They flew them in for 10 days of bridge-building. And when the Ethiopian-Israelis left L.A., the locals were a little bit wiser

SHELI TEITELBAUM Los Angeles

"Don't you feel that being re-quired to learn Hebrew is

really an assault on your African cultural and linguistic integrity?"

The question, asked by a student in Prof. Joseph Holloway's Pan-African Studies class at California State University/Northridge, was one of a barrage faced by a group of eight teenage Ethiopian immigrants to Israel brought to Los Angeles in an effort to bridge the rift between Jews and African-Americans.

There were some hostile statements - one white Catholic woman who had dated an Israeli recounted how his family made her feel an outsider, and suggested that Ethiopian immigrants had encountered this as well - but most of the local students' initial questions were cogent, thoughtful and polite. Yet the visitors - who the sponsoring Anti-Defamation League billed as "Children of the Dream" - were hard-put to answer them. They were high-school students, unable to comment with any authority about sociological or political issues.

There were repeated attempts to get them to own up to anti-black attitudes in Israel, in questions like: "Are you segregated geographically?" "Do you expect to intermarry with other Israelis?" But discrimination was clearly not part of

the Ethiopian-Israelis' vocabulary, and they could only say that they hadn't faced any more than the usual hardships of newcomers.

Israel, they said, was a country of immigrants - bonded together by the Hebrew language. In answer to a young man who asked why Israelis didn't all learn Amharic to make the Ethiopians feel at home, one student said: "If everyone had to learn everyone else's language, the country would be enrolled in language courses from cradle to grave."

The difference between the Israelis, who are 16-18 years old, and their slightly older hosts seemed a matter of worlds, not years. Attending religious boarding schools had not prepared the visitors for questions about drug abuse, early pregnancy, delinquency, the issues which preoccupy black students in Los Angeles. As their English faltered, the questions got more and more pointed; one local student cuttingly observed that if things were so great for blacks in Israel, "maybe we all ought to pack up and go there."

It took a comment from African-American student Carol Hall to defuse what had become an uncomfortable situation. "It's really too bad," she told the class, "that we're wanting them to say negative things about their lifestyles. Their lifestyles are their own. They're sheltered; that's the way they're growing up. It's not for us to judge."

"You have to realize," added another student, "that growing up in America all our lives is hard for us. And it was hard for me to listen to the fact that everything is pretty good for you guys. We have to deal with all sorts of problems every day, so hearing that everything is pretty good is kind of hard to swallow. But I think that's part of us being American and thinking that if we have this negative stuff, everybody else should be having it too."

Holloway observed that African-Americans are seeking to regain a measure of the heritage they were deprived of when their ancestors were brought to the United States, and said his students "found disturbing the sense that their visitors' Jewishness was more important to them than their blackness or African-ness. What has meaning for them… was that they were Jews. To see a group of people who have that connection, and who appear happy to have that (African) connection, and who appear happy to give it up - wow, how is that possible?"

The Northridge campus was an ap-

propriate place for a visit. A week before, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan made unusually conciliatory statements about Jews in an on-campus address to students and faculty. But that followed a public letter by the Black Student Union leader, condemning Jews for complicity in crimes against African-Americans and other people of color. Racial tension on the San Fernando Valley campus had been defused when the university president, a black woman, denounced the letter as anti-Semitic.

"Black students are quite confused," says Jody Meyers, head of the Jewish studies program at Cal State Northridge. "The messages they get from black leaders are changing… the voices espousing hatred for Jews suddenly found themselves marginalized. These students have been wondering if, maybe, they have been working with bad information."

In other places the emissaries visited, the students didn't have even bad information. "There is no understanding of Israel at all in L.A. among non-Jewish students," observes Marjorie Green, the Western States education director for the ADL. "These kids confuse Israel and India - they think of Israelis as wearing long robes with dots on their foreheads."

Green doesn't see this as all bad. The Ethiopian-Israelis' 10-day visit was, in part, designed to demonstrate that there can be ethnic similaritie s between Jews and blacks. This message appeared to go over more easily because many students, especially in the inner city schools, have never met a Jew. Having seldom contemplated the idea of a Jew, they have not yet engaged in stereotyping.

Navah Kabada, a shy but engaging 16-year-old from Netanyah interested in sociology, psychology and sculpture, and Shlomi Bicha, a student at a religious boarding school who yearns to become a pilot, attended an English class at John F. Kennedy High School in Granada Hills. Their hosts, many of them bused to the school from the inner city, were mostly of minority origin.

They presented their guests with photographs and personal cultural mementos as souvenirs, and spoke of their interests. The Americans gasped upon learning that the Israeli students went to school six days a week, and again when they learned Navah and Shlomi were looking forward to army service. And they wondered if their visitors had bought jeans and Nikes in the United States, or if this was how teenagers dressed back home. Were there cars in Israel? Does everyone wear a yarmulke? Do you stay in the army until you're 49?

"On the news you hear they're fighting in the streets, that they don't eat very well," said Tamara Brazzil, an African-American who hopes to become a model. "Everyone is poor there. So it's different to see them in jeans and T-shirts just like us."

Later, the students broke up into smaller groups. At one end of the room, 17-year-old Vincent Carthron and his friends huddled with Shlomi Bicha over a piece of paper. Carthron tried to convey some sense of being a linebacker for the school football team. After absorbing the properties of a "yard," Bicha, a basketball fan, became keenly interested in the plays scratched out on paper. Carthron promised to take him out to the field during their next visit.

Granada Hills was not unique. An African-American student at an-

other high school, Green said, had previously explained how she always thought of Jews as a race. "Now I know," the student said, "that they are more of a culture or religion, and I feel a real sense of closeness to them. They came from Africa, my ancestors came from Africa, and it's changing my whole sense of what Jews are."

The November visit was the second by a group of Ethiopian-Israelis to Los Angeles. The first group arrived on April 25. Four days later the Ethiopian-Israelis and their new friends gathered at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple for an interfaith Seder, where Passover was presented as a celebration of national liberation predicated upon social justice. The Jewish, black and Latino students dipped eggs in salt water, ate matzah and sang freedom songs like "Dayenu" ("Enough"). Not far away in South Central Los Angeles, inner-city residents were rioting over the acquittal of the officers accused in the Rodney King police brutality case.

The Israeli students returned to the homes of their hosts in the predominantly Jewish Beverly-Fairfax area. During their return trip to the riot-ravaged South-Central and East Los Angeles, the American youngsters were told to lie on the floor of the buses. The drivers reported later that as they passed through the smoke flames and gunfire, the kids were quietly singing "Dayenu."