A TRUE LIFE STORY
About Alevel Samuel
Alevel Samuel’s story begins in a small Ethiopian village and stretches across borders, generations, and a lifelong belief in what determination can make possible.
He was just four when Ethiopian soldiers took his father and forced him into military service. His family had no say in that separation. As a child tending livestock, Alevel learned responsibility long before he had the chance to sit in a classroom.
Even then, he carried four ambitions: to bring his father home, to become a businessman—a dream he first explored through a childhood button-trading game—to learn to read and write, and to reach Jerusalem.
On the eve of Passover in 1983, he left Ethiopia with his family. Their journey to Sudan included 28 days of walking barefoot across more than 800 kilometers. He arrived in Israel on December 27, 1984, where a new chapter began: education, military service, engineering studies, and eventually a career in communications and technology.
He went on to build a family and work to reunite relatives separated by distance and circumstance. In his memoir, Walking Barefoot with a Transistor: On the Road to the Dream of Jerusalem, he reflects on survival, opportunity, and the obligation to remember those who helped shape the journey—and those still waiting to come home.
“Problems are part of life. Learning to face them is the art of living.”