Film:
Va, Vis et Deviens (
Go, See and Become/Live and Become)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player
When you watch films based on the real world, you can’t help but pick something up. For instance, I never knew that there were thousands of Jews living in Ethiopia. These are not displaced Israelis but Africans who are traditionally Jewish. Many of these Jews were moved out of Ethiopia and relocated to Israel by Israel. They were forced to walk, and many died along the way—bandits, disease, starvation, and the like killed them off.
Va, Vis et Deviens (
Go, See and Become or more commonly
Live and Become) is the story of one boy who was rescued. The boy, however, has a terrible secret. He is not Jewish, but the son of a Christian woman who is one who, because of her religion, cannot go to Israel. She gives her son to a Jewish woman who had lost hers. The boy is renamed Shlomo (Moshe Agazai as a boy, Moshe Abebe as a teen and Sirak M. Sabahat as an adult), learns a false family history, and is brought to Israel and safety. When his mother sends him away, she tells him to live and become, and to never return to Ethiopia.
