Her mother had just died, leaving her an orphan - her father had died years earlier. So her mother's parents, who were among thousands of Ethiopian Jews already living in Israel, arrived in Addis Ababa to fetch Yityish and her older brother.
In their new home, they had to learn Hebrew from scratch.
"It wasn't easy because I couldn't speak the language and I was put into a regular class without any help," Aynaw, now 21, told the BBC World Service.
