The history of Ethiopian Jewry dates back many centuries. For most of that period, these Jews had no contact with the rest of the Jewish world, yet they strongly maintained their Jewish identity. When the state of Israel was founded in 1948, many of the Ethiopian Jews attempted to make aliyah, but were forbidden to leave Ethiopia. From November 1985 until January 1986, the Israeli government ran Operation Moses, a covert mass migration. This secret operation was halted after only 7,000 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted from the area.
During a dramatic 36-hour period in 1991, the Israeli government, assisted by the United States government and the American Association for Ethiopian Jews (AAEJ), airlifted almost the entire Jewish community of Ethiopia to Israel. The rescue presented Israel and the Ethiopian olim (immigrants) with a new challenge — becoming full-fledged members of Israeli society.
In the mid-1980s the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC) formed Project REAP (the Reform movement Ethiopian Jewry Assistance Program) to send volunteer American doctors to refugee camps and Jewish villages in Gondar and other areas of Ethiopia. Here in the United States, the Religious Action Center played a key role in making the plight of Ethiopian Jews a major concern of the entire American Jewish community.
There are currently two distinct groups in Ethiopia who claim the right to make aliyah to Israel — the Quara Jews and the Felash Mura. These groups make such claims based on completely different circumstances, thus the Israeli government and the Ethiopian Jewry advocacy community are treating the two as separate matters.