The Neglected Tribe

Operation Moses, the furtive airlift of Ethiopian Jews from refugee camps in the Sudan, took place during November and December of 1984. It brought approximately 7,000 Ethiopian Jews into Israel, many of them harbouring tropical viruses, many in severely emaciated condition, but all overjoyed to walk upon the soil which they considered sacred.

When these people finally arrived in Israel from their overcrowded refugee camps, most went through a careful screening process to make certain that they were Jews, and not Christian Ethiopians. Those who could prove they were Jews were proffered immigration cards; their identity cards would only be awarded when they 'renewed their Judaism', the women by ritual immersion in the mikvah, the men through a re-enactment of circumcision, although they were already circumcised. The Israeli government contended that these rites were necessary as a result of the Ethiopians' "significant isolation from Judaism and the Jewish world for hundreds of years". Those 'unfortunates' discovered to be Christian Ethiopians were spared this humiliation, and given temporary visas, then sent to work on kibbutzim.

The most immediate problem of re-settlement was health; doctors were faced with infectious diseases they'd previously only known through their medical textbooks, including malaria, typhoid, jaundice and widespread malnutrition.

These thousands joined a like number of Ethiopian Jews whose slow migration had begun twenty-five years earlier. During that period, a mere trickle of Ethiopian Jews had pulsed into the country, aided by Jewish welfare groups. Later, associations were set up for rescue - and finally, bit by bit, a kind of underground railroad was established by the Israeli government itself.

The Action Committee for Ethiopian Jews had been pleading with the Israeli government for years to act more decisively to negotiate with the Ethiopian government to re-unify families and to bring in greater numbers of Ethiopians from their severely underprivileged environment. Governmental inaction resulted in suicides of despair, with some Beta Israel threatening suicide by immolation before the Israeli Parliament in a last desperate effort to embarrass the government into action.

Who are these dark-skinned Africans who proudly wear the mantle of Judaism? They're familiarly known as Falashas, an Amharic term denoting 'strangers'. But Ethiopian Jews consider themselves denigrated by this, as indeed, the word in Amharic is meant to convey 'outcast'. These black Jews call themselves Beta Israel. The House of Israel; indicative of the pride in their Jewish identity, their biblical descent from Solomon, their adherence to ancient religious rites, and faithfulness against all adversity. They have been ritually scorned, publicly stoned, and officially neglected, in Ethiopia.

This is also a people lost in time, an iron-age still-life, a once-isolated group convinced that they represent the only Jews on earth, the only remnants of a once-numerous tribe. Legend had it that they were one of the ten lost tribes of Israel.

Ethiopian Jews fervently believe their genesis was a bright amour between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the beautiful Abyssinian Princess Makeda, which produced a son, whom Queen Sheba had sent as a child to Solomon to receive his education. His father returned him eventually as a young man, purportedly with the Tablets of the Law of Moses. This son, Menelik I, later ruled Abyssinia.

Although as a group the Ethiopian Jews of this era are largely illiterate, unskilled and desperately poor, in the historical past they were influential and of the ruling class. Several civil wars disrupted the ruling hierarchy and other groups entered the ascendancy. So for past centuries, the Beta Israel have lived alongside other Ethiopians in miserable poverty, practising such lower-class occupations as pottery and iron-mongering. They have lived mostly in Gondar Province, and in Tigre, in northern Ethiopia, among their neighbours, many of whom were Coptic Christians, some of whose religious customs are almost identical. Beta Israel celebrate Passover and observe the Sabbath; succeeding post-Diaspora religious rites were unknown to them. This is, then, a people unfamiliar with the Twentieth Century, for whom a subsistence standard of living has been a way of life. They lived in small thatched huts, and built small circular clay buildings as synagogues.

This is also a people which has been inexcusably neglected. By their country, by the world at large, but inexplicably, by their co-religionists. Their presence has long been known, but interest in their state of being, and later their pathetic plight, has been slow to spark. Even when isolated groups of Canadian and American Jews began to evince some interest and concern, there was no organized movement to attempt to provide support. The State of Israel behaved as though this group did not exist.

No less an historian than Abba Eban, in Heritage: Civilization and the Jews, mentions them on three occasions in passing, with no reference to their historicity and heritage. Similarly, in the seminal work, The Jews: Their History, edited by Louis Finkelstein, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, in a brief, dismissive sentence, it is noted: "The dark-skinned Falashas of Abyssinia, presumably descended from proselytes made in a remote age, retain their individuality even now." Thus in one fell swoop, while the venerableness of their existence is not disputed, the genuineness of their heritage is, and thus the legitimacy of their pride.

These views, sadly, are typical. As a result, Jewish welfare agencies neglected the Ethiopian Jews. Although some relief work was undertaken from the 1950s, it was sparse and sporadic. In 1973 the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel declared himself finally to be satisfied that the Beta Israel were legitimately Jews. Soon afterward the Israeli government pronounced them to be eligible for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return.

But no energetic activity to aid their emigration to Israel was undertaken. The Beta Israel themselves obviously hadn't the means by which they could effect transit to Israel, nor lobby the Ethiopian government to permit emigration. Relief agencies were slow to convince themselves to act in the interests of the Beta Israel.

Finally, North American concerned groups such as Friends of Falasha (Calgary), Ottawa chapter for Ethiopian Jewry, the Canadian Association for Ethiopian Jewry (Toronto and Montreal) began moving things forward. Countdown - New York Association for Ethiopian Jews and Centre for Beta Israel (Ramat Gan, Israel) began to lobby vigorously for public subscriptions. They sought to raise massive amounts needed to send food and medicine to the villages in Ethiopia, along with medical teams, and to pressure the Israeli government to act. Even so, the Israeli government appeared to be loathe to follow through on its own welcoming edict.

Finally, the desolation of the drought in Africa. Ethiopia was hard hit. the drought had devastated the countryside. With the growth of public concern and outrage over the horrific conditions in Ethiopia in late 1984, the world responded, sending great sums of money for relief work, airlifting medical teams, foodstuffs, tents and drugs to those hellholes of human despair.

The 400,000 Ethiopians who had fled from the dreadful drought and the fallout of the civil War in Eritrea Province to try to find comfort in the burgeoning camps in the Sudan were dying of starvation almost as quickly as those left behind in their villages.

Even in the camps of Sudan, mostly crowded with Muslim Ethiopians, the Ethiopian Jews were harassed and harried. The death rate from starvation and illness mounted day by day. Of the Ethiopian Jews who had made their way into the camps, roughly one-third died of privation and an epidemic of diseases before Israel launched its airlift. The rescue was never completed. It was estimated that some four thousand Jews were left behind in the camps when premature disclosure of news of the rescue halted the airlift.

The U.S. had acted as liaison to bring Sudanese officials and Israeli agents in concert to plan the logistics for the airlift. The Sudanese government had insisted that the planeloads of refugees from the rescue mission not be flown directly to Israel, but that they be flown first to another destination, then on to Israel - for diplomatic reasons. The news media were urged, and pledged themselves to secrecy so that the rescue attempt would not be jeopardized.

However, word did leak prematurely, effectively aborting the mission. When Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir had visited the United States several weeks earlier, he had told Jewish leaders that Israel would require about $100-million to resettle Ethiopian Jews. And then Leon Dalzhin, chairman of the Jewish Agency, the Israeli organization charged with absorbing new refugees, is said to have noted also in early December that there had been "a sudden jump in immigration, far beyond the figures we had projected for this and the coming year - one of the ancient tribes of Israel is due to return to its homeland". An Israeli magazine picked it up. One of its reporters had been the recipient of this coy little bit of news, and soon afterward the news of another dazzling Israeli coup was flashed around the world.

Dismayed, American Jews pressured their own government to rescue the estimated remaining four thousand Ethiopian Jews left behind in the camps. A later American airlift was able to find and remove a mere additional nine hundred, all that could be found of those who were left. Many had perished, and no doubt some had made the long trek back to their mountainside villages.

It is now estimated that an additional eight thousand women, children, the ill and the elderly are left to languish in Ethiopia. In early 1984 the Beta Israel communities had steadily been depleted as the young and the hale left to find refuge in the Sudan. Those who were unfit for travel were left behind in the primitive villages. Young children, the ill, the old and the women who care for them, are now left to fend for themselves. Those who had travelled to the refugee centres set up in the Sudan found the situation slightly better, with relief supplies and food being supplied as a good-will gesture by the Sudanese government for 'fellow Muslims' in an effort to help their neighbours. (This was, of course, at a time when the Sudan hadn't yet been hit as hard as Ethiopia; since then the situation in Sudan has paralleled that of its neighbour.) Food was anything but plentiful in the camps, hygiene was poor, and if those Jewish thousands had not been rescued what is left of a once-numerous tribe might well have dwindled to an endangered species.

The government of Israel still appears reluctant to use diplomacy to complete the rescue of Beta Israel. One might think that Israel is unwilling to further burden itself with this dark-skinned and primitive people. Granted, the rescue itself, the relocation of the refugees, their housing, medicine, food, clothing, education, work placement and training all require a massive expenditure of bureaucratic planning, and scarce Israeli shekels in an already over-strained war economy. But public subscription (particularly from North American sources) to assist the State in its commitment should help considerably to make up for the costs involved.

Perhaps settling this people throughout a country housing Jews whose background is European/Mediterranean/Arabic presents the government with another dilemma, integrating a socially and economically disadvantaged group whose existence was an embarrassment to the State.

Another thorny issue of course, is the reaction of the orthodox to this influx of 'others'. Both the Ashkenazic and the Sephardic chief rabbis have finally declared the Beta Israel to be truly Jews, with no need for further demeaning 'conversion' ceremonies. But regional orthodox rabbis are steadfastly refusing this recognition without the ceremonial of the mikva and ritual circumcision. The Beta Israel, deeply insulted by these emotionally injurious demands, are heartbroken at the turn of events. A protest march staged around Israel by the Beta Israel to bitterly demonstrate their opposition to the symbolic conversation (which holds their belief in their heritage in absolute contempt) was emotional and led many Ethiopian Jews to declare that this final humiliation compelled them to compare Israel unfavourably with their former condition in Ethiopia where they were at least recognized as Jews among strangers.

This is a sorry dilemma which deserves a fitting end. That end appears to be a long way off yet.