Ono Students Discuss the Terms Used For and the Crises With Traditional Beta Israel Leadership
The seventh meeting of Ono Academic College’s UJA-Sponsored Program “The Returning Home to Israel Project According to the Tradition of Beta Israel” to identify and reduce tensions within the Ethiopian-Israeli Community focused on the participants’ interim presentations of their communal interventions.
The meeting began with a discussion about the terms used for the traditional Beta Israel spiritual leaders: “Kes”, “Deftere” and “Kahan.” One of the participants, who is a senior Keis, discussed the evolution of these terms. The group was left with the question: If the best term to refer to a traditional Beta Israel spiritual leader is “Kahan,” why do Ethiopian-Israelis more frequently use the term “Keis”?
Discussion moved to the main focus of the meeting, the participants’ presentation of interim reports about their communal interventions as they got about half way through their projects. The program managers had provided an intervention outline to streamline reporting, metrics, lesson learning and application.
Some of the participants presented their projects. Themes that emerged were the need for rigorous analytical tools, the importance of choosing the intervention population correctly, crises in communal education, the generation gap between the immigrants and their Israeli born children, the need for stronger leadership by the Keisim, and the critical importance of cooperation between Keisim and Rabbis.
