By Donald N Levine

For all the talk about ethnic self-determination in Ethiopia, almost no attention has been paid to the one and only ethnic group that actually seceded from Ethiopia–the Beta Israel, formerly called Falasha, whose entire population left the country. The story of their secession is full of drama, intrigue, suffering, and jubilation–and, like so much else about Ethiopia, fraught with misunderstandings.

One account of their exodus, which I once believed, was that their departure was instigated from outside pressures, most notably from the American Jewish community. Stephen Spector’s meticulously researched Operation Solomon (2005) clarifies the matter decisively, locating the real impetus in the religious motives of the Beta Israel themselves. Spector and other sources demonstrate that during the mid-1970s, once Israel’s two chief rabbis of Israel declared the Beta Israel authentic Jews, they experienced a heightened yearning to emigrate to the Land of Israel. How they strove to realize that yearning offers yet another testimony to the religiosity, hardiness, determination–and love of pilgrimage–that characterize Ethiopians of many regions.

Ethiopians of the North long regarded the Holy Land as an alluring beacon. Ethiopian Christians refer to themselves as deqiqa israel, children of Israel; Ethiopians were among the earliest immigrant groups to settle in Jerusalem. Legend is that the Lalibela churches were constructed to enable Ethiopian Christians to have an awesome destination once the route to Jerusalem was hampered by the Arab conquests. Years ago, I spoke with a group of resident monks in Jerusalem and asked if they did not miss their homeland: “Sela-agaratchew nafqot albezabatchihum?” “Inday!” they replied, “izih new agaratchn!” (What do you mean? Our homeland is right here!)

Visiting Jerusalem this year, however, I learned of two points Ethiopian Christians were in trouble. One concerns the decision of authorities not to grant asylum to some seventy illegal Christian immigrants. They were detained in prison for two years until a court accepted the UNHCR judgment that their appeal for asylum based on fear of personal persecution in Ethiopia was not well founded. Under pressure from local Ethiopians, the Government of Israel stayed their deportation until the Canadian Embassy issued invitation letters for them to be interviewed.

More serious is current litigation over Ethiopia’s age-old proprietary claims to a small enclave on the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Deir es-Sultan (Eth. Debra Sultan). Thanks to their long presence in Jerusalem, from not long after their Christianization in the 4th century CE, Ethiopians acquired rights to some of Christianity’s most sacred sites. These rights were attested repeatedly by European visitors through the Middle Ages, one reporting in the late 14th century that Ethiopians possessed four different chapels in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Even so, after Salahadin conquered Jerusalem in 1187 and assigned Ethiopia’s rights to Egyptian Copts, those claims were contested repeatedly. Subsequent competition with diverse Christian nationals–Armenians, Greeks, and Copts–made it difficult for Ethiopians to hold on to those rights. Skirmishes with Egyptians during the two centuries after 1770 took away nearly all Ethiopian property. After the Six-Day War in June 1967, Ethiopians had to evacuate an old monastery near the Jordan, and rejoined their old compatriots at Deir es-Sultan just after it was evacuated by panicking Egyptian Coptic monks–all except their determined archbishop, who stayed only to be manhandled by the tough Ethiopians. That was a retribution of sorts for the episode when Copts threw stones at the Ethiopian Easter celebration on the roof; Israeli authorities changed locks of the two chapels and handed Ethiopians the keys. Still, vicissitudes of relations among Egypt, Ethiopia, and Israel continue to jeopardize Ethiopian rights to the site; at the moment, the case is still before the Israeli High Court.

Most Ethiopians fail to grasp the significance of this monastery for their nation–so argues Daniel Alemu, a young Ethiopian scholar in Jerusalem. Yet if Badme is significant for Ethiopia, he says, Deir es-Sultan is far more integral to Ethiopian history and national identity. It also symbolizes the deep religiosity often attributed to Ethiopians of all faiths; only the unbounded devotion that Ethiopians have for this
ancient holy site enables them to manifest the strength and tolerance needed to live for centuries under inhuman conditions in a collapsing monastery.

The attachment of Christian Ethiopians to the Holy Land pales next to that of their Beta Israel kinsmen. So deep was the Falashas’ historic identification with their Hebraic roots that they created an annual holiday, Sigd, when they climb a mountain and recite the Ten Commandments in honor of Moses on Mt. Sinai. All the Ethiopian olim (immigrants) whom Spector interviewed mentioned this as their primary motive. He quotes an elderly qes (Jewish priest): “Our ancestors all hoped and prayed that they themselves would make it to Jerusalem. They did not make it. We are on the brink of reaching Zion.” This evidence contradicts stories circulated in the West to arouse sympathy and donations, stories disconfirmed by those on the ground. Ethiopian officials, U.S. Government officials, and American relief agencies alike affirm that Falasha did not leave because of famine, warfare, disease, or persecution by Christians. Many Christians pleaded with them not to go, while others felt sympathy for their outpouring of collective devotion, including Berhanu Yiradu, who chaired a committee in Gondar working to expedite the movement to Addis; Dr. Girma Tolossa, who represented the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Addis; and an Ethiopian Christian priest who rented his large compound there to camp the Falasha migrants.

The dream of Zion drove Beta Israel to a via dolorosa into Sudan in the years after 1977 when the Derg halted emigration to Israel. Huge numbers made a long, dangerous trek across the desert, usually at night, in which thousands died dreadful deaths along the way. Once there, many more died in pestilential refugee compounds. Their tragic situation aroused the concern of people in Canada, the U.S. and Israel, after which the ministrations of outside supporters from North America and Israel were indispensable. Israeli Defense Forces began heroic efforts to locate and transport the survivors to Israel–efforts that culminated in Operation Moses of late 1984 when they brought some 6500 Falashas to Israel. When that was exposed in the Sudanese Press, it had to be discontinued. President Nimeiri was deposed, and the new regime imprisoned or executed Sudanese thought to have assisted those rescues. Even after that, Israelis rescued a couple thousand more from Sudan. All told, some twenty thousand Beta Israel left Ethiopia by way of Sudan, of whom about four thousand perished before reaching their destination.

By 1989, nearly half the recognized Falasha community had reached Israel. This fired a constant demand for family reunification, which led eventually to Israel’s agreeing to let some 27,800 more Ethiopian come between 1990 and 1992. The climactic highlight was the remarkable Operation Solomon in which 14,300 Beta Israel were evacuated during a daring 36-hour airlift in late May 1991. A recent Jerusalem Post
article includes Operation Solomon among the most memorable noble achievements in Israel’s modern history, alongside the Six-Day War and the rescue at Entebbe.

By now, numbering at 100,000 to two per cent of the Jewish population of Israel, Ethiopians comprise a larger percentage of the population there than of any other state outside of Ethiopia. Their adjustment problems have been amplified by having to leap from a largely rural subsistence lifestyle into the lifestyle of modern cities, to learn a difficult new language, and to be absorbed in such large numbers in a short time. Much has been made of stories about their maladjustment: reported high rates of divorce, school dropouts, and suicide. For some, the cultural rift proved catastrophic. “On the day I set foot in Israel,” one Ethiopian man said, “my life came to an end.” A great deal of the Ethiopian Jewish community lives below the poverty line in depressed neighborhoods. A disproportionate number are unemployed, since they lack skills appropriate to work in a modern economy. Some claim to have been excluded from schools or jobs on racial grounds.

On the other hand, the Beta Israel of Ethiopia were treated with better accommodations and services than any other immigrant group in Israel’s history. A recent survey showed that although their poverty level was higher than any other immigrant group, so was their level of satisfaction with life in the Promised Land. A decent number have made positive adjustments, becoming army officers, small businessmen, and successful candidates for city councils. Above all, from the viewpoint
of the olim, coming to the Promised Land was the fulfillment of a culture’s dream.

The situation is more ambiguous for several thousands of other Ethiopians who attempt to follow the trail of their Jewish countrymen. These people claim to be relatives of those already in Israel or to be converts to Christianity; the Hebrew name for them, Falasmura, signifies “Falashas who converted.” Their case has been championed by the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry (NACOEJ), an organization that sprang up in the 1980s to assist the Falasha immigrants, but was scarcely known in Israel before the completion of Operation Solomon in 1991. At that point the head of the Jewish Agency announced that except for a few hundred souls, the aliyah of Ethiopia’s Jews had reached a successful completion. The chief charitable organization for the Falasha, the American Association for Ethiopian Jews, closed down its American operation and all of its work in Ethiopia. NACOEJ seized the opportunity to establish itself in Addis as advocate for those refused entry to the airplanes of Operation Solomon because they were known to be converts to Christianity–hence, according to the clear guidelines of the Law of Return, not eligible to come on aliyah.

After 1991 NACOEJ assumed jurisdiction over the 3000 or so Falasmura in Addis and sent agents to villages south of Gondar to recruit groups of Ethiopian Orthodox Christians who in one way or another recalled that their ancestors had been Falashas. The new migrants needed little encouragement; they streamed into Addis Ababa en masse, before long swelling the total arrivals to 50,000. NACOEJ lobbies in Israel and in the States became influential; they readily enlist the support of the Black Caucus as well as the United Jewish Communities if Israel makes any move that seems detrimental to the “Jews” languishing in Ethiopia. Although the group has now been thrown out of Ethiopia, it still works behind the scenes to support those thousands of expectant Ethiopians who anticipate eventually being brought to Israel. Processing all those hopefuls and new immigrants has become what some call a racket. The large reservoir of potential immigrants get encouragement both from their relatives who are already in Israel and from the tireless efforts of a NACOEJ-affiliated Ethiopian, Avraham Beyene, whose organization, which seeks to bring all the Falasmura to Israel, is based in Jerusalem. Paradoxically, Ato Avraham’s own Falasha ancestors were among those who early on converted to Christianity, and he, prior to his aliyah, had worked in Gondar under the auspices of the London Missionary Society for the Conversion of the Jews.

The Falasmura story threatens to override what was a narrative of triumph with a troubling denouement. Ethiopians who arrived since the early 1990s, despite their announced conversions to Judaism, keep distant from the Jewish life of the genuine Falasha community. They have become an increasing burden on the limited resources of the Israeli Government. They incite political opportunists to accuse the Government of racism by not admitting more Ethiopians, just as earlier ideologues accused Israel of racism by importing settlers from Africa.

The genuine Falasha exodus continues to have repercussions. Their departure had costs. It robbed Ethiopia of an important part of her history, a part to which recent scholarship has brought fresh attention. It deprived Israel of the only indigenous Jewish community left in the African Continent. It deprived Gondares of close friends and neighbors. (Indeed, some Gondares have come to feel guilty about how they mistreated the Falashas before their departure and wish to make amends by providing favorable conditions for their return.) And it stripped Falasha culture of its traditional moorings and accessories–ritual objects, prayerbooks, idiosyncratic monastic traditions.

On the other hand, Operations Moses and Solomon saved a distinctive branch of Judaism for the world. Ethiopianist Chaim Rosen notes that “there are perhaps one hundred Falasha priests still functioning in Israel, with many followers, and determinedly passing their tradition down to their sons. So the unique Beta Israel religion remains alive in Israel, and has been preserved there perhaps even more than in it might have been in Ethiopia, where it could have faded away like the Qemant religion.”

What is more, as I wrote in my IJES article, “Reconfiguring the Ethiopian Nation in a Global Era,” there is a sense in which Ethiopians in the Diaspora can and do continue to be an integral part of the Ethiopian nation. They can and do engage from afar, through visits, through the internet, and sometimes by repatriation. Some envisage channels through which Israeli Ethiopians can begin to connect back with the motherland, just like other Diaspora Ethiopians who return for limited times or for good. Falashas are learning skills that can be put to good use in Ethiopia’s development. They and fellow Israelis can harness the experience of Israelis in turning deserts into gardens, and fructify areas like the Ogaden and the their homelands in the northwest. The Ethiopian Government has broached the idea of offering fellowships at Ethiopian universities for Ethiopians in Israel. The prospect of offering Ethiopian Israelis a chance to renew ties to their other motherland offers opportunities for all concerned after the trials and tribulations of the past few decades.