Gedalia Uriya z"l

Gedalia Uriya was born in 1940 in a village in the Begemder province of Ethiopia, near Gondar, into the Beta Israel community. He received his first schooling from the teacher Geta Yirmiyahu in the village of Azazo.

In early 1955, a boy of about fifteen, he was chosen for the group of Beta Israel youth sent to study at the teachers’ seminary in Kfar Batya in Israel - the "first bridge" between Ethiopian Jewry and the Land of Israel. Completing the training at the end of 1957, he returned to Ethiopia and taught in the Jewish schools - in Wuzaba, Ambober and Teda. Over the years he founded and directed a school, and wrote books.

In the spring of 1977, Haim Halachmi, the HIAS emissary, charged him with compiling the lists of aliyah candidates in the Gondar district. His Zionist activity made him a target of the military regime: he tried several times to flee Ethiopia, was caught, imprisoned and tortured. He was later officially recognized as a Prisoner of Zion; according to the Petach Tikva municipality he was even sentenced to death, and was saved after Prime Minister Menachem Begin appealed to Ethiopia’s ruler, Mengistu Haile Mariam.

In the 1980s the American Association for Ethiopian Jews campaigned for his release, and in 1984 he managed to leave Ethiopia under the pretext of a job in Kenya - and from there came home to Israel with his family.

He made his home in Petach Tikva. He toured North America to speak for the aliyah of Beta Israel, took part on behalf of the Jewish Agency in the preparations for Operation Solomon, and for long years worked as an educational social worker in the municipality’s welfare department, walking new-immigrant families through their first steps in the city.

At Tiferet Tzvi he is remembered as a dear congregant who prayed here for many years together with his family - a natural and beloved part of this house.

In 2019 the municipality bestowed on him the title of Yakir HaIr - honored citizen of Petach Tikva. Gedalia Uriya passed away on May 13, 2021. In June 2026 the public library at the Yoseftal community center was named after him, and the memorial plaque describes him as a writer and poet, a Prisoner of Zion and a pioneer of the aliyah - a man of education, kindness and truth.

Sources: the "Gedalia Uriya" entry in the Hebrew Wikipedia; publications of the Petach Tikva municipality and the local press on the Yakir HaIr award (2019) and the naming of the Yoseftal library (2026).