Rabbi Sharon Shalom criticizes the Chief Rabbinate Council's recognition: "This is not a historic decision, it is a decision that is a correction to historical injustice."

• Zion holiday in Jerusalem // Photo: Tzahi Miriam

"When I was 7, shortly after we immigrated to Israel, we were woken up in the middle of the night at the Afula Absorption Center, asked us to get dressed and board a bus that took us to a building that later turned out to be a hope. "We've passed between us and shed some blood for us as a symbolic act of circumcision. It's a wound that bleeds my blood and many to this day."

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For Rabbi Dr. Sharon Shalom, the decision of the Chief Rabbinate Council to accept the ruling of the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who voiced doubts about the Jewishness of the Ethiopian community also called "Beta Israel", is not a historic decision and certainly not a holiday.

Photo: Shmuel Buchris

"This is not a historic decision," he tells Israel Today, "it is a decision that is a correction to historical injustice. The truth is I do not know whether to laugh or cry. It is sad and embarrassing that only decades later, the Chief Rabbinate finally made a decision not to see a Jew. Ethiopia as a bastard and Jewish supplier. "

Rabbi Sharon, who immigrated to Israel in 1982 and currently lives in Kiryat Gat and serves as the head of the International Center for Ethiopian Jewry in the UNO Academic College, says that, like many members of his community, he too had to undergo conversion to Humara and encountered difficulties, even when he wanted to enter the marriage alliance. "Before the wedding, I was asked to go dip in the mikvah only after I showed the rabbi the permit from the Interior Ministry, which I converted to Humara. I got an exemption."

Last November, as announced last Sunday in "Here" 11, the Chief Rabbinate Council decided to accept the Jews of Ethiopia. "The Chief Rabbinate Council of Israel adopts the halakhic ruling of Maran, Rishon Lezion, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef Zatzokel, according to which members of the Ethiopian community" Beta Israel "are Jewish in all halakhic matters." Written in section 8 of the Council meeting.

Ethiopian community officials demand to bring their relatives to Israel // Photo Archive: Gideon Markowitz

Who took part in the struggle to abolish Ethiopian Jewry is MK Pnina Tamano, a white-blue party who also made the decision with mixed feelings. "We are happy to rectify the historic injustice," she points out. My government is Jewish and it was a disdainful doubt that led to religious discrimination manifested in marriage records, work receipt and the like. "

It also adds that it "welcomes those rabbis who courageously made the decision of the rabbinical council. It is a worthy decision shared by the chief rabbi of the Ethiopian Jewish community on behalf of the Chief Rabbinate, Rabbi Reuven Webshet, Ziva Mekonen Dego, the former Israeli Association chief executive and even the president of the state. Reuven Rivlin. Although the average Israeli asks himself: 'What's new?' It's like being told that the sun is shining in the morning. "

However, she explains why community members still struggled with the issue. "As in the blood donation affair, here too, community members have struggled not to get permission from anyone, but to prevent our children from having delusional struggles over self-evident things."

Rabbi Shalom reiterates that although the rabbinical council's decision has different legal and practical implications, on the value side, the decision has no validity. "The Ethiopian Jewish community is already an integral part of almost all sectors. Many religious community members have been born and raised in religious Zionism. The same is true for the secular and ultra-Spanish public. The only public that still generally does not accept us is the Ashkenazi Orthodox public."

According to him, this fact chills the decision he refuses to call historical honesty. "The paradox is that it is the public who also does not accept the Chief Rabbinate's authority, so what does this decision mean? For those who do not even receive us, it is an irrelevant decision. Therefore, it is foolish and superficial to declare it a historic decision and certainly not a holiday today."