Kids are kids are kids no matter where they live or from where they come. We learned that in a spectacularly meaningful way this afternoon as we visited the Canada House where the Jewish Agency for Israel helps the Ministry of Immigration Absorption run an Absorption Center for Ethiopian Jews.
We saw in a most amazing way how Ethiopian Jews are welcomed to their ancient, and at the same time new, homeland and how they are gently introduced to everyday conveniences and the mundane elements of our daily lives that we all take for granted but that, for them, are akin to the miracles of the Torah that a few may have read and others have only heard as the stories of the Torah have been passed down to them from generation to generation (L'dor V'dor) in their former homeland.
Parents come with children and meet for the first time the cousins who sponsored their immigration to Israel. Brothers and sisters come from their small homes in Ethiopia, built of mud and straw, to spend their first nights in multi-room apartments in buildings that are 6 or 7 or 8 floors tall. Imagine if we were forced out of our comfortable, climate controlled, plugged in and turned on daily lives and made to live in a foreign land where we didn't speak the language and had to rely on the kinds of skills we have only seen in Discovery Channel "Survive Alaska" TV shows. But without even the advantage of having seen the TV show.
But kids are kids and they play with one another in the courtyard and kick a soccer ball around in the sun and groan when their parents, in whatever language it may be, ask them to come inside.
Fathers take their children up on their shoulders and give them rides and make funny sounds and faces that make them both laugh. Mothers carry infants and look at them with what can only be described as pure love as their children sleep in their arms in the warm sun on an otherwise cool day in Ashkelon.
Imagine how awesome (in the true sense of the word) it has to be for someone who has never enjoyed the convenience of electricity to learn that they can walk into a small room with the doors closing behind them, push a round disc on the wall, see it light up and the room seems to move, only to have the doors open again and they are in a different place and looking out the open windows from 40' in the air. To us, it is simply an elevator. To them, it is almost unimaginable.
And yet, kids are kids no matter where you go.
We saw young children (4 or 5 or 6 years old) learning to speak Hebrew, coloring pictures of Menorahs in the same way our children color when they are young, except for these children it is a simple joy to be indoors and learning from fellow Ethiopians who came to Israel only a few years before but who are now employed by the Canada House and serving as role models for their newly minted fellow citizens.
But kids are kids are kids. They love to laugh. They play hide and seek and giggle when you make funny faces. They melt in your arms when you hug them and throw their heads back and kick their legs when you tickle them.
These children are part of Israel's future and, in fact, part of our future as the worldwide children of Israel. Although they don't look like the Jews we are all so used to seeing, they will go to school and learn about our shared heritage. They will say the same prayers as we said, and as our children are saying now, when they too have bar and bat mitzvahs. They will serve in the IDF with pride. They will travel the world as ambassadors of their homeland and be secure in knowing that, just like the Sabras who were born here and who lived here before they arrived from Ethiopia, they can always come home again and be welcomed as Jews.
Kids are kids are kids no matter where you go. These kids, like our own back home, touched our hearts and made us proud to have them be a part of our family.
- James
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