From Tigray to Sinai
By Anton Riehle
In Parshat Yitro, in the Book of Exodus, Moses is summoned to Mount Sinai and it is proclaimed: “And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. Now mount Sinai was altogether on smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly” (Exodus 19:17–18). This display of might was right before God began to guide the Israelites into the promised land. Ultimately, Moses never made it into the promised land, but the Israelites did, establishing a kingdom and building a temple. We commemorate this moment in the Jewish saga every year over passover with the words, “Next year in Jerusalem!”
Ferede Aklum was born one of twelve children in a Jewish village in the Tigray region of Northern Ethiopia in 1949. He studied to become a teacher in Addis Ababa and later moved back up to the Tigray to teach. In 1977, the Ethiopian government severed its ties with Israel and subsequently targeted the country’s Jewish community for being “Zionist agents,” taking a page out of the KGB playbook. At this time, Aklum was fleeing a guerilla war in the Tigray, escaping to Sudan with a group of non-Jewish Ethiopians. He was in a refugee camp when, in desperation, he wrote a letter to the Israeli consulate in Geneva, Switzerland. An undercover Mossad agent was sent into Sudan to rendezvous with Aklum, who was soon himself recruited into the Mossad.
During this time, the Mossad undertook a dangerous mission to covertly bring Ethiopian Jews across the border into Sudan and airlift them to Israel. As a cover, a Mossad-run vacation resort on the Red Sea opened, hosting actual tourists while simultaneously providing an exit point for refugees from Ethiopia to make contact with the Israeli government.
In 1983, thousands of Ethiopian Jews from the Tigray would set off on foot, beginning a long, perilous journey to the promised land. An estimated 4,000 died in the deserts of Sudan while others found themselves in Sudanese refugee camps, their hopes diminished. During this time, they were forced to hide their Jewish identity for fear of persecution, and those who perished from malnutrition or disease in the camps were unable to get proper Jewish burials. The Mossad faced increasing troubles reaching all of the refugees and with the danger of being discovered by the Sudanese forces, a plan in conjunction with the CIA and the Sudanese Secret Service began to form. In November 1984, the Israeli government orchestrated one of its most ambitious operations, with the aim of bringing 8,000 Ethiopian olim (migrants) to the land of Israel.
The operation was done in complete secrecy, with passenger jets leased from a Belgian airline flying from Khartoum to Brussels en route to Tel Aviv. After two months, the international press got wind of the story, causing Arab nations to threaten the Sudanese government, effectively putting a stop to rescue operations for an extended period of time. Rescue operations resumed in 1991 with Operation Solomon, during which a Boeing 747 took off with 1,088 people and landed with 1,090 after two babies were delivered in flight. In between the two monumental operations, many families were separated, but mostly were reunited after many years of negotiations and covert rescue missions. Even after Operation Solomon, more Ethiopian Jews were airlifted from Ethiopia into Israel sporadically, some of whom faced a years-long uphill battle through bureaucratic channels that denied their Jewish origins and forced them to undergo halakhic conversions. As for Aklum, he moved to the city of Be’er Sheva in southern Israel where he lived a quiet life with his family until his death in 2009.
This is, of course, barely scratching the surface of the long, complex history of the Ethiopian Jewish exodus to the land of Israel. It is one piece in the tapestry of aliyot (migrations) to the land of Israel during the 20th century. In many ways, this story is an amazing encapsulation of the Jewish experience — one of resistance, perseverance, and a hard journey to the promised land. It is also an important chapter in the story of the Zionist vision and reality, an ever-changing, living, breathing organism that so often is at war with itself. But in spite of the plethora of tensions and debates that exist within Zionist circles, the story of Aklum and his heroic efforts to bring his community to their homeland serves as a unifying reminder of the dreams and possibilities of the Jewish people. Theodore Herzl’s immortal words once again came to fruition — “If you will it, it is no dream.”
