SPRINGFIELD, OHIO — In the past 30 years, more than 100,000 Ethiopian Jews have emigrated to Israel, but thousands more still wait in Gondar province for their chance to leave.
Yellow Springs filmmaker Aileen LeBlanc has been filming them for two years. She showed a 20-minute clip of her film “Take Us Home” at Temple Sholom on Friday, Nov. 14.
LeBlanc, who made the documentary “Dayton Codebreakers” in 2005, has been traveling to Israel and Ethiopia to chronicle the lives of four Ethiopian families trying to get to Israel. Her appearance Friday was a fundraising event for the Springfield Jewish Welfare Fund, which sends money to the nonprofit United Jewish Communities and “Operation Promise,” a program designed to rescue and resettle Ethiopian Jews.
“There’s three reasons why (Ethiopians come to Israel),” LeBlanc said. “Their religion, persecution and the impoverished conditions in their country.”
LeBlanc, who herself is not Jewish, was hired to make the documentary by Karen Levin, executive director of the Levin Family Foundation, which is underwriting the film. Levin said she got the idea for the documentary during a fundraising mission to Gondar in 2006.
“All of these people were in a holding pattern,” Levin said. “They left everything they owned with the faith that someday they would end up in Jerusalem.”
The steady influx of Ethiopian Jews is controversial in Israel, LeBlanc said. Under Israel’s Law of Return, unanimously adopted in 1950, the country opened its doors to Jews all over the world. But the Ethiopian Jews now trying to get in are Falash Mura, Jews that converted to Christianity, some of whom say they did so to avoid persecution. The Ethiopian Jews now living in Israel are having difficulty assimilating.
LeBlanc is not sure when her film will be finished. Shooting wrapped in September, but LeBlanc is now editing more than 100 hours of footage, which could take as long as five months. She also plans to overdub the film in English.
“Most of the film is in Amharic and Hebrew and I don’t want people reading (subtitles) the whole time,” she said.
– By Emanuel Cavallaro | Springfield News-Sun