JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

Ethiopians in Mereba, a crime committed by the Italian occupants
in 1937, thirty-two Beta Israel were killed (Taamrat’s
letter to Faitlovitch, 19.9.1937, in: E. Trevisan Semi, L’epistolario
di Taamrat Emmanuel: un intellettuale ebreo d’Etiopia nella
prima metà del XX secolo (Torino, 2000), 250–256.
1941–1974
Prior to the liberation of Ethiopia in 1941 only a handful of
Western Jews had visited the Beta Israel. In the next three decades,
their numbers were to swell dramatically. Trends which
first became apparent in the period of Faitlovitch, such as outside
intervention, education, and normalization of religious
practice, escalated significantly. In a similar manner the pressure
upon the Beta Israel to speak with one voice grew. The
traditional religious leadership was increasingly challenged
by Western-educated members of the community and contact
with outsiders became an ever more important route to
status.
No description of Beta Israel leadership and the influence
of outside forces on community organization in the period
after World War II would be complete without a discussion
of the figure of Yona *Bogale. Born in Wolleqa, Gondar
in 1910, Yona studied with Faitlovitch and Taamrat Emmanuel
in Ethiopia. Later he pursued further studies in Jerusalem,
Frankfurt, Zurich, and Paris. After his return to Ethiopia he
worked as a teacher and a civil servant. In 1953 he left the imperial
service and from that time on, until he left Ethiopia in
1979, he involved himself with various projects connected with
the Beta Israel community.
During the more than 25 years of Ato Yona’s activities as
a spokesman for the Beta Israel, foreign involvement with the
community in Ethiopia steadily increased. The Israel government,
the Jewish Agency, ORT, JDC, political activists and casual
travelers all made their impact felt upon the Jews of Ethiopia.
From the perspective of the various Jewish organizations,
which sought to aid their co-religionists in Ethiopia, the Beta
Israel’s lack of political unity and their tradition of village-level
politics appeared inefficient and wasteful. In an attempt to rationalize
and simplify the giving of assistance, such organizations
sought to impose an artificial unity on the Beta Israel
whereby a single individual represented all the communities
and coordinated the distribution of assistance.
Despite, or perhaps because of, his unique background,
Ato Yona came to represent the Beta Israel community to
much of the outside world, especially to various Jewish organizations.
As the interest and financial involvement of world
Jewry with the Beta Israel grew, Ato Yona became a wellknown
and idealized figure. Yet, his position within the community
was often a far cry from that depicted by outsiders.
Throughout the period of the 1970s, for example, an open
dispute existed between Yona Bogale and the leading priest of
the Gondar area, Abba Uri Ben (Berhan) Baruch. In part, the
quarrel was based upon a disagreement as to how funds from
the various “pro-Beta Israel” committees should be divided
among different villages. However, it soon developed beyond
beta israel
this specific issue to a more general dispute over the nature of
community leadership and society: a conflict between internal
religious leadership and external/political power. On the one
hand, the religious leader was known, trusted, and respected
throughout the Gondar region; and on the other hand the political
leader, was educated and experienced, and had gained
prestige and influence through both the money he received
from abroad, and the recognition of foreign committees.
The quarrel also appears to have had a generational component
as well, for it pitted the young Israeli-educated Hebrew
teachers against the priests and elders. In the words of Uri ben
Baruch “the young teachers want to lead the people, but the
priests and the head of the elders don’t want to surrender their
leadership… But, because the young teachers have access to
the government, Beta Israel follow them, and only adults and
the elderly continue to obey the priests as of old.”
The divisions which arose in this case can as we have
seen be analyzed on a variety of levels. Religious, political,
and generational factors all appear to have been of relevance.
There was, moreover, a minor geographical component insofar
as the leadership struggle appears to have originated in
the competition between villages for scarce resources. However,
the importance of the geographical factor was relatively
insignificant, when compared to the major role it assumed in
the division between Amharan and Tigrean Beta Israel. In this
case a major regional division developed whose repercussions
are being felt to this day in Israel.
Despite the earlier visits of Faitlovitch and Rabbi Ḥayyim
*Nahoum world Jewry remained largely ignorant of the Tigrean
Jews. In a census undertaken in the 1950s the number
of Jews in Tigre province was underestimated by more than
two thirds (1,250 est. versus 4,000). Moreover, the Jews of
Tigre benefited far less than those in the Gondar region from
the relief and educational efforts of world Jewry. Thus existing
social, economic, and linguistic differences were exacerbated
by a growing gap in modernization, education, and secularization.
By the time the Beta Israel were brought en masse to
Israel in the 1980s (and here too the experience in the two regions
varied tremendously) a latent hostility existed between
many members of the Gondar and Tigrean communities.
[Steven Kaplan]
Developments in the Later 1970s
JEWISHNESS OF THE FALASHAS. The first major statement
affirming the Jewishness of the Beta Israel was made in the
16th century by Rabbi David ibn Zimra, the Radbaz. After an
intensive study, he declared the Beta Israel as “of the seed of
Israel, of the Tribes of Dan.” He further stated that marriage to
one of the Beta Israel is permissible as long as that person accepts
the more modern practices of rabbinic Judaism. And in
later responsum, he became explicit and even more emphatic
in stating the Beta Israel are unquestionably Jews.
Recognizing that the Beta Israel, because of their isolation,
practiced a more biblical Judaism than the rabbinic Judaism
of his time, the Radbaz wrote: “These who came from
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