In a Sudanese refugee camp sheltering Ethiopians displaced by civil war and famine in 1984, the Israeli secret service has begun Operation Moses, airlifting thousands of Falashas, or Ethiopian Jews, to Israel. A non-Jewish Ethiopian woman persuades a Falasha woman whose own son has just died, to allow her son to assume his identity. Renamed Schlomo, the boy is adopted by a loving, liberal Israeli family, however Israel, rather than being the promised land, turns out to be rife with racism. We follow Schlomo through the trials and tribulations of assimilation.