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Legal barriers By Ruth Sinai Tags: lawyers, Israel  Esther Aliyo's father was a well-to-do farmer in Ethiopia. In Israel, he worked as street cleaner. Revital Zana's father also worked as a street cleaner. Unlike Aliyo's father, he does not know how to read and write. The parents of Tigist Beilin and Zanba Derabau are also illiterate. Aliyo, Zana, Beilin and Derabau came to in Israel in 1991, between the ages of 8 and 12, and they also could not read or write. Today, Aliyo, of Netanya, works as a lawyer for Cellcom; Zana, of Hadera, is apprenticing at Bezeq's legal department; Tigist, of Sderot, is doing a pre-internship at the law firm Gornitzky and Co. in Tel Aviv; and Derabau, of Beit She'an, is doing a pre-internship and will soon start apprenticing at law firm M. Firon & Co. in Tel Aviv. Advertisement The four belong to a small group of Ethiopian immigrants forging a path in the Israeli legal world. Attorney Lilach Tal-Nir, who runs a program to integrate Ethiopians into the legal field, says there are 48 Ethiopian lawyers in Israel, 20 more than two years ago. There are also another 45 currently apprenticing and some 100 students. The program Tal-Nir runs for Tebeka (Amharic for justice, an advocacy group for equality and justice for Ethiopian Israelis) accompanies students at their jobs and internships, works with employers to help change attitudes toward Ethiopian immigrants, helps with job searches and raises money to provide scholarships. It also provides training to students so they can improve their legal skills and time management, as well as prepare for interviews. The program also serves as a social network for the students. "It's a crowded market and even for veteran Israelis it's hard to find a job, all the more so for someone who doesn't have a mother or father or uncle who's a lawyer," says Tal-Nir. "Most students come from distressed neighborhoods or peripheral cities, far from the legal office towers in the Manhattan of Ramat Gan. We help open doors for them." Beilin, for example, is from Sderot. She is the eldest of seven children and the first to pursue academic studies. She served six years in the Israel Defense Forces as an ordnance officer. When she started her law studies, she had to work three jobs to sustain herself and help support her family. She delivered newspapers in the morning, babysat and worked in a restaurant. From carrying water jugs Hard work is not foreign to her. She remembers that as a child in Ethiopia she carried water jugs. What almost broke her was the studying and the burdens her family placed on her. "My mother tries, but she doesn't understand a lot of things. I'm the anchor. I'm their eyes - I read. It's typical of families where there's an academic. Everyone calls all the time to ask what to do and how," she says. Problems she cannot solve over the phone require her to make a trip to Sderot. Today she consolidates her work to two days a week at the law firm, while pursuing her studies. Until she arrived in Israel when she was 10, she could not read and write, and still feels that she carries this gap around with her. "There's always some word I'm missing," she says. Aliyo relates that she first saw a computer when she was in the 10th grade. The educational, knowledge and cultural gaps as well as the uneducated parents and economic pressures are the greatest barriers for young Ethiopian immigrants, even those who came as children and studied in the Israeli school system. According to Dr. Sigal Shelach of the Israel Joint Distribution Committee's Momentum in Employment venture, the percentage of Ethiopian immigrants aged 18 to 35 with undergraduate degrees is 87 percent, higher than the 76 percent of other Jews. But the percentage of academics who are not working is almost double that of other Jewish academics (32 percent versus 18 percent). The hourly wage of Ethiopian academics is 72 percent of the wage of other Jewish academics (34 shekels versus 48 shekels). Part of the explanation is that sorting and hiring processes in the private and public sector are not appropriate for Ethiopian immigrants, says Prof. Yossi Tamir, the head of Tevet - a partnership between the JDC and Israeli government for increased independence through employment. The problem was highlighted when none of the 30 Ethiopian candidates passed the exams for the job of senior department director in the Absorption Ministry, and when Ikea wanted to hire Ethiopian immigrants for its store in Netanya, but none of the candidates passed the classification exams. Zana says that in the army she skipped whole pages of the psychometric text. "There were questions about matching shapes, but children in Ethiopia aren't familiar with these shapes," she says. "In Ethiopia, we didn't know what a square is. Our home in the village was round." Only when she arrived in Israel at age 12 did she start learning geometric shapes. Despite the difficulties, none of the four has experienced discrimination at their jobs and internships. "The moment they open the door for us, we can prove our ability, and then they look at us as equals," says Zana. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Coerced collaboration Shin Bet accused of forcing ill Palestinians become informants. A French feud French satirist denies making anti-Semitic remarks towards President Sarkozy's son.

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