Ester Rada
"Life
Happens"
When the famine struck Ethiopia
in 1983, Ester Rada's parents
were forced to flee.
They traveled
by foot to Sudan, only to
find themselves packed into
a dangerous refugee camp.
But the couple managed to
get out because of their religion.
The Rada's were part a group
of Ethiopian Jews who were airlifted
out of Sudan in 1984 by the
Israeli government. It was called
Operation Moses.
They became Israeli citizens
and the government installed
them in Kiryat Arba.
Ester was born a year later,
but her family's life in Israel
was far from smooth sailing,
because their new home was a
volatile Jewish settlement on
the outskirts of Hebron in the
West Bank.
"A lot of Ethiopians came
to Israel at that time and they
put a lot of us in Kiryat Arba,"
says Rada. "There were
fences and soldiers, and they
kept us safe I think. There
was the first intifada in 87,
I was born in 85, so it was
rough times."
Rada's family stayed in Kiryat
Arba until she was 10, but by
then most of the Ethiopians
they'd arrived with had moved
on. As Rada got older, and the
ethnic makeup of her community
changed, she started distancing
herself from the Ethiopian culture
she'd been brought up with.
"My mother always says
to me that until the age of
six I spoke the Ethiopian language
fluently," Rada explains. "I
heard a lot of Ethiopian music
at home and Ethiopian language,
but I started to tell my mom
that I don't want to hear the
language anymore, I want to
speak Hebrew, because I felt
different outside"
Even though Rada was born in
Israel, and spoke like the Israeli
kids around her, there was no
escaping the fact that her East
African looks set her apart.
To cope with the struggles of
feeling different, Rada turned
to singing.
Then she was drafted into the
army, the IDF.
She became a singer in a military
band, and ended up touring the
world.
After finishing her military
duties, Rada moved to Tel Aviv
and made her way as a actress,
becoming known through roles
on a few popular TV shows. But
Rada's recent work marks a return
to her first artistic love,
music.
Though Rada acknowledges that
her path to self-acceptance
sometimes took a convoluted
route, this latest work signifies
a full embrace of her Ethiopian
roots.
"It was very confusing
like you have something at home,
and something totally different
outside, and you want to be
like everyone else," Rada
says. "I wanted to be an
Israeli. Only when I grew up,
after the army I think, that's
when I felt whole with all of
the pieces in me."
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