ABSTRACT
Ethiopian Jews arrived in Israel with a heightened sense of Jewish identity and an already emerging Israeli identity. They felt that as individuals and as a community they had been tested, selected and purified through their suffering and had therefore earned their 'right' to enter Israel, God's land, and to participate in Israeli society. Ethiopian Jews broke stereotypes and social categories in Israel in the 1980s, and it was not until the beginning of the 1990s that Israelis developed a clear social category of 'Ethiopian-black-Jewish-immigrant'. The story of the journey, which is turned into a myth, is therefore extremely important since it serves as a means of opening up a space for the Ethiopian Jews as a group in the Israeli psyche. Certainly, the image held by Israeli society of the Ethiopian Jews as help-less/dependent/hungry people conflicted with the immigrants' self-image as being strong and able.
