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.

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 untold story

For years, the narrative of Ethiopian Jewry in Israel focused almost exclusively on the “journey” – the hardships of the road, the hardships and the heroism of the aliyah. But in this story the “missing link” was omitted: the rich life, the magnificent traditions and the tremendous female resilience that existed in the villages generations before the departure to Jerusalem.

the novel “scarred stone” reveals this chapter. Through the character of Nagasti, the book breathes life into a deep-rooted value system that did not need security cameras to produce discipline, but rested on a moral backbone built over thousands of years.

Roots as a “social vaccine” 

Exposing this chapter in the Jewish narrative is not just a beautiful literary act – it is an urgent topical response. why? Because violence and aggression are often side effects of losing one’s way and identity. When teenage sons and daughters do not know on whose shoulders they stand, when they feel detached from the story of their parents and family, they are more exposed to the spirits of confusion, rage and loss of control.

I believe in “social vaccination”: A youth who is connected to his family story, who knows the power of the generations before him, is a youth with a stronger moral and personal backbone. When you have deep roots, it’s much harder to shake you. When a girl or boy knows that they are part of a chain of generations that has survived unimaginable difficulties thanks to resilience, restraint and values, the drama of the moment takes on a different proportion. The sense of belonging and pride in the family story gives them an inner anchor – one that eliminates the need to prove strength or be drawn to violence in order to feel “someone”.

the novel “scarred stone” Reminds us that even in the biggest break, the resilience is found in the stories we have not yet told. It is time to give back to our youth the missing link in their identity, and turn the past into a compass for the future.

It’s not just their story – it’s our story

This initiative, which was born from a “scarred stone”, calls on every person – from every community and every sect – to return home. To trace the roots, to ask the difficult questions, to find his private “Nagasti”.

In a world where everything is temporary, fast and violent, the roots are the only anchor that can restore our sanity. It’s time to understand that the fight against violence doesn’t just start on the street – it starts around the dinner table, in the stories we tell our children about who we were, and who we can be.

הפוסט The missing link: are our roots the “vaccine” for youth violence? הופיע לראשונה ב-Fentay Maharat-Alamu.