By Carl Zebrowski
Editor
Not long ago, Barel Desta hardly cared about homework and tests and classes. “I wasn’t doing bad in school,” said the 17-year-old Ethiopian Jewish Israeli, “but I wasn’t doing great.”
In an August meeting with Jewish Federation of the Lehigh Valley staff, Desta, in the United States to visit with organizations that fund the Ethiopian National Program, credited the ENP for changing his life. “They showed me a path,” he said. “It helped me grow.”
The ENP is a partnership whose mission is to help Ethiopian Israeli youths reach their potential by strengthening their opportunities for education, social mobility, and better integration into Israeli society. Like all immigrant communities, Ethiopian Israelis face challenges with language, cultural differences, education, and assimilation. Those obstacles don’t just suddenly disappear in a generation or two.
The ENP’s flagship youth program is SPACE—School Performance and Community Empowerment—the program that has helped Desta and many other 7th-12th graders improve their academic performance and graduate. Launched in 2005, SPACE offers students after-school academic support, mentorship, socio-economic support, leadership opportunities, and the chance to strengthen their connection with their Ethiopian heritage.
SPACE gave Desta the opportunity to spend two weeks of the summer of 2024 as an Israeli liaison at a summer camp in Montreal. He was surprised and thrilled that they chose him.
“I’d never left Israel,” he said. “It was like the greatest news I ever heard. I got a chance to meet other Jewish people from around the world.”
But then Hamas attacked on October 7, 2023. His brother was at the Nova Music Festival and witnessed horrors there. He survived and returned home, but the post-traumatic memories stuck with him.
Desta said he couldn’t bear to leave his brother behind at that time. “I made a choice that I would not go,” he said. “That two months let me build a better connection with my brother. When I woke up in the morning, I would check on him, make him get out of his regular box.
“I was really happy that I didn’t go. It was a good decision.”
As a 10th-grader, he got to participate along with others in a SPACE program documenting their families’ journeys to Israel from Ethiopia. Most went there as part of Israeli airlift operations in 1984-85 and 1991. Fleeing political turmoil and violence, these refugees, many of whom were farmers and shepherds, trekked hundreds of miles by car, horse, and on foot to board the planes.
Desta got to research and tell the story of how his grandfather, a spiritual leader in his Ethiopian community, led the way to Israel. His mother supplied much of the story, which ended up published alongside dozens of other family stories in the 2025 book “Documentation of Ethiopian Jewry and Their Journey to the Land of Israel: Interviews and Stories Collected by Students of ENP Project Ti’ud, 2003-2024.”
“She always wanted to document her story,” Desta said. “She never got the opportunity before. That book made her really, really happy. I’m glad that SPACE gave me a chance to do it.”
The next major phase of Desta’s young life will be service in the Israel Defense Forces. He plans to get a law degree and work as a military attorney. After serving his required time, he’ll decide whether to remain in the service or move to private practice.
Wherever he ends up, he’ll remain grateful that ENP gave him a push when he needed it. Grace Rodnitzki, the ENP director of international relations who was guiding Desta on his United States visit, said that kids need to start young. “You already have to work hard from seventh grade,” she said. By ninth trade, she continued, SPACE students choose a major.
Desta has also realized how important it is to put in the effort, even as a kid. “If you want to get ahead of where you are right now,” he said, “you need to work for it.”
And you need help from supporters like the Jewish Federation that have a hand in making important, life-changing opportunities happen. “We’re so grateful to the Federation for all you do, caring so much for us,” said Rodnitzki.
You can be part of providing empowering opportunities like this to Jewish youths who need them. Contact Aaron Gorodzinsky, Federation director of development, at [email protected] or 610-821-5500 for more information on contributing to the Federation’s 2027 Annual Campaign for Jewish Needs.