Every morning, people enter the workplace with much more than a job title, employee card or job description.

They bring with them the way they grew up, the language they learned to understand authority, their family story and the culture they came from. They bring the experiences that shaped them, their fears, strengths, sensitivities and intuitions. In many ways, it is the backbone of the generations they carry with them.

But in many organizations, even before they sit down at the table, they already know what should be left out:

Don’t talk too much about your background.
Not to bring a voice that is too different, too personal or too “sectarian”.
Don’t sound too sensitive or too complex.
Not to reveal that personal, family or cultural identity also affects the way they think, communicate or make decisions.

This is how one of the quietest losses in organizations is created: people come to work – but do not bring themselves fully.

Professionalism does not erase identity

One of the silent assumptions in the world of work is that to be professional, we must be “neutral”. Leave the personal story out of the room, and speak in clean, uniform and measured language – one that does not reveal too much.

There is a certain logic in this. A workplace is not a limitless space, and every person is required to be responsible, mature and considerate.

But professionalism does not erase identity.

A person does not become more professional when he hides what shaped him. He does not become a better manager when he cuts himself off from his roots, and he does not become a better employee when he invests enormous energy in trying to look “like everyone else.”

Sometimes, it is precisely the story that a person brings with him that is the source of his value: his unique way of thinking, empathy, the ability to recognize cultural nuances, and the ability to hold complexity in places where others see only black and white.

The question is not how to reduce the person to fit the organization.
The question is how to build an organization broad enough to fully accommodate the person.

The price of partial attendance

When people feel they have to hide parts of themselves, they don’t go away – they just don’t initiate. They continue to work, meet goals and participate in meetings, but something of their presence is extinguished.

They are less proactive.
Fewer bring unpolished ideas.
They ask less pointed questions.
Fewer dare to say that something is not working.

The organization sees a functioning employee, but loses the whole person.

And this is a deep loss, because organizations don’t just need working hands. They need people who feel they have a place; To people who are able to bring not only performance, but also courage, belonging, responsibility and initiative.

Partial presence can hold a routine. It cannot build a truly competitive organization – one that knows how to innovate, make brave decisions and retain good people over time.

The whole person is not a threat to the organization

Sometimes managements fear that if they allow room for identity, diversity or the personal story of the employees, the organization will lose focus, professionalism or uniformity.

In my opinion, the opposite is true.

When people are not required to invest energy in hiding, conforming or constantly reading “what is allowed to bring and what should be modest”, this energy is released for the benefit of the organization.

It becomes an initiative.

for innovation.

for cooperation.

and the willingness to take responsibility.

Competitive organizations are not made up of people who only follow instructions. They are made up of people who think, propose, debate, identify opportunities and act out of a true commitment to shared success.

When an employee feels that his voice is legitimate and that there is also a place for the life experience, culture and perspective he brings with him, the chances of him contributing his full abilities – and not just the minimum required of him – increase.

But for this to happen, it is not enough to make a statement about diversity, inclusion or authenticity.

Leadership is required that is able to hold complexity, manage diversity constructively, and translate the sense of belonging into an organizational culture that produces trust, performance and competitive advantage.

Between belonging and connectedness

Many organizations measure “employee connectedness” in surveys and reports, and try to improve it through benefits, company days and HR processes.

But real connectedness doesn’t start with a benefit.
It starts with belonging.

Belonging is the feeling that I am not only in the organization, but that I have a place within it. That I don’t just fill a role, but bring unique value because of who I am.

When there is belonging, the employee brings more of himself.
When there is no belonging, even a seemingly high connectedness can remain external and fragile.

Therefore the important question is not only whether the employees are connected to the tasks.
The question is whether they feel they belong to the space.

What can leadership do?

The whole person only enters the room when the leadership actually allows it.

The manager is the one who creates the climate where people understand what is allowed to be brought and what should be hidden.

Is it permissible to say: “I see it differently”?
Is it allowed to talk about differences without fear of being “punished”?
Is it allowed to bring a point of view that stems from another life story?
Is it allowed to be both professional and humane?

Leadership that seeks to see the whole person does not give up standards. On the contrary – it connects high demands with a safer human space.

She understands that trust does not start with demanding the employees to “open up”, but with leadership that is able to be present.

The whole person as a source of value

When a person brings more than himself, the organization gains assets that would not have come up otherwise: new perspectives, the ability to translate between worlds, resilience, sensitivity, intuition and a unique way of seeing reality.

The question is not how to delete the identity.
The question is how to build a language that allows identity to become presence, responsibility and contribution.

This article was born from the world of the content of the lecture “No masks”. As I write in my book “A scarred stoneAbout the power that comes from loyalty to the personal story, the same is true in organizations: a strong organization is an organization that knows how to see the person behind the job.

Why do organizations lose when people are forced to leave parts of themselves out of the room?

A person who is required to leave large parts of himself outside the room, cannot really bring his full contribution.

Not because he is not talented.
Not because he is not committed.
Except that part of his energy is directed to concealment, adjustment and reduction.

The future of organizations will also be built from the ability to see people in their entirety. Because the whole person is not an emotional luxury; It is an infrastructure for trust, belonging and performance.

And when a complete person enters the room – the organization also gets a chance to be complete and more competitive.

הפוסט The complete person in the workplace הופיע לראשונה ב-Fentay Maharat-Alamu.

There are stories that history begins to tell only from the moment they become drama: the moment of departure, the moment of danger, the moment of crossing.

This happened more than once with the story of the Beta Israel community. For decades, the Israeli narrative reduced us to the “journey story”: the hardships of Sudan, the heroism of the march, the pain, the loss and the tormented longing.

But before there was a journey – there was life.

There were villages. There were houses. There was faith. There was a living and rooted value system. There were traditions, prayers, families, women, children, elders and a whole community that carried a deep and ancient Jewish-African world.

In my eyes, the story before the ascension is not a marginal prologue. He is the heart from which everything came.

It’s time to stop telling us only through the “no” and the lack of absorption, and start telling us also through the huge “yes” we brought with us.

Osmosis of identity: the village as a space of power

Life in the Jewish villages in Ethiopia was not just a setting. They were the space where our identity was created.

There, identity was not conveyed in lectures or heritage classes. She passed by osmosis.

As children, we lived on the periphery of the adult world. We were not the center, but we breathed the rhythm of the house: the smell of the beaver, the sounds of prayer, the respect for the elders, the communal responsibility and the sense of belonging that was built not from big words, but from a whole life.

A child growing up in this world didn’t have to learn who he was. He was part of a living continuity.

It is a non-verbal knowledge that is engraved in the body. A memory that was assimilated in us even before it received words.

The women: the silent spine

One of the most missing parts of the pre-aliyah story is the voice of the women.

They were not always in the center of the official stage, but they were the backbone that held everything together.

Women who carried a house.
Women who have borne children.
Women who bore silence.
Women who carried a deep-rooted faith that kept families whole even in impossible conditions.

Their leadership was not always recorded in documents, but it was one of the most profound forms of leadership: the leadership of the everyday. The ability to have a home, memory, faith and community – even when the road is cracked.

Out of the desire to give voice to this feminine, rooted and intergenerational world, my book was born “A scarred stone“.

I wanted to restore these women to their place in the story – not as background characters, but as the driving force of the community.

Longing as a compass, not as a weakness

The longing for Jerusalem was not an inhibiting nostalgic emotion. He was an organizing force.

He gave the community direction. He maintained a sense of belonging even when Jerusalem was far from sight.

The journey to Israel did not begin at the moment of leaving the village. He started much earlier – in every prayer, in every holiday, in every story, in every look that was carried to the horizon.

These acquisitions were the backbone of generations. They kept us upright even when the road cracked.

Why is this amendment necessary today?

When the story begins only with the “wound” of the immigration and absorption, the community is perceived mainly through pain, lack and distress. These are real parts of the story, but they are not the whole story.

The correction I would like to propose gives us back the depth:

We didn’t come from empty.
We didn’t come because of a lack of culture.
We didn’t just come out of distress.

We came from an ancient and living Jewish-African world. from tradition. out of faith from a community structure. From women and men who led whole lives even before their story met the State of Israel.

When the full story is told, the perspective of the next generation also changes.

Our children do not just inherit a story of hardship. They also inherit a story of resilience, depth and continuity. They don’t need to reinvent themselves. They can reconnect with the sources of power that already exist within them.

return the missing chapter

“A scarred stone” is where Nagasti’s personal story meets our collective story.

This is an attempt to look back at the life that was there before. Not as nostalgia for the past, but as a way to the future.

Before there was an ascension, there was life.
Before there was a journey, there were roots.
Before the story reached Israel, it already carried a deep, ancient and living voice within it.

The time has come for Israelis to learn to listen to this voice – not as a story of “others”, but as an integral part of the mosaic of all of us.

To get to know the world behind “scarred stone”.“

This article is part of the content world of “A scarred stone“, a novel about the women of Beta Israel in Ethiopia, about the life before the journey, and about the power absorbed in memory.

הפוסט We did not come from nothing – the missing chapter in the Israeli story הופיע לראשונה ב-Fentay Maharat-Alamu.

There are stories that a person carries inside for years, not knowing if the day will come when he will be able to say them out loud. They do not disappear. they are waiting They change shape in silences that hang in the room, or in sentences that mom says casually.

the book “scarred stone” Born out of deep promise to my mother; A promise that was not signed with big words, but lived among us for years like a heartbeat that does not need to be explained. My mother wanted the story of her life to be told – that the way, the faith and the strength with which she held a whole life would not remain only in the family memory.

When the story that is burned into the memory becomes a voice

For years I did not dare approach this story.

Not because I didn’t want to, but because I wanted too much. The story was too close, too expensive, too big. I feared that I would not be able to bear the full complexity of it; That I wouldn’t know how to write the pain without reducing the intensity, or touch the woman behind the story, my mother, without losing the special peace and wisdom she had.

There are stories that scare us to write precisely because they live inside us. They are found in language, in memories, in a look, and in things that are not always explicitly said.

Before writing there was listening

My writing did not start in front of the page. It started much earlier – in those years when I was on the periphery of the world of adults, absorbing the stories from the air around the beaver ceremony.

My mother’s story was already burned into me. I breathed it all my life, without knowing that I was collecting materials for creation.

At some point I realized that this story is not just mine, and not just my mother’s.

The untold story

Through my meeting with audiences in Israel and around the world, I discovered to what extent the story of the Beta Israel community is still not known in its full depth. Many knew the story of the immigration and the journey, but much less the life that was there before: the home, the tradition, the faith, and the women who held a deep and rooted Jewish-African world.

There I realized that the silence could no longer bear what was entrusted to it.

When fear stopped controlling me

The fear did not go away. He just stopped managing me.

I realized that such stories are never written with complete confidence. They are written out of responsibility and love. That’s how he was born “scarred stone”: out of a desire to give voice to female and intergenerational power. A private story that carries within it a broad echo of identity and belonging.

For me, writing is an act of repetition:

Restoring a voice to those who have not always been heard.
Returning depth to a story that is sometimes told only from the outside.
and returning a place to women who have lived their whole lives without asking for recognition.

This is an attempt to keep the promise to my mother – not to make her a flat figure of heroism, but to allow her to be a whole woman: with cracks and strength, with faith and a voice.

Not as a burden. as a voice

There is a moment when a story that was too big begins to take shape. Not because it is smaller, but because the person carrying it is finally ready to approach it.

“scarred stone” is that moment for me.
The moment I realized that the story absorbed in me as a child wanted to go out into the world.

Not as a burden.
as a voice

הפוסט The promise to my mother that became a book הופיע לראשונה ב-Fentay Maharat-Alamu.

The voice that learned to be “comfortable” with the environment

Some women did not lose their voice in one day. They just learned, slowly and quietly, to soften him. They have learned to preface any statement with an apology, to smile so that the sentence does not sound too sharp, and to offer an idea in the form of a question even when they know exactly what is true.

Over the years, this softening disguises itself as politeness, but beneath the surface, the price is heavy: little by little, the woman stops checking what is right for you to say, and starts checking how not to burden, not to threaten, not to anger and not to stand out.

Thus her voice becomes less her own, and more the softened version that the world asked her to be.

an equation Pleasure = to be loved

From a young age, women learn that their voice needs filtering. A girl who is too opinionated may be called “insolent”, an assertive woman may be called “difficult”, and a woman who refuses to shrink may be perceived as “problematic”.

The unwritten lesson is simple: to stay loved, you should be less sharp. To stay desirable, don’t take up too much space.

But a woman is not born to be a comfortable version of herself. The world may gain a nicer woman when she softens herself, but it loses the wisdom, intuition, depth and truth that only she has.

What happens when you stop wanting?

When a woman stops wanting and makes her voice heard, the first thing that happens is not noise – but a silence of clarity.

She stops disappearing while listening to others, and starts being present. It doesn’t get harder; It becomes more accurate. It does not lose softness; She stops using it to hide her truth.

And it does not imitate power. She brings a different power: the power of active listening, systemic vision, intuition, boundaries and inner loyalty.

The trap of imitation

Many women think that in order to lead they must adopt existing models of power: hide sensitivity, replace intuition with control, speak in a language that is not always natural to them, and prove that they know how to “play the game”.

But the real revolution is not being able to play a game built without you. The revolution is realizing that your clarity is part of your leadership.

When you stop softening your voice, you don’t have to choose between softness and strength. You begin to understand that they are not a contradiction. They can stem from the same source: a woman who knows who she is, what she brings, and does not ask permission to be present.

An unapologetic voice changes the room

When a woman speaks from an inner value, the dynamic in the room changes. She no longer rushes to fill the silence to reassure others. She does not diminish her knowledge so as not to embarrass those around her. She does not present her request as if it is a favor that someone grants her. And she doesn’t wait for them to give her permission to take a seat.

A clear female voice does not only serve the woman speaking. He also opens up a possibility for other women in the room. He tells them: You can be bright without being tough. Sensitive without shrinking. Unapologetically present.

Women who carry the world in silence and voice

in my book “scarred stone”, I return to silences of women who carried generations on their shoulders. Their silence was not always a weakness; Sometimes it was a survival tool. A way to keep, to hold, to continue, to pass another day in a world that did not always give them room to speak with their full voice.

But today, our question is different: how do we turn our voice into a tool that will help us in life? How do we stop using silence just to survive, and start using voice to choose, lead, influence and take a place?

Taking space means to stop acting as a temporary guest in your life.

And Hina asked me about you

Where are you still softening a sentence that you know is true? Where are you apologizing before you asked? Where do you say “I’m not comfortable” when you actually mean “I’m afraid to take up space”?

Choosing a voice doesn’t have to start with a shout. She can start with one quiet, clear and stable sentence.

A sentence that says:
i am here

This article is part of the content world of Fentay Around women, voice, presence and the courage to take a place.

הפוסט What happens when a woman stops wanting and makes her voice heard? הופיע לראשונה ב-Fentay Maharat-Alamu.

He didn’t get there because we sat down for spontaneous “conversations”, but because I was there, on the periphery of her life. I absorbed her world through “overhearing”, from her conversations with her friends, from the arguments and laughter around the beaver ceremony. Her story was not conveyed to me in deliberate words; He is simple Absorbed in memory.

Life is on the edge of the circle

Imagine the bona ceremony in Ethiopia: the smell of the roasted coffee beans, the woman who pours the thin stream into the small cups, and the human circle formed around her. In Ethiopia, the spaces were open. There were no thick walls or doors that closed. As children, we were always there – playing in the corner, helping with something small, or just staying on the outskirts.

We were not the center of the ceremony, no one tried to ‘make the conversation accessible’ to us or engage us. Precisely from this place, on the edge of the circle, we could absorb things as they really are: the nuances, the values, what makes the big ones laugh or scares them. The emotional map of the community was transferred to us simply because we were allowed to be present in the space, hear and assimilate. This is non-verbal knowledge, a memory that is assimilated into the body without even intending to learn it.

The hidden price of the walls

In Israel, the physics of the home has changed. We moved to divided spaces: walls, corridors, rooms and doors. The modern apartment gives us something valuable – privacy and quiet – but alongside this achievement, it is important to recognize the price that has been charged to us in return: we have lost the ability to convey identity by “osmosis”.

Once the space is crossed, the hidden “feed pipe” is cut off. The family memory, which once passed in a continuous “sonic flow”, becomes something mediated, artificial and forced. We find ourselves “reading” a child to tell him a story, “sitting” him down to hear a legacy, or hoping that the education system will do the work for us. But can a “lesson” on tradition really replace what was once simply absorbed into memory while life happened? The result is that we won privacy, but we got a fragmented memory – legacy lessons instead of a pulsing legacy.

look for the complementary mechanism

The question is not whether we should tear down the walls and go back to living in an open yard, but how we create a complementary mechanism within the existing reality. If the physics of the house no longer allows the story to “spill” between the rooms, we need to consciously create opportunities for co-existence – not one where the child is the center and is activated, but one where he is simply present on the periphery while the adults’ lives are happening.

Leaving an “acoustic door open” is not a technical matter, but a decision to allow our lives to “flow” into them. This means allowing them to hear us having a deep conversation with a friend, arguing about values, laughing about memories or simply walking within our culture, without trying to “make it accessible” to them.

We need to find a way to bring this circularity back into the modern apartment. Maybe it won’t happen every day, but it has to happen enough so that they don’t have to “learn” who they are from the books, but just breathe it in from the air, just like I breathed in My mother’s story Without her telling me it even once officially.

Is it time to examine our home not only according to comfort and design, but according to its ability to be a sounding board for the story we want to pass on?

הפוסט Absorb identity: do the walls separate us from our story? הופיע לראשונה ב-Fentay Maharat-Alamu.

The longing that belongs to us all

There are longings that do not belong to just one person. They go through family, community, language, prayer and looking to a place you’ve never seen – yet you know it’s a part of you.

For the Beta Israel community, the holiday of the Tsiggad was never just a time on the calendar. He was a language. A language of longing, of faith, of memory and of home. A language that said: Even if we are far from Jerusalem, Jerusalem is not far from us.

In my eyes, the mosque is not just a dream of one community. It is a gateway to a much broader Israeli conversation about the question: What is a home?

A longing that is not a weakness

In a world that sanctifies fast forward movement, longing is sometimes seen as something inhibiting, as if the person who misses remains stuck in the past. But the holiday of the mosque teaches us that there are longings that do not seek to take us back – they seek to remind us of who we are.

The longing for Jerusalem was not only longing for a geographical place. He was longing for a bigger story, within which a person knows his place. It is a longing that keeps a person upright even when the road is long. A longing that becomes a compass.

The zigged as a language of memory: what is burned into the mind without realizing it

The holiday of the mosque teaches us that memory is not only what we preserve from the past, but also the way in which we build the future. For generations, this memory was not only passed on in history lessons or books. He was burned through life itself.

As children, we were on the periphery of the world of praying adults. We were not the center, but we were there, on the side. Between the sounds of prayer, the smell of beaver and the continuous gaze of the elders towards Jerusalem, we absorbed the emotional map of the community.

This memory was assimilated into the body even before we knew how to call it by name. The mosque is a profound lesson in the power of a community to remember together – not only what happened, but where it belongs.

Multi-rooted Israeliness: not a zero-sum game

The Israeli challenge is not only to “live together”. The deeper challenge is to understand that identity is not a zero-sum game: bringing one root into the common house does not require the deletion of another.

At times, the Israeli story asked us to leave parts of our identity outside the door in order to come inside. But deep Israeliness is not built from erasure, but from the ability to hold plurality.

Hag Tsigd offers a model of complete success: the possibility of being part of the Israeli story not despite our roots, but through them.

Multi-rooted Israeliness is not a split identity – it is a richer identity. The shared house becomes more stable when everyone who enters it is not required to forget where they came from.

What can the mosque teach us today?

In an era where many feel torn or unmoored, the holiday of the Tsigd brings us back to a simple and profound question: what gives us an inner backbone?

The synagogue teaches that belonging is not created only by living in the same place. It is also created from the ability to share a memory, to listen to stories we have not yet known, and to agree that each community has its own way of carrying longing, faith and identity.

When one community’s holiday succeeds in opening a conversation about home, faith and identity – it stops being just a holiday of “others”. He becomes a mirror for all of us.

The connection to the world of “scarred stone”.“

My preoccupation with the mosque and the story before the ascension was born from the same place from which my book was born “scarred stone”: The desire to return depth to a story that is sometimes only told from the outside.

Before the journey there was life. There were houses. There were strong women. There was a belief that permeated the air. There was a community that longed for Jerusalem not as an abstract idea, but as a force that organizes an entire life.

When we tell this story fully, we allow the next generation to understand that belonging does not just begin at the moment of arrival. It begins much earlier – with a memory that did not give up, a belief that was preserved, and a voice that was passed down from generation to generation even when it was not always said in words.

So are we ready for a house with many roots?

The holiday of the mosque reminds us that home is not only the place we arrive at, but also the place we carry inside us along the way. He is the unbroken memory. He is the longing that became power. He is the faith that kept going even when it didn’t see the end of the road.

And perhaps the time has come to ask ourselves: are we mature enough, as Israelis, to stop being afraid of the other’s longing? Can we open the listening doors of our society more, so that each person can bring his roots to the common house – without losing himself along the way?

Get to know the story behind the roots

This article is part of the content world of “scarred stone” – A novel about the women of Beta Israel in Ethiopia, about memory, roots and intergenerational female power.

הפוסט The longing that built a home הופיע לראשונה ב-Fentay Maharat-Alamu.

Nagasti was not born the day I sat down to write. She was not the result of plot planning, a literary exercise or a technical decision by a writer looking for a heroine. In the deepest sense, she was there long before I had chapters, a plot, or a name for the book.

She lives in the conversations I absorbed in my childhood, in my mother’s stories that were absorbed in me almost without me knowing, in the silences between sentences, and in the gaze of women who knew how to carry an entire world on their shoulders without making the pain a headline.

I always knew that if I wrote my first book, she would be at the center of it. Not as a character meant to “represent” a community, nor as a flat symbol of a strong woman, but as one woman, private, complex, vulnerable, stubborn and complete, through whom the story must be told.

Nagasti was born from my mother, but she is not a copy of her. She carries something of her spirit, her nobility, her pains and her way of dealing with life. And at the same time, she was also born from other women in the community; From women I’ve seen, from women I’ve heard about, and from women who didn’t get someone to write their name.

In this sense, Nagasti is both a single woman and a collective woman. A literary figure, but one in which many will be able to recognize something from themselves, from their mothers, from their grandmothers, or from the women who supported entire families without calling it leadership.

Queen without a crown

The choice of the name Nagasti, which means my queen, is not accidental. This is my mother’s original name, so choosing it was an act of personal loyalty. But the Nagasti of the book is not a queen in the external sense. She doesn’t have a crown, she doesn’t have a palace, and she doesn’t have a world that is quick to recognize her position.

Her kingdom is different. This is inner nobility. The way a woman carries her broken bones without losing her spine. The way she continues to walk even when life forces her to say goodbye, to lose, to be silent, to believe, to be angry, to miss and to choose again.

It was important to me that Nagasti not only be “strong”. This word, standing alone, can turn women into characters who are not allowed to break. Nagasti is strong, but she is also weak. She believes, but also hurts. She is stubborn, but also vulnerable. She carries within her mothers, wisdom of life, restrained anger and deep longing for the girls she lost.

This is a woman who faced severe losses at a very young age, with pain that could have collapsed her world, and yet she carried on. Not because it was not broken, but because even after the break something alive remained in it. Something that refused to go away.

One woman who carries many women’s questions

The heroine of the story, Nagasti, is deeply rooted in the world of Beta Israel: in the Jewish villages in Ethiopia, in life before the Aliyah, in faith, in relationships, in female strength, in pain, in scars and in silence. But from the first moment I wanted the readers to meet her as a whole woman: a woman with a body, memory, desire, loss, faith, anger, longing and a voice that wants to be heard.

I wanted her to be seen as a woman who bears the question of what happens when fate and choice collide. A woman who lives in the tension between faith and pain. A woman who learns what a voice is in a world that teaches her to be silent. A woman who moves between the dictates of society and her inner truth.

Nagasti’s questions grow out of a very specific place, but they don’t just stay there. They are questions of many women: how do you continue after a loss? How do we stay true to ourselves within a home, family, community and tradition? Where is the line between acceptance and self-renunciation? And how does a woman find her voice when she has learned for years to protect herself precisely through silence?

The transition where she started breathing

There are moments in writing when a character ceases to be an idea and begins to breathe. For me, one of those moments revolved around Nagasti’s transition from her childhood home to her new life after her marriage.

This is a moment of threshold. A moment when a young woman separates from the world she knows and enters another house, another family, other rules, other looks. She does not leave behind only a geographical place. She leaves a version of herself.

I wanted to understand what happens to a woman inside at a moment like this. What happens to her body, to her silence, to the way she suddenly realizes that her life does not belong to her alone. What happens when she has to relearn her place in the world, not through big words, but through looks, roles, expectations and unwritten boundaries.

It was there that Nagasti began to become clear to me. Not as a heroine moving within a plot, but as a woman crossing a threshold. And every woman who has crossed a threshold in her life – wedding, birth, loss, migration, separation, change or a new beginning – knows that a threshold is not just a transition from one place to another. It is a moment when you need to understand who you will be on the other side.

Between silence and sound

One of Nagasti’s deepest conflicts is the tension between silence and voice. Not simple silence, not simple voice.

In her world, silence can be a tool of survival. A way to maintain dignity. A way not to aggravate pain. A way to protect something fragile. But that silence can also imprison. It can alienate a woman from herself, turn pain into a thing that has no language, and make her live a whole life with her truth remaining inside.

Nagasti also moves between fate and choice. There are things that are imposed on her by the force of time, society, family and circumstances. But in all these she has moments of choice. Sometimes very small, almost invisible. Still, these are the moments when a woman begins to regain ownership of her life.

It also ranges between faith and pain. To me, this is one of the most human places in her character. Faith does not erase pain. Sometimes she lives next to him. Sometimes she struggles with it. Sometimes she leans on him. Nagasti does not believe because life was easy for her. She believes in a life that has often confronted her with abysses.

Why was it important for me to write it now?

Many times the story of the Beta Israel community is told through the drama of the journey to Israel: the road, Sudan, the danger, the persecutions, the heroism. This is an important and defining story, but it is not the whole story.

Before the journey there was life.

There were Jewish villages in Ethiopia. There were houses. There were women. There were relationships, loves, jealousy, wisdom, pain, births, losses, faith, silence and deep community resilience. There were women who lived their whole lives without asking for recognition, without being written about, and without anyone putting them in the center of the stage.

Nagasti is my key to this door. Through her I could enter the world before the immigration not as a historical explanation, but as real life. Through her eyes, her body, her pain, her choices and the way she keeps walking, you can see a whole world that has remained too long on the sidelines of the story.

When I write it, I’m not just writing a novel. I keep a promise: to restore depth to a story that has been told too many times from the outside. To give space to women who were not always heard, but without them no story would last.

The figure that refused to remain transparent

The heroine of the story, Nagasti, refused to remain transparent. Not in the sense that she shouts to be seen, but in a deeper sense: her very existence as a complete, complex character with an inner world is a refusal to remain on the margins.

She is not just a mother. is not just a wife. is not just a member of the community. Is not just a woman who has been through pain. She is a woman with memory, desire, faith, anger, longing, nobility and a wound. A woman who cannot be reduced to one role or one story.

And that, in my eyes, is the strength of the literary. He can take a seemingly “marginal” character within a big story, and show that she is a whole world in herself. He can restore a face, body and voice to women that history has not always known how to see.

Nagasti reminds each of us to ask: What inside me is bigger than the story they told about me? What voice is waiting to break out of the protected silence I adopted for myself? And women in my family carried a whole world without me knowing to ask them in time?

What Nagasti wants to remind us

In the end, Nagasti was born from my memory, but she doesn’t just stay there. She is a literary character, but she was born from the deepest truth I know: women carry the world.

I invite the readers to meet her between the pages of the book not only to read about “history”, but also to meet something of themselves. You are the woman who has been too silent. You are the one who lost and moved on. You are the one who carried pain without calling it by name. You are the one who learned to be strong, but still asks for a place to be whole.

Nagasti reminds us that our scars are not just signs of pain. They are also a living testimony of what survived. They remind us of the women in our family, the untold stories, and the voice that maybe it’s time to give it back its rightful place.

Because Nagasti is one character. But there are many women behind her. Women who carried an entire world, even when no one asked them to tell how they did it.

Get to know Nagasti up close

This article is a gateway to the world of “A scarred stone” – a novel about women, roots, memory and the courage to take a place.

הפוסט How was Nagasti born? The figure that refused to remain transparent הופיע לראשונה ב-Fentay Maharat-Alamu.

When the difference is there, but the language is missing

In many organizations diversity already exists: people from different backgrounds, different generations, different communication styles and diverse worldviews.

On paper, this sounds like enormous organizational potential—a richer, broader organization connected to more perspectives. But in practice, in many places, diversity is not experienced as wealth but as tension, avoidance and silent friction.

People sitting in the same room, but not really speaking the same language.

Is diversity the problem?
In my opinion, no.

Diversity is not the problem. The lack of language is the problem.

Diversity without language becomes caution

When an organization does not have a clear language to talk about diversity, people become wary.

They are careful to say what they really think.
Be careful to ask a question that will not sound “wrong”.
Be careful to bring in their background, story, or unique perspective.
Be careful not to be perceived as “difficult”, too sensitive, too different or inappropriate.

At first this caution can seem like politeness. But over time it turns into organizational silence which does not necessarily indicate harmony.

Sometimes this silence is a sign that people have stopped believing that there is a real space to talk.

The gap between the values ​​on the wall and the experience in the corridor

Almost every organization today knows how to say the right words: diversity, inclusion, belonging, connectedness, trust.

But true culture is not measured only by what the organization declares. It is measured by what people actually feel.

Is it allowed to bring another voice?
Is it allowed to talk about a cultural, identity or personal experience without it being perceived as “oversensitivity”?
Is it permissible to say that there is a gap between the declared values ​​and the everyday reality?
Is it allowed to raise a difficulty without paying a social or professional price for it?

When the language remains a password and does not become a working tool, mistrust is created.

Not because the organization did not mean well, but because it did not have a language that would translate the values ​​into reality.

Corporate language is not a password

Corporate language is no longer a presentation.
It is not an intra-organizational campaign.
And it is not a one-time diversity day.

Organizational language is the ability of management, managers and employees to speak in a mature, accurate and responsible manner about what is really happening between them.

It allows you to ask questions that are not always easy to ask:

Where do people feel they have to hide parts of themselves?
Which voices are heard more, and which voices are weakened?
Where does difference become a value, and where does it become a source of distance?
What do we not know how to say – and therefore continue to manage indirectly?

Good language does not obscure complexity.
It allows you to hold it without running away from it.

When there is no language, wrong translations are created

This is one of the most painful places in a diverse organization.

When there is no language that allows us to find out, we start second guessing each other. And these guesses become stories.

Some interpret silence as a lack of care.
Some interpret directly as aggression.
Some interpret caution as a lack of initiative.
There are those who interpret a different communication style as a lack of professionalism.
There are those who interpret pain or sensitivity as a personal problem, instead of understanding that there is a wider experience here.

This is how a hidden chain is created:
Guesses become stories.
The stories become fixed assumptions.
Assumptions become distance.
And the distance becomes over time an entire organizational culture.

Not because someone planned it that way.
But because there was no language to stop, find out, listen and re-translate.

Leadership is the ability to give a name to what is happening

Leadership is not just about knowing where the organization is going.
It is also knowing how to name what is happening on the road.

When leadership sees diversity, but does not give it a language, it leaves the organization to manage it alone – through insinuations, corridor conversations, avoidance, unspoken frustrations and sometimes burnout.

Connected leadership does something different.

She is not afraid of complexity.
She is in no hurry to cover it with a password.
She is ready to ask: what is really going on here between people?

This is leadership that understands that diversity is not just a matter of HR policy.

It is a matter of trust.
of belonging
of performance.
of being able to work together without each person feeling like they have to hide where they come from.

The whole person is not an obstacle to professionalism

One of the common mistakes in organizations is to think that a professional person is a person who leaves his identity outside the room.

But man does not come to work in parts.

He brings with him the way he grew up.
the language in which he learned to understand authority.
his attitude towards family, community, failure and success.
The story that brought him here.
his fears, intuitions, sensitivities and powers.

What a person carries with him is not necessarily a hindrance to professionalism. Sometimes, this is precisely the source of its value.

The question is not how to erase an identity to work better.
The question is how to build a language that allows identity to become presence, responsibility and contribution.

Turn diversity from a source of friction into a source of value

Variation becomes value only when the organization has the ability to hold it.

It is not enough to recruit people from different backgrounds.
It is not enough to present diverse images on the site.
It is not enough to say that everyone is welcome.

The question is what happens after they enter.

Do they feel they have a real place?
Does their voice matter?
Can they bring a different point of view without paying a price for it?
Do the managers know how to translate cultural, generational or identity gaps into constructive discourse?
Does the organization know how to learn from diversity – or just to indicate that it exists?

When there is language, difference can become a source of learning, creativity, trust and human innovation.

When there is no language, that difference itself can become a source of distance, suspicion and friction.

The connection to the world of Fentay

This article was born from the world of content of the strategic lecture “No masks”.

In my work with managements and organizations, I see again and again that the question is not whether there is diversity. The question is whether the organization has a language capable of holding it.

A language that allows managers to lead without remaining in passwords.
A language that allows employees to bring more than their voice and value.
A language that allows the organization to turn diversity from a source of caution – to a source of trust.

This is also the conversation that is at the heart of my work with organizations: how to create a space where people are not required to invest energy in hiding, but can bring more presence, initiative and real value to the table.

Language is the bridge

Diversity doesn’t go away by not talking about it.
It just goes under the surface.

It appears in misunderstandings.
cautiously.
at a distance
in erosion
In the gap between what the organization says and what people feel.

But when leadership builds a language, something begins to change.

People stop guessing.
Teams begin to understand each other better.
Managers get tools to handle complexity.
And the organization begins to turn what was once experienced as friction – into a source of learning, trust and belonging.

Diversity is not the problem.
The lack of language is the problem.
And the language is where the correction begins.

deepen the conversation in the organization

This article is part of the content world of Fentay around leadership, trust, diversity and belonging in organizations.

הפוסט Diversity is not the problem – lack of language is the problem הופיע לראשונה ב-Fentay Maharat-Alamu.

This picture was taken in the Netherlands, in one of those small moments that life places in front of us without prior preparation. I went running as I do many times, but half way the rain caught me by surprise. I didn’t plan to get wet, I didn’t go out looking for a symbolic moment, and I didn’t think anything special was going to happen. I just ran.

Then, right in the rain, a rainbow appeared.

I stood there wet, smiling, with wild hair and drops on my face, and I suddenly felt how little it sometimes takes to remember that we are alive. Not just functioning, not just enough, not just answering messages, having a house, job, family and expectations. but real animals. Presence in the body. breathing Feeling the air, the water, the light that suddenly enters through the clouds.

There are simple moments that bring us back to ourselves more than any big plan. running in the rain Hot coffee in silence. Walking without hurrying. A deep breath before the day begins. One look at the sky. These seem like small moments, but sometimes they actually remind us that there is a woman inside us who is not just meant to hold everyone’s life. There is a woman inside us who also has to live her own life.

choose for yourself within life itself

Many women grew up understanding that giving themselves space is a matter that needs to be justified. As if every hour they take for themselves is taken from someone else. As if rest, pleasure, movement, silence or personal time are luxuries that can only be requested after everything else has been taken care of.

But life teaches otherwise. A woman who does not give herself space slowly begins to disappear from her life. she is still there She works, cares, remembers, functions, holds. From the outside everything can look neat. But inside something is moving away. The voice becomes weaker, the body is more tired, the joy is less available, and the woman who was there before all the roles begins to be forgotten.

Choosing yourself is not giving up on others. To choose yourself is to stop giving the world an exhausted and reduced version of you. It is the understanding that your giving should not always come from emptying yourself. that you too are allowed to be a source from which life springs, and not just someone who pours it out to others until there is nothing left.

Putting yourself first doesn’t mean stop loving. He says to also love yourself within your love system. Understand that you are allowed to want, to rest, to go for a run, to sit quietly, to meet a friend, to write, to pray, to drink coffee slowly, or to choose one hour of the day when you belong to yourself. This is not a weakness. It is a deep responsibility towards yourself and towards the people you love.

The body knows before the head agrees

During that run in Holland, the body realized something even before the head could formulate it. He just kept moving. The rain fell, the clothes got wet, the air got cooler, but inside me there was a feeling of expansion. As if something in me remembered that I don’t have to wait for everything to be in order to feel alive.

Sometimes our body knows what we need long before the head agrees to admit it. He calls us through fatigue, through contraction, through restlessness, through pain, through a sudden longing for something we didn’t know how to name. We can continue to ignore it for a long time, continue to run through life without noticing that we are no longer really breathing. But the body knows. And he asks us to come back.

Sometimes this repetition does not require a revolution. She starts with a small step. go outside move. look up feel the wind get wet in the rain To remember that life is not only a list of tasks, but also a place where you can meet yourself.

The rainbow in the rain

The rainbow I saw did not stop the rain. She didn’t say I didn’t get wet, and didn’t make the road more comfortable. She just appeared inside him – and precisely because of that there was something so soothing about her.

There is an almost ancient meaning. It is not just colors in the sky. For many of us, a rainbow is a sign of promise. A reminder that even after rain, even in the midst of uncertainty, even when the road doesn’t look the way we planned – something is saved. Something wants to tell us that everything can still be clarified.

At that moment in Holland, when I stood wet in the middle of the run and saw the rainbow unfold above me, my heart relaxed. It was a magical sight by all accounts, but more than that – it was a deep inner feeling. As if life itself stopped for a moment and told me: you are on the right path.

Not because everything was perfect. Not because it didn’t rain. But precisely because a sign of light appeared in the rain.

And this is perhaps one of the most beautiful lessons of that moment: we don’t have to wait for everything to work out in order to choose ourselves. Sometimes precisely when we go out on the road without knowing exactly what will happen, precisely when we agree to move, get wet, breathe and be present – something appears that restores our trust.

You don’t have to wait for the house to be perfect, for work to calm down, for the children to grow up, for the tasks to be finished, or for life to clear up by itself. Life will not always clear up for us. We have to make a place for ourselves in them.

Right now. in the rush. within the requirements. within the imperfect period. in the rain

Choosing ourselves is not a big one-time event. It is built in the small moments when we stop pushing ourselves to the end of the list. At the moment when we ask: what do I need now? What will bring me back to myself? What will allow me to breathe? What will remind me that I’m not just a role, not just a responsibility, not just someone that everyone is used to that is always there?

Sometimes the answer comes as a run in the rain. And sometimes, if we look up in time, it comes as a rainbow.

The best version of you

We are used to thinking that the best version of ourselves is the one that is more sufficient, more successful, looks better, functions better and gives more. But perhaps the best version of us is actually the one that comes back to be present. The one who feels her body, listens to her voice, recognizes when she is tired, understands that her joy is not a luxury, and does not apologize for her need for time.

When a woman regains herself, she does not become less good to others. vice versa. It becomes more real, deeper, calmer, more alive. Her giving varies. It no longer comes only out of duty or pleasure, but from a place where there is breath again.

Maybe this is one of the truths that many women need to hear over and over again: you don’t have to disappear to be good. You don’t have to empty yourself to be generous. You don’t have to put yourself last to prove love. Sometimes the best thing you can do for the people around you is to reconnect with yourself.

One moment a day

A rainbow may not always appear mid-run in the Netherlands. There may not always be time to run, stop or go out for a whole hour. But you can always start from one small moment a day. ten minutes walk. A cup of coffee without a phone. A song in headphones. Short writing in a notebook. A quiet shower. prayer deep breath One look at the sky.

The simple things are much more available to us than we think, but they require us to agree to choose them. Agree not to reject ourselves again. Agree to see our needs as a part of life, not as a hindrance to it.

In this picture I see a woman wet from rain, smiling at life without prior preparation. I see a moment when I didn’t have to prove anything, not to be enough, not to possess, not to be strong for someone. just be

And maybe this is the blessing I want to leave to every woman who reads: that you choose yourself before you forget the way to you. May you find simple moments that take your breath back. Remember that the rain is not always a hindrance – sometimes it is an invitation. And that you know that you are allowed to be first in your life, to return to the world more complete, more alive, more yours.

This article is part of the content world of Fentay Around women, voice, presence and the courage to take a place.

הפוסט Run in the rain – choose yourself as air to breathe הופיע לראשונה ב-Fentay Maharat-Alamu.

In many organizations, people come to work with two operating systems.

One is visible: professional, polite, meets goals.
The second works below the surface: caution, satisfaction, and a constant attempt to understand which parts of myself should be left out of the room.

We sometimes call it professionalism, but in many cases it is a profound waste of organizational energy. When an employee invests his best efforts in impression management and concealment, he is less free to create, take initiative, belong and bring real value.

Leadership without masks It is a management concept that begins with the courage of a leader to be truly present – not only as a management function, but as a whole person.

Trust is built on what is allowed to be said in the room

Everyone is talking about trust, diversity, inclusion and connectedness. But trust is not born from a presentation of values, and it does not exist just because the organization has written that it puts the person at the center.

Trust is born in the small moments when a person realizes that he is allowed to bring more of himself to the table:

It is allowed to bring an imperfect idea.
It is allowed to bring another voice, rooted or cultural, that does not sound like everyone else.
You are allowed to ask.
It is allowed not to know.
It is allowed to say that something is not working.

People don’t judge the corporate culture by what is written on the company’s website. They test her according to what is allowed to happen inside the room.

Is the manager a space of authority – or a space of reduction?

What do you leave outside the room?

One of the critical questions for management is not only who sits around the table, but what he has to leave out.

Does the employee leave out the story that brought him this far?
His cultural background?
His unique way of thinking?
The sensitivity, intuition and experience gained throughout his life?
Do you have the courage to say that something is not working?

When people are required to erase parts of themselves in order to be considered professional, the organization loses the added value that was born precisely from diversity.

Leadership without masks seeks to create Complete success – one in which the person succeeds because of who he is, and not in spite of who he is.

Diversity is not a problem – lack of language is the problem

The friction in organizations does not necessarily stem from the difference itself: cultural, generational, gender, professional or value.

The friction often arises when the organization does not have a language capable of holding this diversity.

Present leadership builds this language: a language where one can talk about identity, belonging, trust and gaps without fear. A language that makes it possible to see the whole person without giving up standards, responsibility and performance.

This is not a “soft” language in the weak sense of the word.
It is a deep management language that builds organizational resilience.

Courage to be present: authority with a backbone

Being present does not mean giving up control, revealing everything or turning the organization into a limitless space.

To be present means to be connected to an inner spine that does not need masks to lead.

When a leader brings clarity alongside humanity, he does not lose authority – he deepens it. An authority that rests on integrity, listening, consistency and clarity is an authority that people can trust.

And in a world of work where the new generation is looking for meaning, belonging and personal vision beyond the paycheck – this is no longer a nice addition. This is an administrative infrastructure.

The connection to the world of Fentay

This article was born from the strategic lecture “No masks”.

In my work with managements, I see again and again that the key to a living organization is not only a good strategy, but a culture where the whole person is not seen as an obstacle to professionalism – but as the greatest source of value.

as in my book “scarred stone” I deal with the power that is born from loyalty to the personal story, the same in organizations: trust does not start with demanding the employees to “open up”. It starts with leadership that is able to take off the mask first.

The courage from which trust begins

Trust is an infrastructure for performance. It is created in a place where people feel safe to bring their best presence, voice and value.

Leadership without masks is an invitation to stop running shows – and start leading people.

Because in the end, we don’t bring our best to the place where we are required to hide.
We bring our best to the place where we feel safe enough to be truly present.

This article is part of the content world of Fentay around leadership, trust and belonging in organizations.

הפוסט Leadership without masks – why does trust begin with the courage to be truly present? הופיע לראשונה ב-Fentay Maharat-Alamu.