SUN VALLEY : Ethiopian Jews Welcomed With Song and Dance

It was the first time Aviva Beecha and Mulaw Yaacov, both 17, had danced to Mexican ranchero music and it was the first time Norma Pineola, 16, had shimmied her shoulders to Ethiopian pop.

Aviva and Mulaw, who visited Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley this week, are part of an eight-member envoy to Los Angeles of high school-age students who were among the 14,000 Ethiopian Jews airlifted from Sudan to Israel in 1985.

Their trip to Los Angeles was arranged by the Anti-Defamation League and designed to challenge stereotypes about Jews and compare immigration experiences. The visit included stops at schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, including Polytechnic High.

On the second day of Aviva and Mulaw’s visit to Polytechnic, they taught a group of mostly Latino youths a traditional Ethiopian social dance, called Amhrat.

In turn, the Latino students showed them how to dance to ranchero music and groove to funk. “I like it!” Aviva beamed, when asked what she thought of the Mexican dancing she had just learned. “I am glad to know it.”

Norma, who showed a rather embarrassed and giggly Mulaw how to dance to ranchero music, said she enjoyed learning the Ethiopian dance, and said she might incorporate the shoulder-shaking steps with her moves the next time she goes out dancing.

But Norma also was surprised to find parallels between her own experience and that of the Ethiopian Jews. As a young girl, she had moved from Mexico to the United States. “They are immigrants, just like us,” she said.

“We bring together black Jews with students of color in Los Angeles to change stereotypes, to show Jews come in different colors,” said Marjorie Green, director of education for the Anti-Defamation League, who has arranged two other such visits of Israelis to the United States.

Many Los Angeles high school students who had themselves escaped threatening situations in Southeast Asia and Central America often identify with these Israeli students, said Green.

The first group of Ethiopian-Jewish students visited Los Angeles in April, 1992, coinciding with the Rodney King verdict and ensuing riots.

On the day of the verdict, high school students from all over Los Angeles were celebrating a Passover Seder at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple with Ethiopian-Jewish students. The youngsters were getting ready to board their buses back to their homes in East and South-Central Los Angeles when the rioting broke out. “We didn’t know that the city had erupted,” Green said.