Sheba and Solomon's Return : Ethiopian Children in Israel: Identity and Attachment

In the chaos of Ethiopia's war and massacre, Israel flew some eighty thousand Ethiopian Jews to Israel in the 1990's, Jews who date themselves from the time of King Solomon and Queen Sheba.  Most were raised in preliterate, isolated ,rural agrarian villages.  This book tells their children's and their stories in their words. Over three years, Dr. Szajnberg worked with these six-year old children and their siblings and families in an after school program for Ethiopian children. They shared their stories, their art and their homes. The book studies their parents' life stories and attachment to their children and the children's accounts of their inner lives and their attachment to their parents.  We learn how girls are thriving as boys lag; how most children and parents are insecurely attached to each other, a legacy of parental trauma in Ethiopia; that a minority of boys begin to bully other children; and how the dedicated teachers and parents are overcoming the generations of viscissitudes to build new lives in a new land.