived. The journey to Israel in this sense is still continuing. Shlomo expressed vividly the frustration and disappointment at the ‘rough face’ shown to him at his journey’s end: When the aeroplane landed in Israel, the joy of it is beyond description. Suddenly you forget all the hardships you suffered, for a moment you put it aside, and…as if I was floating in the air out of happiness. Then they took us into the night. It was raining, we saw the orange groves on our way, and we said to each other: ‘Look. Here it is! The oranges. As we were told, the land of milk and honey! We are seeing it. It actually starts.’ Then we arrived at the absorption centre, and relatives started visiting us, and we were so tired, and they brought us the fruits of the country, and the joy was incredible… And then, slowly, you start observing something strange…as if you were once in a place [where] you had a certain dream, and now you encounter some-thing…for a moment it is hard to accept it. Because…your expectations were different, your dreams were different, and then, all the hardships you went through in order to realise it, and for a moment, when you see that things are different from what you expected, you turn to being disappointed. Asking yourself, ‘Where have I actually arrived?’ Because it is not the place… There were in fact people who asked if they had reached the right place…and ‘Is it the place I dreamt of all my life?’ Suddenly Shabbat arrived, and there were cars driving on a Shabbat… And the bureaucracy…and when they used the word cushi [black]…this was such an insult…and when people used it in a certain tone it would infuriate me. Not only me but many of us felt: ‘Did we come for this? Is this the reception we deserve? What we went through, what we suffered, no one asks us; how many family members we have lost, no one asks us; but instead they say this word!’…And the problem with the [Chief] Rabbinate!… And people think that we had come because of hunger. This enrages me! It makes my blood boil! After everything we have suffered on the journey because of our Jewishness! The journey: a myth in the making? The story of their journey seems to play an important role in the process of adaptation and integration of the Ethiopian Jews into Israeli society. It is recounted among the Ethiopian Jewish community and is being used as a vehicle in the social dialogue which has evolved with Israeli society. It seems to have

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become their way of continuing the necessary journey within Israel, striving to ‘arrive’ in the social sense, to be accepted and integrated. Through the story they try to reach the much-longed-for sense of completeness ensuing from the merging of ‘river’ and ‘sea’. The story of the journey is told within the community, within families and among friends, between generations and within the same age group. It is recounted at gatherings on holidays or vacations, following burial and during mourning rituals; and on days of remembrance for their loved ones. A forest of remembrance has been created in the vicinity of Ramat-Rachel, a kibbutz near Jerusalem, where relatives have planted a tree for each of those who died on the journey. The events of the journey are recounted on the special Memorial Day when they gather at this place. Yet it is told not only on holy days and formal occasions. Often when adolescent friends meet after a long time, on holiday from their boarding schools, they recall their journey and share experiences. The elderly too share their stories when they meet after a long time, and sit together and drink coffee (buna) in the three-rounds time-consuming ceremony when people talk and share. Some elements of the story seem to stand out and repeat themselves. Others are variations on the themes or are more personal. The story of the journey incorporates and introduces the history of the community. It includes, besides the journey itself, a condensed history of the community in Ethiopia—at least, what they consider its essential features (as, for example, the state of exile, a separate existence as an ethno-religious entity and a sense of non-belonging in spiritual terms, etc.) —as well as traditions of how they arrived in Ethiopia and prophecies of their return. It also includes the history of the Jews before their departure. The story of the journey connects them, therefore, to their recent past, that of the journey, as well as to their further (Ethiopian) and mythical (Hebrew) past. Several functions of the telling of this story among themselves were identified: 1 Re-affirmation of their identity: important elements within their identity are restated. This is important since they are encountering a new society, which brings up questions of identity typical of such a phase, as well as the need for change. During this period they feel that they have to go through, or are already undergoing, a reconstruction of identity. This aspect is of special importance for the Ethiopian Jews, since the most central elements of their identity and self-concept have been put under question within Israeli society. 2 Cohesiveness: it connects the members of the community to each other and makes them feel one entity. The telling of the experience reminds them of their mutual fate, their sharing of adversity and their success in overcoming challenges. The sharing of the past brings about a sense of direction in the present and ‘realigns’ them for their stride into the future. 3 A source of strength: it is a spring from which they draw the energy needed for coping with the unexpected difficulties during their resettlement. Through

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recalling the continued existence of their people in spite of hardships over many centuries, the story assists them, lifts them above the current difficult situation. It releases hope and stirs the force of life in them. The story of the journey plays a central role in the social dialogue that has evolved between Ethiopian Jews and Israeli society. When interviewed in the media on other subjects, Ethiopian Jews seize the opportunity to promote their own view of themselves. Through the journey story they try to convey to Israeli society those aspects of their self-perception which are most important for them: those of their Jewish identity, the fact that they earned their right to Israel through the suffering of the journey, and their self-image as brave and resourceful people. What could better convey Jewish identity than stories of kidush hashem (Jewish martyrology) which are included within the narrative of the journey? Or what could better contradict Israeli perceptions of them as miserable people than the stories of heroism and ingenuity on their way? What could replace the information included in the narratives in explaining the reason for their journey ‘home’, that they were persecuted and discriminated against as Jews in Ethiopia and felt that they did not belong there, which conveys a message that stands in contrast to the image of ‘people who came because of hunger’? Or what could be more powerful than the experience of reliving the ‘Exodus of the Israelites’ to convey the idea that they share the same ancestors as the present-day Israelis?36 It is important to note, however, that the social struggle of the Ethiopian Jews was not limited to their efforts to convey important messages to Israeli society through emphasising the journey experience. The struggle also included a use of various political measures. During 1985 they staged a prolonged strike against the Chief Rabbinate. They involved the prime minister in this struggle, and used their right to appeal to the Supreme Court and won their case. For a period they insisted on continuing to have their own priests to perform marriage ceremonies. Yet even these political measures were, in many instances, ‘couched’ within the frame of reference of the journey, which was expressed in interviews made in relation to these actions. Along this process of retelling time and again the story of the journey, or aspects within it, the story seems to be turning into a myth. The concept of myth is applied in this context as it is used by Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson (1990), who relate to it not as ‘mere archaic relics but a potent force in everyday life, part of our collective unconscious’. These authors claim that ‘old myths are constantly reworked and new myths continually created as people make sense of untidy and traumatic memories and give meaning to their lives’ (1990:20). Following these and other scholars (cited below), I think of myth not as an untrue story but as a living memory, of either recent or long past events, which continues to play a role in people’s lives and is ‘a living force in the present’ (Samuel and Thompson 1990:20). The psychologist Rollo May (1991) writes in his study of myths in the United States:

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myth refers to the quintessence of human experience, the meaning and significance of human life… The myth is a drama which begins as a historical event and takes on its special character as a way of orienting people to reality. The myth, or story, carries the values of the society: by the myth the individual finds his sense of identity. (May 1991:26) Myths, I believe, are particularly potent when a collective identity (and sometimes even when an individual identity) is at risk. In his study of a small commune outside Marseilles, Lucien Aschieri has shown how ‘for a threatened community, memory must above all serve to emphasise a sense of common identity’ (Thompson 2000:166). Myth can also serve, according to Roland Barthes (1957), as a ‘system of communication’. Rosanna Basso (1990:68) pointed out in her study of a children’s strike that events or actions could be a prey of myth ‘if there is a collective action that puts them at the centre of a system of communication’. The story of the journey of the Ethiopian Jews seems to have acquired these characteristics of a myth. It is a story that makes sense of untidy and traumatic memories. It is a means of finding and keeping identity, and it has become a system of communication, a vehicle for conveying desired messages to themselves as well as to Israeli society. The story, I believe, is a myth ‘in the making’. It is still a first- and secondhand memory transmitted within and outside the group, but it has already acquired those aspects which play a part in condensing the factual details and reworking them into a collective story whereby the meaning of it is its central essence. The study of the differing processes of transmission has been carried furthest among the anthropologists and historians of Africa, due to their special dependence on oral sources (Thompson 2000:167). Some Africanists have tried to disentangle the process by which immediate memory is transformed into formal tradition. This can sometimes be quite rapid: the lives of African prophets, for example, can be transformed into myths within a space of two or three years (ibid.). Africanist Joseph Miller, using fieldwork in Angola, has shown how when the memory of the Angolan War of 1861 passes beyond personal oral histories which are eyewitness accounts, and beyond informal memory which includes second-hand accounts, what is then needed—and indeed is synthesised by the societies he researched—is ‘a simplified, stylised account which concentrates on the meaning of the story’ (Thompson 2000:167, emphasis mine).37 People who have gone through it are still telling the story of the journey. Nevertheless, it is beginning to change from a personal story into a collective memory. Some elements of the group’s story are already being emphasised, given a place of importance. Some of my interviewees were already orienting themselves according to these collective aspects of the story as if these were coordinates to which their personal account should refer. Tamar, for example, tells

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me at the beginning of her account: ‘I did not suffer as much as most of the others in the community did… My journey was not as difficult as it had been for others.’ She perceives, therefore, that she ‘has nothing to tell about’ (although she is willing to share her account and does so with a formidable strength). She thus relates to the aspect of suffering as an essential part of a journey story, and in fact is complementing her own story by ‘filling in’ this aspect, talking about the communal experience. Myths created by particular groups are not a new phenomenon in Israeli society. Various groups of immigrants (or aliyot, as waves of immigrants are called in Israel) have created different myths. These centre around who they have been (their past identity), the way they were received in Israel, or on what they have built up in their new place. These myths often serve as a means to legitimise claims for certain political or social rights. For example, the myth of the halutz (pioneering Israeli) or tzabar created by Ashkenazi Jews was maintained in order to preserve the power of a social elite and as a means to motivate others towards a certain model of conduct. The case of ‘the myth of the disadvantaged’ of the North African group (aliya) also served as a way of penetrating into the political arena, or of promoting status, as in the myth of ‘the drying of the swamps’ of the first Jewish settlers of the 1880s, which somehow continue to serve their offspring (as a pioneering aristocracy) to this day. Almog (1993) writes about the ‘Zionist myths of the 1948 generation’ and Yablonka (1998) and Segev (1992) relate various myths which play a role within Israeli society through their discussion of the ways Holocaust survivors were received in Israel. It can be assumed that, since every group of immigrants that arrived in Israel created their own myth, those who did not develop such a myth are ‘missing’ as a group in Israeli consciousness. Thus, the first settlers, who came mainly from eastern and central Europe in the last century and built the first little villages and towns, presented society at large with the myth of ‘the drying of the swamps’. The second and third aliya, who came in the 1920s and later, mainly from Russia, the Ukraine and the Baltic republics, created the ‘new person’ and the ‘religion of (manual) work’. The North African Jews in particular created the myth of the disadvantaged, which includes the idealised picture of their previous existence, notably in Morocco. On the other hand, those who do not have a myth surrounding their aliya seem to be missing as a distinctive group in the Israeli consciousness, as, for example, are the Egyptian Jews in Israel.38 The story of the journey, which is turned into a myth, is therefore extremely important since it serves as a means of opening up a space for the Ethiopian Jews as a group in the Israeli psyche. The social struggle of Ethiopian Jews, with its various aspects and the story of the journey at its centre, seems to be of importance if we look at it from yet another point of view. By struggling to assert their identity, the Ethiopian Jews were (and still are) compelled to address the question of what aspects of their original culture they wished to preserve, and what they were willing to give up. In that sense, paradoxically, the struggle against the religious authorities, and the

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heated dialogue with some sections of the Israeli public, launched them on an important process—a process which I would suggest could be called ‘becoming hyphenated’. Migrants, and sometimes refugees if they stay long enough, do not go (as some would argue) through a total transformation into a newly created person, sometimes called an assimilated person, moulded anew in the model of the new (or host) society. Rather, they become hyphenated persons, people with a dual or even multiple sense of social identity, often referred to as MexicanAmericans, Italian-Americans, Chinese-English or Bulgarian-Israelis. A veteran Ethiopian, who came as an adolescent and had been in Israel for thirty years, once said to an interviewer who had asked him whether he was an Israeli in every sense: ‘Of course, I belong to the processes of the last thirty years. Yet some basic things never change.’ By these words, I believe, he meant that he is an Israeli of Ethiopian origin: an Ethiopian-Israeli. We still do not know how this process will continue to unfold, and whether the kind of hyphenated identity that Ethiopian Jews will form will include seeds of future conflict and renewed marginalisation, or the power of hope and integration which initially inaugurated their journey.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

By way of conclusion I wish to highlight a few points arising from this study which seem to have a more general relevance to migration journeys. The first point I want to make relates to the way journeys are experienced by those who have made them. We have seen how for Ethiopian Jews the journey was a distinctive event in their lives, an event which has acquired particular significance within their life stories. This might also be true for other migrants and refugees. Journeys, I believe, are highly intensive events which are registered as a distinct period and experience within the life history of the individual. People construct migration or flight journeys as happening within relatively clear boundaries. These boundaries, however, may extend somewhat beyond the limits of the physical movement. The journey will most probably be conceived as starting from the moment of decision to migrate (whether chosen or forced), when processes of separation from and mourning of the old society and self are starting to take place; it continues through the period of the actual movement and often concludes some time after the arrival of the person in the new country. Nevertheless, the essence of the journey is in the powerful processes which the person (and the community) undergoes in the course of the physical movement and during the period in between countries. Migration journeys, I believe, should be viewed as a dynamic process rather than a static condition. Each phase of the journey influences the next one, and specific experiences within it affect the way the person encounters the experiences that follow. From this perspective, it would be interesting to study the journeys of other groups of migrants and refugees and to understand the experience and its significance in the lives of those who made them. It would also be worthwhile to look at migration in general, even when it does not include an intensive experience of exacting movement, from the point of view of a journey, i.e. looking at the in-between phase—the period that starts with the decision to migrate and ends upon arrival in the new country— examining the dynamics of change which occur during this period as well as how these influence subsequent processes. A second point which comes out of this study is related to the issue of journeys and identity (in the latter various senses). Victor Turner, who researched pilgrimage phenomena (1974) and the condition of ‘limen’ (Turner

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1967, following Van Gennep’s original concept of 1909), wrote about the fact that being out of structure—in other words, out of norm—allows more extensive experimentations which result in potent transformations in the self. Identity is thus affected to a greater extent by this situation of ‘limen’, of being ‘between and betwixt’, going through what could be called a ‘journey mode of existence’, and of self. Thus there seems to be a circular relation between the process of the journey and the journeyer’s identity. Identity (in its various dimensions) affects many aspects of the journey: it may constitute, as in the case of Ethiopian Jews or of political activists who have to flee for their lives, the very cause for a migration journey; it influences the way people will cope with negative experiences, e.g. it can serve as a source of strength and an ideological motivation to rise above hardship and torment. At the same time, the experience of the journey shapes the individual’s and the group’s identity and self-concept. We have seen how, in the case of the Ethiopian Jews, the hardships of the journey were understood as a process of selection and purification, and as a re-experiencing of the Exodus of their ancestors from Egypt to Israel, thus fortifying their Jewish identity. Carl Rogers (1967) argued that the mere experience of learning who one is, of realising the person’s limitations and boundaries of self, is, in itself, a change. Moreover, it releases further change in the direction of the ideal the individual is striving to attain. The very fact of leaving their country of origin, the homeland, and of not having yet reached any other well-defined and cohesive social order, with norms and sanctions, creates a different perspective on events as well as on the individual’s past and future. It is a pause in the usual way that their life is run, and for a while the individual can reflect on it. These processes happen even during harsh conditions and traumatic experiences. Reflection does not have to be long. It is nonetheless meaningful, and can bring about significant changes in the individual. Another aspect of the experience of a journey which affects identity is the encounter with situations involving life and death, particularly with the reality of death which many such journeys include. Experiencing the actual death of relatives, friends and others, or one’s own imagined death, alters people’s perspective on life, changes their self-concept (self-representation, in psychoanalytic terms; Sandler 1962), and the way they view the world. Many report that they felt like different people following such an experience. The third point I would like to make relates to the consequences of extreme experiences such as journeys. Considering the impact of such experiences on individuals (and sometimes on groups), psychologists and other researchers tend to examine these only from the point of view of how the individual functions following the experience. It seems to me that there is a need to widen the perspective, to consider aspects which do not necessarily affect the function in its narrow sense, but to look at the whole ‘associative world’ of the person. I believe that such negative experiences form a condition of ‘over-relevancy’ (BarOn 1991) in their inner world. They occupy the world of associations of the individual in such a way that they are reminded of these events on a daily basis,

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while performing mundane activities. People need to invest mental/emotional energy in order to avoid these associations, circumvent them, escape them and ‘cross danger areas’: that is, even if a reasonable process of ‘working through’ (Sandler et al. 1973) has taken place. While these people may function normally and without problem at work, in the family, at school or in their social activities, their quality of life may have changed as a consequence of the journey. The journey has then affected their ‘internal furniture’ (Sandler 1962; Sandler and Sandler 1983) in such a way that their life—even though not the commonly measured functioning—is changed. I would add here that these negative experiences may influence important decisions within the lives of these persons, such as the choice of a profession or of a partner, but not necessarily the functioning which is connected with these decisions. On the other hand, it is important to remember that extreme situations such as a migration journey do not necessarily lead to a narrowing of personal boundaries (ego boundaries or self-representation) through traumatisation of the individual. They could lead to the quite opposite process of personal development through extension of the boundaries of the self. We have seen how, for some Ethiopian adolescents, the journey was conceptualised as an experience of personal development and growth. They felt that they had learnt new things about themselves and the world around them, and that they could then use this knowledge for their own benefit as well as in the service of others. I therefore suggest that the effect of extreme situations such as the migration journey should be seen (in part) along a continuum relating to their subsequent ‘quality of life’: a continuum that lies between the poles of trauma and personal growth. Somewhere along this continuum people are affected by negative experiences in a way which does not impair their functioning but influences their inner world in other ways. It would be interesting and important, I believe, to research the impact of journey experiences, and other extreme situations, on the quality of life of people, and in particular on those who have experienced them during their childhood and adolescence. These kinds of consequences could not be traced in the common way in which we tend to measure (and think of) effects following difficult and/or traumatic events: that is, measuring functioning at school as in the level of grades, functioning at work through economic success or the stability of employment, or administering questionnaires which investigate these and other areas of functioning. One has first of all to construct a suitable theoretical framework which takes into account such influences on the inner world of the person and the effects in areas which do not impair functioning. Researchers would then have to find the appropriate tools, different ways of investigating the lives of those who have undergone such experiences. A life-story interview in the tradition of the narrative interview is just one such tool. New research instruments may have to be created. A fourth aspect to be found in this research relates to the suffering as an ‘entrance ticket’ into society. We have seen how Ethiopian Jews expected to be

CONCLUDING REMARKS 201

accepted as fellow countrymen (and women) by veteran Israelis and counted on the Israelis to understand how they felt, that they had endured more than their share of suffering. There is some evidence that this experience is shared by other refugees. The number of refugees in the world is increasing and is estimated today at about 50 million (Zetter 2000; it was 15–20 million about ten years ago, see Marrus 1988; Black 1993). Many of these refugees underwent arduous journeys as well as other horrific experiences. Upon arrival in their safe haven many of them, I suggest (following this study as well as some evidence from other studies), conceive their experiences of suffering as entitling them to certain rights. They expect understanding. Even before that, they expect to be listened to, for their voice to be heard. Some even feel that they have a moral message to convey to society, a ‘lesson’ which was acquired through all that suffering. It seems to me that the processes that arise out of this situation have not been sufficiently researched at the individual and social level. We still do not have a deep understanding of the various ways in which these ‘entrance tickets’ or ‘social visas’ are constructed. Nor do we fully grasp the ways in which this perception by the immigrant, refugee, exile or asylum seeker influences their functioning within their new society or the way in which they experience their entrance process. Furthermore, in the case of entire groups who arrive simultaneously in a country as immigrants (or as a large number of individuals seeking asylum), we do not know how their expectations, following the experiences of suffering, influence the way they interpret the reaction/s towards them within their new society. Nor do we know how it affects inter-group (which is often inter-ethnic) relations, and whether in the final analysis suffering invokes social conflict. These questions, I believe, remain to be researched. Let me conclude by returning to the beginning: the elderly Ethiopian man who revolted against the stand taken by the Rabbinate regarding his Jewishness; the youngster at the boarding school who thought that he would have been treated differently ‘if they only knew of the journey I went through, how I suffered, the family members I have lost on the way’. I hope by now the reader understands, as I think I do, why the journey served as the screen through which they experienced the reality of integration in Israel. Furthermore, following this understanding and considering the points raised in this book, I expect it has been made clear why journeys should be considered as a distinct phenomenon which is worth researching among other migrants and refugees. My hope is that I have contributed somewhat towards this aim and, in the final step, towards a better understanding of human suffering and triumph.

Biographical Data of Interviewees

APPENDIX

203

Source This table is an abridged and slightly adapted version of a table contained in Messing (1957)

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NOTES

1 INTRODUCTION 1 If Israel can be considered part of ‘the West’. 2 The terms ‘migrants’, ‘immigrants’ and ‘emigrants’ are often used interchangeably in the literature. The distinction is not always a straightforward one since it is often not simply a matter of ‘geography’ or ‘intent’. I shall mainly use the term ‘migrants’ (which is the more inclusive). However, I shall use ‘emigrants’ to describe the people while they were still in their country of origin, intending to leave, and ‘immigrants’ (which connotes mainly a perception of these people from the point of view of the receiving society) for when they arrived in their new country. The term ‘refugee’ is employed in the present study, as in other studies in the field, to connote the experience of forced migration and of flight, and in its somewhat narrower usage as a legal term defined by the UN Convention of 1951, or Protocol of 1967, or by the African Unity Organisation (OAU). 3 A formal institution called the Chief Rabbinate exists in Israel, headed by an Ashkenazi and a Sephardi Chief Rabbi and by a Chief Rabbinate Council. They decide on religious matters involving both observant and non-observant Israeli Jews, notably those relating to the performance and registration of marriage and divorce. They are also involved in ruling on who is a Jew from a religious (hallachic) point of view, which is one of the important factors to be considered by the state’s law when having to decide on such a matter. The conflict of this institution (and these rabbis) with Ethiopian Jews will be explained in detail below (Chapters 2 and 8). 4 The tightening of the European borders due to the policy of ‘restrictionism’ and the difference between European nation-states in their regulations concerning immigrants as well as asylum seekers are widely and fiercely discussed in this context (Bauman 1998; Zetter 1999b). ‘Bogus’ asylum seekers, who are considered as ‘economic migrants’, have aroused public resentment and have also served as an ‘easy prey’ for populist (and other) politicians. The more recent shift, however, towards opening up the borders for immigration, or rather specific immigrants, is viewed in light of two factors:

1 the low fertility rate in Western European countries (as well as Japan, incidentally) which predicts that the population of united

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Germany, for example, will shrink by 17 million people by the year 2040; thus there will not be enough people in Germany, Britain and other countries to carry the economic burden of the retired-over-65-year-old persons; 2 the realisation that immigrants could actually contribute and boost the economy rather than be a burden on the society. In Britain, for example, agencies are starting to look for and invite skilled workers from other countries: for example, teachers from Australia, computer programmers from Pakistan and medical doctors from South Africa. (The last is to such an extent that Nelson Mandela has asked the British government to stop this process before South Africa is left without good doctors; and the Pakistani ambassador viewed this process as a new type of colonialism.) While these ideas for change of policy towards immigration are thrown to the public to be tested, they are still quali-fied by restricting them to skilled workers, excluding asylum seekers, resulting from the ‘new openness’ towards immigration (see editorials from The Times and the Daily Telegraph from 12 September 2000, and Johnston in the DailyTelegraph from the same day; see also the New York Times issue of ‘Immigrants’, in October 2000, echoing some similar issues concerning Haitian and other migrants/refugees).

5 Handlin relies here, among other sources, on Andreas Geyer, Jr, ‘Letter to the German Society of Philadelphia’ (1805), quoted in Friedrich Kapp (1870:183–5); on reports of sixty years later (quoted in Kapp 1870:189–92); and on Robert Louis Stevenson (1895:39–42, 44–8, 50–5). 6 Elizabeth Colson’s first words in her book about the resettlement of the Tonga should be remembered in this context: ‘Massive technological development hurts’ (Colson 1971, cited in Davis 1992:149). 7 The quite recent Yugoslav conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia, Herzegovina and other parts of the former state, as well as in Albania, caused attention once again to be shifted to Europe and European refugee flows. This has resulted in an incredible number of NGO workers in this area (estimated 50,000 in Bosnia), in comparison, for example, to only a few hundred in Rwanda (Zetter 2000). 8 The numbers are estimations based on refugee applications and various other sources (see ECDC Report 1989:21–9). The Ethiopian community in the US in 1989 was estimated at between 50,000 and 75,000 people. For the Canadian case, of women in particular, see Helene Moussa’s book Storm and Sanctuary (1993). This book could be viewed as the one which resembles most the study presented here. Inspired by a femi-nist theory, the book focuses on the experience of Ethiopian and Eritrean women refugees in Canada. When she deals with their history, Moussa looks at the ‘flight journey’ (Chapter 7) and the camp period (Chapter 8). As I am trying to do in the present work, she relates to the journey as important, tries to

NOTES 207

give the women a ‘voice’, and examines the form of their interviews. The difference from our study, however, is her focus, which as mentioned above is the experience of women in Canada—not the journey and its meaning. 9 The distance from Ban Vinai to Bangkok by bus is 413 miles (Everingham 1980: 646). 10 Refugee camps are, from the point of view of the refugees, just a station on their journey. This is so even if they stay for years—are ‘warehoused’ —in the camps. Most refugees may, for a long time, hold on to the hope of going back to their village or town, or at least of repatriation to their country of origin. However, when the hope of such a prospect seems unreal, many attempt to find new life in a third country; in the West or elsewhere. 11 General aspects of storytelling in Ethiopia could then be taken up in the analysis. For instance, biblical paradigms of speech and style can be detected in the journey stories. These were found in other groups within Ethiopian society (D.L.Appleyard 1992). Consequently, these could be studied in full.

2 THE CONTEXT OF THE JOURNEY 1 The ethnographic sketch is based mainly on the writings by Messing (1957, 1982), Abbink (1984), Schoenberger (1975), Leslau (1951), Faitlovitch (1959), Kahana (1977, 1988 material culture in particular), Schwartz-Beeri (1988 material culture), Trevisan-Semi (1985 purity/impurity rituals, 1993), Budovsky et al. (1994 the life cycle), Tarbus and Minutchin-Itzikson (1983 gender roles in particular), Itzhak (1988 education), Bogale (1985 education), Solomon (1987), Shelemay (1988, 1989) and Friedman and Sabar-Friedman (1987 recent changes in the community). 2 On non-religious journeys see Solomon 1987. 3 Much as the Sabbath hallah (or choleh) is eaten in other communities. 4 Coffee is also associated with various beliefs regarding health e.g. with the phenomenon of spirit possession, the zar. One of the reasons given for zar attacks is the drinking of too much coffee. At the same time, coffee may be used as one way to appease the zar spirit. 5 This does not apply to signs of the cross, which appear on many women’s foreheads or on the backs of their hands. These were probably intended to disguise their Jewish identity within their Christian environment and while travelling. 6 See The Invention of Tradition by Hobsbaum and Ranger 1983. 7 Cf. Shlush 1988:51 for reference to the basis of this custom, called nidah, in the Bible as well as to the rabbinic hallachic law which developed in orthodox Judaism as a result of the biblical precept. 8 During the ceremony the priest slaughters a chicken, the blood of which is then scattered on the site of the circumcision, and prayers and another blessing are recited. The commandment to perform circumcision on the eighth day is scrupulously observed, no matter what the circumstances: an uncircumcised male— a very rare occurrence—would be treated as a non-Jew. Circumcision therefore takes place even on holidays, although ceremonies due to take place on the Sabbath are deferred until Sunday. Weil (1988:40) reports that the circumcision was usually performed by a woman at the entrance to the ‘blood’ (isolation) hut, while the kess

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9

10 11 12

13

14

15

16

17

18

(priest) would bless the bread and share it among the children of the community on the day after circumcision. Others (Ben Dor 1988; Shlush 1988) report slightly different rituals. As in any living community, variations of ritual, of course, existed within Ethiopian Jewish localities. This applies both from a general Ethiopian perspective (Levine 1965) and from the Ethiopian Jewish point of view. For example, there are no bar mitzva or bat mitzva ceremonies, which mark the entering of puberty of Jewish boys and girls at the ages of 13 and 12 respectively (the latter, though, is a modern phenomenon even in mainstream Judaism; see Weil 1988:41). We may assume emotional and psychological implications of this transition. This I hope to address in a future article. Singular kess, plural kessoch. Arnold Van Gennep (1909) addressed this issue in his analysis of the ‘rites of passage’. The application of his formulations to rituals surrounding death in the Ethiopian Jewish community are discussed in Itzikson and Hanegbi 1985. See, for example, BenEzer 1992, Chapter 12: ‘Proverbs as a mirror of culture’, which deals in particular with proverbs related to trouble and misfortune in Ethiopian culture and with coping with these. This chapter also discusses the possible use of proverbs in working with Ethiopian immigrant youth. The extensive usage of proverbs is an aspect of Ethiopian culture, i.e. it is shared by other peoples of Ethiopia, notably the Amhara (Levine 1965; D.L.Appleyard 1992). For proverbs in Africa, see Ruth Finnegan’s particularly useful introduction to oral literature in Africa, where a chapter is devoted to the topic of proverbs (1970: 389–425). These great teachers were the monks. They were often the most highly regarded teachers of religious and cultural traditions, and were those who actually trained the kessoch as well. Monks are a unique phenomenon in Judaism and are only known to have existed among Ethiopian Jews. The practice of sending the bright children to study with the monks was somewhat undermined during the twentieth century. This is because the phenomenon of monks among the Beta Israel was regarded as less desirable by reformers such as Faitlovitch, who tried to build a bridge between them and ‘mainstream’ rabbinic Judaism. One can still, however, find people among Ethiopian Jews today who were trained by monks or whose parents were educated by monks. Formal education entitled the girl, in practice though not necessarily in principle, to a degree of freedom in the choice of a marriage partner or at least in refusing one, thus serving as an agent of social change. Faitlovitch himself had to flee from Ethiopia to Israel, while his most distinguished student, Taamrat Emmanuel (who also was close to the emperor), moved with his students to Gondar. Some Jews became known as part of the resistance movement in Ethiopia. Some of Faitlovitch’s students were killed by the Fascist regime during that time (TrevisanSemi 1986; Bogale 1985:90). The use of the term ‘anti-semitism’ in the Ethiopian context should be regarded with care. Even if the Jews were persecuted, it is not always clear whether this took place because of their religion or, for example, as a result of their profession (or both reasons). There is, however, some evidence which suggests that the notion of antiChrist was indeed applied in the Ethiopian context, including in daily interactions

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19

20 21 22

23 24

25

26

27

between Christians and Jews (for a critical discussion of this topic see Kaplan 1984, 1987). The teachers who had been trained in Kfar Batyah, Israel, were accused of ‘Zionist views’ and thus put in prison, where they were tortured in an attempt to break their spirit. They were finally released after almost two years. All subjects at primary school were studied in Amharic, whereas junior high school was taught in English (beginning with Grade Six). This view, however, permits a possibility that there was some mixture with the local Agaw population, which can also account for the similarities with those people. The exact time of the formation of the Jewish kingdom is not known. At any rate, researchers who hold that such a kingdom existed agree that it was before the fourteenth century. Kaplan 1987; Solomon 1987; Quirin 1992. Scholars point to the traditional etymology of the term coming from the Ge’ez language (falasa, falasi) and meaning an ‘émigré’ or ‘exile’, ‘an uprooted person’, and also a ‘foreigner’ (falasyan) (see, for example, Aescoly 1943; Leslau 1976; Rosen 1985). These terms were considered by researchers as implying a possible separation from ancient Israel and migration to Ethiopia, and are thus believed to have existed even before the crushing of the kingdom, when they acquired the additional meaning of ‘people with no land rights’. ‘Falasha’ was the term then used by Ethiopian Christians (especially as a derogatory term) and by foreign observers (Quirin 1992), as in the generally accepted change from ‘Galla’ to ‘Oromo’ for another Ethiopian people, since the word ‘Galla’ similarly originated as an external label and had pejorative connotations (Quirin 1992:12). I shall, in the present study, use the terms ‘Beta Israel’ and ‘Ethiopian Jews’, by which the community refer to themselves. It is not clear whether these were complementary occupations to their tenant agricultural subsistence or whether this was their only or main occupation (Quirin 1992:89). The term ‘Jewish world’ is widely used among Jews, both in Israel and in other places, referring to the Jewish communities which are scattered around the world. Other terms used are ‘world Jewry’ and ‘the Jewish Diaspora’. The last term connotes more specifically the fact that the Jews outside Israel are in fact exiles. Such was, for example, the encounter of Rabbi David ben Zimra (Radbaz), one of the most important Jewish scholars of his time, in Egypt in the sixteenth century. Radbaz met several Ethiopian Jews since he had to pass a (hallachic) ruling on matters which concerned such Jews (see Waldman 1989:66; Corinaldi 1988; Shlush 1988: 85–92). There were also the stories of various Jewish travellers between the ninth and nineteenth centuries who visited such places as Persia, Tunisia, Egypt and Babylon and seemed to have heard of the existence of Jews in Ethiopia (see Waldman 1989:17–152; also the letters of Kiruan People to Rabbi Tsemah Gaon (end of the ninth century) concerning the stories of Eldad Ha’Dani (‘the Danite’; see also Epstein 1891), Binyamin of Tudela (1159–67), Rabbi Eliahu of Ferrara (fifteenth century), as well as many other reports and correspondence between rabbis, Jewish communities and travellers in Europe, the Middle East and India, in relation to Ethiopian Jews. These encounters were not without consequences for Ethiopian Jews. Later on they served as the basis for opinions in the debate about their identity. The Radbaz ruling of the sixteenth century, for example, was to

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28 29 30

31

become a cornerstone in the ruling that they were Jews, thus entitling them to enter Israel under the Law of Return (see Chapter 8). Kaplan 1992:143–55; Pankhurst 1985. Faitlovitch died in Israel in 1955. He bequeathed his house in Tel Aviv for future activities on behalf of Ethiopian Jews. According to the Israeli Law of Return (1950; see Corinaldi 1988:31 and passim) any Jewish person who wishes to emigrate to Israel is entitled to automatic citizenship on his/her day of arrival in the country. First-degree relatives up to three generations could, when accompanying that person, be granted citizenship as well. The definition of who is considered a Jew under this law is somewhat different from the strict orthodox religious definition, which has been a source of contention and debate since the inception of the state. At any rate, the law was formulated as a consequence of the fact that most of the Jewish people, for whom the state was designed, were still out of the country. An ‘ingathering of the exiles’ was expected. A debate is currently taking place in Israel as to whether this process has ended, thus necessitating an amendment to the law of citizenship, or whether the ‘ingathering’ is still going on. Israel Yeshayahu, at the time deputy leader of the Knesset (Israeli parliament), ended his interesting report, which reflects the views of his time, with the following recommendation: What is the point in establishing and maintaining Hebrew schools for the Falashas as long as we are not prepared to regard them as Jews in every respect? And when we do so, it would be better to bring them to Israel where, without doubt, they would learn more quickly and better, while working and putting down roots, from which they and the state would benefit much more. (cited in Waldman 1992:181, my translation)

32 As Israel Yeshayahu writes in his report: I arrived at the conclusion that we, as Jews and as a state, do not have a clear idea at all about how to relate to the community of Falashas. We are feeling our way, getting a bit closer and backing away again; one hand rejects or is repelled by the possibility that they would be regarded as Jews while the other hand invites them to get closer. (Yeshayahu 1958, in Waldman 1992:177–8, my translation) 33 See Bogale 1985. 34 An Israeli version of a boarding school. A great number of these exist in Israel. Some were created about a hundred years ago. Others were established as a response to the growing power of Nazism in Germany and the necessity to cater for the needs of many unaccompanied minors who arrived in Israel before and after the Second World War. Most of these youth villages and boarding institutions are under the auspices of Youth Aliya, a department within the Jewish Agency. The latter was formed in the 1920s as a sort of government for ‘the state to be’; it was not

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35 36

37 38

39

40 41

abolished when the state came into being, but continued to operate in communities around the world, as well as in Israel. Cited in Corinaldi 1988:182. These are Jews who had converted to (Orthodox or Protestant) Christianity during the last 150 years or so, as a measure of survival or of belief. Although not accepted by the Ethiopian Christians as part of themselves, they were nevertheless then rejected by the ‘mainstream’ Ethiopian Jews—the oritawis—as people who had left the ethno-religious group, basically as non-Jews (although not as fully Christian: see Messing 1982:93, section on maranos). The ‘Fallas Mura’ (a term which probably denotes ‘converted Falasha’, ‘away from Falasha’) continued to marry mainly among themselves. Those of them who have relatives of first degree among Ethiopian Jews who are already in Israel (probably a few thousand altogether) are gradually being allowed to come in under the humanitarian-based family reunification scheme. Their immigration causes an interesting situation now in Israel, where people who were already known as outsiders to the group in Ethiopia are related to as part of Ethiopian Jewish society by the rest of the Israelis. Interesting processes of ‘self’ and ‘other’ redefinition must be taking place among all groups involved, on which very little research has yet been done (see report of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Committee on the Fallas Mura, 19 August 1991, in Waldman 1992:243–9). Rapoport 1986; Parfitt 1985. Alex de Waal (1989) shows how disease, not the scarcity of food in itself, is the major killer in the camps. The concentration of a great number of people in a camp and the specific conditions in the camps are particularly discussed as factors leading to the many deaths. The term aliya means ‘ascent’, ‘going up’ and connotes such upward movement in the spiritual sense, conceived as being achieved by arriving in Israel. This might have originated from biblical times when Jews went up to the mountainous area of Jerusalem to celebrate at the Temple at least three times a year; or it may have originated from earlier times as Jacob and his family are said to have ‘gone down’ from ancient Israel (Canaan) to Egypt, and were ‘coming up’ back to Israel. It is nowadays the customary term used by Jews both inside and outside the country for migration to Israel. The migrant is usually considered to be ‘making aliya’, and once in Israel these immigrants are considered olim (plural), oleh/olah (singular masculine/ feminine) or olimhadashim (new immigrants). Tudor Parfitt (1985:62) writes that the first flight took place only in July 1983 and two Hercules aeroplanes were operated. During some of that period the American Association for Ethiopian Jews (AAEJ) rescued some 200 people in operations destined mainly to put pressure on Israel by showing that things could be done which the Israeli government was not doing.

3 INTERVIEWING AND INTERPRETING IN CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH 1 Ethnographic tradition in particular has a long and distinguished history in the human sciences which extends from the Greeks to the Chicago School in the 1920s and 1930s.

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2 In psychology, the works of Bruner (e.g. 1986) and Sarbin (e.g. 1986) are those often referred to in relation to the study of narrative. The contribution of the clinical field is presented mainly in the works of Schafer (1976, 1981), Spence (1982) and Polkinghorne (1988). 3 This resembles Dwork’s example of the way amenorrhoea was perceived in the Nazi camps. 4 We may note that the choices (and what is remembered) are not always conscious; rather, they are influenced by unconscious processes. 5 Bar-On discusses silenced facts in the stories resulting from ‘Encounters with the children of the Third Reich’, which is the subtitle of his book The Legacy of Silence (1989), and in the life stories of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and of members of their families (thus ‘second’ and ‘third generation’; Bar-On 1994); a more philosophical discussion of these in everyday discourse is presented in his The Indescribable and theUndiscussable,Chapter 1 (1999). 6 I hasten to say that I do not argue for the omniscience of the researcher. S/he does not know the exact content of what the person did not tell, or how the interviewee felt in a certain situation without their relating it in the interview. I think, though, first, that we should be aware that such silenced facts exist and sometimes shape the content and structure of narrated biographical experiences, and second, that we as researchers could sometimes make educated guesses of what some of these facts are, or how the untold story shaped the content that we observe. 7 For an interesting (rather philosophical) discussion of facts in ‘pure’ and ‘impure’ contexts and the severe constraints on ‘genuine’ discourse, see Bar-On (1999). 8 A great deal of the research in cross-cultural studies, cross-cultural psychology in particular, has dealt with comparing aspects of different cultures (e.g. spatial perception). This has led to a situation whereby an increasing number of researchers prefer the term ‘inter-cultural’ in describing and discussing relations or communication between people of different cultural backgrounds. While realising the sense of such a shift in terms, in the present work I use the more familiar term ‘cross-cultural’ when I refer to such interactive contexts. 9 I have come across this definition many times during my fieldwork. 10 Because keeping a secret is so important in Ethiopian culture, and since I knew that they were many times hurt by breach of trust by Israelis, I decided to offer absolute anonymity to the adolescents. Also, since they knew I was a psychologist they might decide to share more of their emotional life during the course of the interview, and they might therefore prefer this to remain anonymous and ‘sealed’. 11 For further discussion of this topic see Chapter 8. 12 For a clarification of these and related terms see, for example, John Berry 1993. 13 This process may have started to take place in the 1960s; some say even in the late 1950s, as Lissak argues in his monograph on the mass immigration to Israel during ‘the Fifties’ (Lissak 1999 and personal communication 1993). 14 In a fairly recent publication of the Ministry of Education (Hakak 1995), which is aimed at teachers who are supposed to teach the Seged celebration of Ethiopian Jews (Abbink 1983; Ben-Dor 1987) to Israeli-born children, the authors list ‘the amalgamation of the exiles’ (mizug galuyot) as one of the important goals which that publication is aiming to assist. While dealing with the subject of different edot (Jewish ethnic groups) in Israel they state: ‘All of us desire one Israel [i.e. homogenous], but the reality is that there is cultural pluralism in Israel.’ It is

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16

17

18

19 20

21

suggested that after presenting the pupils with a series of photos of Jews of different origin and discussing the subject with them, the teacher should ask, ‘What can we learn from the fact that many edot exist, in relation to our Israeli identity?’ In response to that question, they suggest that the teacher should try to arrive with the children at the answer that ‘although the pluralism is a given [i.e.] we are not homogenous’, the desire is ‘for the amalgamation of the exiles and the creation of “one [homogenous] Israel”’ (Hakak 1995:14). Here ‘pluralism’ is used in the sense of an initial condition of difference rather than as a political philosophy, and similarity and homogeneity is still the desired goal here. This concept was developed by these methods following Goffman’s work on characteristics of total institutions (1957) for use in the particular case of boarding educational settings. The notion of one ‘Israeliness’ and of who constitute the ‘mainstream’ of society are issues which I claim no ability to define or describe in a satisfactory way. The fact is, however, that while as a researcher I do not wish to enter such an exercise, I am acutely aware of the fact that members of Israeli society (as well as other societies) employ such notions and act accordingly. It seems that most people also believe that all other members of society have the same views in relation to these notions. There is the odd case of youth villages where the situation could be viewed as an exception to the rule of social pressure. In one such case, Yemin Orde Youth Village, a concerted effort has been made since the early 1980s to turn Ethiopian cultural heritage into part of the experience of all students within the village (including veteran Israelis). At any particular time about half of the 550 adolescents in this village are of Ethiopian origin. Still, pressures towards change are conveyed in a myriad number of ways and could not be completely avoided. On the other hand, there is an urge to ‘be oneself’, to stay who one is, to keep one’s identity intact, to resist any change. An inner conflict then arises between resemblance and distinctiveness as two opposing poles of desire. This kind of conflict is part of the psychological processes accompanying any human being throughout his/her life, yet it makes itself omnipresent during the process of integration of migrants (and refugees) into their new society. If in a group, then trust with other group members is also established at that phase. On the use of this signalling technique within the cross-cultural therapeutic situation see BenEzer 1992, Chapters 13 and 14. The buna ceremony in Ethiopia, where people drink three rounds of coffee, requires time and is employed for sharing of familial and other news, troubles and stories (see Chapter 2, ‘Ethnography’). Glaser and Strauss write in their study that The criterion for judging when to stop sampling the different groups pertinent to a category is the category’s theoretical saturation. Saturation means that no additional data are being found whereby the sociologist can develop properties of the category. As he sees similar instances over and over again the researcher becomes empirically confident that a category is saturated. (Glaser and Strauss 1967:61)

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This could also be seen as part of trying to maintain a balance between the full use of the researcher’s own subjective understanding and the requirement of ‘fit’, which are two essential aspects of making grounded theory, as stated by Pidgeon (1996: 82–3) and Pidgeon and Henwood (1996:87). 4 THE THEME OF JEWISH IDENTITY 1 He seems to have been referring to the Western and the Israeli custom of rewarding children with sweets, as part of parent—child relations. Whether he was just being humorous or critical about it, I couldn’t tell. 2 Here he seemed to move to an implicit comparison of the economic situation in the villages with that of westernised Israel, i.e. many, many sweets to give in the West, while almost none in the Ethiopian village. 3 The traditional saying for Jews in the Diaspora has been ‘Next year in Jerusalem’. Here he uses the phrase in its ‘to Jerusalem’ version, which I believe connotes the intention of a journey, the fact that they visualised walking to Jerusalem. 4 It is written in the Mishnah, the early Jewish commentary to the Bible, that there were two times in the year that Jews celebrated by dancing at the Temple. One was the fifteenth day of the month of Av and the other was the afternoon of the Day of Atonement. This custom disappeared during the later development of Judaism. Rabbi Itzhak, a religious scholar who is also a teacher at the Hofim youth village, tells how shocked and moved they were when on the afternoon of the Day of Atonement the Ethiopian immigrant children stood up and started dancing in the synagogue…we were surprised and moved to observe with our own eyes an old Jewish custom that was preserved among Ethiopian Jews from the time of the Temple of Jerusalem until our time. (BenEzer 1992:194) 5 This word was used by some in its Amharic/Tigrinya pronunciation, ‘Seyon’, and by other interviewees in its Hebrew one, ‘Tseyon’. 6 Gog u’Magog is an expression in the Bible (Ezekiel 38 and 39) which refers to a very formidable war, where superpowers (could be ‘brothers’, thus civil war) clash in a battle in which they ‘eat’ each other, a kind of a total war to their end (for a full discussion of this notion in the Hebrew and Christian Bible see Encyclopedia Judaica under this term). 7 He employs the term ‘fraternal war’ (‘war of brothers’) which is the term used in the Bible for civil war. 8 This is again the language of the Bible, where ‘father against son’ is the ultimate symbol of civil war, trying to convey a war which is total, which involves all sections of society, previous social boundaries and traditional sanctions notwithstanding. It seems that in his mind the context of a prophecy invited the biblical language.

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9 Here it is not clear whether he refers to the ‘old’ underground, the Marxist Dergue which overthrew Haile Selassie, the Ethiopian emperor for many years, and formed a Marxist regime with village associations and local committees including the functions of civil arbitration; or whether he refers to one of the other underground groups such as the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) or the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), which also adopted some form of Marxist revolutionary ideology, sometimes more extreme than the Dergue’s, hence employing the techniques described by the interviewee in the organisation of the areas under their control. 10 There were other derogatory terms which conveyed approximately the same meaning, e.g. agovai and kayla. While buda conveys a derogatory meaning in all cases, some terms, e.g. kayla, were sometimes used to refer to members of the Ethiopian Jewish community in a non-derogatory sense. As Aescoly (1943) noted, a term which was insulting in one place was elsewhere accepted by the community itself as harm-less. See also Rosen 1985. 11 Bir is the Ethiopian currency. 12 It is not clear here whether he is explaining what she meant or whether he is still quoting her. 13 He refers to the curse of buda and related terms. 14 In this she refers to times, 300 years ago and more, when pottery and other occupations which involved fire—despised within Ethiopian (Amhara) culture (Levine 1965) —were not a specialised occupation of the Jews. It is interesting that these times of Jewish autonomy in the Gondar-Semien region are still very much ‘alive’ in the memory of this woman, and maybe others of the community, and serve here as a point of reference to present and future relations with her Christian environment, which now looks down on her. 15 He arrived during the migration wave from the Tigray area which took place before the drought and famine of 1984/5 in Ethiopia. 16 For similar treatment of migrant workers in Germany see Wong 1991. 17 Taddesse Tamrat, in BenEzer and Peri 1990:36. 18 Consider, for example, the relatively recent and repeated proclamations by the Libyan leader Mu’ammar Gaddafi concerning Ethiopia during 1988, 1990 and 1991. 19 UNICEF 1990; Schwab 1985. 20 This is what anthropologists may call an ‘emic’ point of view, i.e. a perception of the situation from within the group, by the actors and about themselves, as opposed to an ‘etic’ point of view, which is the outsider’s conception. In the issue at hand, this concerns their reasons for migration. 21 My interviewees used the word Shabbat. It is the Hebrew word for Saturday, the Jewish day of rest. 22 The Jewish Passover (Hebrew), otherwise called the Festival of Unleavened Bread. It takes eight days; the starting and concluding days are more festive. During these eight days one is not supposed to eat leavened food. This is a reminder of how the Israelites went in haste out of Egypt, thus not having the time to bake bread. Hence unleavened bread, called kita in Amharic and matza in Hebrew, is used during these days. There are also other religious laws, for example using special crockery for Passover only, to which Marito refers in the above excerpt. 23 Hometz (Hebrew), i.e. ‘soured’, ‘leavened’. See Note 22.

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24 A Jewish priest, similar to a rabbi; kess is singular, kessoch plural. 25 In Orthodox rabbinic Judaism, it is permitted to transgress a religious law when it is a matter of life and death. This is otherwise defined as ‘the clause of loss of life’. This clause did not exist within the religious ruling of the Ethiopian Jews. Here, and maybe in other cases, it seems to have existed in practice. 26 Did not ‘work’, hence observed the holy rest. 27 At a certain point, however, a specific area in one camp was known to some as the place where the Jews of this camp had their dead buried. 28 In a very different context, other refugees developed strong identification with the country which granted them safety. I refer to the development of rituals surrounding George Washington and a strong American identity among a group of Lowland Lao refugees in the United States (Takahashi 1994). It seems that supplying refugees with a safe haven turns their identification with the new country into something stronger and more meaningful than that which is developed within the more ‘neutral’ immigration process. As in the case of Ethiopian Jews, this identification and self-perception may start to develop even when the refugee is still awaiting entrance to the country of their choice. 29 The role of their Jewishness as a belief and ideology in sustaining them throughout the journey, including the Sudanese period, will be further discussed elsewhere in this work (Chapter 7, ‘Meaning and coping’).

5 THE THEME OF SUFFERING 1 See BenEzer 1990. 2 This is another example of Ethiopian cultural codes according to which a person continues to be responsible and obligated towards their parents and other blood relatives more than towards their spouse. 3 Names of two towns in Israel, one in the far south, the other in the far north; Tsfat is known in English as Safed; names in Hebrew rhyme. 4 Punishment as well as, at times, Marxist re-education. 5 In Hebrew, the words ‘famine’ and ‘hunger’ are actually one word: ra’av. On the topic of famine, and other cultures in which these two terms are actually used as one word, see Alex de Waal’s interesting discussion in his book Famine that Kills (1989). On villagers’ concept of famine see also Alula Pankhurst, 1992:27 ff. 6 See, for example, Lazarus 1966; Janis and Mann 1980; Ayalon and Lahad 1990; BenEzer and Peri 1990. 7 But this made no improvement to the weather and sleeping conditions. 8 Similar findings were reported in research among refugee children in Nicaragua. When asked about what was most painful for them, the children responded not by talking about traumatic amputation of legs or hands and other traumas but, much to the researchers’ surprise, by relating their pain at the prolonged interruption of their studies (Summerfield 1992). 9 Many were actually frightened by the sight of the landing of the aeroplanes and ran away. They had to be gathered by the Israeli soldiers who were guarding the area and then brought to the aeroplanes (see Parfitt 1985; Rapoport 1986).

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6 THE THEME OF BRAVERY AND INNER STRENGTH 1 Pronounced ‘gobez’ or ‘govez’. 2 This method of approaching the theme of bravery and inner strength on the journey is in accord with the ‘symbols and meanings’ approach in anthropology (Geertz 1973). Central to this approach is an attempt to explicate those ‘core symbols’ through which the individual members of a society organise their experiences. Research in this approach focuses on the intimate connection between language and culture, and the ways in which symbols are internalised and can be seen to have direct effects on individual and group behaviour. 3 In view of Ethiopian topography it is not surprising that the very fact of being able to walk without stopping was perceived as a matter of sheer power. Crossing a very high mountainous plateau which rises between 2,000 to 4,500 metres (6,000 to 13, 500 feet), Ethiopian trails present a formidable challenge to those who wish to cross the country. Ethiopian highlands are usually described as ‘impenetrable’, ‘inaccessible’ and so on. Moving between places necessitates not only the capacity to walk long distances, but also to climb up the trails over the high mountains and down the slopes, which at many times could be quite steep. 4 Cf. Chapter 4 on Jewish identity, and Chapter 7, ‘Meaning and coping’. 5 See BenEzer 1987, 1990. 6 For more details on the physical conditions of the journey to the border see Chapter 5. 7 See Chapter 7, ‘Personal development and growth’. 8 This chapter deals with ‘Proverbs as a mirror to culture: coping with trouble and misfortunes in Ethiopian culture’, pp. 244–60. 9 Verbal expression of feelings is not always recommended by psychologists. Both research and autobiographical accounts show that there are certain conditions in which verbal expression of feelings concerning a situation is indeed unhelpful, sometimes even harmful, in terms of coping. Soldiers during war and people who tried to survive concentration camps are just two examples of such situations, where refraining from talking about the hardships actually helped in the ability to cope (Noy 1977; Levi 1989). This probably applies also to severe refugee situations and to such journey experiences as those of the Ethiopian Jews, in which people go through a prolonged period of threat to their lives. 10 It may be added that these interrogations were also perceived as a continuation of the Jewish fate—the experience of a minority trying to brave their way in a hostile sea of Gentiles. This was an experience known to them only too well. Their sense of a Jewish community was thus further enhanced. 11 Walking at night also enabled them, of course, to avoid the heat of the sun, and so to suffer less from dehydration. 12 This refers mainly to the youth groups, especially those of students running away from the Gondar area. 13 Alex de Waal (1989) writes about the distinction between a period of dearth and the concept of ‘famine that kills’ for inhabitants of Dharfur in Sudan during the period following the drought, and similarly for Ethiopians. He details different theories and

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modes of coping which were employed by the population in these two conditions (see also Pankhurst 1992). 14 These stories obviously were true, yet people used them in that context even if it did not happen to them personally. 15 Traditional dress, long gown. 16 This had probably also helped them to survive.

7 THE IMPACT OF THE JOURNEY: PSYCHO-SOCIAL ISSUES 1 ‘Israelis’, here in the sense of natives, inhabitants of the land of Israel (ZionYerussalem), as the original Israelites who were walking to the Promised Land called Canaan then. 2 Purity/impurity rules exist in some other groups in Ethiopia, hence there is a question about its exclusiveness to Ethiopian Jews. Still these researchers (i.e. Kahana, Trevisan-Semi) bring up the fact that they were the ones who were referred to as the people who smell of water, and to some unique practices. In any case, for our purposes it is enough to know that such an element existed among them. 3 The effect of ‘de-individualisation’ on coping is discussed by Buus and Agger (1988) and in Blackwell (1990). 4 Being ‘out of structure’, as Turner calls it in his analysis following Van Gennep’s concepts. 5 This is really a paradox since the two are fundamentally different. 6 On ‘cumulative trauma’ see Khan 1963; on ‘sequential trauma’ see Keilson 1979. 7 Lifton (1979) has suggested that people’s vulnerability to intrusive images is a defining feature of the ‘traumatic syndrome’. These are images that ‘can neither be enacted nor cast aside’ (p. 172). In particular he focuses on the ‘image of ultimate horror’ which ‘condenses the totality of the destruction and trauma and evokes particularly intense feelings of pity and self condemnation in the survivor’ (ibid.). Although Lifton’s work did not centre upon the exact forms this takes in narrative interviews, he did give examples of it. 8 For an example of such a case see Yoav’s account below. 9 I would not like to imply inadequacy within this mode of expression. I thus hasten to say that this is a normal and adequate behaviour that nevertheless signals a trauma. 10 See also Gabriele Rosenthal (1989, 1991) on ‘argumentation’ as distinct from what she calls ‘narration’ within the narratives of different generations of German people in relation to their Second World War experiences. 11 A particularly dramatic example is reported by Abramovitch (1986) who interviewed a Greek Holocaust survivor in Israel. This interview took place in the car of the interviewee, while parked outside his workplace. This was the only place where he would agree to meet the interviewer, due to a long ‘forced silence’ when he had not spoken of his traumatic experience to his family or work colleagues (or anyone else). Sitting in the car with its windows shut, the interviewee told his story of horror, which included at its centre a partial castration by the Nazis: one of his testicles had been removed in the immoral experiments on human beings in the

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12

13 14

15 16 17 18

19 20

21

22

concentration camp. Then, while telling his story, reaching a point where he spoke about the infamous ‘selections’ in the camp, he suddenly burst out: ‘You mean Mengele? What do you mean?’ The interviewee was, as the interviewer emphatically describes, obviously disoriented. Abramovitch continues to say that it seems as if the boundaries between the person’s ‘telling self’ and his ‘Holocaust self’ had abruptly dissolved. For a moment he did not know whether he was the person suffering in the camp or the one talking about it. For this person, it seems to me, the ‘image of ultimate horror’ was also the ‘melting point’ of the two ‘selves’. A girl in our study, for example, could not narrate her journey experience. She got stuck immediately after starting her account. After a few unsuccessful attempts to continue, she paused at length and then said: ‘I cannot do it.’ She wept. It turned out that her traumatic separation from her parents, who were left in Ethiopia, came between her and the act of narration. This separation was not yet ‘processed’ in a way that would allow her to tell her story. She has not made a story out of it, not even for herself. It was unnarratable, and since it was supposed to be the beginning of her story, that is where she got stuck. See also Anna Freud 1965; Burlingham and Freud 1943; Ainsworth 1969; Pine and Furer 1963; and Spitz 1950. Reuven Feurstein (Feurstein et al. 1979) wrote of this process as ‘mediation’, and developed hypotheses in relation to the nature of such mediation and the degree to which it is needed by the child during different phases of development. Feurstein also developed a revolutionary diagnostic approach based on mediated learning. Margaret Mahler (Mahler et al. 1975; Mahler 1979) used this concept in relation to the infant or toddler in relation to its mother or ‘mothering’ figure. On eating arrests see below, as well as BenEzer 1990. This (at first puzzling) statement was how he had begun his narrative; it seems that the traumatic experience was the explanation of what he had meant by it. One of them told of a villager with whom they found shelter on the journey to Sudan. A few of the girls ended up being locked in his house, and ‘I do not wish to tell what he did to us girls’. Being aware of what such telling could entail, the firmness of her statement and the limitations of the interview context, I gently gave her an option of elaborating on it if and when she felt like it. I did not press in any way, so that she did not feel any pressure to do so or a failure if she did not narrate the incident in full. From the following part of her story, in which she detailed other experiences in this village, it was implied that she and the other girls were raped by this man and his friends. These included impotence for young men. Somewhat similar findings were reported in research and clinical work with victims of torture in other parts of the world (e.g. Montgomery 1991; Herman 1992; Agger 1994; Melzak 1993; van der Kolk et al. 1996; Leydesdorff et al. 1999). Youths who suffered from the syndrome were mainly those whose parents were left in Ethiopia, with no way of communicating whether they were alive and what had happened to them. The condition is described in detail in BenEzer 1990, where a differential diagnosis separating it from Western anorexia nervosa, and placing it within its cultural and reactive-context, is discussed. Reported by the overwhelmed medical services of Youth Aliya. The latter served the boarding schools network where more than 90 per cent of the adolescents were living.

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23 Reported in personal communication and unpublished reports by Chieger; see also BenEzer 1992; Arieli and Aycheh 1993:417. 24 The person’s search for meaning is, therefore, the centre of Frankl’s therapeutic technique called logotherapy (Frankl 1970; BenEzer 1980). 25 Merleau-Ponty, the French scholar, pointed out (1962) the possible attitudes of people towards illness which could, perhaps, apply to trauma as well: The person can deny it, suffer from it, make it the centre of his life, live in peace with it, and also—be completely ruined as a result of it. In part of his being, as in part of his life, the person is responsible for [in charge of] his illness as he is responsible for [in charge of] himself. (cited in Brull 1974:163)

Thus the Ethiopian adolescents could completely submit to their trauma, or they could fight it, refuse to accept it, feel self-pity or react in any other way. They (as all of us when such things happen to us) could not be freed of what had already happened, i.e. of the traumatic event and of some of its biological and psychological consequences. Nevertheless, to a certain extent they are free in their response to the trauma, which in turn also affects their psychology and biology. 26 Some of these communication patterns in relation to authority figures are shared with boys but are more marked in girls (BenEzer 1983, 1987, 1988). 27 It might have been that in Sudan the girls had some new opportunities to perform functions within their gender roles. The boys, on the other hand, were presented with even more situations than before where they were expected to do something but were rendered helpless. This, again, might have changed the degree to which the members of the different sexes developed or were traumatised. 28 Israel is, however, an immigrant society, which is constantly in a process of absorbing culturally different people. 29 Israel is one of the most urban societies in the world. 30 There is a common claim that Western medicine is part of ‘modern societies’ and represents progress. I would argue that it is just a different system of beliefs concerning health and cure practices. Even if it does indeed carry many effective practices, for instance in relation to childbirth and care for infants, it is not as a whole necessarily better than some other health systems. It also results in social implications which are not free of cultural values. Unfortunately, an ethnocentric (West-centric) attitude prevails in the West in relation to medical care. Because of its ‘apparent advantage’, Western medicine provides legitimacy for unrequested intervention in many parts of the world. It is, in my view, one of the residuals of the colonial way of thinking. I would add here that the Ethiopian Jews also encountered the Sudanese traditional healers who operated mainly outside the camps. These were, however, approached to a lesser extent. Among the reasons for not using this system extensively were those already mentioned, such as the fear of being exposed by the Sudanese as Jews and their limited possibilities of movement. At any rate, the interaction with these healers could be viewed as part of their general encounter with a different culture. A further discussion of Ethiopian health beliefs (among

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Ethiopian Jews) can be found in Nudelman 1990, 1995; Itzikson and Mendelson 1987; Chemtov and Rosen 1992; BenEzer 1992; Hodes and Teferedgene 1996; Grisaru et al. 1997. 31 On aspects of modernity and modernisation in Israeli society and the related pressures on immigrants see Eisenstadt 1954, 1956, 1985.

8 ETHIOPIAN JEWS ENCOUNTER ISRAEL 1 In this sense, it was like a ‘rite of passage’ for the whole community, becoming what they should be in order to join in with the ‘legitimate’ social order. Actually, for the present generation, it was more of a ‘re-becoming what they never were’, as Schechner puts it in his discussion of what he calls ‘restored behavior’ (Schechner 1981:3, cited in Paine 1989:6). 2 This is in spite of the Zionist revolution, which tried to present a model of a ‘new person’ as an antithesis of their parents’ exile generation, as will be explained below. 3 Emil Fackenheim (1978) argues that the Holocaust has become the sacred text of Jews around the world, something which replaced the Bible and the religious texts and was compatible with the type of subjectivity of non-observant Jews. An interesting book which deals with this subject from a personal—philosophical point of view is Alain Finkielkraut’s The Imaginary Jew. The author, a French-Jewish intellectual, a ‘product’ of the 1968 ‘revolution’, struggles with the temptation to appropriate the heritage of the death camps in an ‘automatic’ manner as an easy way into an identity, with the social implications that may follow. He suggests as a replacement a continual struggle to achieve authenticity of the self, while keeping a tension between certain poles of Jewish identity. 4 April 1961. 5 The Attorney General against Adolf Eichmann (1962), opening speech, p. 7; see also Gideon Hausner (1980) The Jerusalem Trial, p. 31; both cited in Segev 1992:327–8. 6 David Ben-Gurion, 12 June 1962, Knesset minutes, vol. 34, p. 2293, cited in Segev 1992:339. 7 On the role of Eichmann’s trial for Israeli society and for others outside Israel see Hannah Arendt’s controversial book Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963). 8 A public debate then began concerning Begin’s ‘hegemonic reading’ of the Holocaust which became very popular among Israelis, and the kind of use—some say misuse— of it through the ‘lessons’ he drew from it for political purposes. On this issue see Ezra Mendelson (1994) and Yablonka (1996). 9 It should be stressed, though, that the Holocaust became part of everyone’s consciousness in Israel, not just—or even in particular—of people on the political right. This found its expression during the Gulf War when people sat in sealed rooms with gas masks on their faces for hours on end, sometimes for whole nights, in fear of Iraqi missiles which would bring German (or German-assisted) gas into their homes; and when thousands of inhabitants of Tel Aviv and its area left their homes and fled as refugees to other, safer, parts of the country. The presence of the suffering of the Holocaust in the Israeli psyche was made clear then and was revealed as part of the Israeli mode of existence—in other words, of Israeliness. As Segev ends his book with this experience of helplessness he contends:

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Since the days of Nizanim [a place in the south of Israel that had to be abandoned during the 1948 war of independence; the retreat and surrender to the Egyptians were conceived as a ‘humiliating’ blow to the Israeli psyche and were criticized as ‘treason’ by the Israeli prime minister of the time], the Israeli myth had not been given such a blow. Those who remained in their houses—men, women and children—huddled together, one on top of the other, waiting for the worst, and helpless. Never did so many Israelis go through an experience which was so Jewish. (Segev 1992:476; see also pp. 456–8, the Nizanim affair) 10 On the notion of the halutz and tzabar and its relation to the past and present politics of ‘place’ in Israel, see Gurewitz and Aran (1991), ‘On the place (Israeli anthropology)’. Among other aspects in their interesting analysis, the authors write that ‘The halutz saw himself as rebelling against the Diaspora which stood, as a state of consciousness, between him and the environment and therefore between him and his self’ (p. 22). And: ‘Arriving in the land of Israel thus received the meaning of halutziut (pioneering) —since it was perceived as an act of breaking away, for the first time, from the diasporic state, thus becoming free of it (nehlatzim)’ (p. 21). They add: ‘One could argue that the halutzi (pioneering) idea could be understood as… trying to re-define in Jewish consciousness, what it means “to be in place”’ (p. 22). 11 For example, Yariv, ‘antagonist’; Oz, ‘strength’; Eytan, ‘firm, solid’; Tamir, ‘towering’; Lahat, ‘blaze’ (Elon 1981:126). Another conscious tendency was to choose surnames signalling Zionist rejection of city life, transforming even those who remained lawyers and clerks into farmers, e.g. Sadeh, ‘field’; Yogev, ‘husbandman’; Karmi, ‘my vine-yard’; Dagan, ‘corn, grain’ (ibid.); but Hebrew names common in the Diaspora—such as Avraham, Isaac, Sarah and Rachel—were avoided, and in their place came names which Diaspora Jews never or rarely used, such as Amos and Amnon (Rubinstein 1984:145). 12 The concept was first used by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his book Contract social (Almog 1991). Robert Bellah later developed this concept into a sociological theory of the development of nationalistic rituals (Bellah 1964). The sociologists DonYehiya and Liebman (1983) applied this theory to Israeli nationalism. 13 It tries to persuade the observer to adopt the message of commitment to the society and country for which life was sacrificed. The memorial place, as Almog convincingly shows, becomes a place of pilgrimage for schoolchildren and others, and the ceremonial recall of the names of those who died, following their inscription on the memorial stone, is a recalling of an event of much significance, usually of a heroic kind. Almog adds: When the dead soldier is connected to a specific event, a certain place, a special act of heroism, to a group and a particular war—then starts the process of connecting him/her to a myth. The dead are taken out of the individualpersonal context of their name, history and the way they died and are left with the halation which was created around their sacrifice (martyrdom). (Almog 1991:207; my translation)

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14 For example, tsomet golani (name of army unit) in the north of Israel, or tsomet ha’tank (the tank’s junction) in the centre of the country. 15 It was in part a reaction to the anti-semitic notion of the Jew as a ‘parasitic creature’ who, like parasitic plants, was supposed to grow only on another’s main body, i.e. others’ work (Almog 1995: Chapter 3). 16 They developed the concept of mishmaat mayim, i.e. a water discipline, which principally was having as little to drink as one could, risking passing out. It declared that the water which each person was carrying was not his or hers but a property of the group; thus anyone who dared to drink of it was actually considered as one who ‘betrayed the group’ and ‘stole from the others’. One observer wrote, after visiting the country in 1913: ‘Work has turned into a sort of sacred activity for them and they involve themselves in it truly and holy as the Jew would do in previous times in worshipping the Law [Torah, the book] and the prayers’ (Klosner 1913:209, cited in Almog 1995: Chapter 3). 17 Halper identified four major ‘mistakes’ which account for the ‘social gap’, bitterness and lack of integration of the immigrants of the 1950s. These are: the pressures of the melting pot (through the uncompromising concept of mizug galuyot); the elimina-tion of culture as an adaptation vehicle and the replacement of the culture concept by ‘primitiveness’; the channelling of immigrants to the margins of society; and the authoritarian control exerted over the immigrants by absorption bureaucracy, turning immigrants into ‘words of the state’, as he calls it. It is worth noting, in relation to mizug galüyot, that most researchers—sociologists, anthropologists, social geographers, among others—tend to relate to Jewish subgroups within Israeli society as edot rather than as ‘ethnic groups’ in the sense commonly used in the literature elsewhere. Edah (singular) conveys a social entity somewhat less solidified and ‘separated’ than an ‘ethnic group’, as if conveying a cultural variance within an ethnic group. This reflects, it seems to me, the acceptance to a degree at least of the mizug galuyot concept. The issue of ethnicity in Israel is beyond the scope of this study. Those interested in ethnicity and ethnic tensions within Israeli society should refer, as a good starting point, to Weingrod (1965, 1985) and also to the works of Smooha (1978), Swirski (1981), Eisenstadt (1954), Goldberg (1972, 1985), Deshen and Shokeid (1974), Peres (1977,) Lissak (1973) and Marks (1976), among others. Recently, the idea of a ‘melting-pot policy’ in the United States was revisited and reappraised in a symposium that took place in 1998. The publication of its main speakers in a recent issue of International Migration Review reflects the interest in the issue that still exist (Alba 2000; Fortes 2000; Kasinitz 2000; Foner 2000; Anderson 2000; Glazer 2000). 18 For a description of these absorption centres for Ethiopian Jews and staff-‘inmate’ relations see Hertzog 1993, 1999; Ashkenazi and Weingrod 1984; Donyo 1982; BenEzer 1987. 19 The numbers estimated at the time were much smaller since the exact size of the community was not known. 20 The various physical, social and psychological effects of separation on adaptation in Israel are mainly discussed in BenEzer 1992 passim, 1990 (mental health); and in Hanegbi 1988; Arieli and Aycheh 1993; and cf. Chapter 6).

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21 See BenEzer 1992: Chapter 2, ‘The psychological processes of the Israeli absorber encountering Ethiopian Jewish immigrants’. On the topic of the stranger within society, see for example Schuetz 1960 [1944] and Simmel 1971. 22 The connotation ‘black’ comes from biblical Hebrew and it has become common in modem Hebrew as well. The term also connotes, however, the meaning of ‘a slave’ and is used in modern Hebrew to describe a person who does all the hard and less prestigious work for others. For example, I observed the description of roles within the army by a high-ranking officer to a group of students about to be drafted; as he got to the last and least prestigious role of all, he said about those who carried it out: ‘These are the cushim [plural] of the group, those who do the hard and dirty work for others.’ 23 I remember vividly an incident during my fieldwork which, I think, could illustrate the aspect of skin colour difference and how Ethiopian Jews could have felt in Israel at the beginning of the 1980s. I was sitting at a restaurant in a central bus station of a seaside town, and across the table from me was sat my friend, an Ethiopian immigrant. The restaurant had a large glass window beyond which there was a pavement where some bus stops were located. We were sitting at one of the tables adjacent to that glass window, from which point we could see people passing by and they, of course, could notice us. While we were talking, suddenly a boy who was walking on the outside pavement came very near to the glass window, put his face close to it and thoroughly inspected my Ethiopian friend. I became distracted and looked briefly at the boy. My friend did not pay any attention to him. At last the boy went away. Not more than a few moments later, though, another boy came round to the glass. Again, an intent observation was taking place. When this happened the fourth time I became irritated. This time, I returned a stern look and the boy, who seemed to be about 13 years old, went away. My friend then told me not to pay attention to them. Apparently he had experienced this many times before and had decided not to take any notice. I was struck, though, by the extreme ‘visibility’ of Ethiopian Jews in Israeli society of the time, the determined behaviour of Israelis in response to that visibility, and the heightened sense of difference it must have invoked in the Ethiopian immigrants wherever they went. In one case, an Ethiopian immigrant was so distressed by children running after him, calling him names, that in order to avoid it he bought a bag of potatoes and for a month never went out of his apartment to the grocery store, and ate only boiled potatoes. In yet another example a youngster was lamenting, In Ethiopia, if I got into trouble in one place, or if I wished for any other reason, I could move to another area and no one would take notice of me. Here, in Israel, wherever I go, everyone would recognise me. And while the oleh [immigrant] of Gruzia [Georgia] would not be noticed after one year in Israel, and would be regarded by others in the street as ‘an Israeli’, I would continue to be considered an oleh haddash [immigrant who has newly arrived] even ten years following my arrival in Israel. 24 For further discussion see BenEzer 1992: Chapter 2 (see Note 21 above). 25 There are three major education systems in Israel: ‘state schools’ (beit sefer mamlachti) which are basically for secular students; ‘religious state schools’ (mamlachti daati)

NOTES 225

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

which cater for religious and ‘traditional’ (massorti) pupils; and the ‘ultra orthodox schools’ (haredi) which used to be basically private but were recently included within the state support system following their more active political participation in the government. The latter are, nevertheless, not fully supervised by the state. There are some other private schools, notably at the high-school level, which belong to various associations and are mostly under the state supervision and approval system. The Jewish Hassidic sect which is mainly based in Brooklyn, New York, and in Israel, where it also runs a network of religious schools. This sect is also referred to as ‘the Lubavitchers’, after the name of their leading dynasty (Lobavitch). Other educationalists and researchers would argue, on the other hand, that since the models of Israeliness in these neighbourhoods are anyway problematic, coming from marginalised segments of society, the Ethiopian children would actually do better when they are a majority among the school children (see, for example, Stanislavski 1985). At a certain period the Youth Aliya residential schools admitted even younger children and were willing to let students stay until their course of education was completed, even if this meant staying in the system until they were 20 years old. Those who could go beyond it were offered the chance to do so. I do not relate here the army service of those years, compulsory in Israel between the ages of 18 and 21. Most Ethiopian youngsters would not be drafted until they had been in Israel for at least three years (BenEzer 1983). The special opportunities and problems, and the opportunities related to that period of military service, are discussed in BenEzer (1983, 1988) and Shabtai (1993, 1999). Such support was implemented in the first course designated for Ethiopian immigrant nurses in Israel. It was carried out in what was considered the toughest and most demanding nursing school in the country. A special programme was implemented but with no relaxation of the final government examinations. All Ethiopian students who entered the programme (twenty-three in total) graduated after two and a half years (BenEzer 1992). This constituted a record success in that school, where the percentage of dropouts among veteran Israelis is around 40 per cent. This certainly showed what could be done when a special programme is implemented. Concerning admission criteria, I would like to note one extreme example in which a professor of a certain university, in charge of its admission criteria, claimed, after ‘looking into the matter’, that ‘this Ethiopian youngster would succeed in doing a degree in engineering only when hair starts growing on the inside of my palm’. Four years later the same student completed his degree in another town, in the most prestigious academic institution for training engineers in Israel. On the images of Ethiopia (and of Africa) in the West, see Sorenson (1993) ImaginingEthiopia. On the effect of Ethiopian Jews’ skin colour and cultural differences on Israelis, see the chapter on ‘The psychological processes of the absorber encountering Ethiopian Jews’ in BenEzer (1992). For a general discussion of this kind of relation, see the now classic work by Mauss, The Gift (1990 [1950 in French]). For more elaborate discussion of the attitudes of Israeli absorption workers towards the Ethiopian Jews, see Newman 1987; BenEzer 1987:70–2; Hertzog 1993, 1999. We should note that a sense of unacknowledged suffering is not uncommon among survivors of traumatic experiences; they often feel extremely isolated since no other

226 NOTES

35

36

37

38

person can really understand what they have gone through (Herman 1992; Agger 1994). In the case of the Ethiopian Jews, however, this discrepancy stems more strongly from their feeling that Israeli society has failed to recognise the real reason for their suffering. On this triangular relationship see Martin Buber’s book Between a People and its Country (1984). On the relation of the Jewish people to the land as an actual place see Gurewitz and Aran 1991. In twenty-two presentations to groups of Israelis which I observed between 1986 and 1990, Ethiopian immigrants were requested to talk about what they thought Israelis should know about their group. The journey featured as a central part of their talk in most cases (95 per cent); it occupied more than a third of the lecture; and in more cases than not (82 per cent) it featured as the opening theme of their presentation. Central to the study of myths, though not necessarily to that of current myths, are the writings of Joseph Campbell (1972), Vladimir Propp (1968), Mercia Eliade (1989), Claude Levi-Strauss (1966, 1968) and Kolakovski (1971). Shorter theoretical discussions of myths can also be found in the writings of Clifford Geertz (e.g. 1973) and many other anthropologists. Other factors were involved in the process by which Egyptian Jews have no special ‘place’ in the Israeli social consciousness. In general, these could include, for example, an assimilatory attitude on the part of the group, or a non-ethnic, rather ‘profession-alised’ and individualised conceptualisation of the integration process.

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INDEX

AAEJ54 Abba Mahari63, 64 absorption centres: in Israel185–6, 188 acculturation6 Addis Ababa: opening of Israeli embassy33 adolescents22, 23t, 56, 58; assisting others on journey129; and concept of gobez122; confronting of death for first time110– 11; experience in Sudanese refugee camps112–13; and Israeli educational system189; and leadership148–51; personal growth and development166– 71; psychological problems of trauma164– 5; and readiness for change166–7; and separation87–9, 91–2, 99; suffering inflicted on by Sudanese80–1; and trauma155; see also children Africa196 agriculture17–18 Alamnesh80–l, 113, 149, 203 aliya107, 116, 143, 197 Alliance Israelite Universelle30 Allport, G.W.40 Almog, O.184, 197 Amhara64, 68, 120–1, 122, 136 Amos79, 134–6, 203 Angola196–7 Armatch’ho region94–5, 101–2

Aryeh97, 125, 131, 142–3, 147–8, 203 Aschieri, Lucien196 ashangolit21 Ashkenazi Jews197 Asmara training college31, 32 assimilation6 Avner104, 203 Avraham, Kess64 Baker, Ron12 Barthes, Roland196 Baruch65, 69, 83, 84, 91, 93, 94, 105, 113, 124, 170–1, 203 basket-weaving20 Basso, Rosanna196 beer-making19 Begin, Menachem183 Belgian Trans European Airlines36 Ben-Gurion, David182–3 Berkulin203 Bertaux, Daniel14 Beta Israel3, 121; ethnography16–32; life cycle of21–4 Bettelheim, Bruno: The Informed Heart154 Between Two Cultures9 Bilu, Yoram41–2 black skin colour1, 187, 191 blacksmiths18, 28 Boaz75, 77–8, 94, 134, 146, 203 body language, when narrating a traumatic event157–8 Bossana203 boys:

249

250 INDEX

role expectations171 bravery and inner strength3, 70, 120–51; and concept of gobez120–3, 128, 133, 140, 171; courage and heroism124, 132–7, 146– 8; during escape from Sudan147–8; endurance and determination128–32, 140; on journey128–40; leadership148–51; myth of in Israel183–5, 191; resourcefulness121–2, 126–8, 137–40, 141–6; in setting out phase123–8; in Sudan140–51 Brehanu132, 139, 152, 99–100, 203 Bruner, Jerome40 buda2865, 67, 71, 80, 107 ‘burial survivor’s guilt’85 burials/burial rites24, 83, 142; attempt to observe in Sudan84–5, 112; on journey99–100 ‘chain-migration’5 chakla22, 23t change: readiness for166–7 Chemtov, D. and Rosen, C.121 Chicago School40 Chief Rabbinate: conflict with2, 190; strike by Ethiopian Jews against (1985) 195 childhood22, 23t children148; and education113; endurance and determination of129– 30; learning work skills18; negation of aspects of Ethiopian culture by immigrant47; and personal development167–8; status of in Ethiopian social order124– 5; unaccompanied88–91, 158; see also adolescents Christian Amhara see Amhara

Christian Church29 Christians154; animosity towards Ethiopian Jews in Sudanese refugee camps80, 107, 141–2, 146; regarding of Ethiopian Jews as buda28, 65, 67, 80, 107; relations with Ethiopian Jews65–6, 67– 8, 71; relations with Jews on trek77–8; response to Jews leaving Ethiopia67, 68, 71–2 circumcision22 civil war29 climate108, 109 clothing: and Ethiopian Jews19–20 coffee ceremony (buna)19, 38 cognitive-emotional disorientation157 conscription29 content in narrative: chosen44; non-verbal45; organisation of44; silenced44 context interviews53–4 coping3, 85, 108, 152–4; and ideology154; and symbol of Israelite Exodus154 courage123; on journey132–7; and setting out phase124; in Sudan146–8 cross-cultural interviewing45–8 ‘cultural bereavement’174 culture, Ethiopian: and emotional restraint45; refraining from including expressions of by immigrants46–7; respect as central value of124–5 customs, Jewish see Jewish laws and customs dam construction11 Daniel61, 66, 72, 89, 105–6, 141–2, 161–2, 203 death24, 200;

INDEX 251

on journey99–100; in Sudanese refugee camps35, 110–12, 149; as traumatic event160; see also burials/burial rites decision: and Jewish identity60–6 ‘defreezing’49–50 demography: of migration6 Dergue government29, 67 Desta203 determination123; on journey128–32; in Sudan140 Devorah88, 110–11, 203 Diaspora Jews183 diseases: during journey97; in Sudanese refugee camps109–10, 111 dream: of returning to Jerusalem1, 60–4, 66, 70, 125 drought34 Dwork, Debora14, 43 eating arrests165 economy: effect of refugees on host country10; and Ethiopian Jewish village17–18 education: belief in enlightenment through in Israel63; in Ethiopia24–6; and interviewees58; in Israel113, 180–1, 187–90; and Jewish Agency31–2 Egypt: Israelites’ Exodus out of152–3, 154, 195, 200 Eichmann, Adolf181–3 Eisenbruch, Maurice9 E1-A1 airline180 Elazar63, 65–6, 71–2, 74–5, 76, 84, 123, 126, 203 elderly130;

difficulty in embarkation onto lorries117 Elie106, 129, 145, 148–9, 203 Emmanuel, Taamrat26, 30 emotional context: of interviews48 emotional control: loss of156 emotional detachment/numbness156, 161 emotional restraint45–6, 48, 131, 161 Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences9 endurance123; on journey128–32; in Sudan140 Erikson, Erik40, 171, 193 Eritrea67 escape process (from Sudan to Israel)35–6, 107, 143; and boarding lorries116–18; and boarding aeroplanes118–19; and bravery147–8; contact with messengers34, 86, 143–4; and leadership150–1; and Operation Moses32, 35–6, 54, 186, 190; resourcefulness144–5; routes35; separations116; suffering115–19 Esther61–2, 83, 111, 203 Ethiopia: economy67; famine and media coverage34, 140, 190–1; illegality of immigration33, 68, 123; Marxist regime29, 67–8; relations with Israel33, 67, 191; rise of anti-semitism26 Ethiopian Christians see Christians Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU)29 Ethiopian Jews: ancient dream of exile returning to Jerusalem60–4, 66, 70, 125; basket-weaving20; beer-making19; clothing19–20; coffee ceremony19, 38;

252 INDEX

deterioration of status after Marxist revolution29; dwindling numbers30; economic structure of village17–18; education and school system24–6; estrangement within Ethiopian society64–6; Faitlovitch and cause of30–1; female appearance and adornment20; gender roles171–3; historical background27–9; in Israel see Israel; learning work skills18; life cycle of Beta Israel and customs21– 4; marginalisation of28; origin theories27; pottery production21; recognised as Jews by Chief Rabbi of Israel (1973)32; relations with Christians see Christians; relations with other Jews29–32; role of women in home18–19; seen as the ‘evil eye’ (buda)28, 65, 67, 71, 80, 107; structure of village16–17; view of by Israeli society191–2 Ethiopian Liberation Front145–6 Ethiopian Tourist Board21 ethnic consciousness7 Ethnic Los Angeles (Waldinger and Bozorgmehr)6 ‘evil eye’ see buda Exodus, Israelite152–3, 154, 195, 200 Eyov203 Faitlovitch Jacques25, 30–1 Falasha28, 67, 121 Fallas Mura people33 familial authority125, 158 families: disintegration of87–8, 160–1; importance of87 famine: (1888–92)30; (1984/5)34, 140, 190–1 fearlessness133

festivals, Jewish see Jewish laws and customs Filstead, W.J.39, 40 Finnegan, Ruth14 food: shortage on journey93–4; see also hunger food restrictions (kashrut)76, 83, 86 Frank, Gelia41 Frank, Jerome: Persuasion and Healing154 Frankl, Victor166; Man’s Search for Meaning154 Furnham, Adrian9 Gedaref air route35 Geldof, Bob191 gender roles171–3 Geneva Convention (1951)10 Gergen, Kenneth and Mary40 Gideon102, 204 Giorgi, A.P.54 girls: role expectations171–2 Glaser, B.G. and Strauss, A.L.55 Glick-Schiller, Nina7 ‘global soul’8 Global Trends in Migration9 globalisation7 gobez120–3, 128, 133, 140, 171 God: attribution of ultimate outcome of actions to136; belief in guidance and protection of during journey73–5, 153 Goffman, E.39 Gondar region56, 123 Gondari Jews56 goramsa171 Gordon, A.D.184 guides126; exploitation of travellers by100, 102–3 guilt112, 160; burial survivor’s84–5 Ha’aretz (newspaper)53 Habad religious movement187 Haberland, Hike122 Ha’Dani, Eldad27

INDEX 253

Hadashot (newspaper)53 Haggada152 Halevy, Joseph30 halutz183, 184, 197 Hana92, 204 Handlin, Oscar: Immigration as a Factor inAmerican History8 Hausner, Gideon182 Herman, Simon180 heroism123, 132–7, 146–8 ‘hidden’ event156 Hile’-Mariam, Mengistu67 historical truth43 Hmong people12 Holocaust181–3, 197 homesickness99 humiliation: trauma related to161–3 humour131 hunger: on journey93–4; in Sudanese refugee camps106, 109, 140 Huntington, Samuel7 identity199–200; and condition of ‘limen’200; with Israel by Ethiopian Jews82, 86, 180; reaffirmation of through telling of story of journey194; see also Jewish identity ideology154 immigration/immigrants: debate on7; effect on their new country6; as minority group6–7; illegal in Ethiopia33, 68, 123; see also migration impurity21, 75, 153–4; see also purity injera bread19, 38 inner strength3, 70; escaping without parents’ consent seen as act of125; seealso bravery and inner strength

internal migration5, 6 International Bibliography of Social and CulturalAnthropology9 international migration5 International Refugee Crisis (Robinson)13 interrogation79, 132–3 interviews41–52; cross-cultural context45–8; ‘defreezing’ and forming rapport49–51; and emotional context48; employment of complementary tools52–4; interpretation54–5; and life story method42; narrative14, 41–2, 58, 201; pilot study57–8; structure of51–2; therapeutic effect of48; truth within narratives42–5 interviewees: biographical data203–5; description and background58–9; location56–7; selecting55–6 intrusive images156 Isaiah87, 94, 99, 118–19, 129, 204 Is’hak, Emperor28 isolation huts16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 153–4 Israel180–98; absorption centres185–6, 188; conflict with Arabs and Palestinians82; contact with Ethiopian Jews in Sudan86; education system113, 180–1, 187–90; Eichmann trial181–3; encounter with society by Ethiopian Jews3, 185–93; establishment of state of (1948)31; Ethiopian Jews’ idyllic concept of62–3, 153; Ethiopian Jews’ problems finding employment186; ethos of suffering181–3, 184–5; and Holocaust181–3, 197; issue of authenticity of Jewishness of Ethiopian Jews31–2; journey as a preparation for life in173–4; myth of bravery183–5, 191; myths of immigrants197;

254 INDEX

myths in society180–5; negation of Ethiopian Jews as brave people190–2; numbers of Ethiopian Jews in33; problem of separation from families186; questioning of Ethiopians Jews’ Jewish identity1, 2, 190, 192–3; recognition of Ethiopian Jews as Jews (1973)32; relations with Ethiopia33, 67, 191; skin colour as problem for integration1, 187, 191; view of Ethiopian Jews by191–2 Israelis: and Jewish identity180–1 Israelite Exodus152–3, 154, 195, 200 Italy: occupation of Ethiopia26–7 Jerusalem Post, The53 jewellery20 Jewish Agency26, 31–2 Jewish identity60–86; associated with evil in Ethiopia65; forced to hide while in Sudan83, 106–7; fortifying of by journey72–9, 154, 174, 200; fortifying by re-experiencing Exodus of Israelites200; and Jewish Israelis180–1; and phase of decision60–6; questioning of by Israel1, 2, 190, 192– 3; and setting out phase66–72; in Sudan79–86 Jewish laws and customs: attempt to maintain whilst in Sudan83– 5; attempt to observe whilst on journey75–7, 159– 60 Jonathan69–70, 73–4, 78–9, 81–2, 89–90, 93, 95–8, 102–3, 110, 168, 204 journey: association with Israelite Exodus152–3, 154, 200; bravery and inner strength128–40;

causes32; courage and heroism on132–7; endurance and determination128–32; facts and figures32–6; fortifying of Jewish identity on72–9, 154, 174, 200; functions of telling of194–5; important role of in integration into Israeli society194–5; lack of complaining about difficulties131; meaning of152–4; as a myth ‘in the making’4, 195–7; numbers involved32–3; observance of Jewish laws and customs on75–7, 159–60; as a preparation for life in Israel173–4; relations with non-Jewish population on77–9; resourcefulness on137–40; setting out phase see setting out phase; sources of strength on130–2; suffering on2, 92–104; survival rate1; treatment of topic in refugee studies10; undertaking of as acting under God’s guidance and protection73–5, 153; as unique part of life story8–9 journeys: consequences of extreme experiences on200–1; and death200; little research or analysis in migration studies4, 8–9; little research on in refugee studies11– 12; personal accounts of12 kamis20 kashrut75, 76, 83 Katchil74, 98, 99, 204 Keilson, H.164–5 Kenya33 kessoch76–7 Kfar Batya project188 Khartoum35, 150 kutara22, 23t

INDEX 255

land29 Law of Return27, 31, 32, 190 leadership123, 148–51 Lehawi135 Leslau, Wolf120, 121 letters: role of relatives66–7 Levine, D.N.122; Greater Ethiopia120–1 Lieblich, Amia14 life-stories4, 8, 40, 41, 42, 201 Light, I.H. and Gold, S.J.6 ‘limen’200 Loizus, Peter13 London Mission for the Jews30, 31 long silence156 ‘lost tribe’ theories27 Ma’ariv La’noar (newspaper)53 Ma’ariv (newspaper)53 McClelland, D.C.6, 40 Malaku, Major123 malaria97, 110 manliness133; striving to achieve ideal of131–2 manual work: religion of184 Marito74, 75, 83, 84, 114–15, 152–3, 159– 60, 204 marriage6, 22, 24 Marxist regime, reaction to Ethiopian Jews’ migration to Israel68–9, 123, 127 masa184–5 Massey, Douglas5 May, Rollo196 meaning152–4, 159 media191 media interviews53 medical services: and Sudanese refugee camps174 Mekonen94–5, 109, 111, 129, 204 Memorial Day194 Menasheh, Kess37 menstruation76, 153–4 messengers34, 35, 86, 143–4, 148 migration1, 199; causes and motivation for4–5;

demography of6; direction and boundaries5; failure of1862 attempt to go to Jerusalem63–4; internal5, 6; international5; labour6; patterns of5; ‘push-pull’ theory4–5; regional5; transnational7–8; and women8 Migration9 Migration Process, The (Werbner)9 migration studies4–9 Miller, Joseph196–7 Mollica’s Harvard Trauma Questionnaire155 Monzel, Kristene13 Mossad33, 35 mourning24 Muslims146 myth(s)14; of Israeli immigrant197; in Israeli society180–5; and the journey4, 194–7 names, Ethiopian49 narrative interview14, 41–2, 58, 201 narrative signals: and trauma155–7 narrative truth44–5 Nazi concentration camps164–5 night walking/trekking92–3, 95, 129 Nili88, 204 Nisbet, Robert39 Noah104, 204 North African Jews197 Nurit204 OAU Convention10 On the Move9 Operation Moses32, 35–6, 54, 186, 190 Operation Queen of Sheba33, 36 Operation Solomon33 operators86, 107, 117, 148, 150 oral history4, 13–14 Oral History8

256 INDEX

Organization of Rehabilitation through Training (ORT)25, 26, 32 Ori95, 204 Orit37 Paine, Robert183 Palestinians82 Parfitt, Tudor34 participant observation52–3 Passover see Pessach personal development and growth166–71, 201; experimenting with behaviour and fulfilling adult roles167–8; girls and boys compared in cultural context172–3; ‘hatching’ from a child’s worldview168– 9; increased confidence in ability170–1; lessons for life169–71; readiness for change166–7 Pessach (Passover)75, 83, 152 phenomenological approaches14, 54 pilot study57–8 Portelli, Alesandro14 Portes, Alexander6, 8 positivism39 Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome165 pottery21, 28 psychological truth43–4 purification76, 153, 200 purity21, 22, 24, 25, 75, 153–4 ‘push-pull’ model of migration4–5 qualitative methodology40 quantitative methods39 Quirin, James27 Ramat-Rachel194 Rammy69, 101, 112, 124, 204 rape101, 115, 163–4 Red Cross34, 86, 110 Red Sea route35 reflection200 refugee camps154; studies on experiences of12–13 refugee camps (Sudan)12, 32, 33, 34–5;

belief that Sudanese/Christians were poisoning Ethiopian Jews43, 82; and burials84–5, 112; contracting of diseases109–10, 111; deaths35, 110–12, 149; integration problems107; exacerbation of pain of separation112; harassment and animosity by Ethiopian Christians/Muslims80, 107, 141–2, 146; harsh conditions in34, 108–9, 112, 149, 161; hospitalisation149–50; mapxiv; medical services174; overcrowding and bad housing conditions108–9; shortage of food106.109, 140; see also Sudan refugee studies10–13 refugees10–12, 13; debate on ‘as a burden’ versus ‘as an asset’10; number of in world202; and repatriation11 regional migration5 relief workers142 ‘religion of manual work’184 repatriation11 repetitive reporting156 resourcefulness121–3; embedded within concept of gobez121– 2; on journey137–40; and setting out phase126–8; in Sudan141–6 respect: central value of in Ethiopian culture124–5 return-migration6 Rivka97, 101, 160–1, 204; biographical data204 robbers93, 109; see also shifta Robinson, Vaughan13 Rogers, Carl200 role expectations171–3 Rosen, C.120, 121, 122

INDEX 257

Rosenthal, G.41 Rothschild, Baron de30 Ruth97, 103–4, 127, 204 Sabbath75, 76, 77, 83, 84, 94, 159–60, 180 salvage ethnography14 Samay204 Samuel, Raphael and Thompson, Paul195– 6 Sarah62, 70–1, 100, 204 Save the Children Fund10 Schafer, Roy157 Schlesinger, Arthur7 Segev, Tom181, 197 self-concept3 self-image164 self-report155–6 separation: children without their parents88–90; and disintegration of families87–8; during escape process116; exacerbation of during stay in Sudanese refugee camps112; from life in Ethiopia174; inability to say goodbye91; mourning loss of old world90–1; overcoming pain seen as inner strength125; problem affecting Ethiopian Jews whilst in Israel186; rupture of bond with parents87; and setting out phase87–92; as source of trauma158, 159 setting out phase: bravery and inner strength in123–8; clothes worn127–8; danger of shifta see shifta; escalation in hostility with Christian neighbours67, 68; escaping without consent from parents by youngsters124–5; and Jewish identity66–72; Marxist regime’s reaction to migration and attempts to stop68–9, 123, 127; opposition to emigration by neighbours69–70; pain of separation87–92;

preparations for126; punishment of those forced to return123–4; and resourcefulness126–8; role of letters from relatives in Israel66– 7; secrecy of69, 70–1, 127 sexual abuse113–14, 128, 150, 163–4 shamma19–20 Shaul61, 62, 66, 71, 80, 90–1, 144, 152, 167–8, 187, 204 shifta70, 95, 99, 100–2, 104, 123, 124, 127, 132, 133, 134, 138–9 Shlomo64, 65, 67, 76–7, 94, 97, 99, 109, 128, 130, 133, 193, 204 Shmuel61, 204 skin colour: as problem for integration into Israel1, 187, 191 social methodologists39 social phenomenologists40 sociological methods39 sociology39, 40 soldiers100, 132, 138 Sosenuis, King27 Spence, D.P.42–3 Sudan33–4, 167, 173; bravery and inner strength in140–51; contacts with Israel86; cover stories when crossing border141; crossing of border points33–4; differences encountered in173; endurance and determination140; escape process from see escape process; experimenting with new types of behaviour by boys and girls167; harsh treatment of Ethiopian Jews by authorities43, 80–1, 106; hiding of Jewish identity141–2; Jewish identity in79–86; and leadership148–51; living in towns by refugees34; maintaining a Jewish way of life83–5; refugee camps see refugee camps (Sudan); relations with non-Jews80–3; relief workers142; resourcefulness141–6;

258 INDEX

shock on arriving at105–6, 158–9; state of uprootedness felt by refugees106–7, 108; suffering in80–1, 105–15; uncertainty regarding length of stay106, 108 suffering3, 87–119, 197, 202; and death99–100, 110; diseases and sickness97–8, 99, 109–10; during escape to Israel from Sudan115– 19; encounters with soldiers100; as ‘entrance ticket’ into society202; ethos of in Israel181–3, 184–5; exploitation of travellers by guides102– 4; getting lost95–7; harsh conditions in Sudanese refugee camps34, 108–9, 112, 149, 161; and the Holocaust181–3; hunger and thirst93–5, 109, 129; on journey2, 92–104; and night walking92–3; rape and sexual abuse101, 113–15, 128, 150, 163–4; and robbers95 (see also shifta); and separation87–92, 112; and setting out phase87–92; in Sudan80–1, 105–15; tiredness99; uprootedness and non-belonging in Sudan106–7, 108 synagogue16, 17, 25 Takaleh111–12, 143, 169, 205 Tamar138, 197, 205 tattoos20 teachers26 Telaynesh82, 109, 111, 205 Tena73, 98–9, 115, 159, 165–6, 168–9, 205 testimony48 Tewawa refugee camp34, 35 ‘theoretical sampling’55 thirst94–5, 129

Thompson, Paul8, 14 Tigest92, 98, 127, 205 Tigray67 Tigrean Jews56, 66 tiyul184 Tizazu205 Tonkin, Elizabeth14 torture43, 163–4 transmigrants7–8 transnationalism7–8 trauma3, 15, 80, 84, 154–66; and adolescents155; changes in voice and body language157– 8; and death160; detection of through narrative signals155–7; and disintegration of family160–1; external154–5; girls and boys compared in cultural context172–3; and humiliation161–3; inability to observe Jewish religious laws159–60; meanings154–5; pathological consequences155, 164–5; results in personal growth165–6; and separation from parents as source158, 159; and shock of arriving in Sudan158–9; violation through torture or sexual abuse163–4 trekking (masa)184–5 trust45–6 truth42–5; historical43; narrative42–3, 44–5 Turner, Victor199–200 tzabar183, 184, 197 ‘Tzion-Yerussalem’62 Um-Rakuba refugee camp34, 110, 111, 148 UN Protocol (1967)10 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)10

INDEX 259

United States: Jewish/Italian immigrants and Protestant work ethic in6; movement of Ethiopian refugees to12 universities, Israeli189 Van Gennep, A.200 verbal abuse162–3 Vietnamese refugees12 voice: changes in when narrating traumatic event157 Wad el Hileau refugee camp34 Wad Sherifat refugee camp34 Waldinger, R. and Bozorgmehr, M.6 Waldinger, Roger8 walking92–3, 129 water: lack of in Sudanese refugee camps109; shortage of on journey94–5 water-carrying19 Watson, James6 Werbner, Pnina9 Wolkitian Jews56 women: appearance and adornment20; and basket-weaving20; and isolation huts16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 153–4; and migration8; pottery production21; role of in Ethiopian home18–19; sexual abuse of and rape113–15, 128, 150, 163–4; working as prostitutes in Sudan refugee camps34 work skills, learning of18 World Bank10 World Council of Churches10 wot19 Wrong, D.41 Yablonka, H.T.197 Yediot Aharonot (newspaper)53 Yehuda73, 99, 129, 205 Yeremiah, Getiah30 Yeremyah170, 205

‘Yerussalem’1, 61–2 Yoav66, 71, 78, 81, 94, 103, 160, 169, 205 Yossi l08, 117–18, 147, 205 Youth Aliya organisation188, 189 ‘youth project’ (Israel)189 Zionist Church184 Zionists183