March 23, 2000
Diversity in the Desert
Politics aside, most acknowledge historic significance of pope's trip
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In the photos, soldiers toting Uzis await transportation to army bases in the south. In an open-air market, an Ethiopian Jewish woman in a brightly colored dress heatedly argues over the price of a chicken with a partially veiled Bedouin woman clad in dark robes. Elderly Russian war veterans sell Soviet medals to bargain-hunters; goats and camels are startled by rumbling convoys of flatbed semis hauling battle tanks.
"Transitions: Russians, Ethiopians and Bedouins in Israel's Negev Desert" captures a unique moment in Israeli history: the year that tens of thousands of newly-arrived Russians and Ethiopians streamed into the desert and struggled to settle on the periphery of Israel's urban culture. There, they encountered another group in transition: indigenous Bedouins moving from nomadic encampments to towns created for them in the desert.
