Following a recent order from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to double the influx of Ethiopian Falas Mora - descendants of Jews who converted to Christianity under duress - from 300 to 600 a month, the Jewish Agency has put together a staff of 60 to assume responsibility for the compounds in Addis Ababa and Gondar, where prospective immigrants live pending their departure for Israel. The launch of their mission, dubbed Project Yonah, is awaiting only the conclusion of a formal agreement between Israel's Foreign Ministry and the Ethiopian government granting the Agency legal status on Ethiopian soil. Yonah, meaning "dove," refers to the vision of the ingathering of the exiles in Isaiah 60:8.

The number of Falas Mora waiting to come to Israel is still not clear. Jewish Agency spokesman Michael Jankelowitz says the estimates run from 17,000 to 20,000, while Israel's Interior Ministry, which decides who is eligible to immigrate, places the number at 13,000. The Agency will now join the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in ministering to their needs.

Jankelowitz explains that the chief task of the Agency's delegation, to be comprised mainly of teachers, social workers and translators, as establishing and running schools for teaching Hebrew, so that the prospective immigrants will be better equipped to organize their lives and seek work soon after their arrival.

Project Yonah, he notes, is being financed by a special campaign called Operation Promise, launched by the United Jewish Communities in the United States to raise $160 million over the next three years, of which $100 million will be earmarked for the Falas Mora waiting to emigrate, for advancing their integration upon their arrival, and for improving the education of the veteran community in Israel.

At the same time, the JDC has been spending just under $1 million a year to meet the nutritional and health needs of those living in the compound in Gondar and around the Israeli Embassy in Addis Ababa. In addition to its two general clinics, the JDC offers pre- and post-natal care services and runs a special nutritional program for 3- to 6-year-olds.

Until recently the food and educational needs of many of the Falas Mora were addressed by the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jews (NACOEJ), an organization active in Ethiopia for 23 years, spending an annual $1.5 million on its operations. But last December, following complaints of financial mismanagement from some of its former Ethiopian employees, the Ethiopian government discovered that NACOEJ was operating without a permit, and its activities were suspended. Although some of its services, such as its school and embroidery project in Gondar, were resumed in April, the scope of the investment being made by the Agency and the JDC suggests that these bodies now intend to bear the main burden of sustaining the prospective immigrants.

"Many of the Falas Mora used to receive food directly from NACOEJ or through meals provided in its schools," explains Amos Avgar, the JDC's chief program officer in New York. "Last month, we began providing a three-month cash grant to 4,000 families to ensure that they're properly nourished." Where necessary, Avgar adds, the JDC will also assist the many Falas Mora who are gainfully employed, "though we don't want to condition them to dependence on charity." In addition, the JDC is working with the municipal government of Addis Ababa to bring the children who had been studying in the now-closed NACOEJ school back into the city's educational system.

Once the immigration rate doubles to 600 per month, the Falas Mora aliyah should be completed within two to three years.

The Jerusalem Report, September 5, 2005 issue