14,400 Jews spent the night in the Israeli Embassy in the dark, calmly and with extraordinary discipline.

Just before the rebels conquered the city, the heads of the Ethiopian regime agreed to allow Israel to take out the Jews of Ethiopia in an air lift, in exchange for a $35,000,000 bribe. So I demonstrated solidarity and ate my first Paschal lamb.” As an Ashkenazi Jew, I knew that my laws of Kashrut are different from theirs, but I also knew that eating the sacrificial Paschal lamb has always been a sign of inclusion in the Jewish people. When the Kessim offered me a piece of the sacrificial lamb, I hesitated. After purifying themselves with water, they placed their hands on ten one year-old lambs, recited a blessing, slaughtered the lambs according to the custom of the community, and roasted them on a fire. They sold their land and walked over four hundred miles south to the poor sections of Addis Ababa, in the hope of being able to go to Israel from there.Įight weeks earlier, the Kessim (the Ethiopian equivalent of rabbis), had celebrated their last Seder in Ethiopia, in the Israeli Embassy.

They found themselves between nightmare and dream, between the threat of war with the rebel army surrounding the capital and the possibility of immigration to Israel, moments before the rebels would overrun the city.Ī few months previously, the Jews of Ethiopia had fled their homes in the Gondar Province, where they had lived as farmers for centuries. On Friday night, May 24, 1991, fourteen thousand, four hundred Jews of ‘Beta Yisrael’ crowded together within the compound of the Israeli embassy in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia.

Moses conquered ethiopia