Conference taveng::bagels

1167.0. "What your money can do for others..." by DELNI::SMCCONNELL (Next year, in JERUSALEM!) Fri Feb 07 1992 21:37

copied without permission from the Boston Globe 
Friday February 7, 1992 
METRO/REGION, pp. 21 & 22

A TOUR OF THANKS - New Israelis credit Americans for freedom of thousands
by James L. Franklin, Globe Staff

In Russia, Arkan Kariv endured beatings from street thugs and expulsion 
from college after he applied to emigrate to Israel.

Fentahun Mekonnen watched helplessly as the Ethiopian government closed the 
schools and clinics he helped run for the Jewish relief group ORT and later 
helped gather Ethiopian Jews in Addis Ababa as rebel troops pressed their 
attack on the communist [sic] government.

Both men came to Boston this week to thank American Jews whose generosity 
gave them a new future in Israel and may have saved their lives.

"On behalf of nearly 15,000 Ethiopian Jews, I want to say thank you for 
letting us live in Israel, for giving us a chance to live in freedom," 
Mekonnen told a community gathering at Temple Reyim in Newton Wednesday 
night.

Last year, Boston's Jewish community raised $18million for the rescue 
operations that allowed 350,000 Jews to immigrate to Israel.  "This 
synagogue alone raised nearly $200,000 and 40 percent of our members 
participated," said Stuart Rossman, a member of Temple Reyim and a director 
of the charities that coordinated that giving, Combined Jewish 
Philanthropies in Boston and the United Jewish Appeal nationwide.

"The highest mitzvah" - or good deed - "in the Torah is the redemption of 
captives...and the American Jewish community raised over $650million last 
year to help Israel with the absorption of immigrants," Rossman said.

With immigration - particularly from the former Soviet Union - expected to 
continue at about 200,000 annually, Israel would receive 1million new 
immigrants from 1991 to 1995, "the equivalent of the United States 
absorbing France," he said.

In one 36-hour period last Memorial Day Weekend, Operation Solomon alone 
brought 14,100 Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

For months before Fentahun Mekonnen had organized a school for 4,500 
children of Ethiopian Jews who had concentrated in the Ethiopian capital as 
rebels pressed their campaign.

Mekonnen learned English working for ORT, the Organization for 
Rehabilitation and Training, and the Joint Distribution Committee, two 
Jewish agencies that specialize in delivering relief to people in trouble.

JEWS IMPRISONED, KILLED

Under Haile Mengisthu, the communist government cut ties with the West, 
closed the ORT schools and clinics in the Gondor region where most 
Ethiopian Jews lived, and imprisoned many.  "They tortured and killed some 
of them," Mekonnen said.  "My cousin was an assistant director of ORT in 
the region and he was killed."

Relations with Israel improved in the two years before the Communists fell, 
and Jewish leaders moved their people to Addis Ababa as rebels gained 
control of the countryside.

Without disclosing the ultimate purpose, officials at the Israeli embassy 
asked a 140-member committee to practice concentrating their people in a 
compound at the embassy.

From January to May last year they practiced, ostensibly as part of the 
school program.  "But on May 21 or 22, some officials called three of us 
together and told us to build a latrine and small houses for food storage, 
"he said.

They next were told there would be eight busses available for transporting 
children to the compound from camps as far as 15 kilometers away.  Finally 
under pressure of questions from the leaders who were fearful for their 
children, the officials disclosed plans for Operation Solomon.

"We were shocked and pleased all at once," Mekonnen said.  "But within 48 
hours we were able to spread the word for all the people to come to the 
compound."

Despite the doubts of many, including his own wife, Mekonnen and other 
leaders each had the 10 families they were responsible for at the embassy 
compound on that Friday.  "And on Saturday I arrived at the air force camp 
in Tel Aviv," he said.

WARM RECEPTION IN ISRAEL

Although he was doubtful about the reception, "Israelis welcomed us warmly. 
I still wonder how they managed to provide us with food, clothing and 
housing on so short notice."

Among those who welcomed them with Israeli radio announced the Ethiopian 
rescue that Sabbath evening were immigrants who had been in Israel only two 
or three months, said Rossman.

One of them was Arkan Kariv, now 29, who emigrated because of a book 
smuggled into Russia by an American Jewish tourist.

"Of course I knew I was a Jew, that I was special," he told a questioner at 
Temple Reyim.  "That's what my father would tell me when I was beaten up on 
the street, that "it's OK.  You are special.  You have to be strong.'

"But I felt special like a handicapped person, which is why I didn't take 
pride in who I was until I read the book 'Exodus,', but Leon Uris," Kariv 
said.

INSPIRED BY URIS BOOK

In 1978, a classmate gave him Uris's [sic] book about the settlement of 
Palestine by Holocaust survivors and the struggle for Israel's independence 
after World War II.  "I read all night and got up in the morning and knew I 
had a cause," he said.

He applied to emigrate in 1982, at age 19.  His application was rejected in 
three months, he was expelled from college and made subject to military 
conscription.

Those were the years of war in Afghanistan, "and I knew I didn't want to 
sacrifice my life for the Soviets," Kariv said.  On the advice of friends, 
"I took a razor, put it in boiling water and slashed my wrists," he said.  
At the cost of two months in a mental hospital, he was free.

He took a street sweeper's job in Moscow, which left him time to study 
Hebrew and even to teach the language.

Encouraged by changes in the Soviet Union, Kariv applied for emigration 
again in 1988.  Now, with three years in Israel and a stint in the Israeli 
Defense Forces, Kariv said he feels like an old Israeli.  "After 10 days in 
the United States and eight to 10 meetings a day, "he said, "I'm so 
homesick."