Good Tuesday morning!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on the efforts of the KleinLife JCC in Philadelphia on behalf of Ukrainian refugees, and feature an opinion piece from Rabbi Danny Burkeman. Also in this newsletter: Sylvan Adams, James McBride and Rabbi Elisheva Salamo. We’ll start with efforts to rescue Israelis and people eligible for Israeli citizenship from the fighting in Ethiopia.
The Israeli government is closely monitoring the fighting in the Amhara region of Ethiopia and working to extract the more than 100 Israeli citizens in the area, as well as the dozens of people waiting to immigrate, as clashes continued between government forces and the Fano militia group, an Israeli official familiar with the matter told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross.
As battles between Fano and the Ethiopian military escalated in recent days, the Ethiopian government declared a state of emergency, halting almost all travel into and out of Amhara, including from the city of Gondar, home to one of Ethiopia’s largest Jewish communities, which has seen some of the fiercest battles.
In response, Immigration and Absorption Minister Ofir Sofer organized an “emergency forum,” made up of representatives from his office, the Foreign Ministry, the National Security Council, the Mossad and the Jewish Agency, according to the Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic.
“We are trying to find solutions. Obviously, every solution needs to be coordinated with the Ethiopian government,” the official said.
There are an estimated 50 Israelis in Amhara, many of them in Gondar but some spread out throughout the region, which makes it more complicated to maintain contact with them and rescue them, the official said. Some of these Israelis are in Ethiopia visiting family, while others are there volunteering with the local population. In addition, there are approximately 60 Ethiopians eligible for Israeli citizenship who are waiting to make aliyah (immigrate).
“We hope there will be a rescue operation quickly,” a spokesperson for the immigration and absorption minister told eJP.
Read the full story here.
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