On Sunday night, Rabbi Hailu Moshe Paris, who had been at Manhattan’s Beth Israel Medical Center for three weeks, was blinking and smiling at the small group of Jews gathered around his bed. He could not speak, he wore an oxygen mask and was attached to an IV, but he nodded slightly as the group…
The Sephardi chief rabbi in the Israeli city of Petach Tikvah has been refusing to perform marriages for Ethiopian Jews in his community. Saying their Jewishness is questionable, Rabbi Binyamin Atias has rejected the Falash Mura, whose ancestors converted from Judaism more than 200 years ago, and has not allowed them to register in his…
Israeli lawmakers called for an examination of Magen David Adom blood donation policies after an Ethiopia-born Knesset member was rejected as a donor. Pnina Tamano-Shata of the Yesh Atid party tried to donate during a special blood drive Wednesday at the Knesset but was told she could not because she had “the special kind of…
Titi Aynaw may not have been crowned Miss Universe 2013, but she did Israelis proud by representing her country in the international pageant in Moscow, Russia. The first black Miss Israel failed to make it in to the semi-finals of the competition, despite our urging everyone to vote online for her. Gabriela Isler, Venezuela’s beauty…
The Forward is a non-profit news organization and as such is barred from telling you whom to vote for. There’s also this little thing called journalistic integrity. But we have decided to toss both policies out the window — just this once. Vote for Titi! There, we said it. Let the IRS do what it…
The final two charter flights of new immigrants from Ethiopia landed in Israel. The two airplanes carrying the 450 new Israeli citizens arrived Wednesday at Ben Gurion Airport. A steady trickle of approximately 200 Ethiopian immigrants per month has been coming to Israel since 2010, when Israel launched Operation Wings of a Dove after checking…
It’s a simmering late afternoon on a midsummer’s day in the Gimmel neighborhood of Beer Sheba, the capital of Israel’s Negev desert. The sun beats down from the West over the high rooftops of myriad apartment buildings. As the sun continues to sink, the edifices cast lengthy shadows across a green expanse. These shadows offer…
The Interior Ministry is challenging asylum claims by Eritreans who, it says, are Ethiopian and thus eligible for deportation. A Central District Court judge has ruled in favor of the state in 18 out of 19 petitions against the ministry’s classification. Eritrean citizens in Israel are granted collective ‘temporary protection’ and are not deported to…
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