"They put a blanket in my mouth and told me not to cry. They told me: Keep quiet, get over it," Orit Dego practically shouts. "The baby died in my arms. Only on the plane, when around me they were all Jews, did I cry." Dego ends the monologue and returns to the group of women standing behind her.
Dego, who immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia and lives in Beit She'an, speaks during one of the scenes in a play being performed by the Shorashim (Roots) Theater, composed of 10 women immigrants from Ethiopia who live in this northern town. The entire play is made up of the women's personal or family stories. Dego, for example, tells about the death of her little brother in her aunt's arms.
The Ethiopian immigrant community in Beit She'an numbers about 60 families. About five years ago, Talia Argaman, a member of the neighboring Kibbutz Maoz Haim, wanted to volunteer among them. She had just completed a community builders program run by the Jewish Agency's project Partnership 2000, which creates partnerships between the town of Beit She'an and the communities in the area, with the support of the Cleveland Jewish community.
Argaman began to help with Hebrew lessons and moderated a parenting group. "Slowly but surely I began to feel a connection to the stories that the women told me and I decided that by performing, they could talk about these things. My desire was to respect each of them and to give the women a sense of worth, so that they themselves and their families would see that they can do things in an authentic way."
Hava Elmo, a member of the group, says: "The idea of taking personal stories and presenting them through performances seemed amazing to me." Her mother Dabria is also a member of the group. "It was a long and difficult process, each one brought genuine things that she had gone through, mainly problems of immigration and absorption," she says.
Exposure was not easy for all of them; a number of women were embarrassed and decided to leave the group. As Elmo notes: "There were also fears about what the men would say, and in general a fear of what people would say about us.
"After the first performance all the fears dissolved and they told us, 'That was great.' Now they all support us, even the men. The empowerment of the woman empowers everyone in the end, even the men, everyone is exposed to development, largely thanks to the empowerment of the women."
Elmo grew along with the group. "I began with voluntary activities in the city and slowly but surely I discovered my inner strengths, I saw that they exist." She took the community builders course and says, "The community work, along with theater, opened a path for me." Today she is involved in counseling parenting groups.
Opening the door
The women in the group are aged 30-60, some work in cleaning jobs or at the local chicken factory. Also performing with them is Lital Elio, 12. Elio acts alongside her mother, Sna'it. Sna'it says that the play led to a substantial change in her daughter's life.
Since she was in kindergarten, Lital has been mocked and harassed because of the color of her skin. In the play Lital stands in front of the audience and says: "One girl called me kushit (nigger). I told her: I'm a kushit like chocolate, sweet and tasty, and besides, I don't have to tan myself, I have a natural tan."
Lital, as opposed to most Ethiopians, attended a secular school and was the only Ethiopian girl there. Because she was different, she felt isolated and was humiliated. "Since the students saw the play the attitude toward me has changed completely," she says.
Her mother adds: "Now she's like the Queen of Sheba, girls fought about who would play with her first. The play opened the door for her."
Sna'it now works at an absorption center for Ethiopian immigrants. In spite of the change in the attitude toward her daughter thanks to the play, she says, "The play is not only for veteran Israelis, but first of all for our own children, so they'll know what their roots are and what their parents went through."
Family secrets
She also brings her personal story to the play. A story in which she left her Christian mother in Ethiopia and arrived in Israel for what her family had told her would be "only for a visit." But here she discovered that the family's intention was for her to stay in Israel.
She was placed in a boarding school against her will and underwent a profound crisis of separation from her mother, a sense of betrayal. "One also has to understand that in Ethiopia, only orphans are sent to boarding school, and I wasn't an orphan, I had a mother. I felt they had lied to me, tricked me."
Later on her mother immigrated to Israel, and Elio made peace with her past. She says, "Now I actually recommend to many young people to go to boarding school, because there they'll get support and a good opportunity to become part of society."
"During the play people cry and are moved, both members of the community and veteran Israelis," she says. The women never had told most of the stories in the play. Thus Lital heard her mother's story for the first time through the play.
For Sara Raskai, "the work in the theater group removed a rock from my stomach. Today it's much easier for me. My stomach is empty now."
Raskai plays her 17-year-old sister who was pregnant during the trip from Ethiopia to Sudan. "On the way she was murdered by robbers," she says. "I am moved each time I talk about that and other personal stories, like the fact that I got married at the age of 11. I have three children who didn't know all that and after the first performance they said to me: 'Mom, we didn't know anything about you.'
"My heart was bleeding from within for my sister and her baby. Now the bleeding has stopped and I'm free, the light that was inside the vessel has emerged."
While traveling to the performances, Argaman discovered that the introverted Raskai is attracted to music. "Her singing and drumming were amazing. I simply discovered her," she says.
Ziva Tafri talks about the trials of absorption, about the attempts to erase their culture. "I won't abandon my heritage," she says with determination in the play, after all her friends throw off the large scarves that cover their bodies.
Argaman says that she has such a strong tie to the group that last Pesach she traveled to Ethiopia in order "to see the women's stories from up close. To see the river, the little girls washing clothes on the banks of the river. Everything I saw there helped me to become closer to them. What has guided me all along is the women and with their culture."
