Covid-19 disaster for Ethiopian Jews
V FOR THE Zera Israel community of Ethiopia, an already precarious position has been made far worse by coronavirus.
The majority of the Zera Israel community – descendants of Ethiopian Jews who were forcibly converted to Christianity and have now returned to their Jewish roots - live in the northern Ethiopian town of Gondar, having moved from nearby villages in the hope of making Aliyah to Israel.
Gondar introduced a partial lockdown on April 4 – before any Covid-19 cases had been discovered in the town. Ethiopia’s first case was confirmed on March 13 and transmission has been slow (as of this week there were 194 confirmed cases, though the true number is likely much higher).
Nonetheless, the partial lock-down in Gondar meant that inter-city transport stopped, local public transport was severely restricted, many workplaces closed (schools had already been closed nationwide) and gatherings prohibited. This means a devastating loss of livelihoods for a community where the majority live hand to mouth – for many, even a few days without work means no money to buy food. The poorest and most desperate members of the community continue to come to the market and construction sites in the morning, looking for labouring work but there is far less demand now.
Clockwise from above: Cooking oil stored in the after-school club; flour from teff (a local grain) stored in the club; matzah baking
The Zera Israel have no social safety net: living in the town, they are not eligible for Ethiopia’s food security and emergency employment schemes and even the tiny welfare payments that the local authority gives to the destitute are not available to the Jewish community, as the local authority refused to issue them with residence papers when they moved to the town. The pandemic has hit Ethiopia at a particularly
bad time, after a near-Biblical plague of locusts that has ravaged East Africa for 2 months, which meant food prices were already a staggering 25% higher than last year.
It has fallen to international Jewish organisations to provide relief. The Jewish Agency has provided soap and some food, delivered through the synagogue in Gondar. Before Pesach arrived, they delivered matzot – but only enough for around 5 per person, to last the entire week! Whereas in previous years the community has baked matzot in the courtyard of the synagogue on a huge scale, to provide for the whole community, this year some of young people who previously worked on the communal effort have been baking from home.
UK-based charity Meketa supports some of the poorest members of the Jewish community in Gondar and provides education and livelihoods projects. Meketa has distributed soap, provided guidance on hygiene and social distancing and given 2 months’ of food supplies to destitute families. It is also preparing grants and debt relief to those who have no way to earn. However, in a community of around 8,000 the need remains great and no-one knows how long the emergency will go on for.
www.meketa.org.uk