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'Live and Become' depicts plight of oppressed Ethiopian Jews

By JOHN HAYES Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 17-MAR-06

"Live and become," says the rag-draped Ethiopian woman to her young son.

To the boy, the meaning is all too clear. After walking barefoot hundreds of miles through the desert and watching her children die in a squalid relief camp, the Christian mother is ordering her last surviving child to climb onto a convoy that will secretly spirit black Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

To save his life, the boy is told to deny his faith and live as a Jew in a land where the exodus, an American-Israeli airlift dubbed Operation Moses, is regarded as highly suspect and controversial. He is to live and become ... something.

A French film by Romanian-born director Radu Mihaileanu, "Live and Become" won the Audience Award at the 2005 Berlin International Film Festival.

It's a wonderful fictional story based on the real-life plight of the Ethiopian Jews and the non-Jews who infiltrated the airlift, and the public support, racism and religious oppression they continue to find in Israel.

Sirak M. Sabahat , the actor who plays the boy as an adult, came to the role with an equally fascinating story. An Ethiopian Jew, he spent his first years in poverty in northern Ethiopia. War, famine and religious oppression forced Sabahat and his relatives to walk through the desert to the southern end of the country, then north to the capital Addis Ababa. Some members of his family didn't survive the journey.

"When people ask me how was your childhood, I say I didn't have a childhood. I had to be a man at an early age," says Sabahat, who was in Pittsburgh this week as part of the United Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh's Operation Promise Campaign, which is raising funds to resettle Ethiopian Jews in Israel.

"If you want to go from one place to another place, you must do it barefoot," he says. "The only thing we knew was to walk."

Sabahat was among the Ethiopian Jews secretly evacuated to Israel in the airlift depicted in the movie. The Promised Land wasn't all that was promised. While Sabahat experienced some of the racism that his film character endured, he doesn't like to talk about it.

"As a new immigrant coming to a new society, coming from a different culture, sometimes it doesn't fit easily into the new world," he says. "As a result of that, you have cases of racism, separation in mind and of people. When presenting those things in the film, it's important to speak to those who cannot help themselves. But for now, it's better to not speak of racists because by speaking of them you give them power."

Sabahat attended boarding schools and high school, and studied acting at Haifa University, where he headed a students' group that advocated for the integration of Ethiopian Jews and encouraged them to pursue higher learning. After college, he was cast in an Israeli reality-TV show and hosted a children's show.

"I was waiting for my next opportunity and I returned home (to Ethiopia) to see my parents," he says. "My mother asked what I am doing in my new life. I told her theater and acting, and had to explain to her what it was. She told me she heard on Ethiopian radio that they were looking for an actor in a big French film. This film presents the story of a new boy who comes to a new world and is trying to find himself. Imagine ... My mother, who said she didn't know anything, knew about this opportunity that led to this role."

Some 2,500 people auditioned for "Live and Become." When Sabahat arrived for the audition, the lead role had already been filled.

"They said I could audition for other parts, but I told them I came a very long way to do the main part," he says. "Later on, they let me make the audition. It was perfect for me."

Sabahat describes "Live and Become" as an accurate depiction of the state of oppressed Ethiopian Jews, the controversial airlift and life among the first large group of black Jews to immigrate to Israel.

"In my opinion, it's right," he says. "It's like bringing someone from the 19th century to now. It's hard for people to understand. We put our faith in our hands. Like Moses took 40 years to get there, if you want to be in Jerusalem you must make the journey."

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