Rabbi Menachem Waldman is a central and veteran activist in the struggle for the aliyah and absorption of Ethiopian Jewry. For many years he served as the representative of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate on the matter of Ethiopian Jewry and headed the Shvut Am Institute. In recent years, he has directed the Jewish Agency’s Jewish education programs for Ethiopian immigrants. He has traveled to Ethiopia some fifty times as an emissary in order to guide the Jewish life of tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews while they waited for Aliyah in Addis Ababa and Gondar. Rabbi Waldman is considered one of the foremost experts on the study of Ethiopian Jewry. He has published numerous books on the subject, including The Jews of Ethiopia: The Beta-Israel Community (1985); Beyond the Rivers of Ethiopia: The Jews of Ethiopia and the Jewish People (Hebrew, 1988); From Ethiopia to Jerusalem: The Jews of Ethiopia in the Modern Era (Hebrew, 1992); The Koren Ethiopian Haggadah: Journey to Freedom (2010); and Journey to the Remainder of Ethiopian Jewry (Hebrew, 2015).
