JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

eta israel
As of September 1992 almost half the Ethiopian immigrants
in the country were still in temporary housing: 2,500
were in hotels, 7,600 were in regular absorption centers, and
15,000 were living in mobile homes. Each of these groups presents
officials with a different set of difficulties, but the last is
probably the most problematic. Mobile homes for Ethiopian
immigrants (as well as a relatively small number of Russians
and veteran Israelis) were situated in 22 sites around the country.
Most were located in isolated areas far removed from other
Israelis, schools, and employment opportunities. It was anticipated
that many immigrants would continue to live in such
quarters for at least 3 or 4 years.
So long as the Ethiopians remained in temporary quarters,
it was extremely difficult to complete their educational,
social, and occupational absorption. Although official statistics
were never released, it was generally estimated that prior
to 1991, 80% of Ethiopian immigrants eligible for work had
found jobs. Those who have arrived in the following two years
had a much harder time finding employment both because
of their geographic isolation and difficult conditions in the
Israeli economy.
Although more than two decades have passed since
Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef (at the time Sephardi chief rabbi) ruled
that the Beta Israel were Jews, many details of their religious
status remain unresolved. Despite recurrent demonstrations
and court appeals, most Israeli marriage registrars continue
to follow the Chief Rabbinate’s guidelines and require Ethiopian
immigrants wishing to marry to undergo ritual immersion.
Rabbi David Chelouche of Netanya and other rabbis
designated by him require no such ceremony and continue to
perform weddings for Ethiopian Jews throughout the country.
Some Ethiopian activists have demanded that qessotch
(priests), the community’s religious leaders, be allowed to
conduct weddings and perform divorces as in Ethiopia. The
Chief Rabbinate has firmly rejected this demand. Instead it
has agreed to allow the qessotch to serve on religious councils
in areas with large Ethiopian populations and has suggested
that they study to become marriage registrars.
The ongoing controversy concerning marriages and the
status of the qessotch is not merely a halakhic-legal issue. It
is also symptomatic of the vast changes that have shaken the
Ethiopian family in the past decade. Couples have divorced
and remarried, children have asserted an unprecedented degree
of independence, and women have redefined their roles.
Changes have, moreover, not been limited to the restructuring
of relations within the family. The family’s relationship to
the surrounding society has also been radically changed. In
Ethiopia families and households were the foundation of rural
communal life and served as schools, workshops, clinics,
reformatories, and credit organizations. In Israel most of these
functions have become the primary responsibility of other
institutions. Thus, the past decade has witnessed not only a
dramatic and irreversible change of location (in a geographic
sense) for the Ethiopian family. It has also produced a no less
revolutionary transformation of its place (in a social-economic
sense) and its relationship to its surroundings.
[Steven Kaplan]
1992–2005
The Ethiopian Jews continued to undergo dramatic changes
in a very short period of time. In 2005 there were approximately
85,000 in Israel, of whom 23,000 were Israeli-born.
Official Israeli absorption policy aimed to prevent the development
of Ethiopian ghettos and thus encouraged Ethiopians
not to concentrate in the same areas and to purchase homes
in towns where employment and social services were available.
This policy failed to some extent because immigrants
wished to be housed near relatives and chose to live were it
was cheapest, often preferring not to leave absorption centers.
In 1993 the Ministry of Absorption initiated a special program
to encourage immigrants to buy houses and apply for
mortgages outside peripheral areas. Between 1988 and 2001,
10,542 Ethiopians purchased apartments with the help of government
mortgages. If the special mortgage program permitted
many Ethiopian families to own their homes, the goal of
settling them in the center of the country was not achieved,
because the Ethiopians concentrated in a few selected areas
while Jerusalem and Tel Aviv remained with very small Ethiopian
populations.
The State acted in the process of absorption of Ethiopians
according to a model of “mediated absorption” and the
Jewish Agency was responsible for the process. This policy
encouraged employees to treat immigrants as a social problem,
which led immigrants to conform to expectations and
behave accordingly. In 1999 there were 14,778 Ethiopians aged
25–54 in the country but only 53 percent participated in the
labor force (compared to 76 percent of all Israelis of the same
age). Only 38 percent of the Ethiopians in the labor force were
women (compared to 68 percent of all Israeli women). Most
of the Ethiopians were employed in manufacturing (especially
men) and in public services (especially women). Few of the
Ethiopians were in academic and liberal professions (4 percent
of men and 15 percent of women).
The Israeli education system planned to have all young
Ethiopians attend state religious schools in the first year of
their arrival. Government policy sought to restrict the percentage
of Ethiopian students in classes to no more than 25
percent, but this program too was not achieved. Many students
went to *Youth Aliyah boarding schools.
In 1996 Maariv revealed that the Magen David Adom
blood bank had for years systematically thrown out blood
donated by Ethiopian Israelis without informing the donors.
This occurred because Ethiopian immigrants were considered
a high-risk group for AIDS (especially those who arrived in
Operation Solomon). The “blood scandal” was accompanied
by many demonstrations covered by the international media
and by a commission of enquiry. At the outset of the 21st
century the absorption of Ethiopian Jews remained the most
508 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3