Big screen dreams

‘The Jerusalem Dream’ tells the untold story of Ethiopian Jews The landscape on the way from Ethiopia to Sudan that the Ethiopian Jews passed through on their journey to Israel.

By ARIEL DOMINIQUE HENDELMAN
The landscape on the way from Ethiopia to Sudan that the Ethiopian Jews passed through on their journey to Israel (photo credit: MENI ELIAS)
The landscape on the way from Ethiopia to Sudan that the Ethiopian Jews passed through on their journey to Israel
(photo credit: MENI ELIAS)
Ashkelon-born filmmaker Meni Elias first encountered Ethiopian Jews when he was a teenager. His mother worked as a volunteer after the Ethiopian aliya in the early 1980s and one day she brought him along.
“For me, it was amazing to see a black Jew. I had never seen that before,” Elias recalls. “That was really the start of the The Jerusalem Dream film back then. It’s something that happened to me and really affected me. I became interested in learning about their story.”
Elias later served in the army as a photographer.
It was in the IDF that he learned how to film and edit. Working with a camera changed him forever. When he finished the army, he began working as a cameraman, first with Channel 2 news and Reuters.
The late Micha Shagrir, renowned documentary director and producer, offered Elias his first job as a cinematographer. Elias was 21 at the time.
“It was about one of the leaders who brought the Ethiopian Jews to Israel,” Elias recalls. “It’s called The Story of a Messenger. For me, it was like going to a completely different world; from working in the news to documentary films. You get to go into people’s lives, hear their stories, and feel their feelings.”
On the first day of shooting, Shagrir gave the enthusiastic novice some advice that has remained with him during the 30 years since.
When it comes to documentaries, the most important thing for a cameraman is to listen. All the technical aspects will come later. “Every time that I win a prize for one of my films, I thank Micha for that advice. It’s not only for films, it’s also for life.”
As an award-winning filmmaker, Elias has worked as the cinematographer on 60 films and directed four. But The Jerusalem Dream, released last year, has been the most acclaimed of his career so far. Elias first heard about the journey that the Ethiopian Jews made on foot from northern Ethiopia to Sudan, while working on that first project with Shagrir.
As a boy growing up in Israel, he had never heard their story. Once he began learning about their journey to the Jewish homeland, he was riveted and wondered why no one in Israel seemed to know about it.
“I wanted to tell their story,” Elias adds. “I knew if I could tell it, people would look differently at the Ethiopians. Every Ethiopian that I know has suffered from racism here, some a little bit and some a lot, but every one of them has suffered.
“They have all heard that they should be thankful that we brought them from the desert. But Ethiopia is not a desert – it’s so green, especially where the Jews lived. So I really wanted that everybody would know this story.”
Elias began learning about the Ethiopian Jews’ immigration to Israel seven years ago, with his film Betzet Yisrael (“When Israel Went Out”). Elias walked the same route as the Ethiopian Jews had, with three second- generation Ethiopians in their forties and two Mossad agents.
They walked without water, finding what sustenance they could along the way. The route, from Gondar to the border of Sudan, took 12 days. When Israel Went Out was screened in multiple festivals and won awards, but Elias was curious to know what the Ethiopians who actually made the journey thought about it.
“When I asked them, they didn’t really answer – they told me it was very nice,” Elias shares. “I felt like they didn’t tell the truth. So I had my friend who is Ethiopian ask them. Because an Ethiopian will not say something bad to your face; it’s not respectful. They will not hurt you. So I heard that they said it was a very nice film, but it looked like something for children, not like what they really went through. I knew that I couldn’t leave it like that.”
When the government decided to make a memorial stone on Mount Herzl for the Ethiopian Jews who died along the way, there were meetings to collect all of the names of family members.
Elias attended and began talking to people.
He realized that listening to their stories was much more difficult than recreating their journey without water. At that point, he decided to make The Jerusalem Dream to tell the real story of what the Ethiopian Jews endured. The film featured Elias as cinematographer, director and producer, and took three years to complete.
Shagrir signed on as co-producer, but died before the film was finished. That The Jerusalem Dream was the last project the two worked on together was a fitting ending to a relationship which began so many years before on the same topic.
“I learned the story of their Holocaust,” Elias shares. “I don’t like to use that word, but there are a lot of similarities. They don’t tell their stories to the next generation, because they want to keep them protected. The children don’t want to hear. But after 30 to 40 years, they have finally started talking about it.
People always ask me how I succeeded in hearing their stories. I even had social workers asking me, because they never succeeded in doing it. I think there are two reasons. The first is the advice I got from Micha – to listen. The other is something I read just recently that people who suffer from PTSD start to speak about it after 30 to 40 years. So it was perfect timing.”
Since The Jerusalem Dream was released, more people in the Ethiopian community have begun to speak about their experiences.
Their children are asking questions about the journey and a dialogue has ensued.
Elias says that many Ethiopians have seen the film and he has received countless responses. At a recent screening in Petah Tikva, where the majority of the crowd was not Ethiopian, there were two Ethiopian women in the audience.
At the end of the film, one of them wanted to share her story. Elias asked her to come to the stage. She spoke about her journey for half an hour while the audience listened, transfixed. Then the other woman came up and told her story for another half an hour. Again, all the listeners were riveted.
“It was amazing,” Elias recalls. “They told me that they had never told their stories before, not even to their children, not to anyone. It was the first time.”
After another screening in Rehovot, an Ethiopian teenager stood up and told the crowd that he could tell them about how the Ashkenazim and the Moroccans came to Israel, but nobody ever told him about the Ethiopians. He had no idea how his parents emigrated and the incredible hardships they endured. He didn’t understand why he had never learned about it.
The Jerusalem Dream has opened up a dialogue for the first time between the second generation of Ethiopian Israelis and their parents, a vault that was previously impenetrable.
“They were praying for 2,000 years, maybe more, to return to Israel,” Elias adds. “They didn’t come from the desert – they came from a place where they had nice lives with food and all the basic necessities. Maybe they didn’t have computers, but they were okay.
“Israel says that they had nothing, but it’s not true. Everyone tells the story of the Ethiopian aliya from the side of the Mossad and of the army; that we were heroes and we went in and brought them back to Israel. But it’s important to say that we didn’t really bring them. The Mossad was very brave, but that was their work.
“The Ethiopians left their homes and everything behind on foot. They decided to come. They made the journey and put Israel in the position where it couldn’t say no anymore.”
Elias unearthed stories with The Jerusalem Dream that portray a picture much more nuanced than was previously known. Before leaving Ethiopia, the Jews had good relationships with their Christian neighbors, but a civil war broke out in the mid-1970s and those who were against the government fled to Sudan.
“A minority of them were Jews. The Israeli government received notice that there were Ethiopian Jews in the camps, and after pressure was applied the Mossad was sent in to bring them out.
“When that first group came to Israel, they began writing letters to their Jewish brethren who were still in Ethiopia. They believed that this was their chance to come to Israel; that thousands of years of prayers had been answered. It was then that the Ethiopian Jews began their arduous, heroic – and for some deadly – journey to Sudan, where they were subsequently airlifted out.
“Some of them feel it was the right decision to come here and some don’t,” Elias states. “But I can’t judge them. If I lost half of my family on the way, I don’t know if I would feel it was worth it. But if a father would say it wasn’t worth it, then he’s saying he made the wrong decision. It’s a very difficult question and a very complicated answer. They think about it every day; that’s for sure.”
The most common reaction to the film that Elias receives is that it should be made available to every Israeli, so that they will understand how the Ethiopians came here, with the belief that it would change Israelis’ perception of them. The film has already begun to change the way people think and perceive the Ethiopians.
The sacrifices they made to come to Israel are almost unimaginable. Their stories are a vibrant thread in the tapestry of Israel’s history. The hope is that in the future, The Jerusalem Dream will be screened at schools and for IDF soldiers, a process that has already begun.
The film was screened at festivals such as the International Festival of Ethnological Film, Sole Luna, DovAviv, and Cinema South. It is currently being screened throughout Israel at various locations.
For more information on Meni Elias and The Jerusalem Dream documentary, including upcoming screenings: menielias.com/jerusalem-dream


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