Filmmaker Statement

In 2021, I co-directed a Discovery+ Original documentary, Dreaming of Jerusalem, about the Ethiopian Jewish community living in the northern city of Gondar, Ethiopia. As we showed the film at festivals and in schools, it became clear that audiences were unfamiliar with the story's context. Many viewers were surprised to learn that Black African Jewish communities exist at all. Others knew about the Israeli airlifts of Ethiopian Jews in the 1980s and 1990s – Operations Moses and Solomon – but they were not aware of the Ethiopian side of the story, or the millennia-long history of Jews in Ethiopia, or the communities of Jews that remain in Ethiopia today. Over the last 5 years, I have expanded my scope, partnering with African Jewish communities in Ethiopia, Uganda, and South Africa to amplify their stories through film. The stories of these communities are very different from each other, but they are increasingly connected, both through their interactions with global Jewish communiti