Beta Israel

Beta Israel, also known as Falashas, native Jewish sect of Ethiopia. The origin of the sect is unknown. According to one tradition its ancestry traces to Menelik, son of King Solomon of Israel, and the Queen of Sheba. Some scholars place the date of the sect’s origin before the 2nd century bc, largely because the Ethiopian Jews are unfamiliar with either the Babylonian or Palestinian Talmud. Their Bible is written in an archaic Semitic dialect known as Ge’ez, and the Hebrew Scriptures are unknown to them. Ethiopian Jews refer to their sect as Beta Israel (House of Israel) and consider the name Falasha, which is Amharic for “exiles” or “landless ones,” a derogatory term.

The religion of Ethiopian Jews is a modified form of Mosaic Judaism generally unaffected by postbiblical developments. The Ethiopian Jews retain animal sacrifice. They celebrate scriptural and nonscriptural feast days, although the latter are not the same as those celebrated by other Jews. One of the sect’s nonscriptural feast days, for example, is the Commemoration of Abraham. The Sabbath regulations of Beta Israel are stringent. Members of the sect observe biblical dietary laws but not the postbiblical rabbinic regulations concerning distinctions between meat and dairy foods. Monogamy is practiced, marriage at a very early age is rare, and marriage outside the religious community is forbidden.

The center of Beta Israel religious life is the masjid, or synagogue. The chief functionary in each village is the high priest, who is assisted by lower priests. Monks live alone or in monasteries, isolated from other people. There are no rabbis in the sect.

Until the mid-1980s Ethiopian Jews lived either in separate villages or in separate quarters in Christian or Islamic towns, in the region of Ethiopia north of Lake T’ana. They were skilled in agriculture, masonry, pottery, ironworking, and weaving. Under Haile Selassie I, a few of them rose to positions of prominence in education and government, but reports of persecution followed the emperor's ouster in 1974. More than 12,000 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel from late 1984 to early 1985, when the Ethiopian government halted the program. The airlift resumed in 1989, and about 3,500 Ethiopian Jews immigrated to Israel in 1990. Nearly all of the Jews remaining in Ethiopia were evacuated by the Israeli government in May 1991.