O'H'T'O'D': ORTHODOX HEBREWS TRIBE OF DAN
Excerpts from WIKIPEDIA
The Beta Israel village of Balankab. From H. A. Stern, Wanderings Among the Falashas in Abyssinia London, 1862; reprinted in the 1901-1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, now in the public domain.
Judaism in Ethiopia goes back to ancient times. The Ethiopian book titled Kebra Nagast, or "Book of the Glory of Kings," includes several references to Biblical verses about Solomon and Sheba. The Hebrew Bible also has various references, Tanakh [1 Kings 10:1-13 and 2 Chronicles 9:1-12]. The early history of the community remains obscure, however.
Most of the Beta Israel believe, based on the 9th 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 Ethiopian Jews are descended from these Danites. This tradition was made known to Rabbi Ovadiah Yare of Bertinoro who wrote a 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.[25]
Other sources tell of many Jews who were brought as prisoners of war from Eretz 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.[11]
Rabbinical views
Some Jewish legal authorities have asserted that the Beta Israel are the descendants of the tribe of Dan, one of the Ten Lost Tribes. This is supported by the medieval traveller Eldad ha-Dani. 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.[26]
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.
In the 15th century, Abba Sabra, an archbishop of Coptic Christianity, chaplain of the court and tutor to the heir to the throne, converted to Judaism. He and the heir fled, along with his priestly disciples, to the Jewish vassal kingdom of Gondar.[citation needed] Abba Sabra and his followers were warmly received by Gondar's rulers and were allowed to continue their monastic life as Jews. They settled near Jewish villages and continued to study sacred texts. In subsequent generations, they and those they won to their way of life became learned celibate Jewish monks or hermits supported by local villagers. They led lives of prayer and study. The monks helped maintain Jewish learning and traditions. The priests who led ceremonies were not of any specific lineage but were chosen for aptitude from village children.
The year 1624 marked the end of Beta Israel autonomy in Ethiopia. Emperor Susenyos confiscated their lands, sold many people into slavery and forcibly baptized others.[9] Jewish writings and religious books were burned. The practice of any form of Jewish religion was forbidden in Ethiopia.[citation needed] As a result of this period of oppression, much traditional Jewish culture and practice was lost or changed .
Nonetheless, the Beta Israel appear to have flourished 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 16th century onwards. Such roles had been shunned by Ethiopians as lowly and less honorable than farming.[9] 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 17th century.[citation needed] These accounts also recounted that some knowledge of Hebrew persisted among the people in the 17th 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."[10]
The extent of De Almeida's knowledge is not known. The Ethiopian Jews 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 18th and early 19th 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 Jews by local rulers. No longer was there a strong central government interested in and capable of protecting them.[9] 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.[9]
[edit] Pre-modern and modern contacts with Jews elsewhere
Illustration of an Ethiopian jewish woman.
The earliest surviving testimony to those hidden kingdoms comes from the 9th 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. This seemed to refer to the southern Sudan, or possibly Somalia.
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 16th 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 19th 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.
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.[11]
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 to prevent health problems among the Jews waiting to emigrate from Ethiopia.
[edit] 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 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 Greek translations like the Septuagint[citation needed], which incorporates some of the Apocrypha.
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.
Ethiopian women at the Kotel in Jerusalem during Hol HaMoed (the week of) Passover.
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).[12]
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.[13]
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.[14]
Languages
The Beta Israel once spoke Qwara and Kayla, closely related Cushitic languages. Now they speak Tigrinya and Amharic, a Semitic language. Their liturgical language is Ge'ez. Since the 1950s, they have taught Hebrew in their schools.
[edit] Israel intervenes
Main article: Aliyah from Ethiopia
Aliyah from Ethiopia compared to the total Aliyah to Israel[15]
The Israeli government officially accepted the Beta Israel as Jews in 1975. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin obtained clear rulings from Chief Sefardi Rabbi Ovadia Yosef that they were legitimate descendants of the lost tribes. They were, however, required to undergo pro forma Jewish conversions to Judaism, as is done in all cases of doubt, however slight.
Beginning in 1984, the Israeli-led Operation Moses began transporting Ethiopian Jews 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 Ethiopian Jews non-stop to Israel.
