The Long – And Expensive – Road Home

The Israeli Government has finally agreed to resettle the remaining 20,000 Falash Mura in Israel. 600 per month – double the current rate of immigration – will be brought to Israel until they are all resettled at the end of 2007.

What's been the hitch that has held up Falash Mura aliya?

Money.

The Jewish Agency estimates that it costs 100,000 to resettle each individual Falash Mura. (Presumably this is the average cost to the state over the lifetime of an individual.)

Sometimes doing the right thing isn't cheap.

Comments

[Rowan Berkeley]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10592688&dopt=Abstract

"Because the Jewish haplotypes VII and VIII are not represented in the Falasha population, we conclude that the Falasha people descended from ancient inhabitants of Ethiopia who converted to Judaism."

I would imagine the halachic argument against them is that lapsed converts are no longer Jews ( I do not imply that it is "their fault" that halachically seaking they lapsed, but this is itself halachically irrelevant).