A Historical Analysis by Rabbi S.B. Levy © 2002
At first glance one might incorrectly assume that the only
thing Ethiopian Jews, who call themselves Beta Yisrael (The House of Israel),
have in common with black Jews in other parts of the world is that their
ancestors once lived on the same continent. While not entire true, this small
fact is significant because
Actually, our similarities are more than skin deep. The
direct connections between the Beta Israel and my community of black Jews in the
The Beta Yisrael are perhaps the best known black Jewish sect in the world. Despite their ancient and well-documented history, they, like all black communities, have had their historical connections to Judaism challenged, the validity of their religious practice scrutinized, and their acceptance within the white Jewish world hindered. When the Ethiopians left the cultural isolation of their remote villages, they entered a world prefigured by race. They soon learned that their Jewish heritage was not the only thing that made them “Falasha,” (outsiders). For the black Jews of America, the existence of Ethiopian Jews was living proof that black people have a connection to Judaism that is as old as any claimed by Europeans.
They called themselves Beta Yisrael because for centuries they believed that they were the last remnant of the ancient Israelites. In fact, in the nineteenth century when a French linguist named Joseph Halevy reached one of their villages on a mission from the Alliance Israelite Universelle, they did not believe that he, the European, could be a Jew. As Halevy described it, the Ethiopians said “What!…You a Falahsa! A white Falasha! You are laughing at us. Are there any white Falashas?”[1] Imagine the irony of that moment: black Jews questioning the Jewishness of white Jews; and the white Jew trying to convince them of his authenticity. The levity of that scene is surpassed by a far more serious point: when different Jewish communities come together, one will usually occupy the superior position; the one of dominance, authority, and control. Not surprisingly, the dominant group is in a position to judge the subordinate. That is an exercise of power, and power underlies all of these relationships.
Dominance or power in this context is established by a combination of any or all of these factors: (1) numeric superiority, (2) access to wealth, (3) primo-occupancy; i.e. the act of being there first, (4) higher social status (this could be based on a privilege afforded one Jewish group by a Christian or Muslim authority that is more power than either Jewish group (5) racial or ethnic superiority (this would be true in racialized societies of the West and was evident in the interaction of Ashkenazim and Sephardim in Europe and Israel).
The Beta Israel maintain that their ancestors were descended
from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. That union produced a child called
Menileck (in Hebrew Mem
Meleck literally means “from king). This child was
then trained by the wise men of Solomon’s court. They further assert that when
Menileck left
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Meeting of Solomon and
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King Solomon and the Queen of
Sheaba |
Notice how the 15th century painter whose work is shown of the left depicted King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba as being white, archetypal Europeans. The Israeli artist whose work is shown on the right presents a more realistic depiction showing Makeda as the African queen that she was. These conflicting images reflect the old presumption of whiteness that was traditionally applied to all Biblical characters and the new multicultural realism that acknowledges the Eastern and African origins of Biblical figures respectively. Such realism is to be embraced and celebrated rather than denied and discouraged.
Rudolph R. Windsor examined the validity of this claim in his
book From Babylon to Timbuktu. There he argued that the queen who visited
King Solomon in 1012 B.C. was indeed an Ethiopian queen known variously as Makeda or Bilkis. Her dominion at
that time included a province on the Arabian peninsula called
If the Beta Israel are the product of King Solomon and the
Queen of Sheba, then they have been in
“And when the
Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the Name of the
Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions. She communed with him of
all that was in her heart. And Solomon answered her all her questions:
there was not any thing hid from the King, which he told her not.”
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How Jewish were the Beta Israel? Dr. Wolf Leslau spent ten months in 1947 living among the Beta
Israel. He primarily studied the most urban of their isolated villages in
Priests of the Beta Israel pray seven time a day. Like the Levitical Priest of old, they sacrificed kosher animals on small alters built in front of their synagogues. Unlike the Levites, however, their positions were not hereditary; aspiring clerics had to study, apprentice, and live exemplary lives in order to be selected for the office. Once initiated, the priests wore a white cotton headdress that distinguished them from other Ethiopians. Their Torah, written in the Ge’ez language on parchment, contained all the books of the Old Testament and some from the Apocrypha, but none of the New Testament and no references to Jesus at all. Some devotees have attempted to lead lives of solitude and quiet contemplation as nuns and monks.[10]
Judaism for them was not just an act of faith, it was a way of life governing almost every activity. All marriages were arranged by parents and elders. Individuals who married outside the group and women who were not virgins at the time of marriage could be banished. Their diet prohibited the eating of foods deemed “unclean”—including beef slaughtered by non-Jews or beef that has not had the sinew removed. They used a solar calendar for secular activities and a lunar calendar to calculate all Biblical festivals such as Passover, Shavuot, and the Day of Atonement. For example, the Feast of Tabernacle was celebrated in the seventh month with palm branches and weeping willows.[11]
Circumcision was performed on male children eight days after birth as the Torah proscribed. However, some have adopted the practice of female circumcision from their neighbors.[12] Burials were performed on the same day of death, if possible. Special blessings were said before and after eating and performing other rituals. In fact, the Beta Israel went to such great lengths to avoid spiritual defilement that locale gentiles referred to them as the people who “smell of water” because of their frequent baths and the “touch-me-nots” because of their aversion to physical contact with non-Jews.[13]
In his book, Acts of Faith: A Journey to the Fringes of Jewish Identity, Dan Ross described how the Beta Israel literally applied purity laws by building “blood huts” as temporary housing for women during menstruation:[14]
Like Samaritans, Falashas do not touch women during menstruation or after childbirth. But unlike Samaritans, Falasha women spend their menstrual periods in separate huts. Circles of stones mark a perimeter around those tukuls beyond which men may not pass. Additional huts are built for women to live in during their forty or eighty days of impurity after childbirth; these are burned afterwards.”[15]
Dr. Leslau described the
Judaism of the Beta Israel as being “primitive” because these people were not
aware of all the rabbinic changes that have taken place since the redaction of
the Talmud in the sixth century. From his perspective in the twentieth century,
the menstrual huts and animal sacrifices must seem barbaric and a sure sign of
ignorance. What he fails to recognize—or perhaps is ashamed to acknowledge—is
that the customs of the Beta Israel today are a reflection of what the ancient
Israelite must have looked like when they offered burnt offerings, incense, and
libation to the same God that we as Jews worship today. Perhaps on some level
this is unsettling. It is not often that a people can be confronted with their
past in the present. Or, because Judaism outside of
Despite all the evidence that has been adduced about the
history and origins of the Beta Israel, there has been a profound, and often
irrational, reluctance to accept that their claim is plausible. Scholars who are
quite adept at understanding that the Bible may not always state the literal and
unbiased “truth” of events, may yet remain an important tool in understanding
how a people explained and preserved their culture. Nonetheless, many of these
scholars seem incapable or unwilling to apply the same standards to their
examination of the Beta Israel. Dr. Leslau in
particular, seemed intent on dismissing the very evidence he presented. For
example, he asserted that “from all historical evidence it would seem that the
Falasha never have been a Hebrew-speaking people.”[16]
Yet, before his eyes and throughout his text Hebrew words and names of months
frequently appear. The fact that only a few Hebrew words have survived over the
millennia does not mean they “never” had a working knowledge of the
language. After all, Hebrew had ceased to be the lingua franqua of
In the following passage, Dr. Leslau not only states his candid opinion of the Beta Israel, but he shares his insights into what many of his colleagues in the historical profession believe as well:
Very few of the western scholars who have dealt with the problem of the Falashas are of the opinion that they are ethnically Jews. Most of them think that they are a segment of the indigenous Agau population which was converted to Judaism. How and when they were converted is a problem for which historical evidence is lacking.[18]
It is extremely instructive for scholars looking anew at the Beta Israel to comprehend what Dr. Leslau admitted. Despite all the information he had in his possession, in the end, the Beta Israel did not look “ethnically” Jewish and because of that he and his colleagues were never able to overcome their doubt. Therefore, they concluded that the Beta Israel must have been converted—even though “historical evidence is lacking” to support such a position. What effrontery. To dismiss a body of evidence that points in one direction in favor of another position for which there is no evidence.
Dr. Yosef Ben-Jocannan took issue with Dr. Leslau dubious reference to ethnic Jews. “For Professor Leslau to have reached the conclusion that the Falashas are not ethnically Jews, he must have produced for public scrutiny at least one of his own “Ethnic Jews” from any part of the European and European-American communities where they still allegedly exist. But he must have started with the theory that there are such persons of “Ethnic Jewish Origin” dating back to the allegorical and mythical “Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden” to validate his classification.” [19]
What exactly is an “ethnic Jew?” This is the question that Dr. Ben-Jochannan and others have raised. Those who use this term assume that we know what it is. They can spot one when they see one and they know who looks Jewish and who does not. However, we need to examine more closely what is meant by these terms and how they are used. Naomi Zack defined and clarified terms such as this in her recent book, Thinking About Race. She argues that race and ethnicity are nebulous concepts into which and out of which a host of meanings can be put in order to socially construct an identity. As such, neither of these constitutes a fixed, universal, or objective reality; i.e. they mean whatever the society that uses them wants them to mean at the time. She points out that what masquerades today as the building blocks of ethnic identity (language, common origin, shared culture, etc.) are the same things that social scientist used prior to about 1920 when Jews, Poles, Italians, Germans, and others were classified as races.[20] What has changed since that time—particularly in this era of political correctness—is that “the word ethnicity is often used as a euphemism for race when speakers want to refer to race without causing offense to diverse listeners or readers.”[21] Hence, all the groups previously mentioned have been transformed into ethnic groups, while people of African descent remain a race. This is not because physical characteristics are not a part of ethnicity; they often are, instead it seems that whiteness helps to make one ethnic.
Karen Brodkin has chronicled this process in her book, How Jews Became White Folks. Although she focused on explaining this phenomenon within the United States, I argue that how one defines American Jews, who are essentially European Jews transplanted, is to a large extent the standard against which all other Jews will be judged—since Americans Jews are the largest, wealthiest, and most influential group of Jews in the world. And these American Jews have, despite rigorous resistance, become white folks.[22] Like Dr. Zack, Dr. Brodkin recognizes this racial dimension to how Jews are perceived and how they often perceive themselves. She actually prefers the term “ethnoracial,” but uses it inconsistently.[23] Nonetheless, their works help us to decode the hidden racial messages embedded in terms like ethnicity.
There are many who would argue that Jewishness does not conform to the ethnoracial paradigm that defines other groups. They might argue that Judaism is a religion that people of all ethnoracial backgrounds can and do practice. Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin have tried to carve out just such an exception. Their tact is a very interesting one. Rather than simply positing that Judaism is a religion of peace and love for all people—which it is for many—they concede that there are popular conceptions of Judaism that “promulgate racist or quasi-racist notions of Jewishness.”[24] They further concede that the belief in a distinct Jewish genealogy and the belief that there is something indefinable and found only in Jewish women (not Jewish men) that make their children Jewish, strongly implies that there is a biological component to being Jewish. All the forgoing not withstanding, they argue that conversion to Judaism not only changes ones religion, it miraculously changes ones genealogy as well. In the case of male converts, circumcision alters them physically so that they now look like other Jews. In other words, by this process a convert is not someone of another ethnoracial group who has chosen to practice Judaism, he is in fact and genealogy as Jew. [The implied difference between practicing Judaism and being Jewish will become important to our discussion later.]
More revealingly, however, the convert's name is changed to 'ben Avraham" or "bas Avraham," son or daughter of Abraham. The convert is adopted into the family and assigned a new "genealogical" identity, but because Abraham is the first convert in Jewish tradition, converts are his descendants in that sense as well. There is thus a sense in which the convert becomes the ideal type of the Jew.[25]
The denouement of the Boyarin theory is not that Judaism can never be thought of as a kind of race, but that anyone who joins the religion simultaneously becomes a member of the same race. Well, that certainly would make being Jewish different from being black, white, or Asian—if it were true. However, if the Boyarins mean that all Jews are members of the same Jewish race in the eyes of God, then it would not help us to see how Jews view each other—particularly those who started out as members of other races.
In the 1930s, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan advocated another way of
thinking about Judaism. His movement led to a new denomination of Judaism in the
Walter Benn Michaels has studied
the relationship between cultural groups and race. He began by looking at how
social critics and historians such as Mellville J.
Herskovits attempted to define black people in
It is only the appeal to race that makes culture an object of affect and that gives notions like losing our culture, preserving it, stealing someone else’s culture, restoring people's culture to them, and so on, their pathos. Our race identifies the culture to which we have a right, a right that may be violated or defended, repudiated or recovered. Race transforms people who learn to do what we do into thieves of our culture and people who teach us to do what they do into the destroyers of our culture; it makes assimilation into a kind of betrayal and the refusal to assimilate into a form of heroism. Without race, losing our culture can mean no more than doing things differently from the way we now do them--the melodrama of assimilation disappears.[27]
Michaels thesis is directly on point. His argument is not about what constitutes a culture, he is concerned about what constitutes the our in “our culture,” or the their in “their culture.” That is where the racial element is to be found if it exists. When people refer to “Jewish” culture or “Jewish” civilization the things they point to may be racially innocuous; e.g. cooking or music, but, when pressed to explain what is Jewish about it or what connects them to it and each other, and the user of the cultural term soon finds himself in a morass of racial euphemisms. The racial elements are what usually allow members of the group to explain why this is mine and that is yours. If we are all participants in something then that thing is de facto a part of our shared culture. We are what we do. Race allows us to claim or deny connections based on who we are, not what we do. Like African-American culture, Jewish culture implies that this Jew and that Jew have something in common that goes much deeper than the matzo balls. “The question which culture we belong to is relevant only if culture is anchored in race.”[28]
To be “ethnically Jewish” is to be Jewish according to white
European or American standards. It was obvious and undeniable that the Beta
Israel were doing Jewish things. By Michaels non-racial standards, people who do
the same things share the shame culture unless a racial claim in made; ergo Beta
Beta
In 1904, Dr. Jacques Faitlovitch (1880-1955) was given a
grant by Baron Edmond de Rothschild and the blessings of the Chief Rabbi of
Paris, Zadok Kahn, to go to
The first major victory that Faitlovitch won for the Beta
Israel came in 1906. He persuaded forty-four eminent rabbis to sign a letter
addressed to the Beta Israel that referred to them as “our brethren, sons of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…our flesh and blood.” The signers included: Herman
Adler (Chief Rabbi of
Thus would begin a cruel pattern of expressions of
enthusiastic support and solidarity followed by long periods of inactivity and
indifference. Because the Beta Israel were frequently forgotten, they have been
repeatedly rediscovered—most recently again during the dramatic airlift of fifty
thousand Ethiopians to
Here we begin to see a troubling side to Dr. Faitlovitch’s advocacy of the Beta Israel. Dr. Simon
Messing, who knew and interviewed Dr. Faitlovitch, explained that many people of
that period believed that Africans lacked the intellect to acquire a classical
education. So, Faitlovitch “demonstrated Falasha mental capacity by a test that
was accepted in the ethnocentric
He was determined to rescue the Falashas and to bring them
into rabbinic Judaism, the pattern known in
When the first of Faitlovitch’s
students, Getye Jeremias,
returned to his Ethiopian village “dressed in a European jacket and high leather
riding boots,” he was an envied model of what others should become. He next
student, who would become the well-known Professor Taamrat Emmanuel and have an
important interaction with the black Jews of Harlem, was literally rescued from
a Chrisitan mission that had already converted his
parents. Faitlovitch was greatly impressed with the young man who was fluent in
Italian, Tigrinya (a local dialect), and his native
Amharic. Faitlovitch took
him to
What Faitlovitch did not realize at first and then
later strongly discouraged, was that his prized students were not only black
Jews, but black Ethiopians as well. As they traveled and read they became aware
of how the Western world viewed them and how their own leaders treated them.
Faitlovitch opposed the development of any race consciousness or nationalist
sentiments other than his brand of religious Zionism. When Taamrat, Yonah Boggale, and Mequria Segay temporarily left
their posts in the village Hebrew schools for government positions in Haile
Selassie’s administration, Faitlovitch saw this as a personal betrayal and an
abandonment of the missions for which they were trained. They were expected to
shed their black identity and their Ethiopian identity; they were to master and
emulate what they were taught; and, when enough of them had done this
successfully, they would be accepted back into the Jewish fold. By taking these
jobs his students were not merely motivated by a personal desire for greater
wealth and status—although those were, no doubt, factors—but, more importantly
they were also sincere idealists who were swept up in the hope and optimism of
creating a new
As a poltical activist, Taamrat
regarded Faitlovitch as an antiquarian who was stern in his condemnation of
Falasha “wrong practices” and insufficiently respectful of Falahsa pride in their long independence. Taamrat viewed the
future of the Falashas as largely bound up with the modernization of
Taamrat Emmanuel’s struggle to find a balance between preserving a healthy respect for the traditions of the Beta Israel, while at the same time trying to forge a meaningful relationship with European Jewry, proved to be illusory. Though well intentioned, Faitlovitch and those that followed him made what has become a classic liberal mistake: they setout to remake those they helped in their own image. This often has the consequence of saving the people, but destroying their culture. Complete cultural assimilation unintentionally leads to the cultural annihilation of the dependent group. The Nobel laureate, Chinua Achebe, described in his fictional novel, Things Fall Apart, how the stable social fabric of a pre-colonial Nigerian village began to unravel before the juggernaut of Western conformity. In this context, European Jewry is the juggernaut that black Jewish communities fear, admire, resent, and need.
In December of 1930, Taamrat ignored the urging of his
handlers at the Pro-Falsha Committee in
Emperor Haile Selassie greeting Rabbi Hailu Paris, an Ethiopian-born leader and teacher in our community at a gathering in New York City in which he and Chief Rabbi W. A. Matthew went to meet the “Lion of Judah,” a direct descendent of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. |
[1] Dan Ross, Acts of Faith: A Journey to the Fringe of Jewish Identity (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982), p.155.
[2] Ross, p. 150.
[3]
I kings 10:1-10. Some scholars cavil about the meaning of the euphemism is the
cited passage; however, I think it is clear that Solomon’s material gifts were
“in addition” to satisfying her desire. Also, the Ethiopian explanation for the
disappearance of the
[4]
Ali A. Mazrui, The Africans: A Triple Heritage
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1986) pp.27-37. Mazrui argues that for political reasons European
cartographers associate the
[5]
Flavius Josephus, The Life and Works of Flavius Josephus, trans. William
Whiston (
[6]
Rudolph R. Windsor, From
[7] Simon D. Messing, The Story of the Falashas: “Black
Jews” of
[8] Ibid.
[9] Wolf Leslau, Falasha Anthology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951), pp.xii-xliii; Dan Ross, Acts of Faith: A Journey to the Fringes of Jewish Identity ( New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982) pp.143-166.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Although female circumcision is admittedly not Jewish in origin, the fact that they practice it just proves that despite their isolation their culture has not been impervious to outside influences—no Jewish community has.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Although the separation of women during menstruation may seem quite severe, it is actually based on Leviticus 12. Orthodox Jews have a set of laws called Niddah that govern the activities of Jewish women during menstruation as well. Theirs is a modification of Biblical practices.
[15] Ross, p. 147.
[16] Leslau, p.xx.
[17] The above examples were taken from a
lengthy description of the Beta Israel community from the CD ROM version of the
Encyclopedia Judaica, c.v. “Beta
[18]
Leslau, p.xliii; Professor
Ross was even more emphatic by asserting: “Ruling out some of the more fanciful
theories is the easiest thing to do. It is not very likely that Falashas are
descendants of Moses's followers who turned right out
of
[19]
Yosef Ben-Jochannan, We
The Black Jews Vol I and II
(
[20] Naomi Zack, Thinking About Race (New York: Wadsworth Publishing Compnay, 1998) p.32.
[21] Ibid. p.30.
[22]
Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks &
What That Says About Race in
[23] Ibid. p. 189 footnote 1. She explains that “Both terms [race and ethnicity] have had a variety of definitions attached to them in the scholarly and popular literatures in play at any given time. ‘Ethnicity’ is a relatively new word, coming into use mainly after World War II. It replaced ‘people’ and ‘nation’ and served as an alternative to ‘race,’ which was associated with biology, eugenics, and other theories of scientific racism…Because the meanings of each term have varied, and because both have been used to describe socially salient identities and identifications, I also put them together as ‘ethnoracial’ or ‘racialethnic.”
[24]
Daniel Boyarin and Jonathan Boyarin, “Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish
Identity,” in Identities, ed. Kwame Anthony
Appiah and Henry Louis Gates. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1995), 305-337. [Daniel is the Taubman
Professor of Talmudic Culture at the
[25] Ibid.
[26] Rabbi Morris N. Kertzer, What is a Jew? revised ed.(New York: Touchstone Book, 1993), p.15.
[27] Walter Benn Michaels, “Race into Culture: A Critical Genealogy of Cultural Identity” in Identities, ed. Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 32-62.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Messing, p.55; Leslau, p.x. Faitlovitch had, in fact, been a young, energetic student of Professor Halevy.
[30]
Louis Rapoport, Redemption Song: The Story of
Operation Moses (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), p.39;
Encyclopedia Judaica, C.V. “Beta
[31] Ross, p. 156.
[32] Ross, pp. 156-157.
[33] Messing, p.58.
[34] Ibid. p.55. In his youth Dr. Faitlovitch pursued secular studies at the Sorbonne, but he became a very devote Orthodox Jew who practiced a religious Zionism. Rabbinic law is often referred to Halackha, which literally means “the way.” For Faitlovitch it was the only way.
[35] There is no doubt that these students were brilliant and worked hard, but Faitlovitch was overbearing, controlling, and a cultural chauvinist. They rarely confronted Faitlovitch about his attitudes, by Dr. Messing ,who has met some of them and had access to their correspondence, reports that their letters often complained of his criticism and his belief that their practices were “ignorant.” Messing, p. 104, footnote #62.
[36] Messing, pp.57-65.
[37] Messing, p. 67.
[38]