By Elena Oumano

“You don’t look Jewish” (meaning not like the stereotypical hook-nosed European) is not a compliment, no matter what the speaker’s intentions. And what do Jews look like anyway? 400 Miles to Freedom, directed by husband and wife team Avishai and Shari Rothfarb Mekonen, addresses this and other issues of Jewish identity in its account of the Biblical journey, mostly by foot, that Avishai undertook at age 10 from his native Ethiopia to Israel—where he and his fellow countryman were not exactly fully welcomed as returning brethren—and then onto New York City.

Avishai had been here only three months when two hijacked planes crashed into the Twin Towers. Trained in emergency rescue by the Israeli Army, Avishai raced downtown to help pull survivors from the rubble and scavenge water bottles from abandoned food carts. Later that terrible day, two FBI types approached: “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Avishai held out his Israeli ID “You’re black,” they said. “You can’t be Jewish.” They roughed him up, sent him on his way, and by the time he’d walked, covered in dust, to his apartment near Columbia University, the concept for this film was born.

400’s U.S. footage, showing people of various races and hailing from nearly every continent on earth—including Asia and many post-colonial African nations—and all insisting passionately and convincingly on their Jewishness, is edifying. But this film’s most harrowing emotional impact comes from Avishai’s personal story as it renders achingly specific the struggles of all Ethiopian Jews (who, before Israel, had no idea Jews could be white). In the midst of interviewing others on camera, flashes of confusion, pain and anger flit across his face as suppressed memories surface of his childhood kidnapping by brutish slavers during the year he and his family languished in the Sudan until Operation Moses finally airlifted them home. These moments are nearly as overwhelming for us.

“The film shows not just the pain of Ethiopian Jews but the history of the Diaspora,” Avishai says. “Each community carries a different pain, but it’s one story coming from different places. As I talked to people, it opened up pain I carried for years. What happened to me was a real journey of freedom.”

400 Miles to Freedom screens Feb 21. at the Museum of Tolerance, 226 E. 42nd St., as part of Black History Month, following a daylong tour of the museum; www.museumoftolerancenewyork.com.