Nadene Goldfoot
Ethiopian Jews in Israel are immigrants and descendants of the immigrants from the Beta Israel communities in Ethiopia who now reside in Israel. To a lesser, but notable, extent, the Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel is also composed of Falash Mura, a community of Beta Israel which had converted to Christianity over the course of past two centuries, but were permitted to immigrate to Israel upon returning to Israelite religion - this time largely to Rabbinic Judaism.
As of the latest figures in 2017, there were 148,700 Ethiopian Jews in Israel. They made up 1.75% of the Israeli population. Now in 2021, there are a few more.
They practiced a form of Judaism that differs in some respects from Rabbinic Judaism. In Israel, this form of Judaism is referred to as Haymanot. Beta Israel appear to have been isolated from mainstream Jewish communities for at least a millennium. They suffered religious persecution and a significant portion of the community were forced into Christianity during the 19th and 20th centuries; those converted to Christianity came to be known as the Falash Mura. The larger Beta Abraham Christian community is also considered to have historical links to the Beta Israel.
The Beta Israel made contact with other Jewish communities in the later 20th century. Following this, a rabbinic debate ensued over whether or not the Beta Israel were Jews. After halakhic (Jewish law) and constitutional discussions, Israeli officials decided, in 1977, that the Israeli Law of Return was to be applied to the Beta Israel. The Israeli and American governments mounted aliyah (immigration to Israel) transport operations. These activities included Operation Brothers in Sudan between 1979 and 1990 (this includes the major Operation Moses and Operation Joshua), and in the 1990s from Addis Ababa (which includes Operation Solomon).
By the end of 2008, there were 119,300 people of Ethiopian descent in Israel, including nearly 81,000 people born in Ethiopia and about 38,500 native-born Israelis (about 32 percent of the community) with at least one parent born in Ethiopia or Eritrea (formerly part of Ethiopia). The Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel is mostly composed of Beta Israel (practicing both Haymanot and Rabbinic Judaism) and to a smaller extent of Falash Mura who converted from Christianity to Rabbinic Judaism upon their arrival to Israel.
The first Ethiopian Jews who settled in Israel in the modern times came in 1934 along with the Yemenite Jews from Italian Eritrea. (Eritrea had been a section of Ethiopia).
Between the years 1963 and 1975, a relatively small group of Beta Israel emigrated to Israel. The Beta Israel immigrants in that period were mainly very few men who have studied and came to Israel on a tourist visa, and then remained in the country illegally.
Operation Brothers in Sudan started in 1979.
1. Operation Moses (Hebrew: מִבְצָע מֹשֶׁה, Mivtza Moshe) refers to the covert evacuation of Ethiopian Jews (known as the "Beta Israel" community or "Falashas") from Sudan during a civil war that caused a famine in 1984. Originally called Gur Aryeh Yehuda (“Cub of the Lion of Judah”) by Israelis, the United Jewish Appeal changed the name to “Operation Moses. Operation Solomon was the third Aliyah mission from Ethiopia to Israel. Before Operation Solomon, there was Operation Moses and Operation Joshua, which were two of the other ways that Ethiopian Jews could leave before they were forced to put an end to these type of programs. In between the time when these operations came to an end and Operation Solomon began, a very small number of Ethiopian Jews were able to leave and go to Israel.
After a secret Israeli cabinet meeting in November 1984, the decision was made to go forward with Operation Moses. Beginning November 21, 1984, it involved the air transport by Trans European Airways of some 8,000 Ethiopian Jews from Sudan via Brussels to Israel, ending January 5, 1985. Over those seven weeks, over 30 flights brought about 200 Ethiopian Jews at a time to Israel. Trans European Airways had flown out of Sudan previously with Muslims making the pilgrimage to Mecca, so using TEA was a logical solution for this semi-covert operation because it would not provoke questions from the airport authorities. Before this operation, there were approximately as few as 250 Ethiopian immigrants in Israel. Thousands of Beta Israel had fled Ethiopia on foot for refugee camps in Sudan, a journey which usually took anywhere from two weeks to a month. It is estimated as many as 4,000 died during the trek, due to violence and illness along the way. Sudan secretly allowed Israel to evacuate the refugees. Two days after the airlifts began, Jewish journalists wrote about “the mass rescue of thousands of Ethiopian Jews.”
2. Operation Joshua, also known as Operation Sheba, was the 1985 airlifting of Ethiopian Jews from refugee camps in Sudan to Israel. Ethiopian Jews had fled to refugee camps in Sudan from a severe famine in their country. The Israeli Operation Moses had previously airlifted 8000 people to Israel from November 21, 1984, to January 5, 1985, but when word leaked out to the press, under pressure from other Muslim countries, Sudan blocked further flights, leaving many behind. All 100 United States senators signed a secret petition to President Ronald Reagan, asking him to have the evacuation resumed. Vice President George H. W. Bush then arranged a follow-up mission called Operation Joshua. On March 22, 1985, six United States Air Force C-130 Hercules transport aircraft were dispatched, landing near Al Qadarif. "Around 500", "more than 500" or "around 650" Jews were located and transported to Uvda Airbase in southern Israel.
3. Operation Solomon (Hebrew: מבצע שלמה, Mivtza Shlomo) Six years later,was a covert Israeli military operation to airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel from May 24 to May 25, 1991. Non-stop flights of 35 Israeli aircraft, including Israeli Air Force C-130s and El Al Boeing 747s, transported 14,325 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 36 hours. Operation Moses ended on Friday, January 5, 1985, after Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres held a press conference confirming the airlift while asking people not to talk about it. Sudan killed the airlift moments after Peres stopped speaking, ending it prematurely as the news began to reach their Arab allies.
Once the story broke in the media, Arab countries pressured Sudan to stop the airlift. Although thousands made it successfully to Israel, many children died in the camps or during the flight to Israel, and it was reported that their parents brought their bodies down from the aircraft with them. Some 1,000 Ethiopian Jews were left behind, approximately 500 of whom were evacuated later in the U.S.-led Operation Joshua. More than 1,000 so-called "orphans of circumstance" existed in Israel, children separated from their families still in Africa, until five years later Operation Solomon took 14,324 more Jews to Israel in 1991. Operation Solomon in 1991 cost Israel $26 million to pay off the dictator-led government, while Operation Moses had been the least expensive of all rescue operations undertaken by Israel to aid Jews in other countries.
Operation Dove Wing 2010; 2015-2020 On 14 November 2010, the Israeli cabinet approved a plan to allow an additional 8,000 Falash Mura to immigrate to Israel. On November 16, 2015, the Israeli cabinet unanimously voted in favor of allowing the last group of Falash Mura to immigrate over the next five years, but their acceptance will be conditional on a successful Jewish conversion process, according to the Interior Ministry. In April 2016, they announced that a total of 10,300 people would be included in the latest round of Aliyah, over the following 5 years.
How did Israelis know there were Jews in Ethiopia? In the Bible (Tanakh) under ( I Kings 10) one reads about the Queen of Sheba, the ruler of the Southern Arabian kingdom who visited King Solomon and returned to her country full of admiration for his wisdom. The circumstances were much elaborated in Jewish and even more in non-Jewish legend, found in the Bilqis of Arab folk tales. The Ethiopian royal family claims descent from a legendary union of the queen and King Solomon. Often, legends do have a factual basis..
The legend seems to come from Arabia, not Ethiopia. It looks like Yemen and Djibouti are the common points for Ethiopia. In the new issue of Ifriqiya, Irit Back deals with how Middle Eastern powers are trying to increase their involvement in the Horn of Africa today. it could be also true in the days of Solomon and the country of Sheba in about 940 BCE. Solomon was born in 961BCE died in 920 BCE. Let's say that the Queen and her ladies visited Solomon in 940 BCE. That's 2,961 years ago, almost 3,000 years ago for sure. if the Queen were pregnant, as some claim, and her ladies, they would not have carried the Y haplogroup, and the mt female line is hard to trace. As I have searched before, Ethiopians' Jewish line hadn't been discovered. Practices of being Jewish is another way of proof. Much of that seems to have been lost as well, whereas many traces have been found with the Pashtuns of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. I would suggest looking at the Yemenite women's mt haplogroup as a possible ancestor of the Ethiopian ancestry. Its carried in men as well. Is it close? Similar? Same?
The Beta Israel have traditionally attributed their descent to the Israelite tribe of Dan. On the other hand, they were commonly identified by the Abyssinians with prejudice, as strangers (Falasha) and as being inferior. The Israelite Jewish identity of the group is historically well established across a vast spectrum of sources. Notable of these was the ninth-century Jewish scholar Eldad Ha-Dani, whose very name translates to Eldad the Danite, and who identifies himself as the citizen of a Jewish state “beyond the rivers of Cush [Kush]” (Halper, 2009, p. 49). Eldad was precise about the unique Israelite identity of his people from the tribe of Dan. Others include the twelfth century traveler Benjamin of Tudela (as cited in Kaplan, 1995, p. 50) who refers to “Israelites” in the mountains proximate to Nubia— i.e. the medieval name of the Nile Valley area of Kush in Northern Sudan. Here, it should be noted that the name Ethiopia in ancient times referred to the civilization of Kush in northern Sudan. Also worth mentioning is the Chief Rabbi of Egypt who wrote in the sixteenth century confirming the origin of the Beta Israel as Jews from “the tribe of Dan” (as cited in Bleich, 1977, p. 302). Our original Dan was the 5th son of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham, and Bilhah, the handmaid of Rachel. Bilhah may have been an Egyptian or from that area.
Many of the Beta Israel accounts of their own origins stress that they stem from the very ancient migration of some portion of the Tribe of Dan to Ethiopia, led it is said by sons of Moses, perhaps even at the time of the Exodus. Alternative timelines include perhaps the later crises in Judea, e. g., at the time of the split of the northern Kingdom of Israel from the southern Kingdom of Judah after the death of King Solomon or at the time of the Babylonian Exile. Other Beta Israel take as their basis the Christian account of Menelik's return to Ethiopia. Menelik is considered the first Solomonic Emperor of Ethiopia, and is traditionally believed to be the son of King Solomon of ancient Israel, and Makeda, ancient Queen of Sheba (in modern Ethiopia). Though all the available traditions correspond to recent interpretations, they reflect ancient convictions. According to Jon Abbink; three different versions are to be distinguished among the traditions which were recorded from the priests of the community.
However, the perception of the traditional theory, given its trend in suppressing the distinctions of the Beta Israel from the Christian society, has distorted the historical reality of the group’s identity. Kaplan, for example, identifies ayhud, which is the Agaw word for Jews, as a vague term that includes vilified Christians. He cites cases in which medieval authors, starting from the fourteenth century, pejoratively referred to antagonized Christian groups as ayhud.
An argument against being from Jewish sources begs two basic questions: First, why would the Beta Israel adopt normative Jewish traits if they were not Jewish in the first place? And second, why did they identify themselves, and were identified by others, in the Israelite-Jewish context prior to their exposure to normative Judaism? While references to Israelite presence in Kush are well founded in Biblical literature (e.g. Psalm 87:4, Isaiah 11:11, and Zephaniah 3:10), a wide spectrum of medieval and contemporary sources refers to Jews in the areas of the Semien and Tana (Ashkenazi, 1987, p. 10). And if Summerfield’s hypothesis is based on the assumption that normative Judaism was adopted by the Beta Israel as a more civilized and foreign—perhaps European—influence, then his argument also fails. For such an assumption would contradict the Beta Israel’s overwhelming rejection of Europe’s Christian missionaries. According to one statistic, missionaries converted only about 1% of the poor Beta Israel population within a fifty year period (Hamilton, 2007, p. 143). And even those who converted during this period have predominantly returned to Judaism (Seeman, 2010, p. 63).
A Genetic Perspective on the Beta Israel, Ethiopian Jews
While Ethiopian Jews, historically known as the Beta Israel (or derogatorily as Falashas), constitute an inseparable component of today’s Israeli society, the question as to how and what makes them different from non-Jewish Ethiopians remains a prominent subject of discussion. As I discuss in a prior article (Omer, 2013), scholarly circles today remain overwhelmingly attracted to the hypothesis—also known as the traditional theory—that attributes the origins of the Beta Israel to medieval theological transformations within Christianity (e.g. Quirin, 2010; Kaplan, 1995), rather than to Jewish origins. By this theory, the relationship between the Beta Israel and the native populations is defined as socially constructed, with no ancestral or genetic connection to the ancient Hebrews.
An argument draws on evidence that the group is of ancient Jewish descent. Beside the abundant historical evidence, I base my argument on the recent genetic research—summarize by Jon Entine in Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People—which shows that the Beta Israel were established since the mid-first millennium CE period. Genetic research suggests that some shared ancestry from the latter time period is preserved within the group (p. 149; 2007; Saey, 2010, p. 13; Ostrer, 2012); that is through maintaining kinship ties and obviously through restricting intermarriages with outsiders. I also argue that the intermixture of the Beta Israel with neighboring populations was an inconsistent process that occurred gradually over extended periods of time. Outsiders were integrated into the group through spontaneous interaction and assimilation. One point I emphasize is that the historical, geographical and probably genealogical connections between the Beta Israel and Northern Sudan, which no scholar has practically examined in depth, is essential to understanding the group’s origins.
Although the majority of the Beta Israel, known in the local Ge’ez-Semitic as Falasha, which translates to mean ”strangers,” were settled in Israel since the 1980s, they have historically inhabited the northwestern areas of the Ethiopian highlands. Their settlements were distributed around Lake Tana, the Semien mountains, as well as western areas in what is today Northern Sudan (Tegegne & Pinchuk, 2008, p. 43-4; Jacobovici, 2004). Historically prohibited by the Abyssinian law from owning land, the Beta Israel primarily worked as tenant farmers and artisans. (good grief, Jews in Europe also went through such laws; couldn't own land).
Before the airlift of the 3rd operation, Israelis had a lot of discussions about doing it. Israel is made up of European Jews called Ashkenazis and Spanish/Middle eastern Jews called Sephardis with Middle easterners mixed in called Mizrachis. There has been a diverse mixing of Jews already, but Ethiopians come from a more primitive area, Africa.
In the decade leading up to the operation, there was a heated division within the Israeli community over whether to accept the Ethiopians. The reasoning against bringing in Ethiopians proved to be very diverse. Some Jews within Israel feared a "shanda fur di goyim" (Yiddish: שאנדע פֿאר די גויים embarrassment in front of the non-Jews), and thus aimed to avoid the issue of stirring up controversy by ignoring the pleas of the Ethiopian Jews.
Others advocated for the operation, but avoided public demonstrations that might lead to arrests and further public controversy. Taking a completely different approach, others within the Israeli community claimed that there was a cultural divide which would make the integration process untenable; these included Director General of the Jewish Agency's Department of Immigration and Absorption Yehuda Dominitz, who likened this displacement to "taking a fish out of water". Still others elaborated on this vague notion with more provocative claims, such as World Zionist Organization writer Malkah Raymist, who argued that the Ethiopians' "mental outlook is that of children... It would take several years before they could be educated towards a minimum of progressive thinking." However, ultimately, these counter arguments were in vain, as the Israeli government went ahead and conducted the airlift anyway, and the jubilant Ethiopians were greeted as they exited the planes by thousands of joyous Israelis.
I was in Safed from 1980-85 when Ethiopian Jews were moved into the apartment building across the street in 1984 on David Eleazar St. Ladies set up one apartment as a shop with used clothing that was donated. There, they could try clothes on. I saw them in our supermarket. I attended an art show they put on, and they were very beautiful fine-boned people, just amazing to behold. Their work was fantastic as well. I was told that they had been placed in the hospitals first, after stepping on Israeli soil, and were treated for any problems they brought with them before being freed into the public arena. They were not carrying any African parasites or such things. After the journey they had gone through, they probably needed the hospital for R & R. I suppose they got a little of an ulpan education there as well, at least I hope they did. Any immigrant to Israel undergoes at least 3 months of an education in Israel and it's language, Hebrew. I went through 10 months of a program for immigrant teachers. It was a large group, full of Russian teachers and a few of us Americans.
Today, most Ethiopian Beta Israel have been for the most part integrated into Israeli society; however, a high drop-out rate is a problem, although a higher number are now edging towards the higher areas of society.
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Moses
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Joshua
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Solomon#:~:text=Operation%20Solomon%20(Hebrew%3A%20%D7%9E%D7%91%D7%A6%D7%A2%20%D7%A9%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%94,to%20Israel%20in%2036%20hours.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-55171742
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/06/16/evidence-mounts-of-ancient-jewish-roots-of-beta-israel-ethiopian-jewry/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Jews_in_Israel
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/06/16/evidence-mounts-of-ancient-jewish-roots-of-beta-israel-ethiopian-jewry/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Jews_in_Israel#:~:text=Today%2C%20most%20Ethiopian%20Beta%20Israel,the%20higher%20areas%20of%20society.
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