TEL AVIV (JTA) – Last week, Israelis for the first time saw a black lead character on a homegrown, primetime television show. “Nevsu,” a half-hour comedy, focuses on an Ethiopian man who is married to an Ashkenazi Jewish woman. Misunderstanding ensues. “There is definitely a lot of cultural confusion in the show,” Yosi Vasa, the star and…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Ethiopian Israelis will be permitted to donate blood without restrictions. The new Health Ministry rules will take effect on July 1, Haaretz reported Tuesday, citing the Magen David Adom ambulance service. Blood donations from Ethiopian-born Israelis have been banned since 1977. The date of the new procedures was announced at the meeting…
— The Jewish community of Gondar in Ethiopia said it lost one of its members in riots that have claimed dozens of lives in recent weeks. The Jew killed in Gondar was identified as Weta Chekla, the Israel-based news site Little Ethiopia reported Thursday. The report said he was waiting to immigrate to Israel amid…
JERUSALEM — Activists and politicians called for the firing of Israel Police Chief Roni Alsheich after he called it “natural” for police to be more suspicious of Ethiopian Israelis than of other Israelis. “Studies the world over, without exception, have shown that immigrants are invariably more involved in crime than others, and this should not…
Civil unrest is roiling Ethiopia. Hundreds of protesters have been killed in recent months by a government crackdown that human rights groups say has been ruthless. The United Nations is demanding that its observers be allowed in the country, but Ethiopia’s rulers have refused. And 9,000 men, women and children who say they are Jews…
Wide-eyed superwomen mesh with history in an eye-catchinge new exhibit by an emerging Israeli artist, currently on view in Harlem. Bold, lively, and abstract, “Mulu and the Beta Clan” by Hirut Yosef features a range of medium from collage to painting to woodworking. Some prints are intimate photographs of her family members overlaid with graphic…
In the local Amharic language, the forgotten Jews of Ethiopia are called the Falash-Mura – the people without a land. Numbering around 5,000 families, many have been waiting to make aliyah and immigrate to Israel for decades. I had heard about their struggle long before travelling to Ethiopia. I’d been told that in the 19th…
Ethiopian-Israelis registering for marriage licenses in the central Israeli city of Petach Tikvah reportedly are routinely rejected and forced to register elsewhere. At least 30 Ethiopian-Israeli couples have been denied marriage licenses in Petach Tikvah in the last nine months, Army Radio first reported Monday, when it interviewed an Ethiopian-Israeli woman identified as Shega, a…
100% of profits support our journalism
