20 years advancing Ethiopian-Israeli students into influential leaders
Founded in 2006 from one bold idea, Reichman University’s Israel at Heart program celebrates 20 years of helping Ethiopian-Israeli graduates rise to Israel’s top ranks.
This year, 2026, marks twenty years since the founding of the Israel at Heart program, an initiative dedicated to Ethiopian-Israeli students that has, over two decades, sent graduates into Israel’s diplomatic corps, top law firms, intelligence units, and Ivy League universities.
A Conversation That Started It All
The program traces its origins to 2006, when American Jewish philanthropist Joey Low approached Reichman University leadership with a simple but ambitious idea: open doors for students of Ethiopian origin through a structured educational pathway to positions of influence and leadership across Israeli society.
“Joey Low approached me personally with the idea of establishing the program,” recalled Jonathan Davis, VP and Head of the Raphael Recanati International School. “It was received with open arms by Professors Uriel Reichman, Founding President and Chairperson of the Board and Amnon Rubinstein, of blessed memory”.
Thanks to its donors and supporters along the way, what followed was two decades of quiet, determined program-building mirroring, in its own way, the quiet determination of the community it serves.
The Numbers Tell the Story
Today, the Israel at Heart program counts 220 graduates , a cohort that has dispersed across virtually every prestigious sector of Israeli life.
Among them:
- Journalists shaping public discourse
- Israeli diplomats serving in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Parliamentary advisers working in the Knesset
- Lawyers at elite firms including Herzog Fox & Neeman, Meitar, and Gornitzky, as well as in the State Attorney’s Office
- Clinical and organizational psychologists
- High-tech entrepreneurs and investment professionals
- Staff members in the Prime Minister’s Office
And dozens of emissaries dispatched to Hillel houses on American university campuses to counter the narrative that Israel is an apartheid state
Currently, 51 students of Ethiopian origin are enrolled at Reichman University across undergraduate, medical, and graduate programs.
Applicants to the program are assessed based on their IDF experience, community contributions, personal outlook, and future goals.
Once accepted, students receive full tuition coverage, a stipend, mentoring and tutoring support, academic assistance, and internship opportunities abroad.
Officers, Commandos, and a Rhodes Scholar
After twenty years of championing the program, Jonathan Davis remains as enthusiastic as ever: “Academic achievement within the program has been striking. One third of the Ethiopian-origin students currently on campus are IDF officers, with graduates and students serving in some of the most elite units in the Israeli military — including Shayetet 13, Sayeret Matkal, Maglan, Shaldag, the Paratroopers, Givati, and Golani brigades, as well as Iron Dome battery commands and intelligence units.”
Leading the program on the ground is Ester David, who has served as its director for the most part of the program. The daughter of the former Qes, the traditional Ethiopian rabbi of Lod, David brings to her role not only professional dedication but a deeply personal connection to the community the program was built to serve.
On the academic side, the program produced the first Reichman University student ever to win a Rhodes Scholarship for graduate study at Oxford University. Other graduates have received Fulbright Scholarships and are studying at Ivy League institutions, including Harvard. Multiple students have appeared on the Dean’s List.
Memory and Momentum
The twentieth anniversary arrives against a backdrop of grief as well as pride. Since October 7, 2023, the number of fallen Ethiopian-Israeli soldiers has been three times higher relative to their proportion of the general population.
Each of the Ethiopian students on campus carries stories of family hardship passed down through generations, stories, that are important for all of Israeli society to hear and remember.
It is precisely that intergenerational weight, the grandparents who made aliyah against all odds, the parents who rebuilt lives in an unfamiliar country, the grandchildren now studying medicine and law and diplomacy, that gives the program’s twenty-year milestone its emotional force.
After two decades, the program has helped demonstrate that the children and grandchildren of those who walked out of Ethiopia with nothing can, given the opportunity, rise to the very top of Israeli society, in its courtrooms, its embassies, its newsrooms, and its most elite military units.