I mentioned in a recent posting my work with Ethiopian Jews in Israel.

As part of my Museology course I am planning an exhibition on the theme
of Ethiopian Jewish manuscripts and tradition.  I was recently visiting
two "qessotch" (Ethiopian Jewish priests), father and son, at their home
in Yavneh, to tape-record traditions.  In the course of conversation
they told me their concerns about their community in Israel. One big
problem is the generation-gap: the young generation (those who came to
Israel as children or were born here) no longer listen to the elders,
and are forgetting or ignorant of their own culture, language and
traditions as they become assimilated into Israeli society; many of them
are falling prey to "bad influences", losing their traditional cultural
values. Another Qes once expressed it to me beautifully through a
proverb: "The cow wants to give milk, but the calves won't suckle:  we
want to teach, but our children don't want to learn from us."

The Ethiopian Jewish community is also experiencing difficulties in
absorption in Israeli society: they feel weak, disunited and politically
divided among themselves; and difficulties in obtaining what they feel
is due to them from the Israeli bureaucracy. They feel not fully
accepted in Israeli society; and there have been several cases of
suicide among Ethiopian youth, particularly in the army. I recently
attended a "tazkar" (memorial-gathering) at the home of a 16-year-old
student who had committed suicide because of difficulties with his
studies. There was a continuous stream of relatives and friends coming
and going; I was the only "white" person there.

I feel that this exhibition could, in addition to presenting information
about the traditional culture, also serve a valuable educational and
social purpose: to bridge gaps and break down barriers between the
generations within the Ethiopian Jewish community itself and between
them and the broader Israeli community; to raise the pride of the
Ethiopian Jewish community and to contribute to mutual understanding.
Besides a visual display of manuscripts and photographs, I'm thinking
also of including activities: inviting Qessotch and elders to tell
stories (through interpreters if necessary);  groups to tell and act-out
traditional proverbs (of which they have thousands! - I had great fun
trying this with a Qes' wife and her grand-daughter recently -
grandmother knows no Hebrew at all, grand-daughter only very little: I
read to them proverbs in Amharic from a book, which they explained to me
through gestures, and we all ended up laughing!);  sessions for children
to copy letters of the Amharic alphabet with traditional reed-pens as
used by scribes for copying manuscripts; performances of prayers and
songs; women to prepare Ethiopian food and coffee; et cetera.

I found an article in the journal "Curator" (vol. 40/1, March 1997):
"Bridging a cultural gap: a museum creates access" by Georgia C. Lang,
about an exhibition in 1995 at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum,
Wausau, Wisconsin. The exhibition was called "Jean Despujols: Indochina
Odyssey" and was based on paintings by a French artist who travelled and
painted in south-east Asia in the 1930s; the purpose of the exhibition
was to bridge the gap between the long-established Anglo population of
Wausau and the immigrant community of Hmong refugees from north Laos.
The Hmong community themselves cooperated with the museum staff in
planning and putting on the exhibition.  This article has given me a lot
of ideas about the type of exhibition I would like to plan.

I would like to hear (on or off-list) from people with experience in
organising exhibitions of this type within multicultural communities;
also from people with experience in preserving the cultural heritage of
ethnic groups and minorities, and immigrant communities. Can anyone
suggest sources of funding for such a project? (UNESCO perhaps? others?)
(at present I have no funding at all!)

Margaret Hayon
Student of Museology, University of Haifa, Israel.
Website ("Ethiopian Jewish heritage"):
<http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/7139/>