Background Report 2,000 Years of Isolation

The airlift which has brought large numbers of Ethiopian Jews to Israel in recent months has revived long-standing problems and controversies stemming from that community’s 2,000 years of isolation from the rest of world Jewry.

Until 1973, the Israeli rabbinate refused to recognize them as bona fide Jews. In that year, the then Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Ovadia Yosef, ruled that Ethiopian Jews who call themselves Beta Israel (House of Israel) are descended from the lost tribe of Dan and eligible for repatriation to Israel.

In 1975, the government officially recognized the Ethiopians as Jews entitled to citizenship under the Law of Return and about 300 of them made their way to Israel during the next few years.

Conflict arose when the rabbinate demanded that all males undergo a new ritual circumcision. The Ethiopians took a as an affront and the rabbis modified their demand to a “symbolic drop of blood” to be drawn as part of conversion to the talmudic and halachic Judaism practiced in Israel.

Even that was subsequently dispensed with. The rabbis asked only that the new arrivals submit to ritual immersion. But spokesman for the Ethiopian community here considered it a degrading act and an expression of doubt that they are authentic Jews.

AN OLD PROBLEM REVIVED

The problem was revived with the arrival of as many as 10,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel by airlift from Sudan since last November. Israel’s Ashkenazic and Sephardic Chief Rabbis, Avraham Shapiro and Mordechai Eliahu, respectively, maintained that the “conversion-from-doubt” (Giyur Lehumra) was necessary if the newcomers are to avoid personal problems in the future.

They noted that Ethiopia’s Jews lived apart from the rest of Jewry for two millenia and there was concern that over that vast period they inter-married with non-Jews. Another problem is the widespread divorce among Ethiopian Jews which Israeli religious authorities fear is not carried out according to halachic rules.

Ethiopian Jews were cut off from developing Jewish tradition after the destruction of the Second Temple. But they guarded their Jewish identity which they continue to express by strict adherence to the commandments of the Torah, particularly the dietary laws and Sabbath observance.

They read the Torah in the Geez language, an ancient Semitic tongue. They speak Amharic, also a Semitic language which is the official language of Ethiopia. Ethiopian Jews do no work on the Sabbath or light fires. They observe ritual purification and the various Biblical feasts and fasts, but have no Chanukah or Purim.

CONTROVERSY OVER LINEAGE

There is still controversy over their lineage. The rabbinate has officially accepted their claim to des-

But many anthropologists maintain that the Ethiopian Jews are descended from local tribes which converted to Judaism in the sixth century of the Common Era, under the influence of the Jewish community of upper Egypt.

Physically, the Ethiopian Jews are indistinguishable from other Ethiopians who are dark-skinned with African features. Until the 17th century they consituted an autonomous kingdom within the Christian Ethiopian empire.

With the loss of independence they became a poor, rejected minority. Rumors of semi-independent Jewish tribes in Ethiopia reached Europe in the Middle Ages. Authentic information was first made available by James Bruce, an Englishman, in 1790. They were estimated then to number 250,000.

Beginning in 1904, the Polish-born Jewish scholar, Jacques Faitlovitch, attempted to bring the Ethiopian Jews — known as Falashas (strangers) — into contact with the mainstream of Jewish life. Pro-Falasha committees were established in Europe and North America which trained teachers and maintained schools in Addis Ababa. Since 1948, similar activity was carried out by the Jewish Agency.

Only in 1960, however, did Jewish organizations in the West attempt to establish contact with the Ethiopian Jewish community which shared the fate of most of their hopelessly poor non-Jewish neighbors and endured the latter’s often open hostility toward them. The average income per capita in Ethiopia is about $100 a year and the average life expectancy is 36 years.

ATTITUDE BY THE PRESENT REGIME

The present Marxist regime in Ethiopia takes a negative attitude toward all religions and has acted to secularize education. A ban was imposed on the study of Hebrew and synagogues were ordered closed several years ago.

For a long time the regime denied the Jews the right to emigrate and suppressed by force any expression of cultural uniqueness by Jews or other ethnic groups. The government regarded attempts to leave the country as treason and imposed severe penalties on those who were caught.

But the attitude toward Jews has been modified during the past two years. Although Hebrew is still officially forbidden, synagoguges have reopened and visits by outside Jews, including Israelis, have been allowed. The number of Ethiopian Jews was estimated at 25,000 several years ago but many are believed to have perished, victims of starvation and the ongoing civil war.

Because the very existence of the Ethiopian Jewish community was in jeopardy, organized efforts to bring them to Israel were begun by former Premier Menachem Begin shortly after he took office in 1977.

His Defense Minister, the late Moshe Dayan, then disclosed that Israel was supplying arms to the Marxist regime with which it did not, and still does not have diplomatic relations. As a result of the disclosure, the early airlift was halted after only two flights.