Op-ed: Ethiopian-born journalist Danny Adino Ababa fears his three children will always feel foreign in racist Israel
ed note–I feel for this guy, but the fact is that he is a victim of his own naivete when it comes to understanding the Jewish mindset.
Anti-black racism BEGAN with Judaism, in particular the story of Ham and how he was cursed for laughing at his father Noah, who was passed out drunk in his tent. As ‘the babble’ describes it–
Genesis 9:20–’And Noah planted a vineyard and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. 23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
In Jewish teaching, blacks and Arabs are considered the descendents of Ham. As such, there is NO SUCH THING as a ‘black’ Jew or an ‘arab’ Jew and it is for this reason that Ethiopian Jews (presumably such as the author of this piece) are treated they way they are.
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Newspaper headlines referring to displays of racism against members of Israel’s Ethiopian community are just headlines. Yet for me and for members of my community this wound gets deeper and refuses to heal. After every racist display, the public expresses its revulsion, yet we, members of the Ethiopian community, are left with the pain and without answers.
I was born in Ethiopia and have three young children. My wife is a nurse at a large hospital. I am a journalist at a leading newspaper. Our children are educated in private kindergartens. On the face of it, we are “successful immigrants.”
My three children were born here, yet ever since they were born, for the first time in my life I’ve been facing an uncontrollable fear. I’m anxious about their future. I assume that many of you live in some kind of fear in respect to your children’s future, yet you are worried for different reasons.
I want to tell you about my fear. It does not stem from the Iranian bomb or the war that is expected to erupt in our mad region. I’m afraid because of my children’s dissimilarity, due to the color of their skin. I’m fearful that they won’t be accepted to schools or to extracurricular activities just because they’re different. I’m fearful because once upon a time people felt ashamed to be racist, yet today Israeli racists rear their head and speak up openly.
My oldest son, who will soon celebrate his fourth birthday, already encountered this racism. One day my wife and I came to pick him up from preschool, when another child appeared and said “what a disgusting black kid.” My son withdrew into himself as my wife tried to cheer him up in vain. In the car, he burst into tears, and my wife followed. “I’m crying over my son’s helplessness,” she said.
After wiping away her tears, she asked that we return to the kindergarten so she can speak to the insulting child. She faced him and her tears kept on falling. The next morning we received a letter of apology from his parents.
Dark chocolate
Ever since then, every day I gently ask my son whether anyone called him “black” or insulted him because of his ethnicity. Usually he is silent, yet occasionally he shows interest in the color of his skin. One day he surprised me: “Dad, black is darkness, it’s not a pretty color and I don’t like it,” he said.
I tried to explain to him how beautiful our skin color is. I came up with every superlative I could think of. After failing, I suddenly remembered that my son loves chocolate more than anything else. “You see,” I told him, “chocolate is delicious. And what color is it?” I don’t know if my son accepted the comparison between chocolate and his skin color, yet he certainly ate the chocolate I gave him and asked for more. To this day I haven’t told him that there’s such thing as white chocolate too.
I will never fully feel that I belong in this country; I will always feel like a foreigner in a crowd. At the same time, I always knew subconsciously that once I have children, they will feel like members of this land and my foreignness will never cling to them. Yet in the past year I find myself often thinking about the foreignness of the “black sabra,” as every one of my sons can be referred to.
The latest displays of racism scare me, if only because of the silence of the lambs by the silent majority. I’m scared because I feel that everyone sees us sinking and keeps silent. I’m afraid that my eldest son will inherit the foreignness within me.
The next time you see racist displays on your television screen, think about me, about my Israeli-born son, and about my thoughts and deep pain. What you perceive as yet another newspaper article and another ephemeral story is a painful, sad and never-ending journey for us.
