Days after the Israeli government did an about-face and agreed to continue evaluating Ethiopia’s Falash Mura population for eligibility to make aliya, a new school opened in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar to help prepare thousands of Falash Mura children for a future life in the Jewish homeland.
The school, which was established with the full support of the Ethiopian government, is being funded by a collection of American-Jewish organizations, headed by the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry (NACOEJ), which receives some of its funding from the United Jewish Communities (UJC).
The facility, which will teach Hebrew, religion and Jewish culture, will cater to an estimated 10,000 Falash Mura – Jews whose ancestors were forced to convert to Christianity a century ago – who are currently waiting in Gondar to find out if they are eligible to immigrate under a special clause in the Law of Entry.
In the meantime, the debate over whether Israel should let them in continues, as does the debate over whether the UJC, which is the chief fundraising arm of American Jewry, should continue providing financial support and other essential aid to the families, most of whom have no other form of income outside of the donations made by North American Jewry.
On Sunday, the Israeli government decided that Interior Ministry representatives in Ethiopia should continue checking the eligibility for aliya of some 3,000 Ethiopians, whose names originally appeared on 1999 census known as the Efrati list. However, many Ethiopian community leaders and their supporters insist that there are between 8,000 and 10,000 people who still need to be considered.
On Thursday top UJC officials met to discuss whether to continue funding projects for the Falash Mura in Ethiopia.
In January, UJC President and CEO Howard Rieger sent a memo to executives of the 19 largest federations saying that funds raised in a special campaign dubbed Operation Promise, which was intended in part to help Ethiopian Jewry, had run out and that the UJC was halting its funding of aid programs in northern Ethiopia.