Saving the Lost Tribe: The Rescue and Redemption of the Ethiopian Jews

Rating:
Summary: A diplomat's memoirs
Review: Over the course of three years in the early 1980s and just over a day in 1991 the Israeli government conducted two efforts unprecedented in human history, Operation Moses and Operation Solomon, respectively, that together rescued well over 20,000 Ethiopian Jews from a country ravaged by famine and civil war. Asher Naim was the Israeli ambassador to Ethiopia who negotiated with the regime's warlords and bureaucrats for their cooperation during the 1991 operation. He opens the book with a brief synopsis of the West's discovery of the Beta Israel ("house of Israel," as the Ethiopian Jews call themselves), an expedition so recent as the nineteenth century in which British missionaries found a mysterious tribe of black-skinned Africans with Semitic features who practiced a pre-Talmudic Judaism, dreamed of returning to Jerusalem, and thought they were the only Jews remaining in the world!

Readers, however, should regard this book not as a work of history but as Naim's memoirs chronicling his role in the months preceding May 25, 1991, when a fleet of 35 planes completed Operation Solomon after just 25 hours. His first-person perspective limns the personalities of the major players with an articulation difficult to achieve in a work with more historical depth, but this approach has serious limitations. Naim provides little historical background to the 1991 operation -- Operation Moses is nearly elided from his account altogether, as is the history of the Ethiopian Jews themselves, which is a shame, so fascinating is their story. Moreover, Naim's substantial ego pervades the narrative as he liberally seasons the text with self-congratulatory tributes to his own compassion and clout (going so far as to include an entire non-sequitur chapter claiming credit, perhaps justly, for the United Nations' rescission of its vile resolution equating Zionism with racism). At the same time, he manages to distract the reader's focus from the breathtaking acts of righteousness and grace at the heart of Operation Solomon as he effectively converts a tale of human kindness into a tale of diplomacy. I suspect more readers would have been interested to learn about the Beta Israel and their deliverers than about the internal machinations of ambassadorial politics. Example: the Ethiopian regime demanded a ransom of $35 million for the release of the Jews. Naim dedicates more words to the precise means by which Israel wired these funds to the relevant bureaucrats than to the captivating story of how the ransom was raised in no time at all from just a few dozen American philanthropists. They are not even named.

Naim does bring a refreshing objectivity to the story, declining to whitewash the difficult integration of the Ethiopians into Israeli society and duly noting some religious hardliners' long resistance to the acceptance of the Beta Israel as bona fide Jews. Among the most moving passages is Naim's lamentation for the priceless traditions the Ethiopians forgot as they assimilated into both mainstream Judaism and a secular Western society that brooks no cultural stasis. Given that a decade has elapsed between Operation Solomon and the publication of Naim's book, however, one would have expected more than three short chapters depicting the Beta Israel's communities after the aliyah. This deficiency would be less bothersome if Naim's account of Operation Solomon were more captivating and thorough, but the rescue operation itself does not begin until page 215 and fills only ten pages. I am compelled to conclude that Naim's book is destined to accomplish little more than provide some trivia for a better chronicle of the Exodus from Ethiopia that has yet to be authored.