Are You Really My Brother?

It was Hanukah 1984 and we had been living in Israel for three months in a one room apartment in what is called an "Absorption Center", a residential facility for new immigrants. Arieh Dulcin, the Chairman of the Jewish Agency, was addressing us new Israelis.  My Hebrew comprehension was poor but with the help of Marcia and others around me, I understood that something momentous was unfolding in Israel.  “Top secret,” was Dulcin’s description and yet he continued to speak of “Ethiopians” and “mass aliyah” (immigration to Israel).  Dulcin was probably not the first to leak this story.  In the next few days we read in the newspaper that over 7,500 Ethiopian Jews had arrived in Israel during the previous few weeks.  Many had walked hundreds of miles across desert terrain with little more than the clothes on their back.  They crossed the Ethiopian border into Sudan before completing the next leg of their journey by airplane.   Sadly, “Operation Moses” was aborted by the Ethiopian government when their complicity with this exodus was made public; they feared the wrath of the Arab world.

In May 1991 another 15,000 flew from Addis Ababa to Ben Gurion Airport, planeload after planeload arriving within a period of thirty-six hours.  Two more new Israelis arrived than took off, babies born in flight.  Israelis were proud to be able to demonstrate that all Jews are brothers independent of color and culture.  They flocked to the temporary housing centers bringing clothes, blankets, kitchenware, food, and toys.  This is not to say that many problems of absorption didn’t arise soon thereafter but those initial days were indeed intoxicating.

The woman named Miryam who walked into my office one morning in 1992 had been twenty-seven years old in 1984 when her family gathered in a small village near Addis Ababa.  Accompanied by her mother, her husband, and four children and a number of relatives and friends – a total of fifty people – she set out on a 350 mile-walk to the Sudanese border; it took eight weeks.  On the way they experienced the atrocities and hardships inflicted on similar groups: robbery, rape, looting of their meager household goods and jewelry, hunger, sickness, including malaria and tuberculosis, and even death.  Her mother died, as did her baby after two days of a raging fever.  They buried them in shallow graves.  The somewhat obese, stately patient who now faced me, had regained the thirty pounds she had lost during the trek.

Miryam was primitive in appearence, dressed in a brightly multicolored dress with a woven,  rope tied belt.  Her skin was light brown, her hair black with strands of white.  Most striking and distracting were the numerous linear, blue tattoos over her face, across her forehead and along her cheeks.  I was most unsettled by the tattoo under her lower lip; it was a Christian cross.

Accompanying Miryam was an American Israeli social worker, Beatrice.  Before I could begin my consultation I had to have the mystery of the cross resolved.  In English I asked Beatrice about it.  The answer disheartened me.  It was to ward off potential rapists who would not molest a Christian.

The three of us shook hands, the American with a firm grasp, Miryam with a few limp fingers.  Her referral letter indicated that she was one month after surgery for thyroid cancer.  I was being requested to use radioactive iodine to eradicate any cancer cells the surgeon’s knife may have missed.  I asked the relevant questions to establish a full picture of her health and family situation.  Miryam was soft spoken.  We constructed our Hebrew sentences slowly; her vocabulary was broader than mine. 

At age thirty-four she now had five children, two of whom required special schooling.  Her husband, older by twenty years, was working as a gardener on the hospital grounds.  I had to be certain that she wasn’t pregnant and to make clear to her that she mustn’t become pregnant for the ensuing six months.  This was to prevent radiation to a fetus from the radioactive iodine, which could totally destroy a fetus’s thyroid.  She nodded unconvincingly that she understood.  I was somewhat relieved to learn that a normal menstrual period had begun the previous day.

At that point I indicated that I wanted to examine her briefly in reference to the thyroid status.   She made the typical sabra gesture with the waving of her five vertically extended fingers, meaning, “Wait a minute.”  She leaned over to Beatrice, appearing to be asking a question.  I couldn’t make out the words but Beatrice flashed a constrained smile.

“What does she want?” I asked.

“She wants me to find out if you’re Jewish.”

Then I too, smiled but my unspoken reactions varied from “Such chutzpah (impertinence)!” to “What a historical moment!”  How much more significant was Miryam’s inquiry in light of the trauma inflicted on the Ethiopian Jewish community by Israel’s religion ministry.  Despite ample oral confirmation of their Jewish ancestry, individual Ethiopians were being required to undergo mikva (ritual immersion) to establish themselves as legitimate Jews.  There were instances of suicide by young couples who were being forced to undergo this conversion procedure, humiliating to them, before being granted a marriage permit.  A sit-down demonstration was held on Yom Kippur 1985 opposite Hachal Shlomo Synagogue, the seat of rabbinic power in Jerusalem.  This was near the synagogue where Marcia and I were praying; we visited the protestors to express our support.  The Rabbinical Authority would not relent. 

“Are you really my brother?” I answered in the affirmative and authenticated by Beatrice satisfied Miryam.  Our relationship over the following years was warm and trusting.  Between her shyness and my reticence to invade her privacy, I developed only a superficial understanding of her life with one exception.

Two years after her first treatment, Beatrice required a second dose of radioactive iodine.  Again came the discussion regarding avoiding pregnancy.  Miryam now had a sixth child, one year old.  I learned that Miryam could not tolerate birth control pills and wouldn’t use a diaphragm.  An intrauterine coil had caused profuse bleeding.  Her husband, who would not accompany Miryam to my office, had refused to use a condom, to try the rhythm system, or to consider “withdrawal.”  Tube tying, whether for husband or wife, was repugnant to her husband.  I was stymied.  That left only abstinence.  Since there was no urgency to make a decision (her cancer was extremely slow growing), I suggested, “Go home and think about it.”

Miryam came back two days later requesting a note from me to be addressed to her husband, ordering him to abstain from sexual relations with her!  Possibly I should have consulted an expert in Ethiopian culture for I was thinking as an American who wanted to die only of old age and not at the hands of an irate husband.  I declined the request and concluded with, “We’ll go ahead with the treatment.  Do the best you can to avoid becoming pregnant.” 

Successful she was as was the therapy.  She remained well, with one more child, during the next four years prior to my retirement.

We met one more time two years later when I was visiting my former department.  There was a difference in her appearance, which I couldn’t at first define, that is, until Miryam, smiling, pointed to her chin.  The cross was gone with only a faint stain remaining.  Miryam’s absorption into Israel was now complete.  We indeed were family.