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The Beta-Israel
Leslie Rübner
[Written in 2011]
The Kebra Nagast (Glory of Kings) is the recorded early history of Ethiopia, it is thought to have been in existence for over a thousand years, and contains, according to the Ethiopian Coptic and Rastafarian traditions, the history of the origin of the Solomonic line of the Ethiopian Royal Family. They believe that Menilek the First, the son of the Queen of Sheba, founded the Solomonic dynasty, which lasted until 1974.
The Negus, Haile Selassie, the last Emperor inherited his royal blood through his paternal grandmother, Princess Tenagnework Sahle Selassie, claimed to be a direct descendant of King Solomon. He held Malinek’s titles of King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and the conquering Lion of Judah. Some people say that the Ethiopian Jews are also descendants of Melinek.
There is little hard historical evidence of the origins of the Jews of Ethiopia, the Falasha (Amharic for “Strangers”) or, as they prefer to be referred to, Beta-Israel, but there are many theories. (Some scholars place the date of their origin before the 2nd century BCE, largely because the Falashas are unfamiliar with either the Babylonian or Jerusalem Talmud.) The three most popular theories are:
The Ethiopian Jews are the descendants of the lost tribe of Dan.
They are the descendants of Menelik the First as described in the Kebra Nagast.
They are descendants of Israelites who left their country for Egypt following the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE.
Scholars have provided other theories too. Some view Beta Israel as descendants of the African tribe of Agau, which converted to Judaism in ancient times. Others think the community is made up of descendants of converted Yemeni Arabs or of Yemeni Jews who were brought to Ethiopia during the Axumite rule of the Yemen and who intermarried with the Agau. Some even consider Beta-Israel a non-Jewish African community with some traces of Jewish tradition.
The Beta-Israel always maintained a version of Judaism. The Falashas have retained animal sacrifices. They celebrate both traditional Jewish and specific Falasha holidays. One of their feast days, for example, is Sigd, an Amaharic word meaning, “Prostrating oneself”.
The 29th of the month of Cheshvan is a fast day of the Ethiopian Jewish community. On that day, they meet in the morning and walk to the highest point on a mountain and the Kesim (High Priest) would come carrying the Orit (the T ’nach, written in a book format and not on parchment). The Kesim would recite parts of the Orit. On that day, members of the community busy themselves with reciting the Tehillim and remember the Torah, its traditions, and their desire to return to Jerusalem.
In Ethiopia, there was no marriage outside the Beta-Israel community. In contrast with the rest of Black Africa, they were strictly monogamous, marriage at a very early age was rare, and they maintained high moral standards. They kept kashrut, taharat hamishpacha, and observed the Sabbath and Chagim. The Kesim (the Falashas had no formal Rabbanim), led their services in the ancient language of Ge ’ez (According to the Wikipedia Encyclopedia, Ge’ez is “an ancient South Semitic language had developed in the region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa, as the language of the peasantry. It later became the official language of the Kingdom of Axum and the Ethiopian Imperial Court”).
They passed down their Jewish traditions orally and also maintained their religious writings. The Falasha religious life centred on the masjid, the shul. The chief functionary in each village was the high priest. There were lower priests too to assist him. Falasha monks lived alone or in monasteries, isolated from other Beta-Israel.
The Beta-Israel celebrated their holidays according to a lunar calendar just as the rest of us. On Pesach, they offered up a sacrifice and the community ate matzah for seven days; on Rosh Hashanah, known as Berhan Sarak (“The Light Shone”) and Yom Kippur, “The Pardon”, the kahenats made sacrifices as is prescribed by the Torah.
Cleanliness was an integral part of the Beta-Israel ritual. Nidda women stayed in special huts on the outskirts of the village and only returned after they had been in the mikveh. After giving birth a woman was kept in the hut for forty days after a male child and eighty days after a female child, thereafter, the woman was required to shave her head, immerse herself in the mikveh and wash her clothes and burn the confinement hut down.
A man underwent purification after touching someone or something impure by isolating himself from the community for several days and then washing his body and his clothes with ashes and water – sometimes he would even shave his head to commemorate his purification.
Rabbi Ovadiah of Bertinoro (Italy, c.1450-c.1516) came across two Abyssinian Jewish prisoners of war in Egypt in the late 15th century, who claimed to be descended from the tribe of Dan.
Rabbi David ben-Zimra (the RaDBaZ, born in Spain about 1479; died in Safed in 1573) decreed in the 16th century that the Jews of Ethiopia were irrefutably decedents of the tribe of Dan who had settled in Abyssinia, probably before the time of the Second Temple.
Agricultural Ethiopia gradually changed into a trading nation. Contacts with the Yemen brought literacy and the use of the plough to Ethiopia. The Ethiopian State of Axum, with the Port of Adulia on the Red Sea, lay in the path of the commercial trade routes between Africa, Arabia, and India. As a result, it became a wealthy State. Axum emerged around the first century C.E. in the highlands of northern Ethiopia and southern Eritrea. At the height of the kingdom’s power, Axum controlled the Red Sea coast, from Sudan to Somalia and had dominion over lands as far as the Nile Valley in the Sudan, northern Djibouti. On the opposite bank of the Red Sea, the Axumite kingdom controlled the coast and much of the interior of modern-day Yemen and southern Saudi Arabia.
Axum became one of the important cities of the Ancient World. Although there is little reference relating to Axum in the European history books, they served as a crossroads to a variety of cultures: Egyptian, Sudanese, and Arabic, Middle Eastern, and Indian. An indication of this cosmopolitan character was the fact that the major Axumite cities had Jewish, Nubian, Christian, and even Buddhist minorities. The original Axumite faith was a derivation of an Arabic, idol worshipping religion. The Axumites believed in many gods who controlled the universe. In the 4th century, Ezana, their ruler (c.339 –c.356) converted to Christianity with the help of a Syrian bishop named Frumentius, who thereafter became the first bishop of Axum. He was a Syrian-Phoenician Greek, born in Tyre. Frumentius, not satisfied by the conversion of just the ruler, proceeded to convert, by persuasion or by force, the whole population of the entire country of Ethiopia. Axum became history’s first Christian Empire.
According to basic Christian tenets, because Christianity superseded Judaism, the conversion of the Jews was of paramount importance. These were compulsory conversions and the Christians persecuted those who refused. The Christians forced the Jews to withdraw to the difficult to reach, mountainous region of Gondar. They settled, built communities and have lived there up to the present day.
The Ethiopian Jewry and their history were first mentioned explicitly by Eldad ha-Dani, the Hebrew-writing merchant and traveller of the ninth century. He claimed to be a citizen of an “independent Jewish state” in eastern Africa, inhabited by people claiming to come from the tribe of Dan. According to Eldad, who received the information from his parents, and they in turn heard about it from theirs and so on. According to him, the Ten Tribes were not lost! Eldad related that his own tribe, the tribe of Dan, left before the Exile. When the Assyrian empire grew strong, they saw that there was no hope for them to remain free. Moreover, the Kingdom of Israel was at war with the Kingdom of Judah, and the tribe of Dan did not want to fight against their kinfolk. Therefore, they decided to leave Israel to find a safe place elsewhere.
Fourteen years before the fall of Samaria, the tribe of Dan took their families and livestock and went down from the Land of Israel. Following the river Nile, they had reached Ethiopia, in the land of the Negroes of East Africa and settled there. The Danites were great warriors, and after fighting many battles against native black tribes, they established themselves securely. According to Eldad, members of the tribes of Naftali, Gad and Asher also lived there.
Around the year 960, the Falashas and the Agau tribes rebelled against the king of Axum, the Menelik dynasty and the dominant Christian church. In 940 CE Judith (also referred to as Gudit, Yodit, Esther or Esato) seized the throne of Axum and proclaimed herself Queen. (Some historians only refer to her as the Jewish Queen, while others the heathen queen). She set out to destroy the Church’s power and influence. Her campaigns ended the Axumite supremacy. Judith ruled unchallenged for around 40 years. Succeeding her was the Christian, but tolerant, Zagwe Dynasty. The Zagwe Dynasty ushered in a golden age for Beta-Israel.
In 1270, the Melinek dynasty returned to the Axumite throne. Some of the local tribes, including the Falashas, would not accept the new rulers and rebelled against them resulting in a 400 year tribal warfare. The Beta-Israel fought tooth and nail to keep their Independence. The end of this war, in 1624, marked the closing stages of the golden age of the Jews in Ethiopia.
The Beta-Israel fought what would be their last battle for an independent autonomy against the Portuguese-backed Ethiopian Christian Armies. An eyewitness account described the battle thus:
“Falasha men and women fought to the death from the steep heights of their fortress... they threw themselves over the precipice or cut each other’s throats rather than be taken prisoner - it was a Falasha Masada. The Christians burned all of the Falasha’s written history and all of their religious literature; it was an attempt to eradicate forever the Judaic heritage of Ethiopia”.
Falasha King Gideon and large numbers of his supporters were massacred.
The rebels were surrounded and faced new laws of forced baptism. Many of them did convert to Christianity and those who did not were killed or sold into slavery.
Echoes of these wars spread everywhere. Jews of the Mediterranean countries who heard of the battles or met Falasha prisoners for sale in slave markets, principally in Egypt, believed that the strife might indicate the coming of the Messiah. Even in those difficult times, the Falasha maintained some kind of Jewish tradition in their villages, and isolated themselves from their Gentile neighbours and their customs. However, they became progressively fewer, and their numbers dwindled by the mid 19th century.
The first modern contact with the community came in 1769, when the Scottish explorer James Bruce (1730 –94) stumbled upon them while searching for the source of the River Nile.
In 1908, the chief rabbis of 45 countries collectively declared their official recognition according to Halacha of Ethiopian Jewry, due to the work of Professor Jaques Faitlovitch who travelled to Gondar in 1904 and stayed with the local population for 18 months, observing their customs. Faitlovich studied Amharic and Tigrinia at the Exile des Hautes Etudes in Paris under Professor Yosef Halevi who first visited the Ethiopian Jews in 1867. Faitlovich also established a small local school and the community’s first boarding school in Addis Ababa in 1924.
On 3 October 1935, Italy attacked Ethiopia from Eritrea and Italian Somaliland without a declaration of war. This war lasted seven months. The Italian forces entered Addis Ababa on 5 May 1936. Four days later, Italy announced the annexation of Ethiopia. The occupying Italian Fascist army threatened the Beta-Israel.
The Ethiopian ruler, Emperor Haile Selassie (1930-1974) fled the country and, for a short time, took refuge in Jerusalem. He returned in 1941, but during his reign the Jews of Ethiopia were treated with indifference they were not allowed to own land and this was coupled with the scorn of their neighbours who attributed to them every misfortune which befell them.
In the struggles following the deposition of Haile Saleasie, an estimated 2,500 Jews were killed and 7,000 rendered homeless.
The Falashas from the villages were unfamiliar with Western civilisation or culture. There were few roads, no electricity, running water, telephones or radios. The few schools were hours, sometimes days walking distance from their villages. Children learnt through observation and by imitating their elders. Most were illiterate in the Ethiopian languages of Amharic or Tigrinya. In contrast, the Addis Ababa Jews had access to formal Western education and took advantage of it.
Ethiopia underwent many changes in recent history. In the mid-thirties, there was the Fascist Italian conquest. There was a Communist revolution in 1974 followed by a long civil war and all this time Christian missionaries carried on unabated and actively targeting the Beta-Israel communities.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, groups of young Beta-Israel began leaving Ethiopia on foot for the Sudan hoping to reach the Holy Land. The journey was a traumatic experience. These groups left secretly with limited resources, keeping their Judaism hidden. This was a hazardous passage. Up to 1977 only a few Beta-Israel managed to reach Israel. Between 1977 and 1983, about 6,000 Ethiopians arrived in Sudanese refugee camps and secretly transported to Israel through covert air and sea operations.
In 1975, Menachem Begin obtained a ruling from Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef that the Falashas were legitimate descendants of the lost tribes; however, they were required to undergo pro forma halachic conversions to Judaism, as is done in all cases of doubt, however slight.
At the beginning of 1984, the first massive wave of 10,000 Beta-Israel set out on foot across hundreds of miles of desert between Ethiopia and Sudan. While in Sudan the waiting refugees suffered from hunger and epidemics for months. In the same year, Israel began transporting Ethiopian Jews to Israel.
This activity was code named Operation Moses. Operation Moses came to a sudden halt in 1985 leaving many of the Beta-Israel behind in Ethiopia. It was not until 1990 that the governments of Israel and Ethiopia came to an agreement to allow the rest of Beta-Israel to emigrate. In 1991, the situation in Ethiopia deteriorated both politically and economically as rebels mounted attacks against their government, and eventually captured the capital city of Addis Ababa.
The fate of the Beta-Israel created concern in Israel therefore with several private groups; Israel prepared to continue with the rescue of the Falashas. With El Al obtaining a special dispensation to fly on the Shabbat (because of the danger to life), on Friday 24 May, a new rescue mission started, code named Operation Solomon.
Over the course of a day and a half, 34 planes, with their seats removed to maximise passenger capacity, flew 14,325 Ethiopian Jews non-stop to Israel.
Today there are approximately 100,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel, 20,000 of who were born there. A further 25,000 left behind in Ethiopia.
Those of the Beta-Israel who voluntarily or forcibly had converted to Christianity, (but claim to have returned to the faith) are referred to as the Falash Mura. These people are living in a compound in the city of Gondar run by the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, or NACOEJ, they are learning the Jewish rituals, basic Hebrew and some rudimentary job skills in anticipation of moving to Israel, but the Law of Return does not apply to them.
As some Rabbis consider the Falash Mura as genetically Jewish the Israeli government set up a committee in 1992 to resolve the question of the Falash Mura.
Some Falash Mura, who had a Jewish grandparent, could immigrate on the basis of the Law of Return, or on the basis of family reunification. If an Ethiopian Jew married non-Jew, they would be allowed to bring the non-Jewish spouse’s parents with them to Israel. This is in line with the 1970 amendment to the Law of Return.
The origin of the term “Falash Mura” is unclear. A census of converts conducted in the early 1980’s in Ethiopia and the Jews who helped wit h the work called them Faras Muqra, an Arabic phrase that literally means “crow horses.” More likely, the term comes from the Agau meaning “someone who changes their faith.”
The Falash Mura was unknown until Operation Solomon. During the rescue, some of them were attempting to board the planes, but the Israeli representatives turned them away. The Falash Mura said they were entitled to immigrate to Israel because they were Jews by ancestry, as most of them had never practised Judaism and the Beta-Israel would not recognise them as part of the community, the Israelis saw them as non-Jews. Many Falash Mura left their villages in hopes of making aliyah and now live in terrible conditions in Addis Ababa and Gondar.
Israeli officials maintained the Falash Mura were committed Christians who were being coached to behave like Jews for the sole purpose of getting out of the country. After all, if they were interested in returning to Judaism, why did they wait until it became clear this was a way to escape? The official line was that given the opportunity, the Falash Mura would abandon any pretence of being Jewish as soon as they arrived in Israel. However, certain American groups are applying pressure on the Israeli government to expedite matters on humanitarian grounds, since these people have been waiting for a long time and this is having a dangerous effect on their living conditions in Ethiopia.
Therefore, in January 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided that all of the Falash Mura from Ethiopia would be brought to Israel by the end of 2007. Ethiopian Jews in Israel are in two minds about the Falash Mura, on the one hand, the Falasha remained faithful to their beliefs despite the pressures to convert, while the Falash Mura did not and on the other hand, some of them have relatives among the Falash Mura and want to be reunited. The official Israeli stance is that the Falash Mura would revert to their Christianity once settled in Israel.
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