History of the Jews in Ethiopia
However, legends surrounding a Jewish queen called Judith (Gudit) have been dismissed by scholars like Edward Ullendorff as without foundation in any historical facts.
The man told him of the ongoing conflict of his nation with the Christian Abyssinians; he relayed some of the principles of his faith, which, Ferrara concluded, balanced between Karaite and Rabbinical Judaism.
[5] In the 16th century, the Chief Rabbi of Egypt, David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (also called Radbaz, ca.1479–1573), proclaimed that in terms of halakha the Ethiopian Beta Israel community are ethnically Jewish.
"[9]After the death of Dawit II, the Beta Israel then switched their alliance and began supporting Emperor Gelawdewos against the Muslim invaders.
By 1624, the revolt had been quelled, and the conclusive defeat of a subsequent uprising the following year marked the end of the political autonomy of the Beta Israel.
Some of them were converted to the law of Christ Our Lord; others persisted in their blindness and formerly possessed many wide territories, almost the whole Kingdom of Dambea and the provinces of Ogara and Seman.
There are many of the latter in Dambea and in various regions; they live by weaving cloth and by making zargunchos [spears], ploughs and other iron articles, for they are great smiths.
[13] The isolation of the Beta Israel community in Ethiopia was also reported by the Scottish explorer James Bruce who visited Gondar in the 18th century: "The only copy of the Old Testament, which they have, is the translation in Geez, the same made use of by the Abyssinian Christians, who are the only scribes, and sell these copies to the Falasha Jews; and no controversy, or dispute about the text, has ever yet arisen between the professors of the two religions.
"[14] The Beta Israel lost their relative economic advantage 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 warlords resulted in a decline and exploitation of Beta Israel.
"[15][10] During this period, the Jewish religion was effectively lost for some years, before being restored in the 1840s by Abba Widdaye, the preeminent monk of Qwara.
In all likelihood, they are from the sect of Sadok and Boethus, who are [now] called Karaites, since they know only a few of the biblical commandments, but are unfamiliar with the Oral Law, nor do they light the Sabbath candle.
As a result, several European rabbis proclaimed that they recognized the Jewishness of the Beta Israel community, and eventually in 1868 the organization "Alliance Israélite Universelle" decided to send the Jewish-French Orientalist Joseph Halévy to Ethiopia in order to study the conditions of the Ethiopian Jews.
Upon his return to Europe, Halévy made a very favorable report of the Beta Israel community in which he called for world Jewish community to save the Ethiopian Jews, to establish Jewish schools in Ethiopia, and even suggested to bring thousands of Beta Israel members to settle in Ottoman Syria (a dozen years before the actual establishment of the first Zionist organization).
This happened mainly because serious doubts still remained about the Jewishness of the Beta Israel community, and because the Alliance Israélite Universelle organization did not comply with Halévy's recommendations[citation needed].
The myth of the lost tribes in Ethiopia intrigued Jacques Faitlovitch, a former student of Joseph Halévy at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris.
[26] Following his visit in Ethiopia, Faitlovitch created an international committee for the Beta Israel community, popularized the awareness of their existence through his book Notes de voyage chez les Falashas (1905),[27] and raised funds to enable the establishment of schools in their villages.
In 1921, Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate for Palestine, recognized the Beta Israel community as Jews.
These supporters began organizing associations, including one under the direction of Ovadia Hazzi, a Yemeni Jew and former sergeant in the Israeli army who married a wife from the Beta Israel community after the Second World War.
The rabbi, who cited a rabbinic ruling from the 16th century Radbaz and asserted that the Beta Israel are descended from the lost tribe of Dan, acknowledged their Jewishness in February 1973.
This ruling was initially rejected by the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren, who eventually changed his opinion on the matter in 1974.
Later on, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin obtained clear rulings from Ovadia Yosef that they were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes.
After a period of civil unrest, on September 12, 1974, a pro-communist military junta, known as the "Derg" ("committee"), seized power after ousting the emperor Haile Selassie I.
Mengistu's years in office were marked by a totalitarian-style government, and the country's massive militarization, financed by the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, and assisted by Cuba.
[citation needed] Towards the mid-1980s, Ethiopia underwent a series of famines, exacerbated by adverse geopolitics and civil wars, which eventually resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
[32] As a result, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians, including the Beta Israel community, became untenable and a large part tried to escape the war and the famine by fleeing to neighboring Sudan.
[37] In December 1960, a section of the Ethiopian army attempted a coup whilst the Emperor Haile Sellassie I was on a state visit in Brazil.
[39] Israel trained counter-insurgency forces and the Governor General of Eritrea, Asrate Medhin Kassa, had an Israeli Military Attaché as his advisor.
[38] Ethiopian Prime Minister Aklilu Habte-Wold began seeking political support for breaking relations with Israel after the OAU summit.
Departures in the spring reached about 500 people a month before Ethiopian officials adopted new emigration procedures that reduced the figure by more than two-thirds.
