14 Friday, July 26, 1985
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
CAN THE
ETHIOPI
JEWS
SURVIVE
IN ISRAEL?
Problems of absorption, religious
status and self-esteem are plaguing
the new immigrants.
BY ELSA SOLENDER
Special to The Jewish News
•
Jerusalem — The long-beleaguered
Jews of Ethiopia are being persecuted
again, they say. This time, though,
their oppressors are not outsiders but
the religious leaders of the State of
Israel.
At issue is the two chief rabbis'
refusal to recognize the Ethiopians as
full Jews until they undergo a sym-
bolic immersion in a mikvah, or ritual
bath, to reaffirm their Judaism — a
decision the Ethiopian Jews consider
an unendurable affront. They reject
having Jewish status questioned in
Israel, the homeland they yearned for
for so many years.
"They brought us here because we
were Jews," said Mekonen Avra, a
26-year-old Ethiopian who was one of
hundreds to take part in a protest
march near Tel Aviv this past week.
"Now that we are here, they tell us
that we are not Jews. So why did they
bring us here?
"We came as Jews," he continued.
"We go to the army for three years.
We do everything. We should also
have the rights. I would rather die
than undergo ritual immersion."
This issue lies at the heart of a full
range of religious complications com-
pounding what already promises to be
the most difficult and expensive ab-
sorption process in Israel's history.
On one side of the controversy, some
Orthodox critics demand that the
Jewish Agency (charged with immi-
grant absorption) distribute more
tefillin to Ethiopians and promote
more intense religious training. (See
sidebar)
Other critics, concerned that the
Ethiopians may be ill equipped to com-
pete in d modern society except at its
lowest levels, worry that many schools
Ethiopian children attend lack com-
puters and other high-tech apparatus.
These and other issues surfaced dur-
ing recent visits to absorption and
educational facilities in Israel, as well
as consultations with officials and
others concerned in Ethiopian absorp-
tion. Late last year, I had also jour-
neyed to Ethiopia just as the Opera-
tion Moses rescue was getting under-
way.
Ironically, the mikuah immersion
that the rabbis now require would
have been fully consistent with normal
Jewish religious practice in Ethiopia.
For the Ethiopians in their remote
villages routinely immersed them-
selves before every Shabat, always
taking special care to build their
homes conveniently alongside rivers.
In fact, one of many pejorative terms
that their non-Jewish neighbors apply
to Ethiopian Jews — in addition to
Falasha, which means "outsider" or
"stranger" — translates as "people
who stink of water."
Mikvah immersion could have been
explained as a symbolic renewal of the
Covenant immediately upon arrival in
Israel, a rite of passage signifying the
exile left behind and the entry into a
new life as a Jew in the Jewish home-
land. As such it would probably have
gained easy acceptance. But the se-
cond ceremony, a symbolic circumci-
sion — involving a tiny cut with a
needle to draw a spot of blood — an.
tagonized even the earliest Ethiopian
arrivals in Israel, who endured it with
quiet, albeit affronted dignity. The re-
quirement was waived late last year,
during the great influx, •but the resent.
ment lingered and spread.
Even Ethiopian kessim (priests)
agreed at first to conversion. They
were anxious for their people to be ac-
cepted. The kessim, however, were not
themselves granted rabbinic status.
Only one has thusfar achieved it, and
their disestablishment has been an-
other complicating factor in the total
absorption process.
The Orthodox establishment says
that by requiring these two symbolic
ceremonies of mikvah and circumci-
sion, they are able to accept the Ethio-
pians as full and complete Jews. They
point out that for centuries the Ethio-
pians practiced a Judaism based on
the Torah but were unaware of the
later Talmudic laws. They could not
have had divorces or conversions ac-
cording to Halacha (Jewish law), thus
calling into question the specific
status within Judaism of every mem-
ber of the community.
In the current misunderstanding,
the chief rabbis feel they are facil-
itating an otherwise impossible situa-
tion, paving the way for all Ethiopians
to be fully accepted; but the Ethio-
pians feel humiliated. They say they
are being treated as less than Jews
after risking their lives to maintain
their Jewish identity.
Ethiopian activists argue that they
were brought to Israel precisely be-
cause they are Jews. They have been
officially entitled to this status under
the Israeli Law of Return since 1975.
Ethiopian Jews resisted — or died in
— brutal campaigns by Emperor Haile
Selassie and the Christian majority to
convert them forcibly. They also have
had to contend in recent times with the
influence, hostility and missionary zeal
of the large Muslim minority in Ethi-
opia, now 40 percent of the population.
Mixed marriages were never sanc-
tioned. Ethiopian Jews also kept
scrupulous track of family members.
In one village I visited, blacksmiths
who greeted us were pointed out as
goyim by others in the village, and we
were urged to shun them, with the ex-
planation that even though they might
still claim to be Jews, they had been
converted or bribed away from the
community or intermarried.
One method by which Ethiopian
Jews in refugee camps identified each
other during Operation Moses was a
rigorous cross examination on re-
ligious practices, kinship lines and j
other specialized knowledge that only
recognized Jews would share. In the
melee of the rescue, some non-Jews ,
tried to pass themselves off as Jewel.
Only a very few succeeded.
Ethiopian Jewish zeal in preserving
the integrity of their extended family
communities was so strong that it ac,
tualY caused a serious rift between
kessim (the priests) and workers of
ORT (the Organization for Rehabilita•
tine and Training). That Jewish.
Continued on pap-16