A Person Who Has Made A Difference: Yona Bogale

Introduction- Adi Komraz

Throughout history, there have been people who have influenced the way we live. Yona Bogale is one of these people.

I chose to prepare this research project on Yona Bogale for several reasons. To begin with, our teacher instructed us to choose a person who has left their mark on the world. This person should have been either Jewish or someone who was not a Jew but contributed to the Jewish people or Jewish state.

There are a number of things that I already know about Yona Bogale. Firstly, I know that he was an Ethiopian Jewish educator who served as the director of the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jewish community) education system in Ethiopia. In addition, I know that he worked vigorously for that “Aliyah”

of the Beta Israel and the improvement of their living conditions.

I expect to learn new and interesting things about things about Yona Bogale. First and foremost, I expect to find out how he became an important public figure in the Beta Israel community, who inspired many Jews to immigrate to Israel.  Also, I want to learn about the process it took Yona Bogale to become the director of Beta Israel education system and what impact he had on the younger generation in Ethiopia and Israel. Finally, I would like to discover what inspired Yona Bogale to immigrate to Israel and help thousands of families to do so.

Yona Bogale has left his mark on the world. I am looking forward to finding out more about him.

Introduction- Michal Shtivelman

Throughout history, there have been people who have influenced the way we live. Yona Bogale is one of these people.

I choose to prepare this research project on Yona Bogale for several reasons. To begin with, my teacher insisted us to do the project about a Jew who has made a difference .Moreover, I wanted to do the project about an important Jew who did not receive enough appreciation and recognition he deserved. Furthermore, he saved many Jew’s life in Ethiopia.

There are a number of things that I already know about Yona Bogale. Firstly, I know that Yona helped and saved many Ethiopian Jews from death by motivating them to immigrate to Israel. In addition, he worked to strengthen the contact between Israel and Ethiopia.

I expect to learn new and interesting things about Yona Bogale. First and foremost, I expect to find out in which ways Yona motivated the Jews of Ethiopia. Also, I want to learn about the difficulties Yona had and how he overcame them. Finally, I would like to discover more about Yona’s personal life.

Yona Bogale has left his mark on the world. I am looking forward to finding out more about him

Biography–Yona Bogale

Yona Bogale was considered by many to be the foremost leader of the Ethiopian Jews in the twentieth century.

Yona Bogale was born in 1908_, in the Jewish village Wolleqa. The important Ethiopian city Gonder is located southwest to the village. He was the eldest son of Birru Bogale and Reda Beletu and had five siblings. Yona was raised in a family of farmers and goat and cattle herders. His father worked as a weaver and a farmer for a local Christian nobleman. As a child, he helped his family and worked as a herder, but showed an early ability for language and education. He learned in a synagogue of Beta Israel to read and write in Amharic, Hebrew and Torah studies.

The synagogue in the Jewish village, Wolleqa.

In 1921 Dr. Jacques Faitlovitch (a researcher of Ethiopian Jews) and Professor Tamrat Emmanuel (Ethiopian Jew’s public figure and one of Faitlovitch’s students) came to the village. Both came from Israel and were important figures in the Beta Israel community. At the end of their visit in Wolleqa, they took Yona and three others Beta Israel boys to study in the Hebrew  school Tahkemoni in Jerusalem. In 1924 he was sent to Germany. There he continued his education in a high school in Frankfurt. He then attended the university of Heidelberg and started his international studies. In Switzerland, At the Asher institute in Lausanne he finished his studies. After Germany and Switzerland he was transfered to the Alliance Francaise Universelle in Paris. Throughout this period of time, he learnt about ten languages including Hebrew, English, Italian, French and German fluently, In addition to his mother-tongue Amharic.

Second from top left: Yona Bogale and Dr. Jacob Faitlovitch. 

Israel, 1921.

In 1933, Yona Bogale returned to Ethiopia and started teaching in Hebrew School in Addis Ababa managed by Professor Tamrat Emmanuel. In 1936, Ethiopia was conquered by Italy and the school closed. Tamrat escaped but Bogale returned to teaching. The Italian authorities put out a search warrant againts him. He managed to escape and hid in the north of Ethiopia.

At the termination of the Italian occupation In 1941, he started working in the government as a translator for king Hailie Selassie 1st and for the Ethiopian Ministry of Education and he did this for twelve years.
Around this time, the Christian missionaries started expanding their operations among Jews. Yona was worried about the situation and corresponded with Dr. Jacob Faitlovitch and with the president of Israel at that time, Yitzhak Ben Tzvi.
Bugale married Tayitu Kelkele in 1942.

Yona Bogale teaching Beta Israel children.

In the 1950s , with the help of several Jewish organizations, he established a network of Jewish educational schools and a network of health clinics as well. He supervised more than twenty Hebrew schools opened in the villages in Ethiopia by the Jewish agency (and later also ‘ORT Israel’ in the 70s) with his initiation. This network existed for 45 years. He continued opening the schools, synagogues, agriculture centers and medical clinics for more than twenty years in northern Ethiopia. Yaakov Elias, one of Bogale’s students who was sent to Kfar Batya said: “Without Yona Bogale, th Ethiopian Jewish community would have become extinct”. In 1953, he quit his job in the government and started teaching at the Hebrew school at Asmara. After the death of Dr. Jacob Faitlovitch in 1955, Bogale and Tamrat became the advocates of the Beta Israel organization.

Yona Bogale’s synagogue, Ethiopia.

His work drew the attention of Jewish leaders and government ministers in Israel, as well as Jewish organizations worldwide, particularly with regard to his goal of Aliyah for all Ethiopian Jews. After increasing problems with the local community, the school was transfered from Asmara to the village Ambober. Two groups of his graduating students were later on sent to the dormitory school in Kfar Batya ,Israel. There, they were trained to be teachers and came back to the schools that were opened by then throughout Ethiopia.

In 1974, a civil war broke out. After this war the economic and social condition of the Beta Israel community deteriorated.

Yona Bogale (far left) and Rabbi Joseph Beeri join a group of students at the Asmara School before their departure for Israel.

Yona’s main vision was for all the Beta Israel community to make Aliyah. This vision was objected from inside the community and from outside. He also wanted to educate Ethiopian Jews and teach them to read and write.
He made connections with Jews from all over the world that visited Ethiopia and convinced them to help him with the important Aliyah. To get closer to the goal Yona took several steps. One of them was building an agricultural colony near the border with Sudan in order to concentrate most of Beta Israel so that they would cross the border and come to Israel when the time came. Believing that agriculture was the way to economic success for the Beta Israel, who were largly tenant farmers, he supported more projects by World Bank, Ethiopian government and other bodies to re-settle the Beta Israel near the Sudan border.

Pages from the first Amharic-Hebrew Dictionary, compiled by Yona Bogale to aid his fellow Beta Israelis with their literacy in the Hebrew language.

In 1979, the condition of the Beta Israel community was terrible. Part of the community became refugees and wandered around the country. In light of this, Yona decided to make Aliyah in order to operate the Aliyah of Beta Israel more effectively. The foreign office of Israel issued Yona a visa to take him out of Ethiopia. He connected with his seven children that were in Israel and joined organizations including the American Association for Ethiopian Jews.

In Israel he met Menachem Begin, the Israeli prime-minister, and Jewish leaders. He supported a full immigration of the Beta Israelis to Israeli society. He therefore favoured changing over from the traditional language of prayers, Geez, to Hebrew in order to come in line with all the Jewish communities. Yona published Amharic translations of Jewish texts, and a Hebrew- Amharic dictionary.

The first page of Yona’s speech to the General Assembly of the North American Jewish Federation, Montreal, Canada, 1979.

On November 19th 1979 Yona was invited to deliver a speech at the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities of North America, which was held in Montreal, Canada. In front of a large audience of 3000, he explained the big and important need of an urgent mass Aliyah of his community, Beta Israel. That was a huge step for his vision. Yona demanded the Israeli leaders make an arranged plan for a mass Ethiopian immigration.

His actions bore fruit and a couple months later, in 1984, the rescue operation of Beta Israel, “Mivtsa Moshe”, started. This operation was a complicated, dangerous journey held through Sudan and airlifted 8000 Beta Israelis to Israel.

Yona Bogale was fortunate to see his dream come true and even took a big active part in the Aliyah and the absorption.

Ethiopian Jews on the plane to Israel- Mivtza Moshe

Yona Bogale died at his home in Petah Tikva in 1987 at the age of 79. He was buried in Har Hamenuhot, Jerusalem, near the grave of his teacher, Professor Tamrat Emmanuel. Over 4000 mourners attended his funeral, among them the Speaker of the Knesset, Shlomo Hillel.
The continuation of the operation was “Mivtza Shlomo” in 1991 After Yona’s death. In that operation the Israeli military brought more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews from Addis Ababa to Jerusalem. “Mivtsa Shlomo” couldn’t have happened without Bogale’s vision and efforts.

Funeral of Yona Bogale, Jerusalem, 1987.

Our Figure’s Influence On Us

Yona Bogale’s famous quotation, “We have suffered for our Jewish faith for thousands of years. These suffering have been terrible and many. We have been killed, sold into slavery, forced to convert to other religions, and physically threatened even into this day amongst unspeakable conditions in a coutry which is caugh between war, revolution and terrible changing conditions. But we stayed united and want to come to Israel and live real Jewish life in Jerusalem. I have come to ask for your help, so that we don’t disappear” (said in the General Assembly of the North American Jewish Federation, November 1979) has had influenced on us in a number of ways.

To begin with, it is inspiring to see how Yona did not give up on a dream for all his ethnic group – the Beta Israel community in spite of all the great suffering they had been through. He didn’t abandon what many others had already done. In addition, Yona admits that his community is on the edge of disappearance and he does not see seeking help as a shameful thing. He tells the story of his community without being ashamed of it. This teaches us not to be ashamed of who we are and seek help if needed.

Interview

We chose to interview Dr. Shalva Weil. She is an important researcher at the Institute for Cultivation Research in Education, near the Education Institute in The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She has a PH.D. in Anthropology of the University of Sussex, England

There are several reasons why we chose to interview this person. First of all, Dr.Weil specializes in exploration of Ethiopian Jewry . She is the international academic coordinator of the Ethiopian Jewish Studies Association (SOSTEJE).  Moreover, Shalva engages in research and implementation of educational programs for Ethiopian Jews in Israel. In addition, Weil researches various aspects of the community’s life, such as the faith of Jacques Faitlovitch’s students. One of these 25 students was Yona Bogale.

Q:What caused you to research the Beta Israel community?

A: In 1970 I was friendly with the grand daughter of Haile Selassie, the emperor of Ethiopia. She was studying at the university of London, and I was born and raised in London. She said to me :”If you ever want to come and visit me in Ethiopia, I have a nice house and you can come and stay”. In 1971 I got married, and I went with my husband on a honeymoon. In those days, it was extraordinary. We took all the money we got from the presents and went to Africa. We had friends in Kenya, so we stayed with them.  Because we didn’t have any money we hitchhiked and stopped cars until we got to Addis Ababa with no phones . We went to a public phone box and I phoned the number of the friend and she said “Wait, Where you are? We’ll pick you up”. She picked me up and took me to see Haile Selassie ,the emperor. Everything was prestigious while we

were really filthy.We were in jeans and we had been hitchhiking for days. And he said “What do you want to do?”, and I said I wanted to see the Falashas. Back then they were called Falashas. Today they want to be called Beta Israel or Ethiopian Jews. Falasha is also a stigmatic word.So, we went to the area of Gondar and we visited the Falasha.
From then I decided I would study the Falasha that afterwards became Ethiopian Jews. So that’s the story of how I started researching the Beta Israel.

I’ve studied them all my life now and to this day I am still friendly with many many Ethiopians.

Q: Did you know Yona personally?

A: I knew him very well at the end of his life. Many people knew him when he was very active in the Jewish agency, but I knew him at the end of his life.

I used to go every day and record him. I recorded him on his life, so I’m the only person really whoever has actually recorded his biography.
He was quite old and died in 1987, so the whole of 1986 and 1987 I used to go to Petah Tikva and record him .He was really an exceptionally fine person and spoke many languages. He spoke Hebrew beautifully and he spoke French and he spoke of course Amharic. He was also very very aristocratic.

Q:What was Yona’s biggest dream?

A: His vision and biggest dream was to bring all the Beta Israelis to Israel and to help them. Yona wanted to educate them because they were illiterate, nearly all of them didn’t know to read and write .They weren’t like Yona who was literate and knew the modern world.

Q: What made Yona get such a big recognition in the Beta Israel community?

A: Yona knew many languages so he talked to all of the western leaders. He was well-recognized by western people so that gave him some sort of prestige in his own community. His personality was very charismatic and that is also what made him get recognition and be considered as a leader. He was ‘the representative’ of the Ethiopian Jews in the western world. Anyone could talk to him and Yona would do his best to help his people.

Q: How would you describe the situation of Ethiopian Jews in these times and how did Yona change it?

A: Well, first of all he set up schools to educate people and so a lot of people, many hundreds, learned Hebrew and also learned to read and write in Amharic which they didn’t know

before. He was an educator and wanted people to be educated.

Q: What did the Ethiopian Jews sacrifice when doing an Aliyah?

A: Well Ethiopia is a very lovely country with wonderful views, so they sacrificed all that for horrible cities in Israel which are not attractive at all. The Ethiopians didn’t have buildings in Ethiopia so they were scared because of the steps and elevators. In Ethiopia they never had electricity and they never had water, but they didn’t have to pay Arnona, understand the water bill and pay Bituach and always be busy. In Ethiopia they could just relax and enjoy the seasons. They gave all that up for western culture which is for good also for progress. Now every Ethiopian has phone in their hand, but is it better? They gave up a very good life in terms of social relations, people listening to each other and respect for parents.

Q:  How did Yona manage to persuade all the Ethiopian Jews to come to Israel? Because we read that some of them were against it.

A:I don’t know about any Ethiopian Jews who didn’t want to come to Israel. I don’t know where you read it. They always prayed to Israel. I have written about fifty academic articles on Ethiopian Jews, One of them is “Gaaguim Le Yerushalaim” (longing for Jerusalem), and it shows how they prayed for Jerusalem and all the time the wanted to come to Jerusalem. But, there was opposition to Yona Bogale. There was one man In Addis Ababa called Tedesa Yaakov, whom I’ve also written about, he was also a student of Dr. Faithlovich. Tedesa was anti-Zionist, but that is one out of the whole all, because he lived in a big city and not in the villages. All the Ethiopian Jews wanted to come to Israel, but some of them objected oppose Yona Bogale, which is the same with any leader. Yona was a leader and some of the Ethiopian Jews didn’t like him

and even wrote a petition against him, maybe that’s what you read about. These people didn’t like him and didn’t agree to listen to him and to come to Israel although they all wanted to. At the end’ most of these people made an Aliyah because it was their dream too.

Q:  What did Yona sacrifice in order to fulfil his dream?
A: He sacrificed a lot. His wife refused to come with him to Israel. His wife was from Addis Ababa, she sometimes came to visit but she insisted on living there, in the good life in a capital city. So, Yona lived alone here and when I visited him he was alone. Altough he had children, they never seemed to be around. He really sacrificed his family for the Aliyah of Ethiopian Jews.

Q: Which of Bogale’s acts do you think is the most inspiring?
A: I think that the most inspiring is that Yona Bogale managed to retain his “Ethiopianess”, to be Ethiopian, and yet he could mediate between his community and the western world, which other Ethiopians couldn’t do. I was friendly with a Kes, Ethiopian leader. he has thousands of people who follow him, but he is so “Ethiopian” that other Israelis can’t talk to him and relate to him. Yona Bogale was brilliant because he was both Ethiopian and he could talk to other non- Ethiopian people easily. For example, In the 1980s when I made an appointment with Yona at 10:00 in some place, he was ready at 10:00. When I made an appointment with other Ethiopians at the same year, they were ready a few hours later or even in another day, because they have no idea of western time. So, Yona Bogale was a brilliant mediator.

Q: Do you think Yona has had an impact to this day or did he influence only his generation?
A: I think he has an influence to this day because younger Ethiopian people at your age keep writing to me or phoning me, they are now interested in their roots, which the people my age were less interested in. So the young people are looking for a positive person they can they can admire and lot of people are very interested in Yona. It was very interesting for me that you told me to look in the Wikipedia because somebody has written that, and it must be either his children or grandchildren or young people who are interested. There are loads of Ethiopians in our websites now and they keep looking for something positive in their community. One of them is Tamarat Emanual and another one is Yona Bogale. Also, in 2008 there was a big celebration for Yona Bogale not arranged by me. I was ivited and they even did a film on him.

When Yona Bogale died, they turned to me from the journal “Paamim” which is an Israeli journal from Yad Ben Zvi and asked if I could write Hesped or a little brief thing about his life so people will remember what he have done.

Q: If you were Yona, would you have done anything differently?
A: Yes, I would have brought up my children closer to me. I felt that his children had strayed from him. But that’s what happened with leaders, because you don’t always manage to do everything in life.

Report of presentation

On January 5th, we made a presentation in front of our classmates and teacher on Yona Bogale.

There are a number of things we wanted to achieve by making our presentation in this way. First of all, we wanted to make a presentation in order to teach the class about this amazing person. We involved in the presentation many pictures and a small amount of text to make our classmates concentrated and remember the facts easily. In addition, we made a Kahoot quiz because it is a fun way to test the classmates about important details in Yona’s life.

In order to prepare this presentation, we followed a number of steps. To begin with, we met and designed the presentation based on the Biography we had written before. In addition, we wrote the script which we have learned by heart to the presentation. Finally, we created the Kahoot quiz based on the presentation and the script.

The presentation in the class was done in the following way. Firstly, we started with our presentation. Then, the class played the Kahoot quiz which we had made. At the end of the presentation, all of the classmates were given gummy worms. We chose to give them gummy worms because it was both tasty and connected to Ethiopia in its colors and symbol to nature.

Immediately after the presentation, we received feedback from our teacher and pears.Our classmates said:

Dekel: “Your presentation was interesting, but sometimes fast for me”.

Ran: “I was amazed and interested in your presentation and learnt a lot.”

Yoav: “In my opinion, I would have liked to read more text”.

Denis: “The language was accessible and I understood everything”.

Gil: “I loved the idea that you chose an uncommon person, and I think it’s important.”

Roee: “The presentation was interesting and the game was fun”.

Nevo: “The people that other groups chose to make their project on were European, American or Israelis. None of them was from Africa as Yona which I didn’t know about him, and I like learning new things”.

Aviya: “I never heard about this person, and I like to learn new things. Sometimes you talked too fast or too slowly”.

Our teacher Miriam said: “You put a lot of effort in the presentation. You knew the material perfectly, by heart. Also, we learnt new things about this amazing person”.

We learnt several things about Yona Bogale while doing this section. To begin with, we learnt that even though Yona wasn’t a very well-known person, he made huge efforts to bring new society, new culture to Israel. That was his community, the Beta Israel. In addition, we learnt that Yona managed to fulfil his dream, of making a mass Aliyah of his community.

Yona sacrificed his whole personal life to make that dream come true.

Looking back on our presentation, there are several things that could have been done differently. First and foremost, we should have talked in a slower and more constant speech rate. In addition, we could have added more text in some slides without text at all, so the classmates could have “followed” as we spoke.

In conclusion, we really enjoyed doing this presentation about Yona Bogale. We, our teacher and classmates learnt a lot about Yona Bogale and his amazing and interesting life. We enjoyed teaching new things about a person our class hadn’t known before.

Bibliography

“Yona Bogale, (1908-1987)”, Jewish Virtual Library

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/yona-bogale-jewish-virtual-library

“BETA ISRAEL STUDENTS WHO STUDIED ABROAD 1905-1935”, Shalva Weil

http://portal.svt.ntnu.no/sites/ices16/Proceedings/Volume%201/Shalva%20Weil-%20Beta%20Israel%20Students%20Who%20Studied%20Abroad%201905-1935.pdf

“יונה בוגלה ממנהיגו ביתא ישראל”, שלוה וייל

https://www.ybz.org.il/_Uploads/dbsAttachedFiles/Article_33.8(1).pdf

“יונה בוגלה”

https://pop.education.gov.il/tchumey_daat/moledet_hevra_ezrahut/yesodi/noseem_nilmadim/yuna-bogla/

“Yona Bogale – Biography”, JewAge

http://www.jewage.org/wiki/en/Article:Yona_Bogale_-_Biography