It’s been an astonishing three weeks for Yityish Aynaw, an immigrant orphan
from Ethiopia, who became the fi rst black Miss Israel last month, and has
now been invited to Thursday’s gala dinner with visiting US President Barack
Obama. When Yityish Aynaw arrived in Israel as a 12-year-old, winning beauty
contests and dining with presidents was as far from her thoughts as her native
Ethiopia is from her adopted land. Her mother had just died, leaving her an
orphan - her father had died years earlier. So her mother’s parents, who were
among thousands of Ethiopian Jews already living in Israel, arrived in Addis
Ababa to fetch Yityish and her older brother.
In their new home, they had to learn Hebrew from scratch. “It wasn’t easy
because I couldn’t speak the language and I was put into a regular class without
any help,” Aynaw, now 21, told the BBC World Service. “It was a new language.
It was a new culture. Quite often children even laughed at me,” she says, though
she adds that she also met many kind people. But Aynaw was determined
to succeed in her adopted country. “I felt a responsibility to prove myself in
everything I did and to improve myself as well,” she says. After school, like most
other Israelis, she performed military service. She then stayed on in the army
and was serving as an offi cer when she left, after three years, in September last
year. Before she was selected as Miss Israel on 27 February, she was a manager in a shoe shop in Netanya.
“For people from my country of origin
it is a source of great pride,” she says of her
new title. During the competition she named
the black American civil rights leader Martin
Luther King as one of her heroes. “He fought
for justice and equality, and that’s one of the
reasons I’m here. I want to show that my
community has many beautiful qualities that
aren’t always represented in the media,” she
said at the time.
But another hero, she told the BBC, was the
US president. “I was infl uenced and inspired
by Obama. Like him, I was also raised by my
grandmother. Nothing was handed to me on
a plate and like him I also had to work very
hard and long to achieve things in my life. To
this day he inspires me just as he inspires the
rest of the world,” she says. “I couldn’t believe
that one of the most infl uential people in the
world, the head of such an important state,
would invite someone like me to attend such an important event. It has only just now sunk
in and I can understand that it’s happening.
“It is a great honour not just for me, but the
other people that I represent.” Aynaw says she
hopes her victory will “achieve the acceptance
of everyone in Israel”.
Ethiopian Jews
-
Some 120,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel
-
Known as Beta Israel, they mostly came
from northern Ethiopia
-
They speak the Semitic languages Amharic
and Tigrinya
-
Many Ethiopian Jews believe they are
descended from one of Israel’s ancient tribes
-
Israel decided in the 1970s that its law
allowing Jews the right of return applied to
them
Ethiopians often complain about
discrimination when it comes to jobs,
education and housing. There were even allegations last year that some new Ethiopian
immigrants have been given contraceptive
injections against their will. Aynaw’s victory
“was very important for all Israeli society”, says
Penina Tamanu-Shata, one of two Ethiopian
Israelis currently serving as a member of
the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. “Her
victory is great for us because it shows that
the most beautiful woman is black and that
people accept difference. Yityish won, but
Israeli society also won. Her victory made a
statement. She showed there are no limits.”
Tamanu-Shata says the fact that the
contest was shown on prime-time television
was important as most Israelis encounter
the Ethiopian community - just 120,000
strong - through the media. “Sometimes the
discrimination is under the surface. Most
Israelis say they love the Ethiopian community,
but there are still problems,” she says. “I think
the situation is getting better, but we still have
a lot of work to do.”
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