Devorah Eshet Ravya of Dimona was born and raised in Chicago during politically and socially turbulent times. So when Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was elected last week as the first African American president of the United States, the 54-year-old member of the Black Hebrews couldn't help but feel a deep sense of hope and satisfaction.
"To see, at this time, something I never believed I would ever see - a black man being validated as being worthy, being competent, being a man of great achievement... to lead what is believed to be the most powerful nation on earth, is very gratifying," Eshet Ravya said Sunday, while sitting in a garden at the entrance to the community's kibbutz, the Village of Peace, in Dimona.
It was less than four decades ago when Eshet Ravya, then a high school junior, and three of her schoolmates were surrounded by a mob of angry white people wielding knives, sticks and rakes as the girls were about to leave their school.
Eshet Ravya was one of about 300 African American pupils who were bused in to study among 3,000 white students at John F. Kennedy High School, which had recently been integrated.
Rather than confront the mob waiting at the bottom of the school steps, she and her friends waited for the police to come and escort them to safety, she said.
But when the officers finally arrived, they "attacked" the girls, arresting them and bringing them into the police station to be fingerprinted, she said.
"We were totally in shock," she said. "It was a defining moment because then I realized that people can hate you because of the color of your skin... and I didn't really see that America was the place for me."
Eshet Ravya left the United States in 1978 and has considered Israel her only home ever since. While she didn't vote in last week's US elections, she and many others among the more than 2,500-member Black Hebrew community have been very supportive of Obama, saying that both they and the president-elect are striving to be agents of change.
"We are siblings of the same struggle, so to speak," said Priest Yehuda HaCohane, 43. "We desire a better world. This community itself is a vehicle for change," a beacon of light to the nations.
For example, through the community's strict vegan diet, healthy lifestyle and culture, the community has rid itself of many health and social diseases that plague others around the world from the same gene pool, he said.
"We've been able to avoid many of the scourges that affect people there; diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, it goes on down the line," he said.
Community members say they have succeeded in purging other ills that have plagued African Americans in the US, ranging from alcoholism, to drug abuse, to violent crime.
In 2005, in collaboration with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization co-founded by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1957, the community opened a conflict resolution center in Dimona that teaches holistic nonviolence and reconciliation in communities.
The Black Hebrews, who are based in both Chicago and in Israel, believe they are descended from the Ten Lost Tribes.
They started arriving here in 1969 on temporary visas - though some stayed illegally - but they were not entitled to Israeli citizenship because they were not considered Jews by the Chief Rabbinate.
But the community gained legal status in 1990, and in 2003 they were granted permanent residency. Members say they are now on their way to receiving full citizenship.
HaCohane believes that the community's actions in Israel have contributed to changes being set in motion around the world.
"I think it has to do with our ability to love one another; wherever that is practiced, puts that energy in motion and that energy becomes contagious," he said.
Shamiyah Shaleak, a 69-year-old member of the community who is originally from Mississippi, said she was very excited to see Obama, who came from such humble origins, succeed.
When Obama first appeared on the national scene in 2004, she felt that "this young man sounds like he comes from Jerusalem. I felt that he had a godliness about him."
For too long, she said, we have lived in a world where people do not take others into consideration, have not loved their neighbors as themselves, have not followed God's commandments or respected the environment.
"This is the change we have to have," Shaleak said. "We are hoping to have a partner in Mr. Obama."
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Magal
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