Live & Become

Last night, Rebeccah invited me to the opening night of the Washington Jewish Film Festival, which included a reception, a showing of the movie Live and Become, and a question and answer session with the star of the movie, Sirak M. Sabahat.

The movie was great! I highly recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity to see it. According to Sirak, it will be released widely in the US, so you might have a shot. It's the story of an Ethiopian boy who is Christian. In order to save his life, his mother tells him to pretend to be Jewish, and gets him on a flight out of Sudan to Israel with other Ethiopian Jews during "Operation Moses." The boy takes on the identity of a dead Ethiopian Jewish boy named Solomon/Schlomo, and creates a life for himself in Israel. It's a fascinating story, dealing with Schlomo's guilt over not really being Jewish, his desire to find his mother and understand why she sent him away and told him not to come back, and his life with his new adoptive Israeli parents.

Sirak's question and answer session was fun, too. He's adorable and very funny. He was born in Ethiopia, and was one of the Ethiopian Jews rescued during Operation Solomon. He lives in Israel with his family.