https://virtualjerusalem.com/inside_news.php?xlinks=https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/364337
Thanks to Victor Sharpe for this inspiring story….rsk
Inspiring words of Ethiopia-born MK Moshe Solomon (Rel.Zionist Party): ‘The boy who was once a shepherd is today in the Knesset of Israel.’
By MK Moshe Mousia Solomon
Honored Prime Minister, Honored Knesset Ministers, My friends, Members of the Knesset
I, Moses Mousia Solomon, son of the late Zlalo Shimon z”l and Asgadesh, may she be granted long life, stand here before you, filled with emotion, addressing you from this august site.
Before my eyes float images, life memories, not mine alone, but generation after generation of the people of my community, of the members of my family who dreamed of reaching the Land of Israel and Jerusalem. I stand here today, proud to realize their dream, but fully aware that the journey is not over, and that in many ways, it has just begun.
I do not know for certain on what day I was born, and I was not given a name at my circumcision. “A man’s name contains the secret of his life, its essence,” my father explained to me years later, “and can we look at a newborn infant and know his essence?” My father observed me for a long time, saw my traits, my personality and hopes, until one night he declared: “Mousia, you name will be Mousia.”
The young boy who was once a shepherd in Shira, Ethiopia, stands here today in the Knesset of Israel, one of the 120 members of the Great Assembly of our time. The child who trekked for more than a month from Ethiopia to Sudan, the refugee who waited three years to reach his longed-for land – this young boy is now an elected Member of Knesset in the Land of Israel, the land of the Jewish people.
I remember how during the journey through the deserts of Sudan, after days without rain, when we were on the verge of collapse from lack of water, Divine Providence brought us to the Tekeze River. I remember how our great thirst met a river of flowing water, the hundreds of people slaking that thirst, and their desire to continue drinking more and more. As King David wrote in the Book of Psalms: “My soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you, in dry and desiccated lands, weary and without water.”
I stand here in Israel’s Knesset – and have the right to formulate the laws of this state, the way of life of its citizens, life itself. I am filled with thirst – ideas, hopes, plans – all filling my head with the thought of parliamentary activity in this house. I wish myself – and you – for this activity to be blessed.