By Sam Litvin
SAN DIEGO — A post on Facebook surfaced on Monday July 13th. “I knew Abraham when I was a small grade. I knew him because he was a bookworm….”
The post was by a recent immigrant to United States from a small Jewish majority town in the outskirts of Addis Ababa. The FB post referred to Abraham Ben Teshome, who lived a quiet life. He played football (soccer); he loved to read and he was better educated than most people in Ethiopia. He was a doctor (radiologist) and an electrical engineer. He was kind to those around him. What was remarkable about him was that he was Jewish, openly and unabashedly so. . Attending services, observing shabbat and wearing a kippa, at all times Jewish.
This fact may raise questions not only in Ethiopia, but also in Israel and the United States, whose President Obama is scheduled to soon visit in Ethiopia.
You see, Israel has stated that there are no more Jews in Ethiopia and by all observable accounts that is correct. Except for one synagogue which Ben Teshome founded and the surrounding Jewish neighborhood where there are a few Jews like Abraham who are open about their faith, and other Jews who keep it hidden because of discrimination.
In Ethiopia, being openly Jewish can limit one in many ways. Children of openly Jewish families are not allowed into public schools. Even if one does manage to get through school, then he or she will have difficulty finding a job because workplaces openly discriminate against those who are Jewish.
In Ethiopia there is still a common superstition of the Jewish evil eye curse, a superstition that has led disappearances and deaths of Jews. Which leads to the last complication: being openly Jewish affects one’s burial rights; namely, openly Jewish people have none. They are thrown away like trash.
Because of this harsh anti-Semitism, there are few obvious signs that any Jews live in Kechene. Most Jews in Kechene who want a chance at normal life must do so in secret. This means, in every day life, Jews of Kechene often pretend to be Christian by wearing crosses and taking on tattoos of crosses on their faces, symbols that no non-Jew wears.
This creates a confusion for people in Israel: to them, there is no way that these people with crosses tattooed on their faces are Jewish. Therefore Israel does not extend to them the right of return. Because of this, the Ethiopian government can continue to discriminate against openly Jewish people and continue to persecute those who try to practice Judaism in secret; effectively trapping them at home with no way out of their situation.
In the United States the difference in skin implies to most Jews that they have little in common with Jews of Ethiopia. The phenotype of an individual can be very deceptive. This is why most white people think they have nothing in common with the half-black, President Obama. President Obama is set to visit Addis Ababa and he happens to have more in common with white people than black people having grown up in a white middle class household. By emphasizing race, Israel’s religious authority seems to be saying that somehow, faith and customs of a people are only important if those people are from a specific geographic area or of a certain racial make-up.
The critics of Abraham and other Jews of Kechene will ignore that Abraham chose to endanger his life to maintain his faith, the faith with the same principles which religious Jews hold so dear in Israel and elsewhere around the world. They will ignore that he, just like millions of Jews, had one hope: to live in the land of his forefathers, where he thought he belonged, where people think like him, pray to the same God, the same way he did every Shabbat until his untimely death.
So what now? Now the community will have to fight to bury Abraham just as they fought for the past two years to open synagogues. If they fail, they will have to drive around Ethiopia, until they find a “sympathetic” official, who will let them bury the poor Abraham and hope that officials will not find out. For if they do, the place in the earth will have to be vacated, and Abraham will be relegated to the same fate as all unwanted things in Ethiopia endure.
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Sam Litvin, originally from Ukraine, is a traveler, writer, photographer and engineer living in San Diego. His articles may be found on the website “Sam the Jewish Guy”