The Los Angeles Jewish Journal today reviewed a new book, "Black Jews, Jews, and Other Heroes", by Howard M. Lenhoff, former president of the American Association of Ethiopian Jews (AAEJ). Mr. Lenhoff's book explores the Ethiopian Jews, "from the perspective of an advocate who helped forge a consensus behind the mass aliyah in the 1970s and 1980s":

Roughly 20 years ago, Sudan, whose western Darfur region has been engulfed in genocide for four years, watched another other tragedy unfold -- the deaths of thousands of Ethiopian Jews trying to escape to Israel via Operation Moses.

Nearly one-fifth of the fleeing Falashas perished on their journey due to murder, famine, drought and various illnesses. But tens of thousands reached the Holy Land; and the ancient Jewish community (known to themselves as Beta Yisrael), which had an almost invisible presence in Israel until the late 1970s, now numbers more than 100,000 people.

Former activist Howard Lenhoff, author of "Black Jews, Jews, and Other Heroes," might not consider himself one of his book's eponymous heroes. He never traveled to Ethiopia, never risked his life, never engaged in the kind of swashbuckling derring-do of some of his colleagues.

Yet he played a critical role as president of the American Association of Ethiopian Jews (AAEJ) in negotiating with and, in some cases, applying pressure to the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency to change policy on Ethiopian Jews.

Typical of the response of the Jewish establishment in the 1970s was this remark by one American Jewish woman: "These blacks are not Jews."

And today, black Jews are much more visible, the Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel numbers 100,000.

Only by condemning past mistakes can we hope to make future progress. Baruch Hashem so much progress has been made and may it be G-d's Will that one day, all Jews will feel themselves equal beneficiaries of all the Divine gifts inherent in the Holy Land.