The Blogs: Zionism for the rich? The hypocrisy of ignoring Ethiopia’s Jews

Earlier this week, Israel’s Immigration and Absorption Ministry proudly announced a three-year plan to recruit wealthy and highly skilled Jews to make aliyah.

Grants of up to NIS 1 million (some $295,000), sweeping tax breaks, and fast-tracked licensing will target doctors, AI engineers, aeronautics specialists, and business leaders. Absorption Minister Ofir Sofer is quoted as saying, “Aliyah is not only the fulfillment of the Zionist dream, but also a key to Israel’s economic, social, and moral future.”

Indeed.

But there is another Zionist dream that has not been fulfilled — one promised more than 30 years ago by then-Sephardic chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, zt”l, who ruled that Ethiopian Jews must be brought home without delay. His halakhic ruling was unconditional: they are Jews, and Israel is obligated to bring them to Zion. Minister Sofer is well aware of this ruling — I myself have handed it to him — but has chosen to ignore it.

Today, some 14,000 Jews remain in Ethiopia — most in Gondar and Addis Ababa — under crushing poverty, malnutrition, and the constant threat of civil war. Many are religiously observant, praying daily, keeping kosher, and sending their children to Jewish schools despite their conditions. Families are split: parents and siblings in Ethiopia, children and spouses in Israel — including soldiers serving in the IDF.

More than 1,200 have already been approved by the Interior Ministry under Government Decisions 716 (2015) and 429 (2018). Yet the minister of Immigration and Absorption has not even requested the modest funds needed to bring them home. Worse, he has refused repeated requests to even inspect the rest of the community, despite the overwhelming likelihood that at least 7,000 would be confirmed to have the maternal-line Jewish ancestry required under current policy.

Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of shekels are being sought for Jews from London, Paris, and New York – people living in safety and prosperity. This is mercantile Zionism – Zionism for the rich. It betrays the founding promise of the State of Israel, enshrined in its Declaration of Independence: “The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and the Ingathering of the Exiles.”

And so, 77 years after the establishment of the Jewish state, the burden — and privilege — of sustaining Diaspora Jewry has fallen on American Jewry. An American organization, Struggle to Save Ethiopian Jewry (SSEJ), has for decades fed, provided medicine, and educated these internally displaced Jews while Israel delays. SSEJ runs medical clinics, distributes food, provides Jewish education, and safeguards a community that the State has neglected.

The moral inversion is stark. How can Minister Sofer look an Ethiopian mother in the eye — a mother whose son defends Israel in uniform — and explain that Israel’s priority is a Silicon Valley start-up founder?

Religious Zionism has long claimed fidelity to the mitzvah of kibbutz galuyot, the ingathering of exiles. Rav Mordechai Eliyahu’s ruling was not about economics; it was about halakha, responsibility, and Jewish unity. Ignoring that directive while chasing GDP-boosting immigrants is a betrayal of the Torah obligation that this minister’s own movement claims to champion. How can Interior Minister Arbel refuse to even inspect the credentials of 7,000 Ethiopian Jews who have been found to be maternally linked? Are the express rulings of Maran Harav Ovadiah Yosef, with whom I met numerous times, no longer respected by Shas?

Israel can and should recruit brilliant minds and investors. But if it does so while turning its back on 14,000 Jews living in deprivation and danger — many of whom would qualify for aliyah today — it forfeits the moral authority to speak of kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh — all Jews are responsible for one another.

When the history of this period is written, the historians will ask: Did Israel bring home the last of Beta Israel when it could? Or did it leave them behind while rolling out the red carpet for the rich?