More than 500 Ethiopian Families Helped
Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Rather than bore you with numbers and statistics, let me share just one story: Abbech Azemera is an Ethiopian Messianic Believer in her 80s. She and her husband migrated to Gondar province from elsewhere in Ethiopia to make aliyah (immigrate) to Israel. Their journey was hard, but their fondest desire was to join their children already in Israel.

Sadly, things didn’t work out for Abbech. While waiting to make aliyah, her husband became ill and died.  When she caught malaria, we made arrangements for her hospital care. I’m glad to report she is now recovered and out of the hospital, but things are still dire for her.

Ethiopia is a difficult place to exist when you are elderly and all alone.

Abbech’s children have tried to get the Israeli government to grant her aliyah, but to no avail. That is why, on our last humanitarian aid trip, we made sure Abbech received financial help from us-help that will sustain her with food, lodging and medicine for the next three months. We must pray she can make aliyah by then.

Abbech is just one of more than 500 families we helped the 10 days we were in Ethiopia. In Gondar city and the village of Enfranz, we distributed over $30,000 in gifts.

That help couldn’t have been timelier. The Beta Yisrael (House of Israel) Believers are in particularly difficult circumstances, because they are in limbo over Israel letting them make aliyah. Add to that the social and economic devastation that the war in Somalia and the genocide in Sudan have resulted in, and you have a recipe for severe suffering on a catastrophic level.

The MJAA personally distributes money to families, because that is the surest way we know the aid goes directly where most needed—into the hands of families we have pre-screened beforehand for humanitarian aid.

A local committee has been established to evaluate and verify the needs of families we help. That is how we make sure our help goes to those in the most serious circumstances, those whose very lives may be in the balance.

Our next trip to Ethiopia is scheduled for May. We have been presented with an opportunity to bring restoration to a suffering Jewish remnant in Ethiopia and, at the same time, to provide circumstances that would ease their restoration to Israel in the future.