Ethiopian immigrants and administrators from Rishon Letzion, Israel, visited Congregation Ahawas Achim B’nai Jacob and David in West Orange on May 12. Their tour promoted immigration absorption efforts supported by the United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey. Photos by Johanna Ginsberg
May 15, 2008
Rachel Yesesechar left Ethiopia in 1984 to embrace a dream: to live in Israel. When she started the journey on foot in the middle of the night with 53 members of her extended family, she left behind her life, her profession as a teacher, her security, and her identity.
The first 12 days they walked day and night to the Sudanese border. Some in the group were too young to walk, so their mothers carried them; others were quite old, she said. Many died along the way — in the desert, in refugee camps in Sudan, from disease, from bandits, from wild animals, from the heat. At least one, her niece, simply vanished.
“At one point I stopped, turned around, and my niece, five years old, was gone,” she remembered this week. “We had to hold our hands over the mouths of my sister and her husband — my niece’s parents — for if they heard us, we would all — well…”
Her voice trailed off. They left the place without the child.
“We do not know where she was, or whose hands she was in,” she said.
Eventually, they reached a refugee camp in Sudan, where they stayed for eight months. Those who died, she said, could not be buried properly. “We buried them in front of our doors at the camp.”
Beverly Nadler, center, accepts a certificate in honor of her late husband Paul from, at left, Leslie Dannin Rosenthal, chair of UJC MetroWest’s Israel and Overseas committee, and Gary O. Aidekman, UJA campaign chair. A bequest from Paul Nadler will support immigration absorption efforts in Israel.
They finally made it to Israel, flying from Sudan to Egypt to France.
But 24 years after her niece’s disappearance, “We still do not know what happened to her,” Yesesechar said.
Yesesechar told her story in Hebrew May 12 to seniors at Congregation Ahawas Achim B’nai Jacob & David in West Orange. Her words were translated by a staffer from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which helped arrange a visit of five Ethiopian Israelis and three administrators visiting local agencies and communities.
In partnership with the JDC and Rishon Letzion, where 1,400 Ethiopian families have settled in the last 10 years, United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey initiated a program six years ago known as Operation Atzmaut.
It aims to help immigrants integrate successfully into Israeli life by focusing on education, employment, and family management. It has become a national model, with 12 similar projects initiated around Israel since it began.
The group was inspired by the light, twangy sound of the Ethiopian instrument known as the krar, played by emigre David Ermiase.
Recently, a new endowment was established through UJC MetroWest’s efforts. The Paul Nadler Ethiopian Renewal Endowment will secure for the long run continuous support for the program. On May 8, UJC MetroWest officials presented Beverly Nadler, Paul’s widow, with a certificate marking the endowment at the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany. Paul Nadler of Summit was a banking expert and professor at Rutgers Business School in Newark who died last year.
Yesesechar represents the positive side of the sometimes challenging absorption of Ethiopian immigrants: She learned Hebrew and earned a degree in social work from Tel Aviv University. For the last four years, she has served as coordinator of immigration and absorption for the Rishon Letzion municipality.
She in turn assists people like Rachel Cassoun, 16, another member of the visiting delegation. Born in Israel to immigrant parents, Cassoun is active in the renewal program’s services, which reach as many as 80 families at a time.
In addition to hearing Yesesechar’s story, the synagogue group was treated to the light twangy sound of an Ethiopian string instrument known as the krar, played by David Ermiase.
The delegation returned to Israel May 13.
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