By Stuart Laidlaw | Toronto Star

When Yuvi Tashome was a little girl in Ethiopia, Jerusalem was a mystical place known to her only through the Torah and the tales children tell one another.

“I grew up with stories about how, in Jerusalem, everybody takes care of one another and keeps the Shabbat,” Tashome, 32, says in a phone interview from Gedera, Israel. She will be telling her story next week in Toronto as part of Passover,

“I thought there is no death in Jerusalem. It was like heaven. There was candy on the trees.”

That it could be real, and that she could go there, seemed impossible.

The story of how she and more than 120,000 other Ethiopian Jews eventually made it to Jerusalem will be told by Tashome Monday evening at Beth Tzedec Synagogue at the New Israel Fund’s Liberation Seder for Passover, which begins today and celebrates the escape of Jewish slaves from ancient Egypt.

“The parallels (in Tashome’s story) to the Exodus story are just amazing,” says Rabbi Lawrence Englander of Mississauga’s Solel Synagogue.

Englander will give the Seder address Monday, calling all worshippers to consider themselves to have escaped Egypt and found freedom.

“The idea is to connect with people like Tashome still going through that journey,” he says.

As civil war ravaged her homeland in the mid-1980s, Tashome’s widowed mother decided the family (which included Yuvi’s little brother and grandmother) had to leave for Jerusalem, part of a massive migration of Ethiopia’s Jewish minority to Israel in what came to be known as Operation Moses.

Just like Moses, Tashome and her family wandered the desert in search of refuge, which they found after about two months in a refugee camp in Sudan.

“I don’t remember a lot about Sudan, just the deaths and that everybody was hungry,” Tashome says. “I was hungry all the time.”

At age 5, she had also been separated from her mother and brother, and travelled with her grandmother instead. They were eventually airlifted out of the camps. Tashome’s most vivid memory was the flight crew.

“We were up in the sky, and they were all wearing white. I thought they were angels,” she says, the sight seeming to prove that Jerusalem was heaven. “When we arrived, I remember the grown-ups all getting down on the floor and praying.”

Cut off from European Judaism for almost 2,000 years, the Jews of Ethiopia shared little with others of their faith in terms of tradition or ceremony. Tashome’s mystical ideas about Jerusalem are a reflection of that disconnect.

But the idyllic image of Jerusalem – which, for Ethiopian Jews in the 1980s, meant all of Israel – soon started to tarnish as unemployment, limited acceptance by Israeli society and the accompanying crime among the Ethiopian community began to take its toll.

Growing up, Tashome tried to be a “good Israeli girl,” in her words, going to a kibbutz for high school and serving in the army. But when it came time to get a civilian job, she found prospects dried up.

“All they could see was an Ethiopian girl,” she says.

Tashome turned her attention, instead, to working with troubled Ethiopian youth. Four years ago, she founded Friends by Nature, a grass-roots organization that helps young people stay in school and out of trouble. Her group is partly funded by the New Israel Fund, which supports such community-based organizations in hopes of building a civic society within Israel, says Jay Brodbar, executive director of the New Israel Fund of Canada.

Such efforts, Tashome says, help Ethiopian youths stay in school and even go to university. And along the way, she says, they are building the next generation of Ethiopian Jewish leaders.

By DIANE STAFFORD | The Kansas City Star

U.S. employers have yet to ask for as many H-1B work visas as authorized for the federal fiscal year beginning in October.

For the first time in several years, applications for the employer-sponsored temporary work visas for foreign workers did not reach the cap within a few days after the filing period opened.

Applications for the 65,000 visas authorized by Congress opened April 1. As of Wednesday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had received only about half that number, said Marilu Cabrera, regional spokesman for the federal agency.

Immigration watchers said the unusual decline probably reflected U.S. job losses from the recession and a political climate that would make it unpopular for companies to import workers when Americans have been laid off.

The visa program for fiscal 2010 also authorizes 20,000 H-1B work visas for foreign-born workers who have earned U.S. master’s degrees or higher. Those graduates are exempted from the 65,000 cap.

Cabrera said those applications still were short of the total allowed.

Last year, the limit for both kinds of visas was reached within five days, and a computerized draw determined which employers received the visa permits.

Gizie Bekele, an immigration law specialist at Lathrop & Gage, noted this week at a Kansas City legal seminar that companies receiving federal bailout funding have an additional roadblock this year in applying for H-1B visas. They must show proof that H-1B workers would not displace American workers and that American workers are not available to do the job.

By Jeff Weiss in weiss | LA Weekly

Rivaling Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade, Franco, Tabu Ley Rochereau, and a handful of others, Mulatu Astatke ranks among the most influential African musicians of all-time.

The father of Ethio-Jazz, the Berklee-trained Mulatu was the first of his countryman to fuse American jazz and funk, with native folk and Coptic Chuch melodies. The leading light of the “Swingin’ Addis-“era, Astatke is often acknowledged as the star of the epic Ethiopiques Series, At least, according to filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, who included songs from the Mulatu-arranged and composed, Vol. 4, in his ode to midlife melancholia, Broken Flowers.

His latest album, Mulatu Astatke & The Heliocentrics–Inspiration Information 3, finds him collaborating with the titular UK-based jazz-funk eight-piece. Born out of a serendipitous turn that led to the band backing Mulatu’s first UK gig in 15 years, Mulatu and the Stones Throw-signed outfit decided to record a new album composed of originals and re-worked older compositions. Released yesterday on Strut, the finished product ranks among the year’s finest, and adds another succesful chapter to Mulatu’s unimpeachable legacy.

How did you and Heliocentrics decide to collaborate the first place?

I was in Boston, lecturing for the music academy [from 2007-08, Astatke had the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard University, where he worked on modernizations of traditional Ethiopian instruments and unveiled an opera, “The Yared Opera.”] Karen P invited me to play a show on London, so I did There wasn’t much time to meet with Heliocentrics. We only had one day of rehearsal, but after the show was over, we felt we should collaborate. The album was very hard work. It was recorded in just 10 days, in the Heliocentrics studio in London.

How would you compare the chemistry you had with the Heliocentrics, with Either/Or Orchestra?

It’s not clear. They’re a different band, one who I’d been with for a long time. It’s a different groove, different passion. I like both, and that’s why I felt connected, and it came off authentic. The music reflects the connection.

During the 1970s, Ethiopia was ruled by a fairly repressive government. How did the political situation affect your music?

It didn’t. I’ve always said, ‘leave the politics to the politicians.’ It takes all kinds of professional people to build a country–my role is to develop the culture and introduce the whole world to Ethio-jazz.

You’ve spoken in the past about meeting Duke Ellington in the early 1970s. What was the experience like? Did you play together? Talk about music? Exchange tips?

I was assigned by the Embassy to be Ellington’s escort while he was in Addis. We both stayed at the Hilton in Addis and, whatever he needs or wants to know about Ethiopia, I was his guide. I had always admired him as an arranger, composer and bandleader. During my music studies, I had analyzed his work in detail. During his visit, I showed him some of the cultural musical instruments, which he found really interesting. Some of our cultural musical players jammed with Ellington’s guys – we went to the U.S. Information Centre in Addis and played together. I then took him to the King’s palace and he was given a medal by Emperor Heile Selassie. It was a big ceremony.

We were due to play an evening concert so I discussed with him if he would consider playing one of my arrangements. I wrote an arrangement of ‘Dewel’ for his band, a different version which included some beautiful voicings on the horns. He found the structures so interesting and I remember him saying, ‘This is good. I never expected this from an African’. He made my day. His visit to Ethiopia remains one of the greatest moments in my life.

What was the inspiration to create Ethio-jazz. In addition to your American counterparts’ jazz fusion styles, what native influences and past Ethiopian composers helped inspire the new sound?

During the mid-’60s, no one was really fusing Ethiopian music with jazz. There was Heile Selassie’s First National Theatre Orchestra and the police and the army had orchestras. Then there were bands like the Echoes and the Ras Band. The musicians at the time were playing melodies around the four Ethiopian modes using techniques like ‘cannon’ forms, with melody lines echoing each other. With Ethio jazz, I consciously wanted to expand and explore the modes. My music brought in quite different harmonic structures and a different kind of soloing.

You’ve amassed an incredibly rich discography, but do any records or songs stand out as personal favorites?

‘Dewel’ would definitely be one. ‘Mulatu’s Hideaway’ and ‘Yekermo Sew’ of course. I’m always really happy that these older compositions stand the test of time. At my recent European gigs with the Heliocentrics and in L.A. at the recent ‘Timeless’ concert, the reaction is still so great when I play these.

Does it feel rewarding that American culture has finally discovered the music from Ethopia in recent years. If so, why do you think it took so long?

It’s been so nice, yes. America is a country of privileges for people. To have access to that privilege and have the opportunity to record Ethio-jazz all those years ago is something I always appreciate. I’m not sure why it took so long. I personally was never discouraged, I always just kept on playing. It needed people to find the original music and make it available in the right way. The ‘Ethiopiques’ series and film director Jim Jarmusch (‘Broken Flowers’) gave it a great chance to be heard and Karen P, Strut Records and the Heliocentrics are carrying the flame forward. The live shows I do now have shown me how this music is now accepted all over the world. It gives me great encouragement and I love to do this for Ethiopia and for Ethiopian culture. Ethiopia itself is slowly waking up to the music too. Africa is emerging and Ethio-jazz is in the best position to fly the flag for the future of Africa. I really believe that.

Are there any young and notable Ethiopian musicians that you’ve worked with, whom you think may not have yet crossed over but should?

I play with a number of different musicians at my club in Addis, the African Jazz Village. There’s one kid who plays there on Saturdays called Bebesha, a guitarist. He has a good future and he is a great fan of Ethio-jazz.

You recently completed a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard. Can you talk about what led you to pursue that, and your work on the project?

This has been great for Ethio jazz. The idea was to write a book of what Ethiopia has contributed to development of music and arts. During my time there, I made a lot of talks to 30 fellows of Harvard, with three other composers, some from Japan. We had great researchers and professors. As a team we gave presentations and discussed at length the development of classical music and jazz and the music, customs and instrumentations happening in Ethiopia that pre-date all of this by many centuries. I had written an opera based on music from the Ethiopian Coptic church, which was analyzed. My time there finished with a great evening of Ethio-jazz and a performance of the opera with Either/Orchestra.

After Harvard, I later won an Abrowsie Grant to go to M.I.T. We did a lot of experimental work there. Most Ethio musicians tend to pick up the guitar as a starting point and, at M.I.T., I was looking to upgrade the krar (Ethiopian stringed instrument) to be able to play Western 12-tone music. For me, this is an essential step in encouraging Ethiopian musicians to stick to our culture.

Are you working on any new music currently? If so, what sorts of things?

Yes, I have recorded a group of tracks for a new album, which I have called ‘Mulatu Steps Ahead’. It’s more reflective and jazz-based than the album with Heliocentrics but I’m really pleased with it. It takes Ethio-jazz into another new direction.

How has the creative process evolved for you as you’ve gotten older?

I suppose I have learned to place Ethio-jazz into different situations. From essentially experimenting with the first recordings during the ’60s, I have since adapted the music to write operas and soundtracks for a lot of Ethiopian plays, including a major piece for the National Black Arts Festival in Nigeria. I have tried to keep an open mind with my music and have been lucky enough to play with a lot of wonderful artists in many different situations. It has all helped to keep the music fresh, I hope.

What achievements are you most proud of?

The Ellington visit to Ethiopia and accompanying concert will always be a highlight. For my own music, just to see the interest today and the way it still excites people all over the world is very special.

You’ve worked tirelessly to teach younger generations between your work at the African Jazz Village and Harvard. What do you think it is that draws you to teaching?

I do try and be a kind of ambassador for Ethiopian music and culture and to dispel the myths that have become accepted as fact in the West. In my research around Ethiopian music, I have found people like the Darasha tribespeople who have used a diminishing scale in their music for centuries. In Western music history, this is a technique attributed to Be Bop, to the music of Charlie Parker. It has made me determined to tell the facts as they are to the wider world. We have to find out who came first, how things really happened.

Are there any goals that you feel you have left to accomplish? What do you hope for in the future?

I have a goal to ‘upgrade’ all Ethiopian musical instruments. All of them are based on the 5-tone scale and, over time, I want to re-model them to be able to play the 12-tone scale so we can use them to play Ethio-jazz. I also want to write more music for films and TV and to contribute to documentary programs so more people can view Ethio-jazz and learn about my country’s music heritage.

NEW YORK (jewkey.com) – When Avishai Mekonen, 35, an Israeli photographer who has lived for the past seven years in New York City, lectured before American high-school students in Savannah, GA, one of them asked him to roll up his sleeve.

“Where is the number?” the student asked. Mekonen didn’t get it at first.

“I thought Jews are Holocausts survivors. Aren’t you a Holocaust survivor?” explained the teenager. With experiences of this kind, admits Mekonen, it’s not always easy to be the Ethiopian Jew in America. As if it is anywhere else.

In his new exhibition, “Seven Generations”, he wishes to return to his community the pride of its authentic tradition. Then irony in his quest for shards of his traditional identity is that his work is being displayed in New York, and not in Israel.

It is customary for Ethiopians, before getting married, to have the community elders account for seven generations of each family, in order to ensure that no accidental cases of incest can occur. This tradition also became one of the foundations of the elders’ authority. One who is able to count seven generations back would receive the respect of the community. Those who can count 14 generations are perceived as geniuses.

“Once an Israeli cab driver who took me to an Ethiopian funeral cursed and said: ‘Those Ethiopians! Only one died, yet hundreds are coming!’” recalls Mekonen. “But in our tradition, you must invite all your extended relatives, 7 generations back, both to the weddings and to funerals. It’s like one big family.”

Some of the youngsters he interviewed for the film accompanying the exhibition have no idea what all of this means, or they don’t really care. When Mekonen married his wife Shari, a Jewish American filmmaker, he didn’t really need the elders’ services to count generations of his bride’s family. His parents, who flew all the way from Israel to the U.S. for the wedding, were quite shocked to see the small number of guests. “This is the whole family?” his mother asked, a bit disappointed.

We eat hummus in a small Manhattan restaurant as Mekonen tells me that many years ago he had this idea to make a documentary about the painful generation gap of the Ethiopian community, but dawdled, and his move to the U.S. to join his wife further complicated the matter.

“But one day it struck me, when I met a young Ethiopian in Israel who is able to count generations. This tradition will just disappear, and nothing will be left of it.”

He says that Israeli bureaucrats unknowingly contributed to the destruction of the custom: when Mekonen made Aliya to Israel in 1984, instead of taking on his father’s family name, according to tradition, he was instead registered under his great-grandfather’s name, along with the rest of his family. Born Agegnehu (”gift” in Amharic), he became Avraham upon his arrival. Later, he changed his name to Avishai, to return some semblance of his original name.

“But I’m still Mekonen, and the elders get confused when they try to count generations – it doesn’t seem logical to them, this jump from my great-grandfather to me. Mekonen is supposed to belong to another generation.”

The entire family in Israel was recruited to work on the project. His father made phone calls to community elders, arranging meetings; his mother baked injera, the traditional bread, to honor the hosts; the younger brother was appointed to contact Israeli-Ethiopian hip-hop bands and rebellious teenage girls with tattoos.

“The parents’ generation understood the importance of this project, dressed nicely and fully cooperated. The youngsters neglected it until I talked to them, when they admitted that because of their detachment from tradition they have had serious identity problems. They said they feel “empty and humiliated” when some policeman tells them: “You are Ethiopian, you understand nothing.”

The tears within the Ethiopian community seem so distant from the noisy lobby at the Jewish Community Center building in Manhattan, where his exhibition is presented. In the afternoon, African-American nannies bring children for activities at the Center. 30-year old Jolly is taking care of two active Jewish toddlers, and she seems quite surprised when she sees the pictures: “I never thought there were black Jews!”

Some of the Ethiopians sought comfort in Harlem, so they wouldn’t be forced to deal with the perceptions that “Jews are white”. But Mekonen says “it’s complicated”. In his documentary-in-progress, “400 Miles to freedom”, he explores his personal story and identity, and through this exploration he meets a variety of diverse Jews both in Israel and in America, including Rabbi Capers Funnye, a leader of the African American Jewish community and second cousin of First Lady Michelle Obama, who shares his own historical roots and path to Judaism. He says that although Ethiopians, unlike African-Americans, weren’t enslaved and detached from their history, he feels that the conversations with the community present a strong opportunity to learn about the history of slavery in the U.S.

“There are obvious advantages to being part of a big and influential community,” he admits. “The first time I saw a giant poster featuring a black model, I was stunned and excited that here people actually think that black sells. I wanted it to happen in Israel too. Then in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina where the blacks were neglected, I said, ‘thank God I’m Israeli.’ But when Obama won the election and all our neighbors ran down the street yelling and dancing and singing – I shouted something in Hebrew as well, something like: ‘The good guys won!’ It was perhaps the first time that I felt I belong to this fest, and I said I’m so grateful to be here to witness this historical moment.”

Like almost every Israeli living in New York and hoping “to return one day”, Mekonen dreams of going back to Israel and buying a house in Rosh Pina. He recalls with nostalgia his service in the Israel Defense Forces’ combat engineering unit, the day he was wounded in Hebron by a Molotov cocktail and his time in Lebanon.

“I was a Zionist,” he says. “After I finished my studies I made some documentaries, and one of the films was screened on Channel 1. Even so, I hated headlines like ‘The first Ethiopian filmmaker’ – it made me feel as though they don’t expect anything more from me – you’ve already done your duty, you’re free to go. But I felt that my career had just begun.”

“And then I suddenly found myself organizing the shelves of an N.Y. supermarket, and I didn’t even have a name – I was a ‘garbage boy’. I didn’t come ‘to conquer America’. Frankly, I was horrified at the thought of a second immigration, after we walked from Ethiopia to Sudan.

“I had all kinds of weird phobias, like that being a black Jew might even get me killed over here. Every day I cursed the American food – it seemed so tasteless. For two months, I ate only hot dogs – it was the only thing I could name in English. When I was working at the moving company, like so many other Israelis, one sofa slipped out of my hands and rolled down the stairs, so I had to quit.

“I thought I would have to give up art. I would bring my CV to production companies, but who has heard of Tel-Hai college? Who knows what Channel 1 is here? They were a bit curious about the black guy coming from Israel, but they always finished with: ‘We’ll call you back,’ and you know exactly what that means. The only thing that kept me strong was that I put a small table in the corner, and started writing scripts.”

Eventually, Mekonen started to exhibit his work, got some grants for his projects and was able to go back to filmmaking. But he still feels like a guest in America.

“From the Jewish community I sometimes hear: ‘Did you come with Operation Moshe? I donated to it!’ The thing is my mother lives it every day. Each morning she says: ‘Thank God, thanks to America’. But I start telling people that we were not only sitting there and waiting for someone to rescue us. We walked for months, and thousands died on the way. But they don’t get it, and some even become angry because it doesn’t fit their stereotypes of the naive Africans that are supposed to be grateful until their last day. It’s pretty difficult for me to see sometimes the fundraising campaigns for the Ethiopian community in Israel, they look so miserable. I want people to see my culture as a rich and happy one. But then probably no one would donate money, and it really helps many people.”

In Israel he misses many things that the native Israelis would rather escape.

“I adore those moments, when you come off the plane and the cab driver starts to haggle over each shekel, things like that,” he laughs. “And of course, I ask myself where I would be today if I had stayed there.”

He doubts that his 4-year-old son Ariel will speak Amharic. “But I want him at least to know Hebrew.” At this moment, he would be glad if his exhibition will finally reach Israel. “I want the elders to see it. They deserve it.”

Slightly more than a thousand Ethiopian Jews have settled in North America since the beginning of the 1990s, and about 500 live in New York City. The Israeli Consulate, which used to ignore the trend, nowadays prefers to keep in touch with the Israelis living in the city.

The new New Yorkers themselves hate when one defines it as a “phenomenon”. They are fed up with questions about the racism in Israel and America, and they reject any question that smells of arrogance and an effort to distinguish them from any other young Israelis who head to seek themselves “in the big world.”

Bizu Rikki Mulu, one of the Ethiopian-Israeli-American community veterans, founded an organization aimed at facilitating absorption of the newcomers. She called it Chassida Shmella (”Shmella” means stork in Amharic, she took it from the song people in her village would sing while seeing the migrating birds: “Stork, stork, how is our Holy Land?”). She thinks that the stream of the newcomers will increase now that Obama is president.

“You have here in N.Y.C. maybe one hundred thousand Yemenite Jews, maybe half a million Russian Jews, and now we have the Ethiopian Jews,” she says. “It’s a normal thing. It is better to keep them attached to the community, instead of saying: ‘We’ve spent so much money to bring them to Israel, they should go back there. If someone succeeds, it’s a success for all of us.’”

Mulu, native of a small village in Gondar, came to Israel in 1978 with a group of 150 Jews as part of Operation Begin. She arrived in New York for the first time in 1991, and although she managed to get a green card, she warns that for most young Ethiopians, the absorption is not so simple.

“It looks easy from Israel, but then they come here and work illegally in all kinds of odd jobs, and no one really cares about them,” she says. “A few fared better, some have their own businesses, and one woman works at the local hospital because her profession facilitates the immigration process. And there are plenty of guys who didn’t really succeed, but they don’t want to go back home with empty hands. I think it’s quite healthy to be able to say: ‘I failed and I’m going to try to make it at home.’ Not everyone is like Obama. In many places in America still, the blacks are here and the whites are there. Only in the 60s, segregation was abolished formally. The young Ethiopians coming here don’t think about these things.”

Chassida Shmella organizes cultural and educational events, but most of the newcomers ask for material assistance. “They ask directly: ‘What can you do for me?’ At first, they are less interested in preserving their religious and cultural identity. But most of them come from religious families, and here there are no parents to prepare the Shabbat meal. They are trying to find their place. At first, people at synagogue might stare at them, but eventually they get used to it, and the rabbi is excited. Only upon coming here I discovered how much the American Jews did for the Ethiopian Jews. But there are also a lot of prejudices and stereotypes. Many still want to see us as the guys dressed in white coming off the plane, because that’s how they remember this Aliyah.”

“The Ethiopian Jews sobered later,” declares one fresh arrival. “In Israel, dog eats dog. Here you have plenty of problems as well, but I personally prefer to be stabbed in the back by a gentile, and not my own brother Jew. Here the Ethiopians tend to succeed more, because people don’t look at your origin and family name, they look at what you have to offer them. With God’s help, we’ll get back to Israel empowered, economically and mentally, to Jerusalem and not to the state-sponsored trailers.”