In July 2012, the Israeli government announced its decision to allow the aliyah of the last remnants of the Ethiopian Jewish community.

Each month, 250 Falash Mura (Ethiopian Christians of Jewish ancestry) will complete legal immigration until the entire community has been relocated to Israel. A new immigrant absorption center will be developed to accommodate their special needs. Following their arrival in Israel, they are expected to complete a conversion process to traditional Judaism.

Few can understand the power of immigrants’ transition from life in Ethiopia to the promise and opportunity of Israel as well as Member of Knesset Shlomo Neguese Molla (Kadima). Growing up in a Jewish village in Ethiopia, where Molla studied at a school sponsored by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), “next year in Jerusalem” was merely a lifelong dream. Now it is a reality, and then some. Many would call his story extraordinary, but Molla says it is simply a story of Israel—typifying what determination, reason and tolerance can accomplish.

At age 16, Molla said goodbye to all he knew, leaving home and family to begin the saga of his future in Israel. A 740-kilometer journey through unknown deserts to reach the first stopover on a trip to a destination he had only imagined, he faced the real possibilities of death (his best friend was killed) and imprisonment (he was jailed for 91 days). These experiences were not imaginationary, no tale of adventure. Rather, they were a prelude to his aliyah to the Jewish state. He completed high school in Haifa, served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, earned a law degree and became director of the Ethiopian Immigration and Absorption section of the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI).

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