Ethiopian Jewish Woman, Mazi Pilip’s, Journey To Israel

Mazi Pilip is a county legislator in Nassau County. She and Allison connected at an End Jew Hatred event. Ethiopian-born, Mazi was a participant in Operation Solomon (1991) as a child, which airlifted 14,000 Ethiopian Jews in jumbo jets to Israel. She moved to the United States in adulthood.

Ethiopian Jews have a rich history spanning thousands of years, as one of the lost tribes. Only in the late 1900s did many of them finally achieve the dream of their forefathers to ascend to Jerusalem.

Many Ethiopian Jews participated in Operation Moses (1984-5), in which they made their way to Sudan and were airlifted covertly by Israeli air transport. They walked from Ethiopia to Sudan, traveling for months with very little food and water, hoping that someone would pick them up and finally bring them home.

All these Jews, so eager to go to the Holy Land, barely any knowledge of what Jersalem actually was: all they knew was what had been passed down through the community, and they had never seen a photograph of the city.

Join us as Mazi regales listeners about her family’s arrival to Israel and her experiences as an Ethiopian Jew in both Israel and America.

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Avigail Goldberg

Avigail was one of those kids who maxed out her library card and kept a notebook on her desk for doodles. As an adult, she earned an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Degree in hand, she dove right into professional storytelling: both making her own content and helping other people fulfill their creative vision. She’s passionate about information accessibility, mental health awareness, and minority (especially Jewish!) education and advocacy – so she feels right at home at JITC. If you’re ever in Brooklyn, you can spot her knitting in public.