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Sasha Rogelberg | Staff Writer
A mong the many moments of culture shock Avezu Fanta had
upon arriving to the United States in 2019, the copious bagels
present at Jewish events was just one noteworthy difference.

In the three years Fanta has spent in Philadelphia as Hillel at
Temple University’s Israel Fellow, the 31-year-old has since accli-
mated to American Jewish culture, despite the ample differences she
grew up with in Israel after emigrating from Ethiopia when she was
7 months old.

“I was against bagel brunch in the beginning; now I love bagel
brunch,” she joked.

Bagels were, of course, only the beginning of Fanta’s exploration
10 DECEMBER 29, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
of the relationship between American
Jewish and Israeli Jewish cultures.

During her tenure at Temple, she’s
been tasked with sharing her own
Israeli Jewish culture, introducing
both Jews and non-Jews to Israel’s
ways of life.

As she begins her final semester with
the Hillel in January, her mission has
shifted: Temple University students,
as well as most American college stu-
dents, need to learn how to talk about
Israeli politics.

“A lot of people don’t understand
how to [have] conversations about
Israel, and this is why you have so
much antisemitic rhetoric and lan-
guage,” Fanta said. “The majority of
the language that’s antisemitic, I think,
it’s around Israel, and it’s around Israel
because it’s ignorance.”
When Fanta arrived at Temple
University in August 2019, the goal of
her fellowship was to bring a diverse
voice from Israel to Philadelphia and
to share Israeli Jewish culture with the
Temple student body, as well as grow
appreciation and understanding for the
Jewish state.

In May 2021, following an escala-
tion in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
Fanta’s strategy to speak with students
changed. She began holding conver-
sations with students, Jewish and
non-Jewish, about how to engage with
the conflict. Last semester, Fanta held a
weekly “Kol Yisrael” class to talk about
the nuances of Zionism.

“The only criticism they have around
Zionism is around the conflict,” Fanta
said of some students. “But also it was
around how we, as the Jewish stu-
dents, can stand with Israel but also
say, ‘We don’t support the Israeli gov-
ernment and what’s happening in the
West Bank.’”
Fanta is familiar with bringing
thoughtfulness to complex conver-
sations around Jewish identity. An
Ethiopian Jew raised in Israel, Fanta
has her own unique perspective on syn-
thesizing a whole Jewish identity.

As a child, Fanta came to Israel as
part of Operation Solomon, a May 1991
covert military operation in which 35
Israeli aircrafts airlifted more than 14,000
Ethiopian Jews to Israel in about 36 hours.

Growing up, she and her seven sib-
lings spoke little with her parents about
their Ethiopian identity in the context
of Israel. Her parents had dreamt for
their teenage and adult lives of coming
to Israel; because Fanta and her siblings
had achieved their parents’ dream, they
felt they were not able to complain
about identity or being a minority in
Israel. That’s not to say Fanta wasn’t con-
flicted about her identity. As a teenager,
Fanta had a “little identity crisis,” feel-
ing that her Ethiopian and Israeli iden-
tities were at odds with one another.

When she joined the Israel Defense
Forces, later to become a medic and
a lieutenant, she met other Jewish
Israeli minorities, including Russian
Israelis who were at ease with their
dual nationalities.

“It’s really a part of me,” Fanta said of
her Ethiopian ethnicity. “Like cultur-
ally, I grew up in an Ethiopian home; I
cannot disconnect from that.”
Talking about ethnicity and nation-
ality in Israel is different than in
the United States, Fanta said. While
American Jews prefer to establish dis-
creet identities across denominations
and ethnicities, and use language
around race and oppression to reckon
with the country’s racism and antisem-
itism, in Israel, there’s less discourse
about identity.

Instead, Fanta said, identities in Israel
are divided into Jewish and non-Jewish
first, with further breakdowns for vari-
ous minorities. Most of the time, how-
ever, Israelis aren’t as concerned with
the various taxonomies. That mindset
is reflected in Fanta’s teaching and her
interest in speaking with both Temple’s
Jewish students and non-Jewish
students. Her openness to talk about Israel to
so many demographics is part of what
has made her an effective Israel Fellow,
according to Hillel at Temple assistant
executive director Mallory Kovit.

“She can have a conversation with
anybody; she could talk to anybody
about anything,” said Kovit. “She’s
not going to shy away from a conver-
sation.” JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com Courtesy of Hillel at Temple University
Avezu Fanta