Connecticut College Digital Commons @ Connecticut College Anthropology Department Honors Papers Anthropology Department 5-2009 Diasporic Identities in Israel: A Study of Ethiopian Jews Erich S. Roberts Connecticut College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/anthrohp Part of the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Roberts, Erich S., "Diasporic Identities in Israel: A Study of Ethiopian Jews" (2009). Anthropology Department Honors Papers. 2. http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/anthrohp/2 This Honors Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Anthropology Department at Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Anthropology Department Honors Papers by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author. Diasporic Identities in Israel: A Study of Ethiopian Jews by Erich S. Roberts Class of 2009 An honors thesis submitted to the Department of Anthropology at Connecticut College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts Acknowledgements I would like to give thanks to all who have provided assistance in this past year. First and foremost, I would like to thank the Hiyot organization, especially its director, Nathalie, who gave me the opportunity to work with this community. And special thanks to the three employees of the youth club in Kiryat Motzkin for being patient with me; and to all of the teenagers, who flew in and out of the club, for taking me in as one of their own. I would also like to express my gratitude to and appreciation for the tireless efforts of Catherine Benoit and Jeffrey Cole. They not only inspired me but also helped me put my thoughts and experiences into words. And a special thanks to my parents and brothers who have always encouraged and supported me in all of my endeavors. 2 Abstract Contemporary concerns of anthropology stress the role of power relations in framing the study of a marginalized people within society. In this study, the present predicament of the Ethiopian community in Israel is examined through the highly political processes of nationalism, ethnic conflict, and identity construction. Each of these factors hold implications for the ways by which a dominant European nationalist ideology in Israel has come to impose forces of authority upon subjugated, non-European ethnic groups. The Ethiopians are one such group. The point of divergence between the community of Ethiopian Jews and Israel’s national identity has caused the Ethiopian youth to rebel, resist, and construct their identity both globally and spatially. This phenomenon creates a significant dependence on the behavior of prominent communities in the African diaspora. The structure of this paper aims to illustrate the transnational identity of these youths as a response to Israel’s decision to ideologically orient itself toward Western, capitalist values. Zionism’s original foundation took root in precepts prevalent in the European Enlightenment, such as socialism and Marxism. My work, however, reveals a distinct Ethiopian perspective that today views the nation-state as a source of much conflict. This paper emphasizes conceptions of the field in anthropology, as well as the practices of fieldwork. It also, however, engages fieldwork itself to explore the specific role of space in the lives and imaginings of Ethiopian youth. 3 Contents Introduction……………………………………………..…….………………….…..5 Part I: Reflections on Anthropology and Fieldwork Why Israel?.....................................................................................9 Ethiopian Community..................................................................12 Going to the Field: Peruvian Amazon..........................................13 Contemporary Approaches and Issues in Anthropology..............18 Urban Fieldwork and Degrees of “Otherness”.............................21 Methodology.................................................................................24 Part II: Nationalism, Ethnicity and Nation Identity Introduction..................................................................................32 Roots of Nationalist Theory.........................................................33 Theories of Nationhood................................................................39 Ethnicity and Nationalism............................................................43 Reflections on Changing Patterns of Immigration.......................45 Eurocentrism: A Brief Case Study of non-Western Jews............54 Nationalism in Practice................................................................56 Part III: Constructing a Spatial Identity Introduction..................................................................................60 Territorialization Part I: Dreams and Reality, Reconciling the Past.....................................................................64 Territorialization Part II: The Task of the Second Generation.....69 Contested Spaces.........................................................................73 The Formation of a Translocal Space...........................................82 Landscape as Place.......................................................................92 Concluding Remarks.................................................................................................96 References................................................................................................................104 4 Introduction Ethiopian Jews largely arrived to Israel in two large-scale migration movements. The first, Operation Moses, began at the end of 1984 and ended a few weeks into 1985 and the second, Operation Solomon, occurred in 1991 (Ben-Eliezer 2004, 246). According to estimates, roughly 100,000 Ethiopians currently reside in Israel, with very few Jews of Ethiopian descent still living in Ethiopia. The community has experienced a collective transportation from East Africa to the Middle East. Joseph Halevy, a western Jew and noted Semitist, was the first to study the rare occurrence of practicing Jews in East Africa in 1867. His student and successor Jacques Faitlovitch set the stage for their entry into the realm of World Jewry by setting up schools and even sponsoring a number of young men to travel to Europe and Israel to study among Jewish communities. These men eventually served as leaders in their communities throughout rural Ethiopia (Wagaw 1993, 15-16). Despite the enactment of the Law of Return in 1950, which was said to allow all Jews in the diaspora to return to Israel with full citizenship, it was not until 1973 that Chief Sephardic Rabbi Ovadia Yosef finally declared that they were in fact Jews and could migrate to Israel under the Law of Return (Wagaw 1993). The decision was made after much deliberation on the legitimacy and rationale of their practices and Judaic origins.1 The focus of this study is not on the historical origins of this community, but rather on the contemporary predicament of this community and how the Israeli 1 The popular belief in Israel is that the Ethiopian Jews are descendants of the tribe of Dan, one of the ten lost tribes of Israel. These tribes disappeared after the Kingdom of Israel was attacked and destroyed by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. and many of its inhabitants were enslaved and exiled (Kaplan 1992, Kessler and Parfitt 1985). There is no way to prove the validity of this theory or any other prevalent theory. 5 nation-state gradually developed a system of stratification among Jews from non- European countries. A popular approach to the study of Ethiopian Jews, as seen by the numerous books and articles written in last several decades, is to begin with life in Ethiopia, then move on to the exodus in the early 80s to refugee camps in Sudan (where Operation Moses occurred), next is a focus on the much larger Operation Solomon taking Ethiopian Jews from Addis Adaba to Israel, and lastly a short discussion of the Ethiopian community in transition. Many works have placed the emphasis on the controversial origins of the community, life as Jews in Christian/Muslim Ethiopia, the grueling journey to Sudan, or the widely televised airlifts. Some authors have contextualized the situation as a flight or exodus towards freedom in a modern nation, yet for the purposes of this study I am more concerned with the social position occupied by Ethiopian Jews as recent immigrants to Israel. The historical component examines a link between theories of nationalism and ethnicity with the creation of Israel and how the Ethiopian Jews, like many other non- Ashkenazi2 immigrant groups that migrated to Israel before them, are oppressed while also being essential to the development of the nation-state. Along with the work done by Uri Ben-Eliezer (2004) in Ethiopian communities regarding racism and identity politics, the fieldwork I conducted for 10 weeks in northern Israel among Ethiopian teenagers comprises the vast majority on the material on the community in this study. Last summer, I worked for a non-profit organization called Hiyot3 which strives to achieve the social, education, and economic integration of the Ethiopian community, while also empowering their status 2 For the purposes of this study, Ashkenazi refers to the majority group in Israel with roots in Germany and Eastern Europe. 3 Hiyot means “life” in Amharic,