When the first party of children arrived in Israel Jacques Faitlovitch, by now infirm and almost blind, was nearing the end of his life. A few days before his death, in October 1955, he had the great satisfaction of receiving a representative group at his house in Tel Aviv. At his funeral, attended by twelve Falasha children from Kfar Batya, his lifelong friend Professor Nahum Sloushz, an authority on oriental Jewry, praised his long struggle, often in the face of great difficulties arising out of prejudice, to help the black Jews. (2) Faitlovitch had dedicated his whole life to their cause and he bequeathed his library of books and manuscripts dealing with Ethiopia to the municipality of Tel Aviv, from which it has now passed to the city's university. By his endeavours, over a period of fifty years, he saved the Falashas from extinction, though their struggle for full recognition had yet to be won.

With the death of their great champion even the mild support for the Falashas in the Jewish Agency immediately waned. No more children were sent to Kfar Batya and two years after Faitlovitch's death the school in Asmara was closed. The Jewish Agency pleaded shortage of funds. The students and equipment in Eritrea were transported the 300 odd miles to Wuzaba, in the mountains near Gondar, where the Falashas themselves established a boarding-school. But all this unwonted activity deep in the countryside aroused the suspicion of their neighbours. According to Y ona Bogale, who meantime had become the spokesman and leader of the villagers in the Gondar region, the Christian population suspected that the Falashas intended to usurp their land. On the night of 24 January 1958, one of the dormitories and the dining-hut were set on fire. Fortunately, there were no casualties but it was decided to close the simple boarding accommodation and, once more, the school was moved; this time to the neighbouring but safer village of Ambober, which thence forward became the centre of Falasha educational activity, staffed by teachers who had been trained at Kfar Batya.

Other schools were started, scattered over a very wide area from Semien in the north to Gojjam in the south and Kwara to the west of Lake Tana. Altogether twenty-seven schools were opened, employing thirty-six teachers who had received their training at Addis Ababa, Asmara or Kfar Batya. The teaching did not rise above the elementary level except at Ambober but it was a

(1) J.C., 13 December 1957.
J.C., 21 October 1955.