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The Beta Israel of
Ethiopia
today
Israel’s airlifts have been successful
in transporting the bulk of Ethiopian Jewry out
of the war-torn nation, but there are still
several thousand Ethiopians who claim Jewish
ancestry in a compound in Addis Ababa and in
small villages around the traditionally Jewish
region of Gondar, along the Sudanese border. Many
of these remaining Beta Israel are first or
second generation relatives of those who
emigrated to Israel, yet scholars of the Beta
Israel strongly disagree whether they themselves
are Jewish. Within Israel they have come to be
known as "Falash Mura," a rather
pejorative term implying that they are fraudulent
Falashas. Many of these self-proclaimed Jews
either converted to Christianity generations ago
or have not practiced Judaism for decades, but
since the airlifts they have returned to Judaism
and petitioned to emigrate. According to the
North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry (NACOEJ),
nearly 2,500 Jews in Addis Ababa participated in
High Holiday services this fall, and about 2,000
students attend the NACEJ Jewish school. Recent
anti-Jewish raids in the North and unresponsive
Jewish organizations which had formerly provided
aid have resulted in a sharp increase of
starvation and disease among the Beta Israel who
still remain in Ethiopia. Jewish groups are
petitioning the Israeli government to allow these
remaining Beta Israel and their "Falash Mura"
relatives to emigrate, but the current Israeli
government has not yet been responsive.
The Beta Israel’s Judaism is often
difficult for other contemporary Jews to
understand. The Beta Israel lost contact with the
Western world more than a century before the
completion of the Talmud, the commentaries on the
Torah that inspired most of the Jews’
contemporary rituals. The Beta Israel therefore
base their rituals directly on the Torah. Their
spiritual leaders are not Rabbis, teachers who
lead the community in study as well as ritual,
but cahenats, priests who
conduct high religious ceremonies and claim
descent from Moses’ brother Aaron. The
priests in a particular region elect a high
priest who becomes the spiritual leader of the
region in that only he may ordain other priests.
There are also Beta Israel monks and nuns who
live in seclusion in Jewish monasteries, a
tradition that scholars believe developed due to
contact with 15th
century Catholic missionaries. The center of Beta
Israel life is the mesgid,
the synagogue. In the courtyard of the synagogue
there is a stone altar for the offering of animal
sacrifices. The Beta Israel pray in the morning
and the evening, both times in Ge’ez, the
Ethiopian liturgical tongue. The Sabbath is an
essential part of Beta Israel ritual. After they
cease work on Friday at midday, every member of
the community purifies him or herself by either
visiting the mikveh, the
ritual bath, or changing into a special suit of
Sabbath clothing. Community members spend most of
the Sabbath in the mesgid
and may not light fire, draw water, leave the
bounds of the village or engage in sexual
intercourse.
The Beta Israel celebrate festivals
according to a lunar calendar exactly as the
Torah prescribes. On Passover the cahenats
offer up a sacrifice and community members eat
unleavened bread for seven days; on Rosh Hashanah,
known as Berhan Sarak ("The Light Shone"),
and Yom Kippur, "The Pardon," the cahenats
make sacrifices as is written in the Torah. Beta
Israel fast on Yom Kippur, during the Hebrew
month of Av in order to solemnize the destruction
of the Temple and to commemorate the Fast of
Esther. Cleanliness is an essential part of Beta
Israel ritual. During menstruation women stay in
a special hut on the outskirts of the village and
only return after they immerse themselves in the mikveh
(ritual bath). After birth a woman is kept in the
hut for forty days after a male child and eighty
days after a female child (as the Torah decrees
in Leviticus 12). After the time of impurity the
woman shaves her head, goes to the mikveh,
washes her clothes and burns the confinement hut.
A man undergoes purification after touching
somebody or something impure by isolating himself
from the community for several days and then
washing his body and his clothes with ashes and
water – sometimes he even shaves his head to
commemorate his purification.
The Beta Israel don’t eat raw meat
like other Ethiopians, and only eat cooked meat
if a cahenat has slaughtered
the animal according to particular rituals, yet
Beta Israel kashrut does not
include the separation of meat and milk (which is
a Rabbinical distinction). They do purify food by
sprinkling the ashes of a red heifer, "the
water of separation," as ordained in Numbers
19 – they keep the ashes in an earthenware
jar which hangs in the synagogue. Male
circumcision takes place on the eighth day after
birth. Some villagers do practice female
circumcision, though this practice is dying out.
There is controversy over whether the
Ethiopian festival of Seged has Jewish or
Christian origins. Seged, held on the 29th
of Chesvan, about November, is a pilgrimage
festival which has as its focal point the march
of the Beta Israel, all carrying stones on their
shoulders, up a large hill led by priests. Three
times a day they preform Emen (rememberance),
which is the act of putting millet on stones for
birds to eat, commemorating the dead. People then
bring bread, beer and drums to the synagogue and
they dance around with the Torah. Seged,
according to historian David Kessler, "recalls
the actions of Ezra and Nehemiah in rejuvenating
Judaism after the trauma of the Babylonian exile,
which were seen as ‘a great national
confession of guilt and a solemn undertaking to
observe the new covenant.’"
Jay plans to visit Ethiopia by the end of
2000 and will return with images and news from
any Jewish community that remains there.
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