Ethiopian Jewry was “a top priority” on U.S. Rep. Mickey Leland’s trip to Ethiopia, the head of an Ethiopian Jewry advocacy group said Wednesday.
Leland, a Democratic congressman from Houston, and eight other Americans, including a prominent Jewish New Yorker, have been missing since Monday, when they set out by plane from Addis Ababa to a refugee camp near Ethiopia’s border with Sudan.
Searches hampered by bad weather Tuesday found no clues as to the group’s whereabouts. On Wednesday, the United States sent military aircraft and rescue teams to assist in the search operation.
Will Recant, executive director of the American Association for Ethiopian Jews, met with Leland the week before he left for Ethiopia.
He called the 44-year-old congressman, who has worked to strengthen black-Jewish relations, “a very good friend to Ethiopian Jews.”
LONGTIME FRIEND OF ISRAEL
He said that Leland, who chairs the House Select Committee on Hunger, had planned to meet with Ethiopian officials, including President Haile Mariam Mengistu, to “raise the issue of family reunification and what it might take to foster a large-scale program.”
Recant’s organization works to reunite the estimated 15,000 Jews remaining in Ethiopia with relatives now living in Israel.
Recant said Leland was not planning to meet directly with Ethiopian Jews on this trip, though he has done so on past visits.
“Mickey Leland has greater entree to President Mengistu than anyone in the United States,” Recant said, “and he has served as an intermediary on this issue, trying to get Ethiopians to allow more Jews to leave.”
Leland “was perhaps going to stop in Israel on his way back to give a briefing to Israeli officials and tell them what he learned of the conditions of the Jews,” Recant said.
Leland has a warm relationship with the Jewish state. He has visited Israel frequently and particularly enjoys bicycling there.
He also has helped send children from his largely poor district to Israel each summer to spend time on a kibbutz.
PROMINENT JEWISH ATTORNEY ON BOARD
A board member of another Ethiopian Jewry advocacy group was among those aboard Leland’s plane.
Ivan Tillem, an Orthodox Jewish attorney from New York, is also an assistant professor at Yeshiva University and the publisher of an annual Jewish almanac.
Tillem has been a member of the advisory board of the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry since 1987.
“Ivan was interested in doing things which would benefit Ethiopia in general and that would also have benefits for the Ethiopian Jews,” said Barbara Ribicove Gordon, the group’s executive director.
Tillem, a well-known philanthropist, had plans to assist the Ethiopians in developing kibbutz-style cooperative farms, to help make the poverty-stricken nation more self-sufficient.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
