Ethiopian member of Israeli government speaks at Union

By Benjamin Engle

On Sunday, April 19, Shlomo Molla, the only Ethiopian Jewish member of the Israeli Knesset, arrived at Union College's Nott Memorial directly from Tel Aviv, Israel where he spoke to a crowd of approximately fifty members of the Union community to discuss his experiences as an Ethiopian Jew and politician.

Molla, who has served in the Knesset as a member of the centrist Kadima party since 2008 and recently won reelection in 2009, was born in Ethiopia in 1965. At the Nott, Molla discussed his life experiences, which took him from a small Jewish village in Ethiopia's Gondar province to the Israeli Parliament in Jerusalem.

While in Ethiopia, Molla, who was one of 11 children, studied Torah almost daily as well as observing all the religious Jewish holidays. He, like others in his small community, waited for the day that he would travel to Israel.

When Molla was 16, he attempted to make the journey across the desert to take part in Operation Moses. Operation Moses was a covert removal of Ethiopian Jews from the Sudan during a famine in 1984 by the Israeli Defense Forces, CIA, and United States embassy in Khartoum.

As Molla made the trip towards the Sudanese border, he and his 15 friends were picked up by the border patrol after which they were placed in prison for four months. After being in solitary confinement for that long duration, Molla was taken to a refugee camp. Soon after, he was placed in an Israeli Defense Forces aircraft that took him to his original destination, Israel.
When he arrived in Israel, Molla was taken to an Absorption Center in Tzfat. "When I got to Israel, I started from nothing. It was a whole new place with all new people," Molla stated. Currently 130,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel, 30,000 of which are Israeli-born.

Once in Israel, Molla became very active in Israeli public life, becoming a Commander in Reserve Unit, Haifa in 1994, the Head of the Ethiopian Division of the Jewish Agency for Israel in 1999, and in 2006 becoming a Member of the Zionist Executive and Department Head of the World Zionist Organization. He currently is married with three children.

Throughout the discussion, both Union students and community members were closely listening to Molla's story.

"Molla's story was incredibly interesting. It's great how he went from arriving in Israel with nothing to becoming a member of the Knesset," Amy Scheck '09 said. "It's just an example of the promise that Israel represents for so many people!"

Benjamin Gurlitz '12 agreed, "Molla's speech was inspirational and very unique. It was an honor to meet Shlomo Molla, a member of the Israeli Knesset, who is working for peace in an unstable region."

Molla also discussed his current activities in the Knesset. He is currently a member of various committees in the Knesset, primarily focusing on education and welfare issues as well as immigration, absorption, and Diaspora affairs.

The discussion was sponsored by Union College Hillel, Alpha Epsilon Pi, and the Office of the President, as well as the departments of History, Political Science and Sociology.

Originally published in Union's Concordy on 4/23/09