The last Aliyah? || For Ethiopia's Jews, a long journey is over, a new one begins

Ahead of the last Falashmura flight, Anshel Pfeffer joins new immigrants on their way to Israel. A first report in a series examining three decades of Ethiopian Aliyah.

Friday, last week, 9 A.M., Jewish Agency Absorption Center, Kiryat Gat

For Melkamu and Wotetie Getnet and their two children, the journey ends in a one-bedroom apartment in the Kiryat Gat absorption center. Between metal-frame beds, a new ‘fridge and kettle, they lay down the two suitcases containing all their possessions. A four-hour flight, following three days on the bus from Gondar to Addis Ababa − a journey that began two years ago, leaving the village where they were born, in the hope of being allowed to emigrate to Israel.

Soon they will be taken to the post office to sign up for health insurance. The beginning of a new journey into Israeli society. For the parents, in their 40s, an exhausting attempt to acclimate to a new environment, a strange language and a job market with demands they may not be equipped to meet. For two years they will mainly study Hebrew, look for housing and undergo a conversion process ‏(as Falashmura, they are not recognized as Jews, only as descendants of Ethiopian Jews who converted to Christianity, and thus full conversion is a condition for permanent citizenship‏).

Melkamu will seek a job, but without formal education or experience in construction or subsistence farming, what opportunities will he have? Wotetie has never had a job. When asked to sign for the equipment , Wotetie insists on signing her name in the Hebrew letters she learned in Gondar. A small smile of success.

Thirteen-year-old Hudit and Mokach, 7, are embarking on their own journey. The first morning in Israel and they already seem different from their parents − walking about the center’s corridors with confidence, trying out their basic Hebrew. Hudit has located the clubroom, with its television. In the coming years they will likely serve as Melkamu and Wotetie’s interpreters, navigating the Israeli thicket for them. Things won’t be easy for them either; they will face obstacles like other Ethiopian-born youths, but they have a chance of making it.

For Melkamu and Wotetie, the morning of their arrival − when they exchanged a tiny mud hut for a fifth-floor apartment with running water and electricity, and cannot yet define what they left behind − may yet prove to have been the high point of their journey.