The Baskets on My Grandmother's Shelf

1On a shelf in my grandmother's living room in Rehovot, there is a row of round baskets woven from straw and colored thread: red, purple, green and yellow. When I was little, I thought they were just decorations. I was not allowed to touch them, and I never asked why. It was only last year, when I had to interview a family member for a school project, that I learned what they really were.

2My grandmother, Almaz, grew up in a village in the Gondar region of northern Ethiopia. Like most Jewish girls there, she learned to weave baskets from her mother when she was about seven. The baskets were not decorations. They were used to store grain, to carry bread and, on special occasions, to serve food to guests. A woman's skill at weaving was a source of pride, and some patterns were passed down from mother to daughter for generations.

3When I asked her about leaving Ethiopia, she was silent for a long time. Then she told me that in 1990 her family left their village and travelled to Addis Ababa, the capital, hoping to reach Israel. They waited there for about a year in a crowded room, never knowing when, or whether, they would be able to leave. Then, in May 1991, came Operation Solomon. In about a day and a half, Israeli planes carried more than fourteen thousand Ethiopian Jews to Israel. My grandmother was twenty-six. She remembers that the seats had been removed from the plane to make room for more people, and that she sat on the floor holding my father, who was two years old, and a single basket.

4The first years in Israel were not easy. She had to learn Hebrew, a new alphabet and a new way of life, and she worked for years cleaning offices. Some of her neighbors asked whether she was really Jewish, a question that hurt her deeply. "I had prayed for Jerusalem my whole life," she told me, "and then I had to prove that I belonged."

5Through all of this, she kept weaving. In the evenings, after work, she sat by the window with her straw and thread. The baskets, she explained, were her way of keeping the village alive inside her. Each one marked a period of her life: the first one she made in Israel, the one she wove when my father finished the army, the one for my parents' wedding.

6At the end of the interview, she took down the oldest basket, the one she had held on the plane, and placed it in my hands. It was lighter than I expected. I realized that I had been looking at my family's history for years without seeing it. Now, when I visit her, I sit beside her and try to learn the patterns. My baskets are crooked, and she laughs at them kindly. But I keep trying, because some things are too important to be kept only on a shelf.