What to Watch: The Passengers

The Abandoned Jews of Ethiopia

Jews have lived in Ethiopia for centuries, but over the past decades, the majority have emigrated to Israel, most in the well-known airlifts of Operations Moses (1984) and Solomon (1991). Now some 140,000 are citizens. Those left behind in Addis Ababa and Gondar languish in dire conditions, vividly illustrated in the beautifully shot film. 

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What’s In a Name?

By Gabriel Weinstein For hundreds of years, Ethiopian Jews dreamed of strolling through Jerusalem’s supposed golden streets and celebrating the Sigd festival in its hills. By the late 1970’s, Ethiopians decided that dreaming of Israel no longer sufficed, and embarked on foot to the Promised Land. Scores of Ethiopian Jews fulfilled their dream of reaching Israel through Operation Moses in 1984 after trekking through deserts, skirting Ethiopian border authorities and toiling in unsanitary Sudanese refugee camps. But Ethiopians never dreamed that in Israel, their utopia, they would abandon their Amharic names. Journalist Ruth Mason explores how Ethiopian immigrants traded their Amharic names, and ultimately a sense of identity, for new Israeli-sounding Hebrew names in her documentary These Are My Names.  The film, which premiered last week at the Jewish Eye World Film Festival in Ashkelon, Israel, expresses...

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