Beejhy Barhany (pictured above with her husband) is the Director of BINA Cultural Foundation, which coordinates of the annual Sheba Film Festival. (Photo: Tadias Magazine)
By Carolyn Slutsky
By the time she was 7, Beejhy Barhany had fled her native Ethiopia, walking with her family and 300 villagers to Sudan, where they started a new life. After a few years they left again, this time taking a Jeep through the jungles of Kenya, on to Uganda, France and finally to Israel, which even at that young age she remembers was “like fulfilling a dream after exile.”
She quickly made the transition into Israeli life, and at 22 visited New York, where she also felt at home. But when she moved here, she searched for agencies to help Ethiopian Jews making the transition and found nothing. So in 2003 she founded Beta Israel of North America (BINA), a cultural organization for Ethiopian Jews.
36 Under 36 2009: Beejhy Barhany, 33
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Related:
The 6th Sheba Film Festival
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