Twelve Tribes by Ethan Michaeli

Author:Ethan Michaeli [Michaeli, Ethan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-11-16T00:00:00+00:00

Ben Ammi died in 2014 in a hospital in Be’er Sheva at seventy-five, survived by four wives, twenty-five children, forty-five grandchildren, and fifteen great-grandchildren. Not having been back to Dimona since, I wondered how his death had affected the Hebrew Israelite community overall.

Gabi and I were greeted warmly by Ahmadiel Ben Yehudah, the Hebrew Israelites’ minister of information and national spokesman, whom I’d met on my previous visits, and he invited us into the cottage they used as the press office, where we sat in the comfortable air-conditioning drinking cold, sparkling water as we talked. Speaking in English, he spent the first few minutes recalling our prior conversations over the years. Tall and thin, with a narrow mustache and full beard, Ahmadiel remembered my mother’s tour of Dimona and graciously accepted her condolences for Ben Ammi’s death.

Though not an original member himself, Ahmadiel had held important positions in the community for decades, serving in nine locales over twenty years, including Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), where they had just a small group, and South Africa, where there were over one thousand members. He had arrived in Israel in 1978 and played drums with the Soul Messengers, before becoming the minister of information as of 1984 and community spokesperson since 1994. He proudly counted twenty-two children from three wives, including four who were adopted. All those who had reached the age of conscription had served in the IDF, and some had even served in combat units. “There is no greater service,” he said of his children in the military. “Most parents don’t want their children in combat units, but it’s their choice.”

I asked about the community’s size now, and Ahmadiel said they did not keep an exact count, though he was sure it was well over three thousand in Dimona alone. Ben Ammi had finally received his Israeli citizenship two years before he died, but Ahmadiel noted with frustration that many Hebrew Israelites were “still in limbo” when it came to their citizenship applications, while additional immigration from the United States or elsewhere was effectively blocked. But overall, there had been great improvement in their circumstances since my last visit, he said. In the past, after all, many community members had been deported from Israel and prohibited from legal participation in the workforce. Now Teva Deli, which the community founded in 1995, was selling a line of products in supermarkets—vegan shawarma, tofu, and seitan packages, as well as BBQ patties in flavors they called “New York,” “California,” “Texas,” and “Kabab”—and also supplied restaurants across the country, providing patties for the signature dish at Buddha Burgers, a fashionable vegan spot in Tel Aviv, and nondairy cheese to the Israeli branches of Domino’s Pizza. To formalize their communal efforts, the Dimona community had incorporated as a municipal kibbutz called Shomrey Ha Shalom, or the Guardians of Peace.

“They no longer call us a vegan, polygamous cult,” Ahmadiel said.

Acceptance and legalized status came with their own consequences, however. The young people all

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