O P E R A T ION

SOLOMON

From King Solomon
To Operation Solomon

Ethiopian Jews have lived Judaism
only according to the Torah.

ELLEN BERNSTEIN

Special to The Jewish News

N

unemployment and low level
of academic achievement.
They tend to live together in
ethnically segregated
neighborhoods, and, unfor-
tunately, it must be said
that some towns and cities in
Israel adamantly refused to
settle them.
As the result of a political
bargain, their children are
channeled into the state-run
religious schools, but many
are squeezed out at the high-
school level due as much to
prejudice as lagging
scholastic standards.
The earlier wave of Ethio-
pian immigrants even had
aspersions cast on their
identity as bona fide Jews,
and this otherwise soft-
spoken community clashed
with Israel's religious estab-
lishment when the Chief

Rabbinate demanded that
they undergo a variation of
religious conversion.
"Absorption will be all the
more difficult now," said
Arnon Mantbar, head of the
Jewish Agency's Immigra-
tion and Absorption
Department, "with all the
Russian immigrants to take
into account."
Yet it cannot be denied
that in a time of national
overload, Israelis put all
other considerations aside
and rose to the challenge of
mounting a daring rescue.
They do that well, even with
panache.
And it is to their enduring
credit that after all these
years they still get high on
doing what their country
was founded to do: save Jews
in distress.

❑

o one knows with any
certainty about the
origins of Ethiopia's
Jews. They are black
Africans who call them-
selves Beta Yisrael, which in
Hebrew means House of
Israel. In Ethiopia, they are
known as Falashas, a pe-
jorative term meaning
strangers.
Some contemporary schol-
ars believe Ethiopian Jews
are descendants of Jews who
fled the land of Israel after
the Babylonian conquest
and the fall of the First
Temple 2,500 years ago.
The controversy over their
lineage and their status as
Jews has never been settled.
According to their own
legend, they are descendants
of King Solomon, who built
the First Temple, and the
Queen of Sheba, an Ethiopi-
an princess. Other scholars
believe they are part of the
lost tribe of Dan.
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 in-
fluence of the Jewish com-
munity of upper Egypt.
Because they were isolated
from developing Judaism for
at least two thousand years,
their religious practices
reflect pre-rabbinic tradi-
tions. Until recent years
they were unaware of Jew-
ish practices derived from
the Talmud or relatively
modern rabbinic teachings.
In Israel they have accepted
the newly discovered tradi-
tions and laws.
The Beta Yisrael guard
their Jewish identity which
they express by strict
adherence to the command-
ments of the Torah, par-
ticularly the dietary laws,
the Sabbath observance, cir-

Ellen Bernstein is a staff
writer for the Atlanta Jewish
Times.

cumcision and ritual
purification. They speak the
Ethiopian Semitic language
of Amharic, but read the
Torah in Geez, an ancient
Semitic tongue.
The Jews of Ethiopia have
no rabbinic tradition. They
have a priesthood of
Cohanim, who claim descent
from Aaron, the brother of
Moses. They sacrifice goats
and lambs at Passover, and
they observe the various

Ethiopian Jews say
they are
descendants of
King Solomon and
the Queen of
Sheba.

biblical feasts and fasts, but
have no Chanukah or
Purim.
Ethiopian Jews once
numbered in the hundreds of
thousands, but over the cen-
turies they suffered persecu-
tion and death at the hands
of Christian Ethiopians.
They were defeated in a 400-
year war and reduced to

slavery. They were for-
bidden to own land, an edict
in force until the overthrow
of Emperor Haile Selassie in
1974.
In the 1970s, drought and
persecution brought their
plight to the attention of
Israel and world Jewry. In
1977, small groups of Ethio-
pian Jews were brought to
Israel, via the Sudan. There
was much discussion as to
whether these people were
authentic Jews.
The religious dispute was
revived with the airlift of as
many as 15,000 Ethiopian
Jews to Israel in 1984, dur-
ing Operation Moses, which
came to an abrupt end after
it was publicized in the
press. Ashkenazi rabbis ask-
ed that the new arrivals
submit to symbolic circumci-
sion and ritual immersion to
convert them to the talmudic
and halachic Judaism prac-
ticed in Israel. The Ethiopi-
an community considered it
a degrading act and an ex-
pression of doubt that they
are authentic Jews. The
rabbis' requests were even-
tually withdrawn.

❑

Wearing traditional prayer shawls, Ethiopian Jews pray at an
outdoor service in the province of Gondar.

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

23