Who Gets to Tell My Story? Ethiopian Jewish Aliyot
with Efrat Yerday
Sunday, May 31
10:00 AM at GJC and on Zoom
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO REGISTER TO JOIN IN PERSON OR ON ZOOM
When we think of Ethiopian Jewish immigration to Israel, we usually picture the dramatic rescue operations of the 1980s and 90s. But the untold story began decades earlier.
Israel was founded on the powerful ideal of Kibbutz Galuyot—the Ingathering of the Exiles. But what happened when the returning exiles were Black Jews? In this talk, Dr. Efrat Yerday will explore the forgotten years before 1975, showing how the arrival of the early Ethiopian immigrants challenged the core of Israel’s national ethos. Crucially, this is not just an Israeli story, but a global Jewish one. We will explore the complex involvement of US Jewish diaspora, revealing how different organizations and activists shaped Israel’s immigration policies. Going beyond the heroic rescue narratives, we will uncover how unspoken ideas about race and color tested the boundaries of Jewish belonging.
Efrat Yerday’s research focuses on Ethiopian Jews and Blackness in Israel. From 2023 to 2024, she was a teaching fellow at UMD and American University where she taught, among other things, “Blackness in Israeli Popular Culture and Contemporary Art.” Beyond academia, Yerday has served as chair of the Association of Ethiopian Jews for the last five years and has founded several initiatives and writing projects, including Ra’av (Hunger) Publishing House; the “Ethiopolitics” reading group; the research group “Ethiopian Jews Rewriting Their Story” at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. She wrote the blog, Shchora M’Shachor for HaMakom Hahi Kham Bagehinom, among other op-eds in Haaretz, Ynet, and Middle East Eye.
Yerday received her Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University.