Supporting the Family Education Initiative
Rabbi Yafet (Aytegeb in Amharic) Alemu, the director of our Family Education Initiative, immigrated to Israel in 1983, walking 28 nights from Ethiopia to the Sudan. He is the only Masorti-Conservative Ethiopian rabbi in the world, having received his smicha from the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem. He created his holistic educational model during a fellowship at the Mandel Educational Leadership School, where he specialized in community education. Rabbi Alemu has been part of the Ethiopian community’s leadership since he arrived in Israel.
FEI works with neighborhood committees in neighborhoods with large concentrations of Ethiopian immigrants – so far four are in Jerusalem and one is in Beit Shemesh. The program focuses on strengthening families by giving parents the tools to raise children in Israeli society and by facilitating dialogue between the generations.
FEI now is building two innovative programs, one called Neighborhood Workers and the other a series of educational workshops. Both of these programs train people from the neighborhood, thus ensuring good communications, accountability, and neighborhood empowerment. Ethiopian community leaders and educators become advocates for the needs of Ethiopian families at the neighborhood, municipal, and national level.
Rabbi Alemu will lead a course for education workshop instruction, which will train Ethiopian adult educators in each neighborhood; these educators will work with members of their own communities. Workshops stressing parental responsibilities within the context of Israeli and Western societies are a core part of the program. In deference to Ethiopian culture, women and men are instructed separately for the first part of the course and then meet to consider issues that require them to work together. Children are included in the third part of the workshop as well. Understanding the Israeli education system, developing inter-generational dialogue, and acculturation are topics of paramount importance to Ethiopian families.
The programs are producing stronger families, whose members become productive members of Israeli society. We are grateful to the financial support from United Synagogue congregations, which has allowed us to start this undertaking.
