User talk:Menilek

My edits for Bete Israel
I am planing on correcting numerous errors and ommissions on the page regarding Bete Israel. Below are a rough draft of my edits so far, but in is also an unfinished work in progress. I am a ranking member of the Bete Israel clergy, being the current ራስነቢይ (ras-nebiy, which means head prophet) and many of the omissions and errors in the article about us were glaring and some shocking from the Bete Israel perspective.

I am posting said edits here for now on my own talk page until I figure out a more appropriate place. Please not that most of this is as I found it and is not my own doing. But there are corrections and additions I have made to the edited version. I have located the draft here for discussion, if any is forthcoming. If there is a better place to discuss these edits with as much room as is needed for the whole Bete Israel page as well as discussion of it, please advise me and be forgiving because I am still pretty new and unskilled at Wikipedia editing, but willing to learn. However it s made very difficult by the fact that one has to be a programmer to understand these codes and has to eb a lawyer to understand these cryptic guidlines for editing, which for me is like trying to read a linux programming manual that has been printed on a tangle of sphaghetti with a penlight in the dark! They could have made it much less cumbersome to follow, but instead they seem to have opted for making it impossibley difficult for the average non-programmer/non-lawyer to cope with. But I will give it my best shot and listen for good UNBIASED advice that doesn't require me to comprimise on the truth.

Said edited version is as follows:

Bete Israel
The Beta Israel (ביתא ישראל: Beta Israel, "House of Israel"; Ge'ez: ቤተ እስራኤል Bēta 'Isrā'ēl, modern Bēte 'Isrā'ēl) is the Jewish community from Ethiopia, but with most now living in Israel. They are also known as Falasha (Amharic for "Exiles" or "Strangers") by non-Jewish Ethiopians, but the Jews consider the term derogatory. Other terms by which the community have been known include Kayla (an Agaw group and language spoken by some members) and the Hebrew Habashim, associated with the non-Jewish Habesha people.

Nearly 85% of the Ethiopian Beta Israel community, comprising more than 120,000 people, have emigrated to Israel under its Law of Return, which gives Jews and those with Jewish parents or grandparents, and all of their spouses, the right to settle in Israel and obtain citizenship. The Israeli government has mounted rescue operations, most notably during Operation Moses (1984) and Operation Solomon (1991), for their migration when civil war and famine threatened populations within Ethiopia. Some immigration has continued up until the present day.

The related Falash Mura, who consider that term to be pejorative and prefer to be called either Bete Yisrael and/or Mesihawi (Messianic), are the descendants of Bete Israel who converted to Messianic since 54-AD, their first Messianic head priest or ራስ ካሃን (ras-kahene), having been converted and commissioned by Apostle Philip in Acts 8:26-39, who in turn converted Empress Garsemot Kandeke VI, who declared Masihawi (Christianity) to be the new national for which she was assassinated, but still most Bete Israel Jews converted and became Messianic Jews, estimated to have been as many as 85%. In Israel, under both state and popular coercion, some are returning to the practices of Judaism, living in Falash Mura communities and observing halakha. Beta Israel spiritual leaders, including the Raskahane (Head Priest) Raphael Hadane have argued for the acceptance of the Falasha Mura as Jews. This claim has been a matter of controversy within Israeli society.

Beta Israel beliefs


The Ethiopian account described in Bete Israel's apocryphal book Kebra Negast, or "Glory of Kings," relates that Ethiopians are descended from a battalion from the tribe of Judah and a few dozens Levites who came to Ethiopia with Menilek I, alleged to be a son of King Solomon and Empress Makeda, the Queen of Sheba (see and ). The legend relates that Menilek, as an adult, returned to his father in Jerusalem, and then resettled in Aksum, and that he took with him the Ark of the Covenant. In the Bible there is no mention that the Queen of Sheba either married or had any sexual relations with King Solomon; rather, the narrative records that she was impressed with his wealth and wisdom, and they exchanged royal gifts, and then she returned to rule her people in Kush. However, the "royal gifts" are interpreted by some as sexual contact. The loss of the Ark is also not specifically mentioned in the Bible, in fact, it ceases to be mentioned at all after the Babylonian captivity, except for one reference, which Bete Israel tradition says is a replica that was used to replace the real Ark.

Those who accept the Kebra Negast believe that the Beta Israel are descended from a battalion of men of Judah that fled southwards down the Arabian coastal lands from Judaea after the breakup of the united Kingdom of Israel into two kingdoms in the 10th century BCE (while King Rehoboam reigned over Judah), but before the invasion of Judah by King Nebuchadnezzar, which initiated the Babylonian Captivity.

Although the Kebra Negast and some traditional Ethiopian history states that Yodit (or "Gudit"), a tenth century usurping queen, was an Aksumite Jew, it may be that she was a pagan southerner or a usurping Christian Aksumite Queen.

Most Jews other than Bete Israel consider the Kebra Negast legend to be a fabrication. Instead they believe, based on the ninth century stories of Eldad ha-Dani (the Danite), that the tribe of Dan attempted to avoid the civil war in the Kingdom of Israel between Solomon's son Rehoboam and Jeroboam the son of Nebat, by resettling in Egypt. From there they moved southwards up the Nile into Ethiopia, and the Beta Israel are descended from these Danites. However according to Bete Israel, the Kebre Negast is one part their ancient oral tradition, which was written down in Ge'ez by Orthodox Christian monks during the middle ages, who were very interested in the story.

Other sources tell of many Jews who were brought as prisoners of war from ancient Israel by Ptolemy I and also settled on the border of his kingdom with Nubia (Sudan). Another tradition handed down in the community from father to son asserts that they arrived either via the old district of Qwara in northwestern Ethiopia, or via the Atbara River, where the Nile tributaries flow into Sudan. Some accounts even specify the route taken by their forefathers on their way upstream from Egypt.

Rabbinical views
The ninth century Jewish traveler Eldad ha-Dani claimed the Beta Israel descended from the extinct tribe of Dan, claiming Jewish kingdoms around or in East Africa existed during this time. However he never presents any actual evidence that they were from tribe of Dan. His writings represent an early mention of the Beta Israel, but his accuracy is uncertain; scholars point to Eldad's lack of firsthand knowledge of Ethiopia's geography and any Ethiopian language, although he claimed the area as his homeland.

Rabbi Ovadiah Yare of Bertinoro wrote in letter from Jerusalem in 1488: "I myself saw two of them in Egypt. They are dark-skinned... and one could not tell whether they keep the teaching of the Karaites, or of the Rabbis, for some of their practices resemble the Karaite teaching... but in other things they appear to follow the instruction of the Rabbis; and they say they are related to the tribe of Dan."

Based upon the aforementioned sources, in 1972 one Jewish legal authority, Ovadia Yosef, has also asserted that the Beta Israel are the descendants of the tribe of Dan. In his view, these people established a Jewish kingdom that lasted for hundreds of years. With the rise of Christianity and later Islam, schisms arose and three kingdoms competed. Eventually, the Christian and Muslim Ethiopian kingdoms reduced the Jewish kingdom to a small impoverished section. The earliest authority to rule this way was the Radbaz (Rabbi David ben Zimra, 1479 – 1573). Radbaz explains in a responsum concerning the status of a Beta Israel slave:

"But those Jews who come from the land of Cush are without doubt from the tribe of Dan, and since they did not have in their midst sages who were masters of the tradition, they clung to the simple meaning of the Scriptures. If they had been taught, however, they would not be irreverent towards the words of our sages, so their status is comparable to a Jewish infant taken captive by non-Jews … And even if you say that the matter is in doubt, it is a commandment to redeem them."

In 1972 Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, then the Chief Sephardic Rabbi, based on the Radbaz and other accounts, ruled that the Beta Israel were Jews and should be brought to Israel. He was later joined by a number of other authorities who made similar rulings, including the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Shlomo Goren.

Other notable poskim, from non-Zionist Ashkenazi circles, placed a halakhic safek (doubt) over the Jewishness of the Beta Israel. Such dissenting voices include Rabbies Elazar Shach, Yosef Shalom Eliashiv, Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, and Moshe Feinstein. Similar doubts were raised within the same circles towards Bene Israel Jews, Chabad messianism and Russian immigrants to Israel in the 1990s.

In the 1970s and early 80s the Beta Israel were forced to undergo a modified conversion ceremony involving immersion in a ritual bath, a declaration accepting Rabbinic law, and, for men, a "symbolic recircumcision". Chief Rabbi Avraham Shapira later waived the "symbolic recircumcision" demand, which is only required when the halakhic doubt is significant. More recently Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar has ruled that descendants of Ethiopian Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity are "unquestionably Jews in every respect". With the consent of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Rabbi Amar ruled that it is forbidden to question the Jewishness of this community, pejoratively called Falashmura.

At present, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel requires ritual immersion prior to marriage, from Jews of Ethiopian or any other ancestry alike.

DNA evidence
A 1999 study by Lucotte and Smets studied the DNA of 38 unrelated Beta Israel males living in Israel and 104 Ethiopians living in regions located north of Addis Ababa and concluded that "the distinctiveness of the Y-chromosome haplotype distribution of Beta Israel Jews from conventional Jewish populations and their relatively greater similarity in haplotype profile to non-Jewish Ethiopians are consistent with the view that the Beta Israel people descended from ancient inhabitants of Ethiopia who converted to Judaism." This study confirmed the findings of a 1991 study by Zoossmann-Disken et al.. . A 2000 study by Hammer et al. of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes of Jewish and non-Jewish groups suggested that "paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population," with the exception of the Beta Israel, who were "affiliated more closely with non-Jewish Ethiopians and other North Africans."

A 2001 study by the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University found a possible genetic similarity between 11 Ethiopian Jews and 4 Yemenite Jews who took part in the testing. The differentiation statistic and genetic distances for the 11 Ethiopian Jews and 4 Yemenite Jews tested were quite low, among the smallest of comparisons involving either of these populations. The 4 Yemenite Jews from this study may be descendants of reverse migrants of African origin who crossed Ethiopia to Yemen. The study result suggests gene flow between Ethiopia and Yemen as a possible explanation for the closeness. The study also suggests that the gene flow between Ethiopian and Yemenite Jewish populations may not have been direct, but instead could have been between Jewish and non-Jewish populations of both regions.

A 2002 study of Mitochondrial DNA (which is passed through only maternal lineage to both men and women) by Thomas et al. showed that the most common mtDNA type found among the Ethiopian Jewish sample was present only in Somalia. This further supported the view that most Ethiopian Jews were of local or Ethiopian origin.

Scholarly view
In the past, secular scholars were divided on the origins of the Beta Israel; whether they were the descendants of an Israelite tribe, or converted by Jews living in Yemen, or by the Jewish community in southern Egypt at Elephantine. In the 1930s Jones and Monro argues that the chief Semitic languages of Ethiopia may suggest an antiquity of Judaism in Ethiopia. "There still remains the curious circumstance that a number of Abyssinian words connected with religion, such as the words for Hell, idol, Easter, purification, and alms – are of Hebrew origin. These words must have been derived directly from a Jewish source, for the Abyssinian Church knows the scriptures only in a Ge'ez version made from the Septuagint." Richard Pankhurst summarized the various theories offered about their origins as of 1950 that the first members of this community were "(1) converted Agaws, (2) Jewish immigrants who intermarried with Agaws, (3) immigrant Yemeni Arabs who had converted to Judaism, (4) immigrant Yemeni Jews, (5) Jews from Egypt, and (6) successive waves of Yemeni Jews. Traditional Ethiopian savants, on the one hand, have declared that 'We were Jews before we were Christians', while more recent, well-documented, Ethiopian hypotheses, notably by two Ethiopian scholars, Dr Taddesse Tamrat and Dr Getachew Haile... put much greater emphasis on the manner in which Christians over the years converted to the Falasha faith, thus showing that the Falashas were culturally an Ethiopian sect, made up of ethnic Ethiopians."

According to Menachem Waldman, a major wave of immigration from the Kingdom of Judah to present-day Ethiopia dates back to the Assyrian Siege of Jerusalem, in the beginning of the 7th century BC. Rabbinic accounts of the siege assert that only about 110,000 Judeans remained in Jerusalem under King Hezekiah's command, whereas about 130,000 Judeans led by Shebna had joined Sennacherib's campaign against Tirhakah, king of Kush. Sennacherib's campaign failed and Shebna's army was lost "at the mountains of darkness", suggestively identified with Semien Mountains. This account is supported by the letter of Aristeas (13), which also describes several later occasions in which Judean armies were sent against Ethiopian forces. According to Jacqueline Pirenne, numerous Sabaeans crossed over the Red Sea to Ethiopia to escape from the Assyrians, who had devastated the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. She further states that a second major wave of Sabaeans crossed over to Ethiopia in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE to escape Nebuchadnezzar. This wave also included Jews fleeing from the Babylonian takeover of Judah.

Modern scholars of Ethiopian history and Ethiopian Jews generally support one of two conflicting hypotheses, as outlined by Steven Kaplan:


 * A late ethnogenesis of the Beta Israel between the 14th to 16th Centuries, from a sect of Ethiopian Christians who took on Biblical practices, and came to see themselves as Jews. Steven Kaplan lists himself along with G.J. Abbink, Kay K. Shelemay, Taddesse Tamrat and James A. Quirin as supporters of this hypothesis. Quirin differs from his fellow researchers in the weight he assigns to an ancient Jewish element that the Beta Israel have conserved.


 * An ancient Jewish origin of the Beta Israel, as well as some ancient Jewish traditions later conserved by the Ethiopian Church. Steven Kaplan lists Simon D. Messing, David Shlush, Michael Corinaldi, Menachem Waldman, Menachem Elon and David Kessler as supporters of this hypothesis.

Supporters of either of the two hypotheses all acknowledge that Beta Israeli heritage has to be analyzed within a broader Ethiopian context, a principle not held by some earlier scholars. It is also widely acknowledged that due to the lack of documentation regarding ancient Ethiopian history, many fundamental questions regarding the origin of Beta Israel are likely to remain open. In 1992 Richard Pankhurst stated "The early origins of the Falashas are shrouded in mystery, and, for lack of documentation, will probably remain so for ever." Kaplan has bitterly commented: "Although we don't have a single fine ethnographic research on Beta Israel, and the recent history of this tribe has received almost no attention by researchers, every one who writes about the Jews of Ethiopia feels obliged to contribute his share to the ongoing debate about their origin. Politicians and journalists, Rabbies and political activists, not a single one of them withstood the temptation to play the role of the historian and invent a solution for this riddle."

In The Middle Ages
In 1329, Emperor Amda Seyon campaigned in the northwest provinces of Semien, Wegera, Tselemt, and Tsegede, in which many had been converting to Judaism and where the Beta Israel had been gaining prominence. He sent troops there to fight people "like Jews" (Ge'ez ከመ:አይሁድ kama ayhūd).

For the next three centuries, these regions were frequently areas of Beta Israel rebellion against the Solomonic dynasty. Religion was less important to the Emperors than loyalty, however. Rebellious Beta Israel leaders often formed alliances with other enemies of the Emperor despite their differing faiths. The late fourteenth century Christian monk Qozmos, for instance, copied the Orit (Old Testament) for the Beta Israel communities. He led them against local Christians before being defeated by Emperor Dawit I. Likewise, the fifteenth century governor of Tsellemt used both Jewish and Christian troops for his revolt. The first personal campaign against rebelling Beta Israel areas did not come until the reign of Emperor Yeshaq (r.1414-29). When Yeshaq I defeated the governors of Semien and Dembiya, he began to exert religious pressure. He reduced the Jews' social status below that of Christians. Yeshaq forced the Jews to convert or lose their land. It would be given away as rist, a type of land qualification that rendered it forever inheritable by the recipient and not transferrable by the Emperor. Yeshaq decreed, "He who is baptized in the Christian religion may inherit the land of his father, otherwise let him be a Falāsī." This may have been the origin for the term "Falasha" (falāšā, "wanderer," or "landless person"). In the 1400s, Emperor Zara Yaqob carried out some of the worst massacres, attacks and forced conversions of the Christian kingdom. Zara Yaqob added the title "Exterminator of the Jews" to his name.

Another convert was Abba Sabra (or Sabriqu) of Madra Kabd near Zeqwala in Shewa, who lived in the fifteenth century. According to Falasha tradition, in which he is a seminal figure, Abba Sabra turned to a life of penance after having committed a murder; one act of this penance was building a church in Dankaz near Gondar. Not long afterwards, he "embraced the faith of the Israelites", and converted one of Zara Yaqob's sons, Saga-Amlak, who according to some accounts also converted many other people. Abba Sabra is also remembered for his teaching of the Orit, as well as the laws of purity known in Amharic as attenhugn. He is also believed to have introduced to the Beta Israel monastic practices, which became one of its most distinctive practices as a Jewish sect. The influence of converts like Qozmos and Abba Sabra complicates the work of tracing this group's possible heritage from its earliest adherents.

Beta Israel autonomy in Ethiopia ended in 1624, when Emperor Susenyos confiscated their lands, sold many people into slavery and forcibly baptized others. Jewish writings and religious books were burned. The practice of any form of Jewish religion was forbidden in Ethiopia. As a result of this period of oppression, much traditional Jewish culture and practice was lost or changed.

Nonetheless, the Beta Israel community appears to have continued to flourish during this period. The capital of Ethiopia, Gondar, in Dembiya, was surrounded by Beta Israel lands. The Beta Israel served as craftsmen, masons, and carpenters for the Emperors from the sixteenth century onwards. Such roles had been shunned by Ethiopians as lowly and less honorable than farming. According to contemporary accounts by European visitors: Portuguese merchants and diplomats, French, British and other travellers, the Beta Israel numbered about one million persons in the seventeenth century. These accounts also recounted that some knowledge of Hebrew persisted among the people in the seventeenth century. For example, Manoel de Almeida, a Portuguese diplomat and traveller of the day, wrote that:

"The Falashas or Jews are... of [Arabic] race [and speak] Hebrew, though it is very corrupt. They have their Hebrew Bibles and sing the psalms in their synagogues."

The extent of De Almeida's knowledge is not known. The Beta Israel were not predominantly of the Arabic race, for instance, but he may have meant the term loosely or meant that they also knew Arabic.

The Beta Israel lost their relative economic advantages, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, during the Zemene Mesafint, a period of recurring civil strife. Although the capital was nominally in Gondar during this time period, the decentralization of government and dominance by  regional capitals resulted in a decline and exploitation of Beta Israel by local rulers. No longer was there a strong central government interested in and capable of protecting them. During this period, the Jewish religion was effectively lost for some forty years, before being restored in the 1840s by Abba Widdaye, the preeminent monk of Qwara.

Pre-modern and modern contacts with Jews elsewhere
The earliest surviving testimony to those hidden kingdoms comes from the ninth century. In the last decades of that century, the Jews of Kairowan in Tunisia were visited by a man called Eldad son of Mahli, the Danite. Eldad the Danite, as he is referred to in Jewish histories, said he was the lone survivor of a shipwreck. He claimed to have escaped cannibals and had other fabulous adventures before arriving in Tunisia. He was described as having dark skin and speaking only a strange sort of Hebrew and no Arabic. Eldad the Danite claimed to be a Jew of a pastoralist tribe residing in the land of Havilah beyond the rivers of Ethiopia.

He claimed the tribe was descendants of the tribe of Dan, which had emigrated from Judaea at the time of Jeroboam's accession, after the death of Solomon. He said three other tribes, Naphtali, Gad and Asher, had joined them in the time of Sennacherib. He laid waste to the northern kingdom of Israel around 722 B.C. Opposite these tribes lived the Children of Moses, Bnai Mosheh, who came from those Levites who had mutilated the fingers of their right hands rather than sing the songs of Zion by the rivers of Babylon, and chose instead to flee to the south.

Eldad the Danite said the Children of Moses lived beyond a river of grinding stones. They were impossible to visit, except on the sabbath day when the river ceased its grinding. This was a concept strikingly similar to, if not a direct borrowing from, Sambation. The tribes were pastoralists and mighty warriors. They were ruled together by a king assisted by a learned Torah judge-prophet. They did not know of the Talmud, but had their own traditions written down in Hebrew. Eldad the Danite displayed these to the rabbis of Tunisia and Egypt.

The rabbis corresponded with a Gaon of Sura (in Babylon) and concluded that Eldad the Danite was indeed a Jew. They determined that the differences of his practice from their own were legitimate forms of customary law for the Jews of Havilah. In the early modern period, the variations from Rabbinic law which he practiced and obeyed were still cited by Rabbinic authorities as precedents. The facts that he used only Hebrew in the Muslim world and carried a sacred text written in Hebrew which gave details of ritual and other practices suggested that ancient Ethiopian Jewry knew Hebrew.

In the sixteenth century, the Chief Rabbi of Egypt, Rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (Radbaz) proclaimed that in terms of halakha (Jewish legal code), the Ethiopian community was certainly Jewish. During the nineteenth century, the majority of European Jewish authorities openly supported this assertion.

In 1908, the chief rabbis of 45 countries made a joint statement officially declaring that Ethiopian Jews were indeed Jewish. This proclamation was chiefly due to the work of Professor Jacques Faitlovitch, who studied Amharic and Tigrinya at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris under Professor Joseph Halévy. Halévy first visited the Ethiopian Jews in 1876. Upon his return to Europe, Halévy published a "Kol Korei," a cry to the world Jewish community to save the Ethiopian Jews. He formed the organization Kol Yisroel Chaverim ("All Israel are Friends"), to act as advocates for Ethiopian Jews for years to come.

Ethiopian enclave


One of the earliest dated references to the Beta Israel in Ethiopian literature is in the Glorious Victories of Amda Seyon, which mentions a revolt in the province of Begemder by "the renegades who are like Jews" in the year 1332.

The isolation of the Beta Israel was reported by explorer James Bruce, who published his Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in Edinburgh in 1790. In 1860, Henry Stern, a Jewish convert to Christianity, traveled to Ethiopia to attempt to convert the Beta Israel to Christianity.

Many Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity have been returning to the practice of Judaism. Such people are known as the Falash Mura. They have been admitted to Israel, although not as Jews. The Israeli government can thus set quotas on their immigration and make citizenship dependent on their conversion to Orthodox Judaism. Although no one knows precisely the population of the Falash Mura in Ethiopia, observers believe it is approximately 20,000-26,000 persons. Recently, some reporters and other travelers in remote regions of Ethiopia have noted finding entire villages where people claim they are Jewish or are Falash Mura, that is, Jews who have been practicing Christianity.

In the Achefer woreda of the Mirab Gojjam Zone, roughly 1,000-2,000 families of Beta Israel were found. They have not petitioned to immigrate to the Jewish state. There may be other such regions in Ethiopia with significant Jewish enclaves, which would raise the total Jewish population to more than 50,000 people. Israel has approved the immigration of the Falash Mura at 300 per month. The Ethiopian Jewish community and its supporters have petitioned to increase this number to 600 per month, citing the high mortality rate among Jews waiting to emigrate from Ethiopia. An economic analysis conducted for the JAI by David Brodet, former director general of the Ministry of Finance, concluded that an increased rate of immigration to Israel "is highly logical and has economical and social advantages" over the present immigration rate.‏‏

Religious traditions
The holiest work is the Torah — Orit. All the holy writings, including the Torah, are handwritten on parchment pages that are assembled into a codex. The rest of the Prophets and the Hagiographa are of secondary importance. The language of their holy writings is Ge'ez.

In addition to the Rabbincal Biblical canon, the Beta Israel hold sacred the books of Enoch, Jubilees, Baruch and the books of Ezra as well (considered Jewish Apocrypha by Rabbincal Judaism and Catholic Apocrypha by the Catholic Church). The basic wording of Beta Israel Biblical writings was passed down through ancient translations like the Septuagint, which incorporates the Apocrypha (as referred by Protestant Christians) including all the books noted by Catholics as Deuterocanon as well as other Rabbinal Jewish Apocrypha books as those already stated above.

The Beta Israel possess several other books, including the Arde'et, Acts of Moses, Apocalypse of Gorgorios, Meddrash Abba Elija, and biographies of the nation's forebears: Gadla Adam, Gadla Avraham, Gadla Ishak, Gadla Ya'kov, Gadla Moshe, Gadla Aaron, Nagara Musye, Mota Musye.



Leaders of the community consider especially important a book about the Shabbat and its precepts, Te'ezaza Sanbat (Precepts of the Sabbath). The leaders of the Beta Israel also read liturgical works, including weekday services, Shabbat and Festival prayers, and various blessings. Sefer Cahen deals with priestly functions, while Sefer Sa'atat (Book of the Hours) applies to weekdays and Shabbat. The Beta Israel religious calendar is set according to a treatise known as the Abu Shaker, which was written around 1257 CE. It covered the computation of Jewish holidays and chronological matters. The Abu Shaker lists civil and lunar dates for Jewish feasts, including Matqe' (New Year), Soma Ayhud or Badr (Yom Kippur), Masallat (Sucot), Fesh (Passover), and Soma Dehnat (Fast of Salvation) or Soma Aster (Fast of Esther).

The Beta Israel have a unique holiday, known as Sigd on the 29th of Cheshvan. Sigd or Seged is derived from the Semitic root, meaning "to bow or prostrate oneself." In the past the day was called Mehella. The acts of bowing and supplication are still known as mehella. Sigd celebrates the giving of the Torah and the return from exile in Babylonia to Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah. Beta Israel tradition holds that Sigd commemorates Ezra's proclamation against the Babylonian wives (Ezra 10:10-12). In Ethiopia, the Sigd was celebrated on hilltops outside villages. The location was called by several names, including Ya'arego Dabr (Mountain for making prayers) and in Amharic Yalamana Tarrara (Mountain of Supplication). The Kessim, or elders of the community, drew a parallel between the ritual mountain and Mount Sinai. Another source described Sigd (calling it Amata Saww) as a new-moon holiday, after which the Kessim withdrew for a period of isolation.

Social contact between the Beta Israel and other Ethiopians was limited. It was not because of the laws of Kashrut, since all Ethiopians share the same food taboos. Ethiopian Jews were forbidden to eat the food of non-Jews. The Kessim were more strict about the prohibition against eating food prepared by non-Kessim. Beta Israel who broke these taboos were ostracized and had to undergo a purification process. Purification included fasting for one or more days and ritual purification before entering the village. Unlike other Ethiopians, the Beta Israel do not eat raw meat dishes like kitfo or gored gored.

Languages
The Beta Israel once spoke Qwara and Kayla, closely related Cushitic languages. Now they speak Tigrinya and Amharic, both Semitic languages. Their liturgical language is Ge'ez, also Semitic. Since the 1950s, they have taught Hebrew in their schools; in addition, those Beta Israel currently residing in the State of Israel use Hebrew as a daily language.

Israeli intervention
The Israeli government officially accepted the Beta Israel as Jews in 1975, for the purpose of the Law of Return. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin obtained clear rulings from Chief Sephardi Rabbi Ovadia Yosef that they were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes. They were, however, required to undergo pro forma Jewish conversions, to remove any doubt as to their Jewish status.

Beginning in 1984, the Israeli-led Operation Moses began transporting Beta Israel to Israel. In 1985 it came to an abrupt halt, leaving many of the Beta Israel still in Ethiopia. It was not until 1990 that the governments of Israel and Ethiopia came to an agreement to allow the remaining Beta Israel a chance to emigrate to Israel. In 1991, the political and economic stability of Ethiopia deteriorated as rebels mounted attacks against and eventually controlled the capital city of Addis Ababa. Worried about the fate of the Beta Israel during the transition period, the Israeli government along with several private groups prepared to continue covertly with the migration. After El Al obtained a special provision to fly on Shabbat (because of the danger to life), on Friday, May 24, Operation Solomon began. Over the course of 36 hours, a total of 34 El Al passenger planes, with their seats removed to maximize passenger capacity, flew 14,325 Beta Israel non-stop to Israel.

Ethiopian Jews in Israel today


Ethiopian Jews are gradually becoming part of the mainstream Israeli society in religious life, military service (with nearly all males doing national service), education, and politics. Similarly to other groups of immigrant Jews who made aliyah to Israel, the Ethiopian Jews have faced obstacles in their integration to Israeli society. The Ethiopian Jewish community's internal challenges have been complicated by limited but real racist attitudes on the part of some elements of Israeli society and the official establishment.

One study found that some of the problems with the absorption of the Beta Israel was due to the model of absorption chosen. "Planning for the absorption of Jewish immigrants to Israel has been dominated by a procedural approach, which has generally been insensitive to the particular circumstances and needs of minority ethnic groups. This approach has emphasised the ‘national interest’ as defined by the dominant group, namely Ashkenazi Jews who originated in Central Europe. The social and cultural traditions of other groups have been treated as ‘problems’ that need to be overcome, and minimal attention has been given to the processes of adaptation such groups undergo."

Most of the 100,000 Ethiopian Jews living in Israel are immigrants and descendants of two main waves, the first in 1981-1984 and the second in 1991-1998. These airlifts were known as Operation Moses and Operation Solomon, respectively. Civil war and famine in Ethiopia prompted the Israeli government to mount these dramatic rescue operations. The rescues were within the context of Israel's national mission to gather Diaspora Jews and bring them to the Jewish homeland.

Individual Ethiopian Jews had lived in Eretz Yisrael prior to the establishment of the state. A youth group arrived in Israel in the 1950s to undergo training in Hebrew education and returned to Ethiopia to educate young Jews there. Also, Ethiopian Jews had been trickling into Israel prior to the 1970s. The numbers of such Ethiopian immigrants grew after the Israeli government officially recognized them in 1973 as Jews entitled to Israeli citizenship.

To prepare for the absorption of tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews, the State of Israel prepared  two `Master Plans’ (Ministry of Absorption, 1985, 1991). The first was prepared in 1985, a year after the arrival of the first wave of immigrants. The second updated the first in response to the second wave of immigration in 1991 from Ethiopia. The first Master Plan contained an elaborate and detailed program. It covered issues of housing, education, employment and practical organization, together with policy guidelines regarding specific groups, including women, youths, and single -parent families. Like earlier absorption policies, it adopted a procedural approach which assumed that the immigrants were broadly similar to the existing majority population of Israel. The Plans were, no doubt, created with good intentions and a firm belief in assimilation. As noted in this section, results have been disappointing and suggest that much greater attention needs to be paid to issues of ethnicity. 

According to a November 17, 1999 BBC article, a report commissioned by Israel's Ministry of Immigrant Absorption stated that 75% of the 70,000 Ethiopian Jews living in Israel in 1999 could not read or write Hebrew. More than half the population could not hold a simple conversation in the Hebrew language. Unlike Russian immigrants, many of whom arrive with job skills, Ethiopians came from a subsistence economy and were ill-prepared to work in an industrialized society. Since then much progress has been made. Through military service most Ethiopian Jews have been able to increase their chances for better opportunities. . Today most Ethiopian Jews have been for the most part integrated into Israeli society, however a high drop out rate is a problem, although a higher number are now edging towards the higher areas of society.

In September, 2006, the Israeli government's proposed 2007 budget included reducing Ethiopian immigration from 600 persons per month to 150. On the eve of the Knesset vote, the Prime Minister's office announced that the plan had been dropped. Advocates for the Falash Mura noted that although the quota was set at 600 per month in March, 2005, actual immigration has remained at 300 per month.

Prominent Israelis of Ethiopian Jewish background
Qes Adana Takuyo was born in Seqelt and studied with the Qessim as a child. During the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, he had moved to Ambober where he worked as a farmer. He studied Hebrew briefly in 1955 when an Israeli rabbi taught in Asmara. In 1985 Qes Adana immigrated to Israel along with his wife and eleven children. His oldest son Rabbi Josef Adana, who had immigrated earlier, had become the first Ethiopian Jewish Rabbi.

In the 1920s, Yona Bogale was sponsored by Jacques Faitlovitch to study abroad. He spent two years in British Mandate Palestine, four in Germany, one in Switzerland, and one in France. After returning to Addis Ababa around 1930, he taught in the Faitlovitch school there. During the Italian occupation, he went into hiding and worked as a farmer in Wolleka. After the war Yona Bogale worked for the Ethiopian Ministry of Education for twelve years and then for the Jewish Agency.

Yona Bogale was fluent in Hebrew, English, and German, as well as Amharic. He was author of an early Hebrew-Amharic dictionary. He left Ethiopia in late 1979 and immigrated to Israel. Yona was an early proponent of Ethiopian Jews' praying in Hebrew instead of Ge'ez. He believed the latter language was no longer appropriate for those seeking to be part of the modern Jewish world. He felt that Ethiopian Jews should set Hebrew prayers to the traditional Jewish melodies.

Rabbi Sharon Shalom is a lecturer in Jewish ritual and tradition at Bar Ilan University in Israel. He is a counselor for the Ethiopian-Israeli community in the town of Kiryat Gat. Rabbi Yefet Alemu was born in 1961 in a small village in Ethiopia. In 1980, he left his village to go to Israel. He was arrested in Addis Ababa and escaped from prison. He arrived in the Gondar region and then set out walking to Sudan. There he met a Jewish Red Cross director who arranged for him to fly on one of the Israeli-organized secret flights to Israel. In Israel he studied and became a nurse.

While continuing to be a believing Jew, Yefet became disillusioned with organized Judaism and the Israeli religious establishment’s insistence on a conversion ceremony for all Ethiopian Jews. Yefet helped organize an Ethiopian protest vigil opposite the Chief Rabbinate building in Jerusalem. At the vigil, he met students from the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies who were studying to be Conservative rabbis. He was confused and surprised to see that they were without beards and without long black coats. The students replied that there was more than one type of rabbi, more than one way of being Jewish. Yefet excitedly embraced this pluralistic approach to Judaism. He was accepted by the Schechter Institute and after 6 years of hard work, he received a BA, MA, and his rabbinical ordination.

Ethiopian-Israelis have been participating more in Israeli political life. The Atid Ekhad party sees itself as the political representative of the community, though other parties include Ethiopian members. In 2006, Shas, a party representing ultra-orthodox Jews of Sephardic and Middle Eastern background, included an Ethiopian rabbi from Beersheba, in its list for the Knesset in a conscious attempt to represent diverse geographic and ethnic groups.

Rabbi Mazor Bayana, rabbi of an Ethiopian community of 10,000 in Beersheba, studied at Yeshivat Porat Yosef, one of the most prestigious Sephardi yeshivot in Israel. Rabbi Bayana, however, did not win a seat in the Knesset.

Shas was not the only party attempting to appeal to the Ethiopian vote. Herut and Kadima both had Ethiopians on their lists. Shlomo Mula, head of the Jewish Agency's Ethiopian absorption department, was ranked 33 on Kadima's list and Avraham was number three on Herut's list.

Adisu Massala, of Labour and later One Nation, is the first Ethiopian-Israeli to have served in the Knesset.

Esti Mamo is an Ethiopian Jewish model. She is one of the first Ethiopian-Israelis to make it into the entertainment industry and is a budding actress. The first Ethiopian-Israeli model was Mazal Pikado in 1990.

Avraham Negussie is one of Israel's most prominent Ethiopian Activists and a member of the South Wing to Zion. His struggle, with the support of many other Ethiopian-Israelis has resulted in the Israeli government continuing to bring the last 23,000 Ethiopian Jews from Ethiopia; though the Israeli government has set a quota of 300 Jews per month, half of what they agreed to under pressure from Negussie, NACOEJ and the United Jewish Communities.

Shas's spiritual mentor, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, enthusiastically embraced Ethiopians when they first began immigrating to Israel four decades ago. Despite Rabbi Ovadia's halachic ruling, some refuse to marry Ethiopians without a conversion in accordance with official Chief Rabbinate policy. Only in cities and towns with rabbis that accept Ovadia's ruling or the ruling of Rabbi Shlomo Goren are Ethiopians married without immersion in a ritual bath (mikva) or, for men, hatafat dam, הטפת דם, see brit milah), the symbolic cut to produce a drop of blood instead of circumcision.

Meskie Shibru-Sivan is a female Ethiopian-Israeli actress and vocalist, well known in Israel and beyond for acting on theater stages, in television programs, movies as well as being an accomplished singer.

Baruch Tegegne, a prodigy of Bogale, was a leader in protests on behalf of Ethiopian Jewry in the 1980s and 1990s.

In 2009, Tzion Shenkor, the highest ranking officer in the Israel Defence Forces with a rank of Lieutenant Colonel, became the first battalion commander of Ethiopian descent.

Ethiopian Heritage Museum: Rehovot, Israel
A museum highlighting the culture and heritage of the Ethiopian Jewish community is to be built in Rehovot. The museum, planned as a research, interpretive and spiritual center, is the brainchild of Tomer. This is an association of veteran Ethiopian immigrants and former Mossad agents who participated in the first operations to bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

"The Jews of Ethiopia have a rich cultural heritage, and are the only Jews who strictly kept their Judaism although they were entirely cut off from the Jewish people," said Tomer chairman Moshe Bar-Yuda. "The museum will present Ethiopian Jewish culture to Israelis who are not familiar enough with it, and also to young Ethiopians who fall between the cracks — on one hand they are not connected to their parents' culture, and on the other, they sometimes find it hard to become part of the dynamic of life in Israel. When they see the ancient culture of their forbears, they will be filled with pride, and it will be easier for them to become part of veteran Israeli society.""

Plans for the museum, expected to cost some $4.5 million, include a model Ethiopian village, an herb garden, an artificial stream, an amphitheater, classrooms, and a memorial to both Ethiopian Jews who died in Sudan on their way to Israel, and Ethiopian Zionist activists. "We view the conservation of the past as very important and believe the museum will attract young people and adults alike," Rehovot Mayor Shuki Forer says.

Numerous Ethiopian Jews live in Rehovot and surrounding towns, which is why it was chosen as the site of the museum. The city has set aside 6 dunams (6,000 m²), of land for the museum complex.

"All 21 members of the Rehovot City Council, both coalition and opposition, voted for the establishment of the center," says Abai Zaudeh, a council member and a member of Tomer's board of directors. "It's the first time they all agree and leave politics behind to focus on the reality that the establishment of the museum will assist the absorption of the Ethiopian community a great deal."

One of the museum's founders was Baruch Tegegne, who pioneered escape routes from Ethiopia via Sudan and fought for the right of Jews to emigrate to Israel. Other founders include veteran Ethiopian rights activist Babu Yaakov, a former member of the Ramle City Council, and Shetu Barehon, who worked in the transit camps in Sudan to bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel. A number of Ethiopian Jewish spiritual leaders and rabbis are also working to increase support for the project in the community and the Diaspora.

Bar-Yuda's long association with the Ethiopian Jewish community began in 1958. The Jewish Agency asked him to go to Ethiopia to look for Jews and to reach remote villages. His report, together with a 16th Century ruling by Rabbi David B. Zimra, known as the Radbaz, was the basis for chief Sephardic rabbi Ovadia Yosef's determination in 1972 that the Jews of Ethiopia were to be considered Jews according to halakha (Jewish religious law).

Politics
Some non-Jewish Ethiopians expressed bitterness towards the Jewish emigration out of Ethiopia. Others hope that the growing Ethiopian population in Israel will create stronger social and political connection between Ethiopia and Israel. Some Ethiopian Jews currently participate in Israeli politics.

Ethiopian government is also an important ally of Israel in the international stage. Israel often sends expertise assistance for development projects in Ethiopia. Strategically, Israel "has always aspired to protect itself by means of a non-Arab belt that has included at various times Iran, Turkey and Ethiopia."

In fiction
Operation Moses was the subject of an Israeli-French film titled Va, Vis et Deviens (Go, Live, and Become), directed by Romanian-born Radu Mihăileanu. The film tells the story of an Ethiopian Christian child whose mother has him pass as Jewish so he can emigrate to Israel and escape the famine looming in Ethiopia. The film was awarded the 2005 Best Film Award at the Copenhagen International Film Festival.

Photos

 * A collection of images of Beta Israel
 * Ethiopian Jews in the Sigd ceremony
 * video Sigd ceremony

Related Sources

 * Kaplan, Steve The Beta Israel (Falasha in Ethiopia: from Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century). New York University Press, re-issue edition, 1994. ISBN 0-8147-4664-0
 * Berhanu, Girma Learning In Context (An Ethnographic Investigation of Meditated Learning Experiences Among Ethiopian Jews in Israel). Goteborg University Press, 2001. ISBN 91-7346-411-2
 * Leslau, Wolf Falasha Anthology (Translated from Ethiopic Sources with an introduction by Wolf Leslau). Yale Judaica Series, vol. 6. New Haven & London: Yale University Press 1951. ISBN 0-300-03927-1.
 * Lyons, Len. "The Ethiopian Jews of Israel: Personal Stories of Life in the Promised Land." Jewish Lights Publishing. 2007. ISBN_13:978-1-58023-323-1.
 * Quirin, James. The Evolution of the Ethiopian Jews: A History of the Beta Israel (Falasha) to 1920. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. ISBN 0-8122-3116-3
 * Shelemay, Kay Kaufman. Music, Ritual, and Falasha History. Michigan State University Press; 1989. ISBN 0-87013-274-1
 * Aescoly, A.Z. Recueil de textes falachas: introduction textes Ethiopiens (edition critique et traduction). Paris: Institut d'ethnologie 1951.
 * Aescoly, A.Z. Notices sur les Falacha ou juifs d'Abbyssinie, d'apres le journal de voyage d'Antoine d'Abbadie. Cashiers d'etdues africaines 2; 1961.
 * Neugebauer, Otto. Ethiopic Astronomy and Computus. Vienna: Verlag der osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften; 1979.
 * Rey, C.F. In the Country of the Blue Nile. (Second Printing) New York: Negro University Press; 1969. ISBN: 0837126568

Discussion
Please put any discussion of the draft below this signature line:

[Menilek]  ጥሩ ምኒልክ (ራስነቢይ የ ቤት ዪሥራእል / አበምኔት ቢሥርዓት ናዝረታዊ) 01:22, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

The OneTopJob6 Vandalism of the Bete Israel Article
OneTopJob6, when are you going to read my rebuttal of your PREJUDICED rant on the discussion page for Bete Israel? You tell me to keep Messianic things out of it when in fact 85% of us Bete Israel people ARE Messianic. That is a demographic FACT and when you reverted said facts you INSERTED your own personal bias which is against Wikipedia's rules! Not to mention the fact that it is also against the rulings of the highest religious authorities in Israel, which have ruled more than once that a person does NOT lose their ethnicity as a descendant of Yahuda (IE: does not cease to be a Jew) just because of what one believes regarding the identity and time of arrival of the Moshiakh! Just as a Chinese Buddhist does not cease to be Chinese if he became a Christian! You sir, HAVE clearly demonstrated that you are an anti-Messianic BIGOT and you have vandalized my correctional edits which I made to said article regarding MY OWN people, and you did it for no other reason than to satisfy your blind ignorant bigoted hate and doing so was completely contrary to Wikipedia rules, not to mention the fact that I am one of the leading authorities on Bete Israel, as one of their 2 highest ranking spiritual leaders! You sir, are NOT an honest and unbiased judge of the facts! You owe me and my people an apology, to say the least! (cc) [Menilek]  ጥሩ ምኒልክ (ራስነቢይ የ ቤት ዪሥራእል / አበምኔት ቢሥርዓት ናዝረታዊ) 05:34, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

New Corrections for the Much-Revised "Beta Israel" Page
Note: This is not yet fully corrected. Outsiders keep revising the official Wikipedia "Beta Israel" page faster than I have time to post fully corrected versions here. So expect more of this to be corrected soon.

The Beta Israel (ביתא ישראל: Beta Israel, "House of Israel"; Ge'ez: ቤተ እስራኤል Bēta 'Isrā'ēl, modern Bēte 'Isrā'ēl) is the Jewish community from Ethiopia, but with most now living in Israel. They are also known as Falasha (Amharic for "Exiles" or "Strangers") by non-Jewish Ethiopians, but the Jews consider the term derogatory. Other terms by which the community have been known include Kayla (an Agaw group and language spoken by some members) and the Hebrew Habashim, associated with the non-Jewish Habesha people.

Nearly 85% of the Ethiopian Beta Israel community, comprising more than 130,000 people, have emigrated to Israel under its Law of Return, which gives Jews and those with Jewish parents or grandparents, and all of their spouses, the right to settle in Israel and obtain citizenship. The Israeli government has mounted rescue operations, most notably during Operation Moses (1984) and Operation Solomon (1991), for their migration when civil war and famine threatened populations within Ethiopia. Some immigration has continued up until the present day.

The related Falasha Mura are the majority descendants of Beta Israel who converted to Christianity. Some are returning to the practices of Judaism, living in Falash Mura communities and observing halakha. Beta Israel spiritual leaders, including Chief Kes Raphael Hadane have argued for the acceptance of the Falasha Mura as Jews. This claim has been a matter of controversy within Israeli society.

That Ethiopian adherents of Judaism existed in ancient times is famously supported by the case of the Ethiopian monk spoken of in. He had been to Jerusalem for purpose of worship and to bring the annual tithes to the temple from "Queen Candace" (the Jewish Empress of Aksum, Garsemot Kandeke VI) and was on his way home while reading Isaiah 53 when Philip the Christian evangelist converted and baptized him.

Beta Israel beliefs


The Ethiopian legend described in the Kebra Negast, or "Book of the Glory of Kings," relates that Ethiopians are descendants of the tribes of Judah and Levi who came to Ethiopia with Menelik I, alleged to be the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (or Makeda, in the legend) (see and ). The legend relates that Menelik, as an adult, returned to his father in Jerusalem, and then resettled in Ethiopia, and that he took with him the Ark of the Covenant.

In the Bible there is no mention that the Queen of Sheba either married or had any sexual relations with King Solomon; rather, the narrative records that she was impressed with his wealth and wisdom, and they exchanged royal gifts, and then she returned to rule her people in Kush. However, the "royal gifts" are interpreted by some as sexual contact. The loss of the Ark is also not mentioned in the Bible.

Those who accept the Kebra Negast believe that the Beta Israel are descended from a battalion of men of Judah that fled southwards down the Arabian coastal lands from Judaea after the breakup of the united Kingdom of Israel into two kingdoms in the 10th century BCE (while King Solomon reigned over Judah).

Although the Kebra Nagast and some traditional Ethiopian histories have stated that Yodit (or "Judit"), a tenth century usurping queen, was Jewish, it's unlikely that this was the case. It is though by some that she was a pagan southerner or a usurping Christian Aksumite Queen.

A minority of the Beta Israel consider the Kebra Negast legend to be a fabrication. Non-Ethiopian rabbis have claimed, based on the ninth century stories of Eldad ha-Dani (the Danite), that the tribe of Dan attempted to avoid the civil war in the Kingdom of Israel between Solomon's son Rehoboam and Jeroboam the son of Nebat, by resettling in Egypt. From there they moved southwards up the Nile into Ethiopia, and the Beta Israel are descended from these Danites. Most Beta Israel scholars deny being from the tribe of Dan, believing Dan to have been made extinct by God for idolatry sometime before Sha'ul (Saul) became Israel's first mortal king and that they are exclusively from the tribes of Judah and of Levites loyal to the kingdom of Judah and that these mixed with Habeshas who in the scriptures are called both Midianites and Ismaelites, and that Arabs falsely claim to be of Ishmael, directly based on the story of Joseph being sold into slavery which interchangeably refers to the people who bought Joseph both as Midianites and as Ishmaelites.

Other sources tell of many Jews who were brought as prisoners of war from ancient Israel by Ptolemy I and also settled on the border of his kingdom with Nubia (Sudan). Another tradition handed down in the community from father to son asserts that they arrived either via the old district of Qwara in northwestern Ethiopia, or via the Atbara River, where the Nile tributaries flow into Sudan. Some accounts even specify the route taken by their forefathers on their way upstream from Egypt.

Rabbinical views
The ninth century Jewish traveler Eldad ha-Dani claimed the Beta Israel descended from the tribe of Dan, claiming Jewish kingdoms around or in East Africa existed during this time. His writings may represent the first mention of the Beta Israel, but his accuracy is uncertain; scholars point to Eldad's lack of firsthand knowledge of Ethiopia's geography and any Ethiopian language, although he claimed the area as his homeland.

Rabbi Ovadiah Yare of Bertinoro wrote in letter from Jerusalem in 1488: "I myself saw two of them in Egypt. They are dark-skinned... and one could not tell whether they keep the teaching of the Karaites, or of the Rabbis, for some of their practices resemble the Karaite teaching... but in other things they appear to follow the instruction of the Rabbis; and they say they are related to the tribe of Dan."

Some Jewish legal authorities have also asserted that the Beta Israel are the descendants of the tribe of Dan, one of the Ten Lost Tribes. In their view, these people established a Jewish kingdom that lasted for hundreds of years. With the rise of Christianity and later Islam, schisms arose and three kingdoms competed. Eventually, the Christian and Muslim Ethiopian kingdoms reduced the Jewish kingdom to a small impoverished section. The earliest authority to rule this way was the Radbaz (Rabbi David ben Zimra, 1479 – 1573). Radbaz explains in a responsum concerning the status of a Beta Israel slave:

"But those Jews who come from the land of Cush are without doubt from the tribe of Dan, and since they did not have in their midst sages who were masters of the tradition, they clung to the simple meaning of the Scriptures. If they had been taught, however, they would not be irreverent towards the words of our sages, so their status is comparable to a Jewish infant taken captive by non-Jews … And even if you say that the matter is in doubt, it is a commandment to redeem them."

In 1973 Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, then the Chief Sephardic Rabbi, based on the Radbaz and other accounts, ruled that the Beta Israel were Jews and should be brought to Israel. He was later joined by a number of other authorities who made similar rulings, including the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Shlomo Goren.

Other notable poskim, from non-Zionist Ashkenazi circles, placed a halakhic safek (doubt) over the Jewishness of the Beta Israel. Such dissenting voices include rabbis Elazar Shach, Yosef Shalom Eliashiv, Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, and Moshe Feinstein. Similar doubts were raised within the same circles towards Bene Israel Jews, Chabad messianism and Russian immigrants to Israel in the 1990s.

In the 1970s and early 80s the Beta Israel were forced to undergo a modified conversion ceremony involving immersion in a ritual bath, a declaration accepting Rabbinic law, and, for men, a "symbolic recircumcision". Chief Rabbi Avraham Shapira later waived the "symbolic recircumcision" demand, which is only required when the halakhic doubt is significant. More recently Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar has ruled that descendants of Ethiopian Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity are "unquestionably Jews in every respect". With the consent of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Rabbi Amar ruled that it is forbidden to question the Jewishness of this community, pejoratively called Falashmura.

At present, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel requires ritual immersion prior to marriage, from Jews of Ethiopian or any other ancestry alike.

DNA evidence
A 1999 study by Lucotte and Smets studied the DNA of 38 unrelated Beta Israel males living in Israel and 104 Ethiopians living in regions located north of Addis Ababa and concluded that "the distinctiveness of the Y-chromosome haplotype distribution of Beta Israel Jews from conventional Jewish populations and their relatively greater similarity in haplotype profile to non-Jewish Ethiopians are consistent with the view that the Beta Israel people descended from ancient inhabitants of Ethiopia who converted to Judaism." This study confirmed the findings of a 1991 study by Zoossmann-Disken et al.. . A 2000 study by Hammer et al. of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes of Jewish and non-Jewish groups suggested that "paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population," with the exception of the Beta Israel, who were "affiliated more closely with non-Jewish Ethiopians and other North Africans."

A 2001 study by the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University found a possible genetic similarity between 11 Ethiopian Jews and 4 Yemenite Jews who took part in the testing. The differentiation statistic and genetic distances for the 11 Ethiopian Jews and 4 Yemenite Jews tested were quite low, among the smallest of comparisons involving either of these populations. The 4 Yemenite Jews from this study may be descendants of reverse migrants of African origin who crossed Ethiopia to Yemen. The study result suggests gene flow between Ethiopia and Yemen as a possible explanation for the closeness. The study also suggests that the gene flow between Ethiopian and Yemenite Jewish populations may not have been direct, but instead could have been between Jewish and non-Jewish populations of both regions.

A 2002 study of Mitochondrial DNA (which is passed through only maternal lineage to both men and women) by Thomas et al. showed that the most common mtDNA type found among the Ethiopian Jewish sample was present only in Somalia. This further supported the view that most Ethiopian Jews were of local or Ethiopian origin.

Scholarly view
In the past, secular scholars were divided on the origins of the Beta Israel; whether they were the descendants of an Israelite tribe, or converted by Jews living in Yemen, or by the Jewish community in southern Egypt at Elephantine. In the 1930s Jones and Monro argues that the chief Semitic languages of Ethiopia may suggest an antiquity of Judaism in Ethiopia. "There still remains the curious circumstance that a number of Abyssinian words connected with religion, such as the words for Hell, idol, Easter, purification, and alms – are of Hebrew origin. These words must have been derived directly from a Jewish source, for the Abyssinian Church knows the scriptures only in a Ge'ez version made from the Septuagint." Richard Pankhurst summarized the various theories offered about their origins as of 1950 that the first members of this community were "(1) converted Agaws, (2) Jewish immigrants who intermarried with Agaws, (3) immigrant Yemeni Arabs who had converted to Judaism, (4) immigrant Yemeni Jews, (5) Jews from Egypt, and (6) successive waves of Yemeni Jews. Traditional Ethiopian savants, on the one hand, have declared that 'We were Jews before we were Christians', while more recent, well-documented, Ethiopian hypotheses, notably by two Ethiopian scholars, Dr Taddesse Tamrat and Dr Getachew Haile... put much greater emphasis on the manner in which Christians over the years converted to the Falasha faith, thus showing that the Falashas were culturally an Ethiopian sect, made up of ethnic Ethiopians."

According to Menachem Waldman, a major wave of immigration from the Kingdom of Judah to present-day Ethiopia dates back to the Assyrian Siege of Jerusalem, in the beginning of the 7th century BC. Rabbinic accounts of the siege assert that only about 110,000 Judeans remained in Jerusalem under King Hezekiah's command, whereas about 130,000 Judeans led by Shebna had joined Sennacherib's campaign against Tirhakah, king of Kush. Sennacherib's campaign failed and Shebna's army was lost "at the mountains of darkness", suggestively identified with Semien Mountains. This account is supported by the letter of Aristeas (13), which also describes several later occasions in which Judean armies were sent against Ethiopian forces. According to Jacqueline Pirenne, numerous Sabaeans crossed over the Red Sea to Ethiopia to escape from the Assyrians, who had devastated the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. She further states that a second major wave of Sabaeans crossed over to Ethiopia in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE to escape Nebuchadnezzar. This wave also included Jews fleeing from the Babylonian takeover of Judah.

Modern scholars of Ethiopian history and Ethiopian Jews generally support one of two conflicting hypotheses, as outlined by Steven Kaplan:


 * A late ethnogenesis of the Beta Israel between the 14th to 16th Centuries, from a sect of Ethiopian Christians who took on Biblical practices, and came to see themselves as Jews. Steven Kaplan lists himself along with G.J. Abbink, Kay K. Shelemay, Taddesse Tamrat and James A. Quirin as supporters of this hypothesis. Quirin differs from his fellow researchers in the weight he assigns to an ancient Jewish element that the Beta Israel have conserved.


 * An ancient Jewish origin of the Beta Israel, as well as some ancient Jewish traditions later conserved by the Ethiopian Church. Steven Kaplan lists Simon D. Messing, David Shlush, Michael Corinaldi, Menachem Waldman, Menachem Elon and David Kessler as supporters of this hypothesis.

Supporters of either of the two hypotheses all acknowledge that Beta Israeli heritage has to be analyzed within a broader Ethiopian context, a principle not held by some earlier scholars. It is also widely acknowledged that due to the lack of documentation regarding ancient Ethiopian history, many fundamental questions regarding the origin of Beta Israel are likely to remain open. In 1992 Richard Pankhurst stated "The early origins of the Falashas are shrouded in mystery, and, for lack of documentation, will probably remain so for ever." Kaplan has bitterly commented: "Although we don't have a single fine ethnographic research on Beta Israel, and the recent history of this tribe has received almost no attention by researchers, every one who writes about the Jews of Ethiopia feels obliged to contribute his share to the ongoing debate about their origin. Politicians and journalists, Rabbis and political activists, not a single one of them withstood the temptation to play the role of the historian and invent a solution for this riddle."

In The Middle Ages
In 1329, Emperor Amda Seyon campaigned in the northwest provinces of Semien, Wegera, Tselemt, and Tsegede, in which many had been converting to Judaism and where the Beta Israel had been gaining prominence. He sent troops there to fight people "like Jews" (Ge'ez ከመ:አይሁድ kama ayhūd).

For the next three centuries, these regions were frequently areas of Beta Israel rebellion against the Solomonic dynasty. Religion was less important to the Emperors than loyalty, however. Rebellious Beta Israel leaders often formed alliances with other enemies of the Emperor despite their differing faiths. The late fourteenth century Christian monk Qozmos, for instance, copied the Orit (Old Testament) for the Beta Israel communities. He led them against local Christians before being defeated by Emperor Dawit I. Likewise, the fifteenth century governor of Tsellemt used both Jewish and Christian troops for his revolt. The first personal campaign against rebelling Beta Israel areas did not come until the reign of Emperor Yeshaq (r.1414-29). When Yeshaq I defeated the governors of Semien and Dembiya, he began to exert religious pressure. He reduced the Jews' social status below that of Christians. Yeshaq forced the Jews to convert or lose their land. It would be given away as rist, a type of land qualification that rendered it forever inheritable by the recipient and not transferrable by the Emperor. Yeshaq decreed, "He who is baptized in the Christian religion may inherit the land of his father, otherwise let him be a Falāsī." This may have been the origin for the term "Falasha" (falāšā, "wanderer," or "landless person"). In the 1400s, Emperor Zara Yaqob carried out some of the worst massacres, attacks and forced conversions of the Christian kingdom. Zara Yaqob added the title "Exterminator of the Jews" to his name.

Another convert was Abba Sabra (or Sabriqu) of Madra Kabd near Zeqwala in Shewa, who lived in the fifteenth century. According to Falasha tradition, in which he is a seminal figure, Abba Sabra turned to a life of penance after having committed a murder; one act of this penance was building a church in Dankaz near Gondar. Not long afterwards, he "embraced the faith of the Israelites", and converted one of Zara Yaqob's sons, Saga-Amlak, who according to some accounts also converted many other people. Abba Sabra is also remembered for his teaching of the Orit, as well as the laws of purity known in Amharic as attenhugn. He is also believed to have introduced to the Beta Israel monastic practices, which became one of its most distinctive practices as a Jewish sect. The influence of converts like Qozmos and Abba Sabra complicates the work of tracing this group's possible heritage from its earliest adherents.

Beta Israel autonomy in Ethiopia ended in 1624, when Emperor Susenyos confiscated their lands, sold many people into slavery and forcibly baptized others. Jewish writings and religious books were burned. The practice of any form of Jewish religion was forbidden in Ethiopia. As a result of this period of oppression, much traditional Jewish culture and practice was lost or changed.

Nonetheless, the Beta Israel community appears to have continued to flourish during this period. The capital of Ethiopia, Gondar, in Dembiya, was surrounded by Beta Israel lands. The Beta Israel served as craftsmen, masons, and carpenters for the Emperors from the sixteenth century onwards. Such roles had been shunned by Ethiopians as lowly and less honorable than farming. According to contemporary accounts by European visitors: Portuguese merchants and diplomats, French, British and other travellers, the Beta Israel numbered about one million persons in the seventeenth century. These accounts also recounted that some knowledge of Hebrew persisted among the people in the seventeenth century. For example, Manoel de Almeida, a Portuguese diplomat and traveller of the day, wrote that:

"The Falashas or Jews are... of [Arabic] race [and speak] Hebrew, though it is very corrupt. They have their Hebrew Bibles and sing the psalms in their synagogues."

The extent of De Almeida's knowledge is not known. The Beta Israel were not predominantly of the Arabic race, for instance, but he may have meant the term loosely or meant that they also knew Arabic.

The Beta Israel lost their relative economic advantages, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, during the Zemene Mesafint, a period of recurring civil strife. Although the capital was nominally in Gondar during this time period, the decentralization of government and dominance by  regional capitals resulted in a decline and exploitation of Beta Israel by local rulers. No longer was there a strong central government interested in and capable of protecting them. During this period, the Jewish religion was effectively lost for some forty years, before being restored in the 1840s by Abba Widdaye, the preeminent monk of Qwara.

Pre-modern and modern contacts with Jews elsewhere
The earliest surviving testimony to those hidden kingdoms comes from the ninth century. In the last decades of that century, the Jews of Kairowan in Tunisia were visited by a man called Eldad son of Mahli, the Danite. Eldad the Danite, as he is referred to in Jewish histories, said he was the lone survivor of a shipwreck. He claimed to have escaped cannibals and had other fabulous adventures before arriving in Tunisia. He was described as having dark skin and speaking only a strange sort of Hebrew and no Arabic. Eldad the Danite claimed to be a Jew of a pastoralist tribe residing in the land of Havilah beyond the rivers of Ethiopia.

He claimed the tribe was descendants of the tribe of Dan, which had emigrated from Judaea at the time of Jeroboam's accession, after the death of Solomon. He said three other tribes, Naphtali, Gad and Asher, had joined them in the time of Sennacherib. He laid waste to the northern kingdom of Israel around 722 B.C. Opposite these tribes lived the Children of Moses, Bnai Mosheh, who came from those Levites who had mutilated the fingers of their right hands rather than sing the songs of Zion by the rivers of Babylon, and chose instead to flee to the south.

Eldad the Danite said the Children of Moses lived beyond a river of grinding stones. They were impossible to visit, except on the sabbath day when the river ceased its grinding. This was a concept strikingly similar to, if not a direct borrowing from, Sambation. The tribes were pastoralists and mighty warriors. They were ruled together by a king assisted by a learned Torah judge-prophet. They did not know of the Talmud, but had their own traditions written down in Hebrew. Eldad the Danite displayed these to the rabbis of Tunisia and Egypt.

The rabbis corresponded with a Gaon of Sura (in Babylon) and concluded that Eldad the Danite was indeed a Jew. They determined that the differences of his practice from their own were legitimate forms of customary law for the Jews of Havilah. In the early modern period, the variations from Rabbinic law which he practiced and obeyed were still cited by Rabbinic authorities as precedents. The facts that he used only Hebrew in the Muslim world and carried a sacred text written in Hebrew which gave details of ritual and other practices suggested that ancient Ethiopian Jewry knew Hebrew.

In the sixteenth century, the Chief Rabbi of Egypt, Rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (Radbaz) proclaimed that in terms of halakha (Jewish legal code), the Ethiopian community was certainly Jewish. During the nineteenth century, the majority of European Jewish authorities openly supported this assertion.

In 1908, the chief rabbis of 45 countries made a joint statement officially declaring that Ethiopian Jews were indeed Jewish. This proclamation was chiefly due to the work of Professor Jacques Faitlovitch, who studied Amharic and Tigrinya at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris under Professor Joseph Halévy. Halévy first visited the Ethiopian Jews in 1876. Upon his return to Europe, Halévy published a "Kol Korei," a cry to the world Jewish community to save the Ethiopian Jews. He formed the organization Kol Yisroel Chaverim ("All Israel are Friends"), to act as advocates for Ethiopian Jews for years to come.

Ethiopian enclave


One of the earliest dated references to the Beta Israel in Ethiopian literature is in the Glorious Victories of Amda Seyon, which mentions a revolt in the province of Begemder by "the renegades who are like Jews" in the year 1332.

The isolation of the Beta Israel was reported by explorer James Bruce, who published his Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in Edinburgh in 1790. In 1860, Henry Stern, a Jewish convert to Christianity, traveled to Ethiopia to attempt to convert the Beta Israel to Christianity.

Many Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity have been returning to the practice of Judaism. Such people are known as the Falash Mura. They have been admitted to Israel, although not as Jews. The Israeli government can thus set quotas on their immigration and make citizenship dependent on their conversion to Orthodox Judaism. Although no one knows precisely the population of the Falash Mura in Ethiopia, observers believe it is approximately 20,000-26,000 persons. Recently, some reporters and other travelers in remote regions of Ethiopia have noted finding entire villages where people claim they are Jewish or are Falash Mura, that is, Jews who have been practicing Christianity.

In the Achefer woreda of the Mirab Gojjam Zone, roughly 1,000-2,000 families of Beta Israel were found. They have not petitioned to immigrate to the Jewish state. There may be other such regions in Ethiopia with significant Jewish enclaves, which would raise the total Jewish population to more than 50,000 people. Israel has approved the immigration of the Falash Mura at 300 per month. The Ethiopian Jewish community and its supporters have petitioned to increase this number to 600 per month, citing the high mortality rate among Jews waiting to emigrate from Ethiopia. An economic analysis conducted for the JAI by David Brodet, former director general of the Ministry of Finance, concluded that an increased rate of immigration to Israel "is highly logical and has economical and social advantages" over the present immigration rate.‏‏

Religious traditions
The holiest work is the Torah — Orit. All the holy writings, including the Torah, are handwritten on parchment pages that are assembled into a codex. The rest of the Prophets and the Hagiographa are of secondary importance. The language of their holy writings is Ge'ez.

In addition to the Rabbinical Biblical canon, the Beta Israel hold sacred the books of Enoch, Jubilees, Baruch and the books of Ezra as well. The basic wording of Beta Israel Biblical writings was passed down through ancient translations like the Septuagint, which incorporates the Apocrypha (as called by Protestant Christians) including all the books noted by Catholics as Deuterocanon as well as other Rabbinical Jewish Apocrypha.

The Beta Israel possess, but do not consider canonical, several other books, including the Arde'et, Acts of Moses, Apocalypse of Gorgorios, Meddrash Abba Elija, and biographies of the nation's forebears: Gadla Adam, Gadla Avraham, Gadla Ishak, Gadla Ya'kov, Gadla Moshe, Gadla Aaron, Nagara Musye, Mota Musye.



Leaders of the community consider especially important a book about the Shabbat and its precepts, Te'ezaza Sanbat (Precepts of the Sabbath). The leaders of the Beta Israel also read liturgical works, including weekday services, Shabbat and Festival prayers, and various blessings. Sefer Cahen deals with priestly functions, while Sefer Sa'atat (Book of the Hours) applies to weekdays and Shabbat. The Beta Israel religious calendar is set according to a treatise known as the Abu Shaker, which was written around 1257 CE. It covered the computation of Jewish holidays and chronological matters. The Abu Shaker lists civil and lunar dates for Jewish feasts, including Matqe' (New Year), Soma Ayhud or Badr (Yom Kippur), Masallat (Sucot), Fesh (Passover), and Soma Dehnat (Fast of Salvation) or Soma Aster (Fast of Esther).

The Beta Israel have a unique holiday, known as Sigd on the 29th of Cheshvan. Sigd or Seged is derived from the Semitic root, meaning "to bow or prostrate oneself." In the past the day was called Mehella. The acts of bowing and supplication are still known as mehella. Sigd celebrates the giving of the Torah and the return from exile in Babylonia to Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah. Beta Israel tradition holds that Sigd commemorates Ezra's proclamation against the Babylonian wives (Ezra 10:10-12). In Ethiopia, the Sigd was celebrated on hilltops outside villages. The location was called by several names, including Ya'arego Dabr (Mountain for making prayers) and in Amharic Yalamana Tarrara (Mountain of Supplication). The Kessim, or elders of the community, drew a parallel between the ritual mountain and Mount Sinai. Another source described Sigd (calling it Amata Saww) as a new-moon holiday, after which the Kessim withdrew for a period of isolation.

Social contact between the Beta Israel and other Ethiopians was limited. It was not because of the laws of Kashrut, since all Ethiopians share the same food taboos. Ethiopian Jews were forbidden to eat the food of non-Jews. The Kessim were more strict about the prohibition against eating food prepared by non-Kessim. Beta Israel who broke these taboos were ostracized and had to undergo a purification process. Purification included fasting for one or more days and ritual purification before entering the village. Unlike other Ethiopians, the Beta Israel do not eat raw meat dishes like kitfo or gored gored.

Languages
The Beta Israel once spoke Qwara and Kayla, closely related Cushitic languages. Now they speak Tigrinya and Amharic, both Semitic languages. Their liturgical language is Ge'ez, also Semitic. Since the 1950s, they have taught Hebrew in their schools; in addition, those Beta Israel currently residing in the State of Israel use Hebrew as a daily language.

Israeli intervention
The Israeli government officially accepted the Beta Israel as Jews in 1975, for the purpose of the Law of Return. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin obtained clear rulings from Chief Sephardi Rabbi Ovadia Yosef that they were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes. They were, however, required to undergo pro forma Jewish conversions, to remove any doubt as to their Jewish status.

Beginning in 1984, the Israeli-led Operation Moses began transporting Beta Israel to Israel. In 1985 it came to an abrupt halt, leaving many of the Beta Israel still in Ethiopia. It was not until 1990 that the governments of Israel and Ethiopia came to an agreement to allow the remaining Beta Israel a chance to emigrate to Israel. In 1991, the political and economic stability of Ethiopia deteriorated as rebels mounted attacks against and eventually controlled the capital city of Addis Ababa. Worried about the fate of the Beta Israel during the transition period, the Israeli government along with several private groups prepared to continue covertly with the migration. After El Al obtained a special provision to fly on Shabbat (because of the danger to life), on Friday, May 24, Operation Solomon began. Over the course of 36 hours, a total of 34 El Al passenger planes, with their seats removed to maximize passenger capacity, flew 14,325 Beta Israel non-stop to Israel.

Ethiopian Jews in Israel today


Ethiopian Jews are gradually becoming part of the mainstream Israeli society in religious life, military service (with nearly all males doing national service), education, and politics. Similarly to other groups of immigrant Jews who made aliyah to Israel, the Ethiopian Jews have faced obstacles in their integration to Israeli society. The Ethiopian Jewish community's internal challenges have been complicated by limited but real racist attitudes on the part of some elements of Israeli society and the official establishment.

One study found that some of the problems with the absorption of the Beta Israel was due to the model of absorption chosen. "Planning for the absorption of Jewish immigrants to Israel has been dominated by a procedural approach, which has generally been insensitive to the particular circumstances and needs of minority ethnic groups. This approach has emphasised the ‘national interest’ as defined by the dominant group, namely Ashkenazi Jews who originated in Central Europe. The social and cultural traditions of other groups have been treated as ‘problems’ that need to be overcome, and minimal attention has been given to the processes of adaptation such groups undergo."

Most of the 100,000 Ethiopian Jews living in Israel are immigrants and descendants of two main waves, the first in 1981-1984 and the second in 1991-1998. These airlifts were known as Operation Moses and Operation Solomon, respectively. Civil war and famine in Ethiopia prompted the Israeli government to mount these dramatic rescue operations. The rescues were within the context of Israel's national mission to gather Diaspora Jews and bring them to the Jewish homeland.

Individual Ethiopian Jews had lived in Eretz Yisrael prior to the establishment of the state. A youth group arrived in Israel in the 1950s to undergo training in Hebrew education and returned to Ethiopia to educate young Jews there. Also, Ethiopian Jews had been trickling into Israel prior to the 1970s. The numbers of such Ethiopian immigrants grew after the Israeli government officially recognized them in 1973 as Jews entitled to Israeli citizenship.

To prepare for the absorption of tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews, the State of Israel prepared  two `Master Plans’ (Ministry of Absorption, 1985, 1991). The first was prepared in 1985, a year after the arrival of the first wave of immigrants. The second updated the first in response to the second wave of immigration in 1991 from Ethiopia. The first Master Plan contained an elaborate and detailed program. It covered issues of housing, education, employment and practical organization, together with policy guidelines regarding specific groups, including women, youths, and single -parent families. Like earlier absorption policies, it adopted a procedural approach which assumed that the immigrants were broadly similar to the existing majority population of Israel. The Plans were, no doubt, created with good intentions and a firm belief in assimilation. As noted in this section, results have been disappointing and suggest that much greater attention needs to be paid to issues of ethnicity. 

According to a November 17, 1999 BBC article, a report commissioned by Israel's Ministry of Immigrant Absorption stated that 75% of the 70,000 Ethiopian Jews living in Israel in 1999 could not read or write Hebrew. More than half the population could not hold a simple conversation in the Hebrew language. Unlike Russian immigrants, many of whom arrive with job skills, Ethiopians came from a subsistence economy and were ill-prepared to work in an industrialized society. Since then much progress has been made. Through military service most Ethiopian Jews have been able to increase their chances for better opportunities. . Today most Ethiopian Jews have been for the most part integrated into Israeli society, however a high drop out rate is a problem, although a higher number are now edging towards the higher areas of society.

In September, 2006, the Israeli government's proposed 2007 budget included reducing Ethiopian immigration from 600 persons per month to 150. On the eve of the Knesset vote, the Prime Minister's office announced that the plan had been dropped. Advocates for the Falash Mura noted that although the quota was set at 600 per month in March, 2005, actual immigration has remained at 300 per month.

Prominent Israelis of Ethiopian Jewish background
Qes Adana Takuyo was born in Seqelt and studied with the Qessim as a child. During the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, he had moved to Ambober where he worked as a farmer. He studied Hebrew briefly in 1955 when an Israeli rabbi taught in Asmara. In 1985 Qes Adana immigrated to Israel along with his wife and eleven children. His oldest son Rabbi Josef Adana, who had immigrated earlier, had become the first Ethiopian Rabbi.

In the 1920s, Yona Bogale was sponsored by Jacques Faitlovitch to study abroad. He spent two years in British Mandate Palestine, four in Germany, one in Switzerland, and one in France. After returning to Addis Ababa around 1930, he taught in the Faitlovitch school there. During the Italian occupation, he went into hiding and worked as a farmer in Wolleka. After the war Yona Bogale worked for the Ethiopian Ministry of Education for twelve years and then for the Jewish Agency.

Yona Bogale was fluent in Hebrew, English, and German, as well as Amharic. He was author of an early Hebrew-Amharic dictionary. He left Ethiopia in late 1979 and immigrated to Israel. Yona was an early proponent of Ethiopian Jews' praying in Hebrew instead of Ge'ez. He believed the latter language was no longer appropriate for those seeking to be part of the modern Jewish world. He felt that Ethiopian Jews should set Hebrew prayers to the traditional Jewish melodies.

Rabbi Sharon Shalom is a lecturer in Jewish ritual and tradition at Bar Ilan University in Israel. He is a counselor for the Ethiopian-Israeli community in the town of Kiryat Gat. Rabbi Yefet Alemu was born in 1961 in a small village in Ethiopia. In 1980, he left his village to go to Israel. He was arrested in Addis Ababa and escaped from prison. He arrived in the Gondar region and then set out walking to Sudan. There he met a Jewish Red Cross director who arranged for him to fly on one of the Israeli-organized secret flights to Israel. In Israel he studied and became a nurse.

While continuing to be a believing Jew, Yefet became disillusioned with organized Judaism and the Israeli religious establishment’s insistence on a conversion ceremony for all Ethiopian Jews. Yefet helped organize an Ethiopian protest vigil opposite the Chief Rabbinate building in Jerusalem. At the vigil, he met students from the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies who were studying to be Conservative rabbis. He was confused and surprised to see that they were without beards and without long black coats. The students replied that there was more than one type of rabbi, more than one way of being Jewish. Yefet excitedly embraced this pluralistic approach to Judaism. He was accepted by the Schechter Institute and after 6 years of hard work, he received a BA, MA, and his rabbinical ordination.

Ethiopian-Israelis have been participating more in Israeli political life. The Atid Ekhad party sees itself as the political representative of the community, though other parties include Ethiopian members. In 2006, Shas, a party representing ultra-orthodox Jews of Sephardic and Middle Eastern background, included an Ethiopian rabbi from Beersheba, in its list for the Knesset in a conscious attempt to represent diverse geographic and ethnic groups.

Rabbi Mazor Bayana, rabbi of an Ethiopian community of 10,000 in Beersheba, studied at Yeshivat Porat Yosef, one of the most prestigious Sephardi yeshivot in Israel. Rabbi Bayana, however, did not win a seat in the Knesset.

Shas was not the only party attempting to appeal to the Ethiopian vote. Herut and Kadima both had Ethiopians on their lists. Shlomo Mula, head of the Jewish Agency's Ethiopian absorption department, was ranked 33 on Kadima's list and Avraham was number three on Herut's list.

Adisu Massala, of Labour and later One Nation, is the first Ethiopian-Israeli to have served in the Knesset.

Esti Mamo is an Ethiopian Jewish model. She is one of the first Ethiopian-Israelis to make it into the entertainment industry and is a budding actress. The first Ethiopian-Israeli model was Mazal Pikado in 1990.

Avraham Negussie is one of Israel's most prominent Ethiopian Activists and a member of the South Wing to Zion. His struggle, with the support of many other Ethiopian-Israelis has resulted in the Israeli government continuing to bring the last 23,000 Ethiopian Jews from Ethiopia; though the Israeli government has set a quota of 300 Jews per month, half of what they agreed to under pressure from Negussie, NACOEJ and the United Jewish Communities.

Shas's spiritual mentor, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, enthusiastically embraced Ethiopians when they first began immigrating to Israel four decades ago. Despite Rabbi Ovadia's halachic ruling, some refuse to marry Ethiopians without a conversion in accordance with official Chief Rabbinate policy. Only in cities and towns with rabbis that accept Ovadia's ruling or the ruling of Rabbi Shlomo Goren are Ethiopians married without immersion in a ritual bath (mikva) or, for men, hatafat dam, הטפת דם, see brit milah), the symbolic cut to produce a drop of blood instead of circumcision.

Meskie Shibru-Sivan is a female Ethiopian-Israeli actress and vocalist, well known in Israel and beyond for acting on theater stages, in television programs, movies as well as being an accomplished singer.

Baruch Tegegne, a prodigy of Bogale, was a leader in protests on behalf of Ethiopian Jewry in the 1980s and 1990s.

In 2009, Tzion Shenkor, the highest ranking officer in the Israel Defence Forces with a rank of Lieutenant Colonel, became the first battalion commander of Ethiopian descent.

Ethiopian Heritage Museum: Rehovot, Israel
A museum highlighting the culture and heritage of the Ethiopian Jewish community is to be built in Rehovot. The museum, planned as a research, interpretive and spiritual center, is the brainchild of Tomer. This is an association of veteran Ethiopian immigrants and former Mossad agents who participated in the first operations to bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

"The Jews of Ethiopia have a rich cultural heritage, and are the only Jews who strictly kept their Judaism although they were entirely cut off from the Jewish people," said Tomer chairman Moshe Bar-Yuda. "The museum will present Ethiopian Jewish culture to Israelis who are not familiar enough with it, and also to young Ethiopians who fall between the cracks — on one hand they are not connected to their parents' culture, and on the other, they sometimes find it hard to become part of the dynamic of life in Israel. When they see the ancient culture of their forbears, they will be filled with pride, and it will be easier for them to become part of veteran Israeli society.""

Plans for the museum, expected to cost some $4.5 million, include a model Ethiopian village, an herb garden, an artificial stream, an amphitheater, classrooms, and a memorial to both Ethiopian Jews who died in Sudan on their way to Israel, and Ethiopian Zionist activists. "We view the conservation of the past as very important and believe the museum will attract young people and adults alike," Rehovot Mayor Shuki Forer says.

Numerous Ethiopian Jews live in Rehovot and surrounding towns, which is why it was chosen as the site of the museum. The city has set aside 6 dunams (6,000 m²), of land for the museum complex.

"All 21 members of the Rehovot City Council, both coalition and opposition, voted for the establishment of the center," says Abai Zaudeh, a council member and a member of Tomer's board of directors. "It's the first time they all agree and leave politics behind to focus on the reality that the establishment of the museum will assist the absorption of the Ethiopian community a great deal."

One of the museum's founders was Baruch Tegegne, who pioneered escape routes from Ethiopia via Sudan and fought for the right of Jews to emigrate to Israel. Other founders include veteran Ethiopian rights activist Babu Yaakov, a former member of the Ramle City Council, and Shetu Barehon, who worked in the transit camps in Sudan to bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel. A number of Ethiopian Jewish spiritual leaders and rabbis are also working to increase support for the project in the community and the Diaspora.

Bar-Yuda's long association with the Ethiopian Jewish community began in 1958. The Jewish Agency asked him to go to Ethiopia to look for Jews and to reach remote villages. His report, together with a 16th Century ruling by Rabbi David B. Zimra, known as the Radbaz, was the basis for chief Sephardic rabbi Ovadia Yosef's determination in 1973 that the Jews of Ethiopia were to be considered Jews according to halakha (Jewish religious law).

Politics
Some non-Jewish Ethiopians expressed bitterness towards the Jewish emigration out of Ethiopia. Others hope that the growing Ethiopian population in Israel will create stronger social and political connection between Ethiopia and Israel. Some Ethiopian Jews currently participate in Israeli politics.

Ethiopian government is also an important ally of Israel in the international stage. Israel often sends expertise assistance for development projects in Ethiopia. Strategically, Israel "has always aspired to protect itself by means of a non-Arab belt that has included at various times Iran, Turkey and Ethiopia."

In fiction
Operation Moses was the subject of an Israeli-French film titled Va, Vis et Deviens (Go, Live, and Become), directed by Romanian-born Radu Mihăileanu. The film tells the story of an Ethiopian Christian child whose mother has him pass as Jewish so he can emigrate to Israel and escape the famine looming in Ethiopia. The film was awarded the 2005 Best Film Award at the Copenhagen International Film Festival.

Photos

 * A collection of images of Beta Israel
 * Ethiopian Jews in the Sigd ceremony
 * video Sigd ceremony

Literature

 * Carol Beckwith & Angela Fisher (Photographs), Graham Hancock (Text): African Ark - Peoples of the Horn, Chapter II: The Heavenly World/ Gondar: the Falasha and Amhara, An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, ISBN 0-00-272780-3

End of New Corrections for the Much-Revised "Beta Israel" Page
. ..

December 2009
Hello, I assume that you and Minilik are one and the same? If so, are you no longer using the old account? You might want to put on your old talk page. Thank you. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 15:07, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

February 2011
Greetings, I have reverted your Feb. 11 & 12 edits to Aksum and Aksumite Empire. You stated that Aksum/Aksumite Empire officially adopted Christianity during the first century CE, citing Rey, Sir Charles F., In the Country of the Blue Nile, (1927, Duckworth Press, London) Appendix and the New Testament account of Phillip and the eunuch (Acts 8:26-39; 8:26-39&version=NIV;KJV#fen-NIV-27204a link). However, the source (and the Bible) use the term "Ethiopia," which more likely means Aethiopia (Classical Greek term), referring to the Kingdom of Kush rather than Ethiopia in the modern sense. Aksum itself is not mentioned.

The cited Rey source seems obscure and out-of-date (1927), although I won't go so far as to say it is unreliable. However, a more recent text (Hansberry, William Leo Pillars in Ethiopian History, Howard University Press, 1974) suggests the older, rather than modern, meaning of Ethiopia when used in this context. You pointed out the distinction yourself between ancient and modern Ethiopia in an older discussion (diff).

The remainder of your edits lacked attribution, save for the Kebra Nagast, which we can't cite as a source (at least, not in the context that you cited it: see WP:RNPOV).

Thank you. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 18:59, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Menilek on Aksumite/Abyssinian/Ethiopian Religion & History
(This is my own talk-page's copy of my response to Gyrofrog's comments on why he has obstructed my edits)

Besides the fact that I am both a member of the royal family as well as at the top level in my nation's oldest church denomination, I am also a historian of both.

To answer your cited causes for the reversion:

1) Regarding Ethiopian history, the fact that a referenced source is older, means that it is less likely to have suffered latter-day Marxist revisionism and thus such older sources are usually known to be more credible, especially when written by an outside independent author, such as Sir Charles F. Rey, an English lord who made Abyssinian life and history his own life's study. His books are uninfluenced by the revisionist agenda of Marxist propaganda. He had nobody to answer to but God and the Queen of England. Therefore being so unencumbered by Ethiopian politics, he is to be seen as an unbiased source intimately familiar with his subject matter.

2) The three sources I cited were for all of the edits, not just the edit next to the ref link. This was to avoid redundant citations appearing in the references list, which itself, is not a bad goal. Would you rather see the same source listed numerous times, once for each point of info being cited from the same source? That should be unnecessary when the first reference citing that source has already directed the reader to read that source and if they did, they would see all of the points that were being cited, especially if more than one of said points of info are on the same page or in the same appendix, the latter definitely being the case here referring to the official complete list of monarchs the royal family provided to Rey to include in his book, showing which monarchs began their reign and how many years they reigned and in which order they reigned and which dynasty of which their reign was a part. Such an index of names and dates WAS the source for a number of points I made in my edits. Am I expected to cite the same page over and over, once for each and every point? If your answer is that you did not realize that this was the case, I must ask, aren't you supposed to know that before you do such a reversion, to make sure that you have not reverted the edits on a false assumption on your part? For the reason you gave for reverting, indeed did constitute just that... a false assumption that I had not cited the source for multiple points when I HAD cited the source once already because the source was a source for more than one point that had been edited. I am only required to cite the source but I do not think that I am required to cite which line on the page, when I have already cited the page.

3) You said "The remainder of your edits lacked attribution, save for the Kebra Nagast, which we can't cite as a source (at least, not in the context that you cited it: see WP:RNPOV)." Items 1 and 2 above explains that the references I gave were attribution for the edits you thought were without attribution. However in that same statement, you also claim that the Kebra Negast was NOT an acceptable source for the context of my edit for which it was cited. However, it actually is. the fact that you said this makes me wonder, have you even read the Kebra Negast? Do you know what events of which Kebra Negast is a record? Intimate knowledge of this apocryphal work is needed before claiming that it is not a source for a point or context being associated with it. For me it is more than just an interesting text sitting on the shelf. But for me Kebra Negast is a required textbook from which I teach the history of my people and my faith, of which Kebra Negast is a historical record, just as 1 & 2 Maccabees would be a required text if you were a teacher of the Greek occupation of Israel. As the current rasnebiy ye Bete Yisrael, I am the head proclaimer and guardian of doctrine for Bete Yisrael, which includes all supportive historical and apocryphal data, not just scripture. So this is not merely a curiosity for me. It is my job and my life. As such an expert on the subject, that means that I to, myself, AM a source.

4) You said "However, the source (and the Bible) use the term "Ethiopia," which more likely means Aethiopia (Classical Greek term), referring to the Kingdom of Kush rather than Ethiopia in the modern sense. Aksum itself is not mentioned."

The fact is that the Greek term "Aethiopia" is the same term as the English "Ethiopia" and is a combination of the Greek word Aethi and Opi combined as a phrase, which unarguably DOES translate as "burnt-faces" an ancient Κοινά (common) Greek pejorative for any people of such dark complexion as are people from Africa or certain parts of India. People of the "classical Greek" period were not above poking fun at such obvious differences from their own appearance. IE: 20th century Americans never cornered the historical market on being bigoted jerks, although there are people in the world who would disagree on that point, yet without just cause. One can not honestly deny that human nature is prevalent in a portion of every human society.

And to declare, as you did, that Aksum is not mentioned, when discussing "Ethiopia" is the same thing as claiming that Kurdistan is not mentioned when you discuss the area bordering Iran, Iraq and Turkey or to say that Israel is not mentioned when you discuss 1938 "Palestine". Just because a defacto government has taken over and occupies a place, does not ever negate that those who were robbed of their right to govern cease to be the legitimate government de jur. Whoever told you that Bete Yisrael,(IE: the remaining descendants of the Empire of Aksum), ever surrendered or that we ever ceded our empire, has grossly misinformed you. Nothing was surrendered. Nothing was ceded. It is merely under occupation, but as long as Tsion (the Ark) resides in that land, then that land is rightfully ours to rule, even when we do not have the power to do so, just as if the theft of your car would never mean that your stolen car ever could truly become the rightful property of those who wrongly possess it. Stolen property forever remains stolen property until returned to its rightful owner. My point is that that which you call Ethiopia IS Aksum and shall not cease to BELONG to Aksum until it has been officially ceded by a properly seated Messianic Aksumite-Judean monarch and that will never happen for every descendant of Menilek I would rather die first, as many of us already have.

Most sincerely,

T'ru Daniel Menilek,

Current rasnebiy to Bete Yisrael and to the Negusa Tsion, Ras Mengesha Seyoum;

Retired Abamenet of Bisrat Nazretawi and of Gedam Qidus Selassie ye Tsion.

If you have any further comments or questions, please use BeteYisrael*Gmail.com (put an @ in place of *) because this "talk page" format is too difficult to master and use. I probably have not done so correctly, here, now. I wonder if they make it hard to respond on purpose, refusing to install a proper standard editor with standard commands and functions, just to discourage anyone from standing up to Wikipedia, which is notorious on a global scale for bullying would-be contributors who disagree with obstructors who are appointed and sanctioned by wikipedia's elitists. People like me are intimidated into feeling like a black jew trying to access a 1950's country club golf course in a WASP neighborhood. But then, I am a black jew. So there you have it.

[Menilek]  ጥሩ ምኒልክ (ራስነቢይ የ ቤት ዪሥራእል / አበምኔት ቢሥርዓት ናዝረታዊ) 06:10, 13 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I see your point about how footnoting every sentence could make for a clumsy appearance. However, all of the sentences raised questions for me. Regardless of your position (and no disrespect intended), you are citing yourself and the only place I've seen that equates the Ethiopia mentioned in Acts 8 with Aksum is in your declarations on my talk page. Thank you. -- Gyrofrog  (talk) 00:05, 14 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Again, if "Ethiopia" (in Acts 8) means the same (or includes) Aksum, then it would need a verifiable source. You wrote, "The places where this able to be looked up are numerous." The onus would be on you to provide this. (And no, I have no love for Meles nor the TPLF.) Thank you. -- Gyrofrog  (talk) 15:47, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

ANI discussion
Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 21:39, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * You are permitted to comment on the ANI and put your side of the story (but try to keep your replies short).Slatersteven (talk) 11:13, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. [Menilek]  ጥሩ ምኒልክ (ራስነቢይ የ ቤት ዪሥራእል / አበምኔት ቢሥርዓት ናዝረታዊ) 12:07, 14 February 2011 (UTC)