Efrat Yerday:
All Western societies are anti-black societies. Israel is no different. This is what the Jewish people want to believe that Israel is a safe haven for Jews from around the world. But Ethiopian Jews were not accepted here. You come to Israel, the Jewish country, the place that’s supposed to be the most safe for Jewish people in the world, and suddenly people question you do Judaism. That’s why I’m so triggered when people talk about Operation Moses. There were 20 years of creating networks and movements and connecting all the dots and collecting all the people who are supportive. It’s not the best place in the world, but I will fight for it tooth and nail to make it better.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Israel is supposed to be the place where every Jew can come home. So what happens when black Jews get here and still have to prove they belong? For me, this is personal. I’m an Israeli Jew. I’m also Caribbean, brown skinned, a Jew of color. When I was younger I thought that in Israel, none of that would matter. I could just be Jewish. But it’s a little more complicated. This episode is about Ethiopian Jews, Operation Moses, the challenges many Jews of color have experienced.
The Jewish state was built to be a homeland for the Jewish people. So why have some Jews had to fight so hard to belong? This is Borderlines. Dr. Efrat Yerday. Welcome to Borderlines with That Semite.
Efrat Yerday:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
What keeps you up at night about the Jewish people these days?
Efrat Yerday:
wow.
So actually I will start with the concrete. The question of where are we going to live when we’ll be back here. That’s what ki what keeps me at night. Where which school my daughter will go. I have a daughter, so I don’t think I don’t need to think about the army. not so as mothers for sons, for boys. Also my my ideology or the way I think I draw my ideas from my daily life and not from I can be attracted to certain philosophies or ideas but at the end of the day I think about where do I live tomorrow? Which school system? Where do I work? Who are my friends?
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
So you think about it on a personal level. Like where do you fit in? Where does your daughter fit in in this Jewish world? And and why is that why does that trouble you?
Efrat Yerday:
Mm-hmm.
We’ve been in the United States in the last three years and it’s interesting to be in this place because it’s very diverse and it’s very I we have a lot of curiosity. My daughter is in school that the majority of the students are black, which is a very exciting experience for us. she didn’t have it before here in Israel. when she did have it for one year it was a very low class school or kindergarten and we enjoyed the idea that there are black people which are middle class. and they’re like us. Like we can we can fit in. But in the deeper level we’re very different. Like I I like the idea that my daughter in second grade she experienced all this diversity which she sh she’s not going to have here. if we want to her to have a good education, so she will be in a school of that the majority is Ashkenazi probably.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
So I w if we have time towards the end, I’d like to speak more about the comparison between your experiences in Israel versus in the United States. but before we get into all of that and everything I want to discuss with you today, let’s take a step back. Please tell me a little bit about yourself, who you are, where you’re from and what you do, just in a few lines.
Efrat Yerday:
Yeah, so I’m Efrat Yerday. I was born and raised in Ashdod. I studied f in the elementary school in the ultra orthodox system. And in high school I was in the religious Zionist system, high school all for girls, religious high school. then I I did my BA in social sciences and my PhD in sociology and my research focused on Ethiopian Jews that were in Israel between the fifties and the seventies, which I realized it’s a part of history that disappeared from the narrative of the state, from the narrative of of Israel, the narrative of the Jewish people as a whole. And I was I I n I grew up with the story that there were Ethiopian Jews in Israel before the eighties, before the big operations of the State of Israel.
And this this gap between the story of my parents and the story that I’ve been told in the Israeli media, in the education system, pushed me to learn more about it and to research it and that was my research.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
So just to contextualize a little by a little bit this episode, this conversation that we’re having for me. So I I grew up in a household where my father was Israeli, born in Israel, from a Jewish family that’s been in this land for more than ten generations, and a Caribbean mother, mother who was born and raised in Guyana and then moved to the United States and grew up in the Caribbean American community. So I very much You know, my throughout my youth grew up in multiple worlds. a foot in the Israeli community, the Israeli American community, also in Israel, but also in the Caribbean community, in the living my life in the United States as a person of color, navigating what that means to be a Jew of color. And and often, particularly in the United States, where things are often sp divided between white and black, not really finding my place there. you know, too dark for for many in the Jewish community, too Jewish for many in the non-Jewish black community. And one of the things that I thought was going to be resolved when I, you know, relocated my entire life to Israel was that in Israel I could just be Jewish. I wouldn’t have to deal with all the complexities of of what it means to be a person of color and relationship to blackness and and you know, what it means to be a Jew of color, all of those other different things. But then very quickly I realized that that is not the case. you know, I also found that on an individual level my Jewish identity was getting interrogated by individuals, that there were also d certain systemic realities in the Project of Israel that I wasn’t aware of and or at least that I was just aware of on a surface level and not a, you know, a experiential level. And I think that in many ways, I started asking a question. Okay, what does it mean to be you know, the s the Jewish state, when you have Jews of all these other different c expressions and colors, and who really belongs in the Jewish state? Who do what does this Jewish society, what does this Jewish state exist for? Who does it exist for? And I think that a lot of Jews of color are asking this question. I think a lot of Jews in general in the West, in the United States, are asking this question. particularly when they come across stories of discrimination or of racism within Israeli society. And there’s one case study, which I think kind of looms large amongst all the other different ones, and that’s the story of Ethiopian Jews in Israel. for many people, the story of Ethiopian Jews in Israel is mythologized. It’s this kind of heroic story in which the heroes is are the state of Israel, the maybe Israeli institutions, the Mossad, and the Ethiopian Jews are essentially this group that was saved or rescued and brought to Israel, and this is an incredible testimony of the ways in which the state of Israel is fulfilling its purpose of being this homeland for all of the Jewish people, of rescuing Jews that are in danger. And the ways in which that story is complicated by history and complicated by the current reality then brings up questions about okay, what’s the true story? What’s the nuanced way we can really understand the relationship between all of the Jewish people and all of its diversity and the the reality of of the state of Israel today. I want to ask the question, right? A very blunt question, but I think it kind of gets to the core of what I’m thinking, what I’m wondering, and I know a lot of people that have similar experiences to me are wondering is Israel an anti black society?
Efrat Yerday:
So I will try okay, I will start from the end. All Western societies are anti bla anti-black societies. Israel is no different. The other level is that I want to decentralize the story of the US. We’re not in the US. We want to look at the US to learn about ourselves. We can learn some things from the US, but this is not the history of the state of Israel.
There are systems of oppression in every society, especially in Western societies, that Western societies, because the of the history of imperialism and colonialism have this anti black racism part of their DNA. So Israel is no different for me. That’s why it’s easier for me, because I don’t see Israel as a heroic story.
I see Israel as another state that have these systems of oppression, usually toward non white people, and actually also white ultra Orthodox people, this is part of Israel DNA, because of the history of Zionism. So Zionism is a secular movement who admired imperialism and colonialism as part of Europe.
This is not part of the story of Ethiopian Jews, and I think this is one of the sins of the main sins of Zionism that they connected between the state and Judaism. And this is the source of the problem for me. So when Ethiopian Jews or Moroccan Jews prayed about Jerusalem, thought about Jerusalem, wanted to be saved and to come back to their homeland to Jerusalem.
They didn’t think about Ben-Gurion. So when you want me to when you ask me is it a white supremacy place, I think it’s not different in any way th in this kind of black and white from France, from Germany, from Holland, from the US. But it’s not the worst white supremacist place that people want to to claim.
I don’t think that Israel is more white supremacist than the United States, because the United States is the inventor of white supremacy, right? Or maybe Germany or the United States or both of them.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Of course, this isn’t just theoretical for Efrat. She approaches this question as a sociologist, mapping Israel’s relationship with anti blackness against a global pattern. When I spoke to Israeli Ethiopian activist Ashager Araro on the street, she came at the same question from a more personal angle. Here’s her take.
Ashager Araro:
Tomorrow Benjamin Netanyahu can come and tell me Ethiopian Jews are not Jews and this would not affect my level of Judaism in any shape or form. I’m will always be grateful for my dad that he didn’t like let the breaking of the spirit deter me from being a proud Israeli, deter me from being like integrated to this society. It’s not the best place in the world, but I will fight for it tooth and nail to make it better.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
This is Akiva and Chava Hart. They are American Jews of color who made Aliyah to Israel, and were genuinely surprised by the level of racism they encountered here, especially in the ultra-orthodox community they live in. What struck me about their perspective is that rather than connecting what they found to American white supremacy, they focused on what made racism in Israel distinct. Take a listen.
Akiva & Chava Hart:
Israel is not racist. Israel has elements of racism inside of it that exist. When it comes with racism with in Israel versus racism in America, it’s it’s different. Meaning that in America we know culturally, like, okay, who’s being racist, like bluntly, like it’s obvious. In Israel, it’s different because a lot of Israelis they don’t understand the difference of really what racism is. You know what I mean? A lot of them come to find out doesn’t even know a little like about slavery, like in America, you know, the black Atlantic slave trade, those things. So those things were kind of shocking to us.
At the end of the day, this is home. I wouldn’t want to go back. I wouldn’t go wanna be anywhere else but here in Israel. Obviously this is our home, but we just we have work.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
So maybe it be helpful for us to before we get into like some of these terms more Zionism, anti black racism, let’s let’s define some things. So how do you understand the definitions of white supremacy and anti blackness or anti black racism?
Efrat Yerday:
So for me white supremacy is the preference of white people over black people. That the the system is preferring whiteness and also on in the individual level, but I feel that this term is not useful to other contexts that are out of the United States. I think it’s make it if we want to learn If we don’t want only to provoke, this is not the right term.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
So what what is the correct term then for let’s say let’s focus on Israel? What’s the correct term or the more accurate or helpful term for the Israeli content?
Efrat Yerday:
So first in the Israeli context is the preference of Ashkenazi heritage, the preference of secularism, and the preference of Jewish people. So these are the three things that will always be preferable over other parameters or or yeah, ingredients. but I think that in the case of Israel, for example, if you see if you talk about Arabs. Arabs are black, brown, like what are they? so this is a different context and you know also in the if if if we look at the US we can say that why we prefer to say that it’s anti black and not anti v indig anti indigenous for example. There is no rational reason for that. It’s just The way people prefer to talk about it, the way the black story in the United States gain power in history. so if we talk about for example the Palestinians in Israel, we should compare them to Native Americans, right? If w the state of Israel grabbed land or exiled Palestinians, so this is the case of indigenous, but we don’t do that. Why?
Because the story of the black people gain power in the world in terms of culture, in terms of history, and all the world is part of US imperialism looking to the story. But it doesn’t as a sociologist I can’t do this comparison just like that. Because when I look at the history of Ethiopian Jews or Palestinians in Israel and black people or specifically African American in the United States, some places is similar.
like the methods of oppression or structural racism or systemic racism it works and some p some pl in some cases, in some angles it doesn’t work. So I hope I answered your question.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
So I so if I’m understanding correctly, essentially there are some places in which comparing racism, whether it’s anti blackness in America or anti indigenous bias, structural or individual, is helpful in the Israeli model. And there’s just as many cases, if not more, or different ways, if not more, that the comparison actually doesn’t help. And that there’s enough unique things to the history of Israel that make it so much more different than America that really, the comparison isn’t so helpful.
Efrat Yerday:
Yeah, and it’s doesn’t solve the problem that the state of Israel have a lot of problems. The fact that it’s not exactly a white supremacist as the United States doesn’t mean that it’s better. Okay? I can say that the state of Israel in seventy five years managed to put so many black people in jail, that the United States it took them like two hundred years, right? The the amount of black and brown and Arab people in the Israeli prison system.
So in some cases I would say we’re we’re we’re getting worse and worse and we’re getting closer to say to the United States in such a short period of time. So I’m not going I’m not trying to say that to use the term complicated in order to say Israel is better than the United States or something like that. But if we want to understand the history of this place, we should look for other ways to compare, other frameworks to talk about this case.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
So so let’s focus on Israel then, because you know, every t w every time you mention let’s say Palestinians, comparing them to Native Americans, or let’s say, you know, black Americans to to black Israelis, there’s all these different types of differences keep popping up in my mind, right? In the ways that Palestinians are dissimilar to to Native Americans or black Israelis are dissimilar to black Americans in terms of the different histories, you know, different different contexts. You know, for example for focus specifically on on anti black racism.
The thing that’s the elephant of the room in America is slavery, right? The the mass enslavement of of millions of people, the human tr the human trafficking of millions and millions of people to to work on plantations in America. Obviously that history doesn’t exist here. And so let’s focus on what anti blackness means here, right? What is unique, or what maybe not what’s unique, how would you define anti black racism in the Israeli context? What is unique about this?
that is, you know, the the somebody like who lives in America wouldn’t understand.
Efrat Yerday:
Okay, so I will focus on Jewish society, okay? Before we go to other cases. Because anti anti b black racism toward Ethiopians is different than anti black racism toward black Palestinians and toward black Bedouins and toward refugees from Eritrea, right? So in the case of Jewish society, the state of Israel proves again and again from the even from the thirties, the Jewish Agency.
Prove again and and again that they don’t want Ethiopian Jews in this land. Okay? So we have the chair of the Jewish Agency in the thirties that says we we don’t want to give certificates for Ethiopian Jews. And then you say, Ethiopian Jews in the thirties in Israel? Yes. Okay, we don’t want them to be in this land. And then in forty eight and and in the fifties, during the fifties
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
This is before the establishment of
Efrat Yerday:
Before the establishment of the State of Israel. In the fifties, David Ben-Gurion said everyone who is interested in bringing here Ethiopian Jews must consult with me directly. Why? To push it back by himself. So we see it repeating.
through Ben-Gurion, through Golda Meir, through different, you know, the Jewish Agency is a very powerful organization, especially in these years, in the fifties and the sixties, because their their work is to look for Jews around the world. And when Ethiopian Jews say, hey, we’re here, say no, you’re not. So there is a whole history of rejecting Ethiopian Jews. And then that’s why I feel that I need to demystify the story of bringing Ethiopian Jews in Israel and and this is the this is what the Jewish people want to believe that Israel is a safe haven for Jews from around the world. But Ethiopian Jews were not accepted here. And then only in the 80s after Ethiopian Jews by themselves managed to enter Israel not from by the law of return, the law that allows all Jews to arrive to Israel and get citizenship with working permits, with tourist visas, with different ways to enter Israel against the Israeli law. Actually they didn’t break the law when they entered, they break the law when they stayed after the visa expired. They were the one to lead the struggle, to force the state of Israel to bring it up and just to Israel.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
So c can you make the connection between this bias or this these policies that you’re describing of preventing Bet Israel pred or preventing Ethiopian Jews from making Aliyah to anti black racism, right? Let me just explain like what some of the listeners or viewers might be thinking at this point. Okay, yeah, like they’re these policies may have existed, but perhaps it was because Ethiopian Jews were a different situation because their Jewish identity was isolated from other Jewish communities. That’s maybe some things that people would say. That I’m I’m giving you a stronger version of like of an argument that I don’t agree with. But so I know
Efrat Yerday:
How do you repeat I did I made this argument like on a daily basis. So in the 30s, one of the most notorious persons in the Zionist history was Arthur Ruppin, which we have college, street, institutions after his name. He was a German Jew. And he was the chair of the Jewish agency during the the 30s. And he was a eugenic. Eugenic is someone that believed in the differences between races and that we need to separate races in order to get better human beings. Which is sometimes I try to find different word than Nazi framework, but that’s I I’m even to say that it’s hard for me, but I’m trying to tell myself That was the period. We’re in the thirties. Right.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Right, just to just to contextualize this, right, the eugenics, this concept of of race and racism was like e accepted science and like standard practice. Like the Nazis, we we remember them for for their contribution, horrific contribution to this legacy, but if I’m not mistaken, the Nazis learned it from the Americans, from the United States, eugenics.
Efrat Yerday:
No, there is a debate about it. I didn’t want to get into it, but let’s follow I don’t care. It was a bad idea and yeah, and and Israel did not even invent invent it. Let’s that’s why when we go back to our earlier part of the conversation, Israel is not like the worst white supremacist case. so Arthur Ruppin his claim was
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Mm-hmm.
Yeah either way it was a bad idea.
Efrat Yerday:
that this group are Negroes and that’s why they have no blood relations to the Jewish people. He w he so most of the people who did who were thinking through eugenics were not biologists, were not physicians, they were social science scientists. Arthur Ruppin is, we can say, the first Jewish demographer in the the modern Jewish history.
So when he said w with this claim was coming back again and again until the seventies. So in seventy-three, there were already around a hundred and fifty Ethiopian Jews in Israel that came to Israel like in different ways from b different back doors and they were meeting with different politicians who were more supportive of their cause cause.
one of them was Rabbi Ovadia Yosef who was the chief rabbi of Tel of Tel Aviv, but it it was it was very clear that he’s going to be the chief rabbi the Safaradi chief rabbi of the state of Israel. and he they asked him, Ethiopian Jews, with their supporters such as Ovadia Hazzi, which was a Yemeni Jew. Well I don’t want to talk about it too much, but they asked him to make his argument about Ethiopian Jews public, which means that he believed through his research and through his halha halakha reading reading that Jewish law that Ethiopian Jews are Jews. and and they they asked him to make it public. They asked him to make it public because Ethiopian Jews that enter is in Israel not through the law of return were in were afraid from deportation. They got my father got deportation order from the Ministry of Interior in nineteen seventy two.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
So your father was one of those Ethiopian Jews that came here and
Efrat Yerday:
Yes, my father came here in july nineteen seventy as a tourist. He left behind my mum and my elder sister and he had to hide from police from the Minister of Interior and and he got this deportation order that he must leave the country within forty eight hours. Nineteen seventy two.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
What year was this? Nineteen seventy two. So nineteen seventy two. State of Israel’s existed at this point for quite a while and your father is evading police as a Jewish person in the Jewish state. How how did we get here? Right? What is what is the what is the the conversation that’s happening in Israel about Ethiopian Jewish identity?
Efrat Yerday:
So there is a debate within Jew Jewish institutions, and even within the Israeli rabbinic institutions there is a debate. but the the people in power are the one rejecting Ethiopian Jews as a whole. There are not we can’t find like blatant racism because people don’t talk like that unless you’re Arthur Ruppin in the thirties. but they find different ways to explain why Ethiopian Jews shouldn’t come here. for example, one of the most amazing things that the state of Israel is doing is building a settlement for Ethiopian Jews in Ethiopia. In the sixties in Ethiopia.
which is I wanted to I I called this chapter in my PhD, the Aliyah to Ethiopia.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
W what was the logic behind this?
Efrat Yerday:
The logic behind this was this
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Explain what it is that we’re talking about.
Efrat Yerday:
So Ethiopian Jews realize that the state of Israel is not interested in them coming back to Israel. So they try to find out a way to survive in Ethiopia because the situation was was dire. Like the the they they couldn’t mo many of them didn’t have the they were not allowed to have land of their own. So they wanted to the the idea was if Ethiopian Jews will have land.
Maybe they will forget about Jerusalem. We will make the situation better. This way we’ll continue the alliance we have with the state of Ethiopia. Israel was very connected to the state the to the Ethiopian state. The Ethiopian state wanted to have a security border and to have intelligence. So actually, the state of Israel wanted to use this Jewish settlement for intelligence and to have this.
cooperation with Ethiopia. So Israel will go back again. Geopolitics during this period of time, Israel was cooperating with the Ethiopian states, especially in intelligence, security, weapons and agriculture. They were Jewish enough to to work for them in Ethiopia. They were not Jewish enough to get citizenship and to come to Israel. So we see it in different places. For example, when my father came to Israel, he didn’t have he didn’t have no one here. But there was a group of people from Ki from the kibbutzim, actually not a group, specifically one person from Kibbutz Ma’abarot who needed working hands and you know the connection with Ovadia Hazzi and these random people that made this connection.
And actually Ethiopian Jews that came here, you know, they were t eighteen to twenty five years old. they came and they went straight to work in the kibbutzim. Their Hebrew was perfect. Like you read their letters after a year in Israel and they write amazing because they spent so much time in Ulp in Ulpanim of in the kibbutzim. So for example the the the I I found the whole line how they managed to stay here.
without citizenship. So they will come through mostly through Massawa, Eritrea, to Eilat by boat because that was the cheapest way. Unless you’re super rich and you’ll take the plane. Mostly from Gondar region, people that have more money will take the plane. But usually they come to the port of Eilat, will connect to family that was already here in Ashkelon. This family, this couple, they were not even family yet.
will send them to Kibbutz Ma’abarot, they will stay in Kibbutz Ma’abarot for five months, then they finish the five months, they go to another kibbutz [name unclear in audio — transcribed as “Ashomer Hatzair”]. They finish five months there. They will go to an… so I’m telling you their Hebrew was so good.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
That’s an incredible d network of people like that are working clearly it toward if we look you know, retrospect towards a certain goal. Right, ’cause these definitely these individuals, they start a movement. They start a movement of activism to try and change government policy with regards to Jews in Ethiopia and the relationship to the state of Israel.
Efrat Yerday:
They forced the state to accept them. They established in seventy two they established the Association for Ethiopian Jews. The chairperson, the first chairperson was Ovadia Hazzi, a Yemeni Jew who speak Ethiopian languages because he was he grew up in Eritrea. And the second chair was my father from nineteen seventy-six. So they they create this network, they collected all the people who were supportive of their cause, from the kibbutzim.
From for example, there was one ultra-orthodox guy who worked in Israeli factory in Eritrea and he he he he he learned about this story and he became one one of the fierce people to support them. He actually hosts people in his own house. So it’s it’s from nothing they create this movement. That’s why I’m so triggered when people talk about Operation Moses. There were twenty years of creating networks and movements and connecting all the dots and collecting all the people who are supportive. And
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
And the end product was the operation that people talk about. The problem is the people start the story right there as opposed to the twenty years of activism and struggle that led up to it.
Efrat Yerday:
Yeah, and also the operation was th the worst option they took. ‘Cause they could do it in seventy five. Before the civil war in Ethiopia. They couldn’t could do it in seventy eight when people started started to run away from the famine that started in Ethiopia. They needed to wait until the last moment where we lost at least two thousand people in this way and then they managed to do it. After American Jews American Jews, very small group, very loud and small group of American Jewish activists told them, We’re going to shame you in front of the world, that’s when the State of Israel said, Okay, we’re going to do it.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
So this what you’re describing in terms of a group of committed activists both within Israel and in Ethiopia and with their allies abroad in North America, there’s this isn’t the first time something like this happened where it led to a type of change. The history of the Bene Israel, the Jews from from E from India, particularly from the the Mumbai region, right, they also went through something similar in that they were they made Aliyah They arrived in Israel, shortly after the establishment of the state, and yet their Judaism was called into question and there was a popular protest movement that led to a change in policy. Do you see
Efrat Yerday:
To the l to to people hundred and fifty probably hundred and fifty people go went back to India. No, no, they just didn’t want to be here. You can you imagine Jews who dream for two thousand years to come back and they say no thank you? Like what in what situation you need to be in order to say no?
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Being deported, right?
So the history of of the Bene Israel, this Indian Jewish community, how does this fit into the history of anti black racism in Israel and and what does it tell us about how blackness is understood racially in Israeli society?
Efrat Yerday:
Mm-hmm.
So again I think Israel is no difference. There is nothing special here. This is the idea of when you read Jabotinsky and he walks in Istanbul and he says I need to cover my head not to get the dust of the Orient. Like these are the people who who who created this place. the interesting thing why I think that the state of Israel is just another state like any other Western state is that Even in the case of religious law, the Bene Israel were allowed to come to Israel. And they said that you can’t marry someone out of your community because you’re not Jews enough. If you want to marry someone out of your community, you need to go through the Tvila, the ritual mikveh. you need to do this process. But Ethiopian Jews were rejected as a whole.
so it Ethiopian Jews at the end of the day they they their their case was was even worse. Like it’s it’s parallel cases because it’s the same discussion about their practices and and their skin color. But Ethiopian Jews were the one that the state chose to reject them and not to tell them, Okay, you can come here But you will n you’ll need to go to a s through a certain ceremonies or religious ceremonies. Mm-hmm.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
That was a later stage in the this history. Yes.
Efrat Yerday:
That’s why when people say this is the Halacha, no it’s not. If this is the same case in terms of Halacha, why they treat it differently? So when someone tells me this is Halacha, I want to read the Halacha, which I read, the the shoot, the questions and answer of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, when he argue with the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the state of Israel, Isaac Herzog, and he tells him Why you decide in the case of Ethiopian Jews to read scientists that are not even Jewish? Like the arguments that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef make are so strong, he never used the word race. Only in through the religious law of the Jewish people. Why, in the case of Ethiopian Jews, you decide that Rabbi David ibn Zimra from the 15th century from Egypt was wrong?
If the Jewish law preferred
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
It’s just for the listener, right, and or the viewer, the all the way back in the fifteenth, sixteenth century, significant rabbinic authorities were already had already talked about this issue, had already made rulings about the status of Ethiopian Jews.
Efrat Yerday:
So when the in in the fifties Rabbi Isaac Herzog decide that maybe they were wrong. Maybe they they they write it very because it’s it’s religious people. It’s not like us that I can say Arthur is crazy eugenic. Like they have this this language of religious law which is it’s very blatant but it’s very respectful and Rabbi Yosef even say I didn’t want to make it public.
Because I wanted to respect Rabbi Isaac which is Gil is a Gyo no Lam, like someone someone older. but the argument said if you if you if you think Ethiopian Jews are not Jews, you need to ask about all the communities. You need to ask all of them.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
So on that subject, right, often what I’ve heard, and I’ve been having conversations with a lot of people about this subject in order to to make this piece. And something I’ve heard from not just you know people from outside the community, but even people from with within the community, is the comparison to certain challenges that other communities dealt with during Aliyah, during their immigration process to Israel. comparison to Mizrahi Jews in general, even you made the comparison between You know, some kind of Orientalism or, you know, anti-Mizrahi prejudice, and the case of Ethiopian Jews. obviously we’ve we hear something similar about from the Haredi from the ultra Orthodox community today that that they don’t feel like they’ve ever d been fully exp accepted or respected within Israeli society. why is why is this different or or maybe it’s not different? Maybe this is just, you know, the the same type of challenges that every community has dealt with in their acclamation, absorption into Israel.
Just with an added element of of of blackness or race on top.
Efrat Yerday:
Mm. So how do I start? So I don’t think racism toward brown, black, it’s the same. It’s the same root. Like some difference some people differentiate between it’s just an a matter of terminology. Some people s talk no, it’s just anti culture or ethnicity. There is no difference between racism toward Moroccan and racism toward African American, it’s the same route. You hate someone, you don’t want him to be around you because he’s black, because he’s brown. it’s the same.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
If this show’s got you thinking, good. That’s the whole point. And it’s kind of what we do around here at Unpacked. Borderlines with That Semite is just one of the things we’re creating at Unpacked to help you dig into Israel, Jewish history, and identity through our YouTube videos, podcasts, socials, and articles the same way I try to. With real curiosity, real nuance, and no oversimplifying. So here’s where to go next. If you want to keep up with everything we make, subscribe to our newsletter, unpack.media slash join.
and you’ll get a weekly roundup of all the stuff we’re creating. That’s unpack.media slash join. See you there.
Efrat Yerday:
Moroccan Jews there were quotas for I’m using Moroccan because this is the the the the majority of Mizrachi, but when I say Moroccan I want to say Mizrachi in general. Yeah and I also familiar more with this specific group. Moroccans were having quotas so in the case when you compare the way they talk about Polish or Hungarian or East European Jews to Moroccans, there were more criteria on who is allowed to enter Israel in the case of brown Jews I will call them than in the case of of white Jews. The difference with Ethiopians is that they didn’t have in the even the quotas. Now we have the quotas. Like how many Ethiopians can come from Ethiopia today?
But back then you were not allowed to enter, which means that you don’t have the mother of rights, which is citizenship. If you don’t have citizenship to today, you’re nothing. So from the beginning, like all the the writing even in Israeli academia, it’s about the integration crisis, the ghettos, the police brutality. I want to go back a little bit earlier.
Ethiopian Jews were not eligible for the law of return, which which means they were not eligible for Israeli citizenship, which is different from any other group in in the Jewish society. You said something about the Bene Israel. So the Bene Israel, Rabbi David ibn Zimra gets the same question about Bene Israel in the sixteenth century from Baghdadi Jews, from we call them white Jews that moved to India.
And he said, There are Jews, you can you can pray with them. And they don’t accept them. They don’t want to. And then they send the same question fifty years later to his student, Maharikash. And they say he said, I o my my my teacher already replied, There are Jews, you can pray with them, you can marry with them, everything is good. They don’t.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
I think that’s the perfect segue into what I wanted what I want to ask now. And that’s that essentially one of the things that makes the Israeli reality and the Israeli history different from some Western examples and certainly from the United States is that Israeli society is comprised of two major populations or two large populations, Ashkenazi Jews and Mizrahi slash North African Jews. And both of those societies Have unique yet and different histories with anti-black racism. Both of those societies in different ways were both of those societies were slave trading populations that went into Africa and trafficked in human beings on the basis of their skin color. For the the case of of the West, of the transatlantic slave trade, in the case of the Arab and Islamic world, the Trans Saharan slave trade. And so anti black racism bias existed.
in both of these societies, and you have both of the the Jewish communities that lived in that larger society, in that larger social context, returning, immigrating, making aliyah to Israel, and bringing with them some of these ideas, or many of these ideas. And so there’s there’s two kind of lenses that I can look at this history and this reality today. One is perhaps a postcolonial lens, though we have a population That is literally coming out of societies that were engaged in different forms of anti-black racism, imperialism, perhaps even colonialism if we want to use that term in in the Arab Islamic context as well. And that we also have the Jewish history lens, right? Of a people that went into exile in different places and came out of exile to return to their homeland. And maybe this is where, in my p from my perspective, the two lenses, the post-colonial and the Jewish history lens, meet because this is a society which is in the process of trying to free itself, liberate itself from the things that we learned in exile that enslaved us, and at the same time trying to figure out what it means to be a Jewish state, a Jewish society in our homeland, free from, you know, imperial forces, whether those imperial entities were European or Eurocentric or Arab and Arab centric.
Efrat Yerday:
Mm. So I I I think when you’re racist and you have power, it’s different than when you don’t have power and you’re racist, right?
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
So you’re talking about the difference between like institutional racism versus individual racism. Or
Efrat Yerday:
Or Ashkenazi racism to versus Mizrahi racism. So Mizra Mizrahi, for example, you can call me the Hebrew N-word in the street. Okay? But he he’s not the one who interviewing me for a job. He’s not the one who decides where my daughter will go to school. He’s not the one to decide whether my father is a citizen, is eligible for citizenship or not.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Break that down.
Efrat Yerday:
So there is a difference. I don’t believe in good and bad. There there is no such a thing. Like these are the good mi Ashkenazi are bad, Mizrahi are good and like all this crap, sorry. I I think I want to add to your like these differences you you were talking about. I think one of the main what complicate things here, not in terms when you see evil
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Yeah.
Efrat Yerday:
You identify it. I don’t think like there is a question for us. But there is a difference between religious law and secular law. For me, secular law is part of colonialism. The secular law, like what it means democracy. Democracy could not exist without colonialism, right? Capitalism could not exist without robbing like Africa and Asia, right?
So all these enlightened ideas are born from corruption and anti black racism and rape and slave trade. Okay? So religious law for me, I want to believe that religious law is I I’m going to s to say something here that is a little bit weird. Religious law can be better from this secular law because Rabbi Ovadia Yosef Can argue with Rabbi Isaac Herzog and tell him we’re l religious. We follow the Rambam, we follow Rashi, we follow Rabbi David ibn Zimra, we follow Maharikash. Who are these scientists you’re talking about? These anthropologists who travel in Ethiopia? Like we have very organized set of books as Jewish people, and that’s what we follow. Racism did not exist during this period of time. When we hear even the story, I love the story of Miriam that became white because she talked about the black wife of Moses. Do you have something more radical and beautiful than something like that in your body?
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Anti racism within the Torah.
Efrat Yerday:
when I think about the secular law when we talking about like the state democracy like all these ideas these ideas were born on the expense of black bodies it it couldn’t like after Britain finished robbing ended robbing Africa they invented democracy right that’s that’s that’s what happened in history. So when we I I feel that I can find more answers in like sometimes I will say sometimes in the religious law and not to follow these categories that we like also in as as academic, right? That we like to okay, this is good, this is bad, this is better, this is worse. Like it doesn’t work.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Obviously we don’t have the time to litigate all the history and development of democracy and capitalism and colonialism. That we’ll save that maybe for the next time. but i I think you’re getting at something which is like a core tension that a lot of people have when they look at this issue or similar issues in Israel’s history and in the West history and maybe the Arab and Islamic world’s history. And that’s the relationship between an idea and the actual history, right?
And you know, w whether we’re talking about democracy or we’re talking about Zionism, you know, is an idea limited by the founding institutions or founding generation of those systems, or is it beyond that? So a lot of people when I’ve had this conversation about the history of of racism, whether it’s you know tensions between Ashkenazi Jews and other Ashkenazi Jews, like there was a tension between, you know, Central European Jews and Eastern European Jews, or between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi, between black Jews and non-black Jews.
There’s this this idea that well, we don’t we don’t reject Zionism or we don’t reject Israel and the idea of a Jewish nation state because some of those founding institutions were racist or the founding generation was racist. These were ideas that however they dis they you know, explain it or contextualize it, that were grandfathered in through generations of exile or generations of being colonized and and persecuted themselves, and we Had our own ideas of what it means to be to have a relationship and aspiration for Zion, or to be, you know, a free member of a society, i.e., a democratic society. And so when for example, when Martin Luther King, to go quickly into like an American parallel, was looking at the US Constitution and acknowledging the racism and the anti-blackness that existed in the founding of America, but also pointing to the intern to the eternal.
liberatory principles within those same documents to say this is who we really are or this is another version of who we can be. And so likewise, I’ve seen a lot of people tell me, or I’ve had I’ve heard a lot of people tell me in the process of this project, saying, I’m a Zionist. I’m not a Zionist because of Herzl or because of Golda Meir or Ben-Gurion. I’m a Zionist because of Abba Mahari. I’m a Zionist because of Yona Bogale. I’m a Zionist because of all these other different people that had an aspiration to live in Zion as free and liberated Jews. Is that not a version of of Zionism, a version of of Israeli identity that has kind of also always existed and and and can be where we aspire to to arrive nowadays?
Efrat Yerday:
So I think the more I read yeah, so the more I read the the writing of the founding fathers of the state of Israel and I don’t I don’t feel comfortable with this term. I think that if some people will read Golda Meir, David Ben-Gurion, Jabotinsky, Ruppin, all these people that have we have their names here on this on the streets around us, they will feel less comfortable. I want I think that there is something in Zionism by definition that maybe we won’t have time to explain it, but there is something about self hating in this ideology.
Because these people and yeah, I’m a I’m a sociologist, but I really love history. I’m sociologist to use use history. these people wanted to get rid of religion. They they they they didn’t respect their previous generations. They many of them thought that we suffer from anti-Semitism because we live in the ghetto and we practice Judaism. And these ideas Triggered triggers me.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Rich, it triggers me as I’m hearing you say this.
Efrat Yerday:
And we know that in the fifties what happens with Yemeni Jews, it’s I get chills when I think about it. the way they they thought that Yemeni Jews should get rid of their practices from their pious, from their religion in order to become good Israelis.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
But did they justify these things because they were Zionists, i.e., they believed in the right for the Jewish people to sel to have self-determination in their ancestral homeland? Or did they justify this because they lived in societies that were racist and and Eurocentric and anti black, etc., and anti religion? I look, it depends on how we answer the question. Whether or not an idea or ideology or identity is defined by
Efrat Yerday:
Does it matter?
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
the individuals that originally espoused it or by the central principle that people continue to identify with. For example, right, I think a lot of people would feel, including myself, very deeply uncomfortable reading a lot of the the writings of the founding fathers of the United States. Like I mentioned Martin Luther King. And they should, right? Because those founding fathers would have enslaved me, right? Right. Both of us. And yet the and yet, at the end of the day, I can’t but also be incredibly inspired by, you know, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass, just as a few examples, that looked into those same documents and said, this and this, I’m throwing this in the garbage because this is this is antihuman, right? And yet these ideas, that I can get around, that I can create a collective identity, an aspirational American patriotism that actually appeals to the best of humanity as opposed to the worst. And so when I look at the founding fathers and mothers of Zionism and of Israel, I can look at some of those writings and be horrified because I can say, wow, they wouldn’t they wouldn’t have seen me as being a you know a full member of this project. But at the same time I can look at other parts of the writing and other parts of the actual project in history and be inspired in the sense that it appealed to the best aspects of our humanity for and aspirations that Jewish people, like all other people on the planet, should be able to have liberation, freedom, and self determination just like any other people.
Efrat Yerday:
I agree on the last one. but I think it’s very rare to have people who talk about the way you talk about the founding founding fathers on the U of the US to talk about David Ben-Gurion like this. maybe we need more time. But here it’s very it’s much more very much defensive.
if you say something about these people you you you you are a traitor. Right? I’m not talking about Benjamin Netanyahu, I’m talking about Herzl. I’m talking about David Ben-Gurion. People cannot hear it. So maybe in in time people will feel more comfortable to to talk about this. You can read this only in academia. It’s not something that someone like you and me can right just talk about. So
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Yeah, and I think two there’s two reasons for that. Number one, as you mentioned, we’re a young society, right? We’re we haven’t existed for that long and I think we’re we’re growing to that slowly but surely. And at the same maybe not surely but slowly we’re growing into that. And at the same time there’s another element, there’s an elephant in the room, and that’s that most people that are having conversations about the founding of Israel, about the founding fathers and mothers of Israel, about the present reality in Israel, are not also saying what you said in the beginning of this conversation.
which is that Israel suffers from a lot of the same pathologies or problems that all societies suffer from, in particular societies that are v deeply diverse, ethnically and racially and religiously diverse. Many people are not saying that, right? They’re uniquely looking at Israel as because it has all these different flaws and problems, then it doesn’t deserve to exist. And I think that a lot of the defensiveness comes from that experience.
Efrat Yerday:
I think that’s the difference between vikuach l’shem shamayim or just vikuach for the sake of vikuach.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
How do how do we translate that into English? An argument for the sake of heaven or an argument for the sake of argument. Right. This reminded me of something described, being a fierce critic of racism inside Israel while remaining fully committed to the Zionist project, and seeing herself as defining what Zionism means no less than the founders of the state. This is how she put it. In its core, that Zionism, like the Zionist dream, has no color.
Efrat Yerday:
Yeah, yeah.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Meaning in in the core, Zionism is the belief that Jewish people as a whole deserve to have a self-determination in their historical homeland. Point. It doesn’t matter if you are Moroccan Jew, Yemenite Jew, Persian Jew, Polish Jew, it doesn’t matter. It’s a place where Jewish af Jewish people, after years of like upon years of discrimination in every different country they live, are deserving of coming back and returning to their home. That is that. And when you talk about this definite of Israel estate, the same idea of like a home For the Jewish people. And is there phenomena in those categories that create racism, that create discrimination for different communities? 100%. But the idea is still the same idea. Like the reason that I’m a proud Israeli is not because Israel is a perfect country.
Israel can be a perfect country or close to perfection with the work of young people who will speak up, who wanna create a change. There’s a lot of grey. You can criticize the government, you can criticize the people, you can criticize everything, but at the same time we will like there is a war you put up your uniform and you will be the first one to jump. Why? ‘Cause it lo you love this place. The duality that we ex like we have here.
It’s very unique. So I wanna do something a little bit different just for the the remaining time that we have. Okay. I wanna ask some rapid fire questions. And so every question I ask, I just want you to say the first thing that comes to mind. One word to describe Israeli society right now.
Efrat Yerday:
Mess.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
one Jewish personality, historical or present that inspires you.
Efrat Yerday:
My parents.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
What moment made you proudest to be Israeli?
Efrat Yerday:
No comment. Maybe we will come back we we need to come back to this question.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
I’ll come back we’ll come back to that. what is the biggest lie that gets told about Ethiopian Jews?
Efrat Yerday:
That they were saved.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
One thing you wish every Israeli Jewish child learned in school.
Efrat Yerday:
The history of Ethiopian Jews before the eighties?
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
If
Efrat Yerday:
Given the history of Ethiopian Jews beyond anti Semitism?
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
If a black American Jew or a Caribbean Jew makes Aliyah tomorrow, what is the most beautiful thing that is waiting for them?
Efrat Yerday:
The beach.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
And what is the most what is the if a black American or Caribbean Jew makes Aliah tomorrow, what is the most challenging thing that waits for them?
Efrat Yerday:
The line to the bus?
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
What’s change that you’ve seen in your lifetime that gives you hope in Israel?
Efrat Yerday:
Ethiopian artist. Mm-hmm.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
What’s one moment that made you proud to be Jewish?
Efrat Yerday:
Most of the time I read religious Jewish text, I’m proud.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Israel in one hundred years. What do you want it to look like?
Efrat Yerday:
People speak Arabic as fluently as Hebrew, not for the use of the IDF.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Is Israel the home for black Jewish people?
Efrat Yerday:
There are black Jewish people in Israel. So
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
So just the reality is that it is. We’re here.
Efrat Yerday:
We’re here also like does Israel have the right to exist? It exists, right? We’re here. It’s a struggle, it’s challenging, there are many problems, but we’re here. Does the United States is the ha the home for African Americans? They live there. It’s challenging. It’s it’s It can be brutal, but this is their home and people will always look for the way to live in dignity. So that’s the struggle.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Do you have hope for the future?
Efrat Yerday:
Of course I have many plans, many hopes, many ideas about how to to live in dignity, to have a better future, especially as a mother, you know, when you’re you’re you’re single, you like you’re going through things for yourself, but then when you you’re you’re you’re a parent, it’s have more urg like it’s more urgent. So
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Dr. Efrat Yerday, thank you so much for being with me today.
Efrat Yerday:
Thank you for having me, it was a pleasure.
Yirmiyahu Danzig:
Like I said before, this episode is personal for me given my own identity and background. I’m Israeli, I’m Jewish, I’m Middle Eastern, I’m Caribbean, I’m a person of color. And for a long time I think I carried a hope that Israel would make those categories, maybe not irrelevant, they are an important part of me, but certainly less loaded, less definitive. In America, I was often too dark for parts of the Jewish community, and too Jewish for parts of the black and brown communities.
So there was something powerful about the idea that in Israel I could just be Jewish. Then I came back here, and I started fielding questions I didn’t expect in a Jewish state. Questions about my Judaism. Questions about where I was really from. Questions that made me realize Israel carries a lot of the same sicknesses other societies carry. Of course, that doesn’t make Israel uniquely evil. It means Israel has a lot in common with the Western and Arab countries many of us came here from. And it was built by people who brought their hopes, their wounds.
Their courage, their fears, and yes, their prejudices with them, all the broken ideas they absorbed in the places they lived before. Dr. Efrat Yerday was very clear about this. Israel did not invent racial prejudice, nor is it the worst version of it. But anti-black racism exists in parts of society here, and it determined the way Ethiopian Jews were treated from the beginning. The history is painful, and it’s painful too that few Israelis and Jews seem to be aware of it.
Because the story most Jews know about Ethiopian Jews is the rescue story, Operation Moses, the Mossad, the heroic image of Israel reaching across the world to bring endangered Jews home. There is a lot that is true about that story. It’s also incomplete. Efrat is asking us to look at the part of the story that came before the rescue, the years when Ethiopian Jews were trying to get to Israel and Israeli institutions that did not want them here.
The activists who came anyway, the people who entered on tourist visas, work permits, whatever they could find. The Ethiopian Jews who had to organize, lobby, push, pressure, and fight for the Jewish state to recognize them as Jews. Her father was one of them. A Jewish man in the Jewish state hiding from deportation. That’s difficult to come to terms with, but we must confront it. One of the most striking parts about the conversation was Efrat’s point about religious law and secular institutions.
A lot of people assume the religious establishment was the obstacle and the secular Zionist establishment was the open, modern, inclusive force. In this story, the reality is more complicated. Some of the strongest support for Ethiopian Jews came from Sephardic rabbis, especially Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who from the beginning argued from Jewish law that Ethiopian Jews are Jews. At the same time, many secular institutions, which were supposed to be building the modern Jewish state, resisted them. And then we got to Zionism itself.
If Efrat sees Zionism as a movement born in a European colonial world, and therefore carrying some of that world’s racism with it, I understand that critique. When you read some of the founding figures of Zionism, it can be painful. Some of them wrote about Mizrahi Jews, religious Jews, black Jews, Arabs, and others in ways that are ugly, arrogant, and racist. We should be honest about that. But I also pushed back.
Because Zionism cannot only be defined by Herzl, Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, or the institutions that failed Ethiopian Jews. Zionism also belongs to Abba Mahari and the Ethiopian Jews who dreamed of Jerusalem. It belongs to the Beta Israel elders who carried Zion in their prayers, their imagination, their longing. It belongs to the Jews who walked, suffered, organized, and fought to come home, even when the state that was supposed to welcome them did not welcome them. That too is Zionism.
And for me, that may be one of the most important takeaways from this episode. We cannot reduce the Jewish story to the people who hold power at any given moment. Israel belongs to the Jews who founded it and to the Jews they failed to recognize. It belongs to the Jews who arrived first, and to the Jews who had to fight their way in. It belongs to Ashkenazi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Indian Jews, African American Jews, Caribbean Jews, Latin American Jews, Ibo Jews, Lemba Jews, and every Jew who sees their future tied to the future of this people. At the end of the day, as Chava and Akiva said, this is home. Not because Israel is perfect, not because the pain disappears. Not because racism can be explained away as absorption difficulties or cultural misunderstandings or a few bad moments from the past. And we don’t abandon our home because of its flaws. No matter how serious those flaws are, we stay and fight tooth and nail to make it better.
That’s what I heard from Efrat even through her critique. That’s what I heard from Ashager Araro. That’s what I heard from the Lev family, American Jews of color who made Aliyah and are now facing anti black racism from within the Haredi community. There is something very Jewish about that, and actually this is what real belonging means. Saying this is mine too, and I’m gonna help fix it. Let’s be clear. Black Jews in Israel should not have to prove their Judaism, dilute their identity, or wait for the rest of Israel to catch up. But I believe Israel can become better than this.
It has already become better in certain ways. Not enough, not everywhere, not for everyone. But our society, like any other, is a work in progress. Israel is the home of the Jewish people, and the Jewish people came home in many colors. Ultimately, that is what makes the Jewish people so beautiful and so strong. We are not the same, and still we are one.
Borderlines with That Semite is a production of Unpacked, part of OpenDor Media. The show is sponsored by the Marcus Foundation. I’m your host, Yirmiyahu Danzig. Borderlines is produced by Paula Kweskin, and our team includes Noam Noam Azouz, Simon Apfel, Jenny Falcon, Andrew Miller, Ari Schlacht, and Rivki Stern. Thanks for joining us.