c. 1998 Religion News Service

AFULA, Israel _ Eighteen years ago this Passover, Mulu Mokria, a 66-year-old Ethiopian Jew and son of a”kes,”or religious leader, left his rural village in southern Ethiopia and set out on foot toward the neighboring state of Sudan _ the first way station on a circuitous route to Israel.

This year, as Mokria gathers with his seven children and grandchildren for the Passover holiday _ which begins the evening of April 10 _ he will not only retell the biblical story of the ancient Israelites’ departure from Egypt, but also the story of the modern Ethiopian exodus that brought some 45,000 African Jews to Israel between 1980 and 1992.”To me, our departure from Ethiopia is no less miraculous than our ancient departure from Egypt, so Passover has become a holiday when I tell both stories,”Mokria said.

But while the story of the Ethiopian exodus remains fresh, ancient Ethiopian Jewish Passover customs practiced in Africa _ such as the sacrifice of a lamb _ are slowly dying out among these new immigrants to modern Israel.

Still, new customs are being added in this community, which braved unusual perils to reach the promised land known to them only from oral legends and biblical text.

Most notably, the story of the Ethiopian exodus is in itself becoming an integral part of the Ethiopian Passover experience.”Ethiopians always had a strong oral tradition _ the elders were often brilliant storytellers,”said anthropologist Shalva Weil of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. “So Passover, which is a `telling’ holiday, in which the oral history of the Jewish nation is retold to the younger generation, is an ideal vehicle for preserving communal memories, and to continue this dynamic, oral tradition,”said Weil, who has written several books on Ethiopian Jews.

The parallels between the Ethiopian exodus and that of the ancient Israelites are more than coincidental.

Ethiopian Jews, isolated from mainstream Jewry for more than 2,000 years, followed biblically based traditions in their home country and were only exposed to rabbinic Judaism during this century.

That made Passover in Ethiopia reminiscent of the way the holiday might have first been celebrated by the ancient Israelites, who, according to tradition, fled slavery in Egypt in such haste that they had no time even to leaven their bread.

In memory of the flight, many diaspora Jews typically purchase flat, unleavened matzah for the holiday, and use a second set of dishes that have had no contact with yeasted breads or flours during the year.

In Ethiopia, however, old dishes were broken, and new earthenware was actually fashioned for use during the holiday. All Passover foods, including handmade matzahs, called”kitta,”were prepared fresh on an open fire every day, much as they would have been at the time of the original Exodus drama.

On Passover eve, Ethiopian Jews would slaughter a sacrificial sheep, just as the ancient Israelites did prior to their departure from Egypt, and eat the broiled meat, while burning all of the remains, said Gershon Dasta, a 30-year-old Ethiopian Jewish community worker here in Afula, a northern Israel town where some 5,000 Ethiopian Jews now live.

But the similarities between Ethiopian practice and ancient history did not end in Africa, Dasta and other immigrants said. Their own modern exodus, they said, bears a striking resemblance to the ancient text.

It was on the second night of Passover in 1980 that Mokria’s extended family slipped away from their rural Ethiopian village and headed for Sudan, where they had heard Jewish emissaries were helping groups of Jews reach Israel.

For centuries Ethiopian Jews had been despised, persecuted and even enslaved by Ethiopian Christian monarchs. Even the community’s name _”falasha”_ was a term of contempt thrust upon them by other Ethiopians.

Much as in the case of the ancient Israelite slaves, the departure of Ethiopian Jews during the Passover feast period was a deliberate ruse designed to catch their enemies off guard. “Since the entire week of Passover is considered special and holy to us, our non-Jewish neighbors didn’t expect us to be out in the fields working,”recalled Mokria.”So our absence wasn’t noticed immediately.” As in the biblical story, Ethiopian Jews generally slipped away after dark _ to arouse minimal notice _ fleeing on foot with only those possessions they could carry.”We left in the night, just like the Jews of the Exodus did, and in the day we would hide; we wouldn’t move,”said Yefet Hadaray, 48, a health consultant and father of five children, who arrived in Israel 18 years ago at age 30.”The Passover story talks about the 10 plagues visited on the Egyptians,”added Hadaray.”Well, we suffered from the plagues as well _ from thirst, wild animals, shootings, robbings, and arrests.”I can remember one young mother who traveled with us who just fell down and died of thirst on the trek to Sudan with her baby tied to her back. Still, the child survived and today is about to enter the Israeli army.” The Sudanese border, rather than the Red Sea, marked the crossing point to relative freedom. But like the ancient Israelites who wandered for 40 years in the desert, the Ethiopian Jews waited for months or years in Sudanese and Ethiopian refugee camps, before finally being permitted by authorities to leave for Israel.

Young men like Hadaray and Dasta came first. They traveled covertly in small groups led by Israeli and other Jewish emissaries who smuggled them out of Sudan via both sea and air routes.

Most families, however, waited for the final miracle of the Ethiopian saga _ Operation Moses in 1984 and Operation Solomon in 1990 _ when Sudanese and Ethiopian authorities granted secret permission for the mass airlift of the ancient Jewish community to Israel.

Living in the shadow of their own personal dramas, Passover in Israel is almost anti-climactic for the older members of the community, who are unaccustomed to the holiday’s commercial aspects in Israel.”In Ethiopia, you made everything with your own hands,”said Hadaray.”Here you buy products in the store that are stamped `kosher for Passover.’ You don’t really know what’s inside them. It’s not the same feeling.” The standard”haggadah”_ the text used at a typical Passover Seder, or ritual meal, to tell the Exodus story _ also was unknown in Ethiopia. There, elders would read of the Exodus from biblical texts, written in the holy language of Gez, the ancient Jewish language of Ethiopia, or in the modern Ethiopian language of Amharic.

In Afula, as in other Israeli Ethiopian communities, many of those distinctive prayers are being forgotten. Younger men speaking fluent Hebrew have gradually usurped the status of the traditional religious leaders who know the Ethiopian languages. Only small groups of traditionalists preserve the customs of hand-making matzah or slaughtering a sheep for the holiday.”If I tried to slaughter a sheep at Passover, I’d have the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of the Environment on my doorstep in no time,”grinned Dasta, as he hung out with a group of immigrants in Afula’s first Ethiopian community synagogue awaiting even prayers.

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However Dasta, who tries to help Ethiopian immigrants find jobs and integrate into Israeli life, said few immigrant families have time to muse over issues of culture and tradition.

Daily realities, such as unemployment, are a pressing problem among the immigrants clustered in communities on Israel’s rural periphery, where jobs are scarce. Moreover, the generation gap is a yawning problem among Israeli-born youths and their African-born parents, and government support for education, religious and cultural activities has been less than optimal.”Ethiopian children are growing up like they do everywhere, with television and modern technology, and not all of the elderly have the ability to transmit their experiences to the younger generation,”said Dasta.”There also are few places like this synagogue where Ethiopians immigrant can gather together to study, think, talk or pray,”he added, noting that it took seven years to get government permission to build Afula’s Ethiopian synagogue. The synagogue was partly funded by the Jewish community of Westport, Conn.

Yet with the exception of Passover, when Ethiopian adults customarily retell the story of the community’s exodus, few immigrants will openly express sentiments of bitterness, or nostalgia for a past that is increasingly preserved now only in stories and memory.”The Torah came from Sinai to Israel, and from Israel it reached Ethiopia,”said Mokria, holding a Bible written in Amharic.”We have returned to Israel, which is our home, so we accept the customs here.” DEA END FLETCHER