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Beta Israel: the Jews of Ethiopia and Beyond

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Beta Israel: the Jews of Ethiopia and Beyond Beta Israel: the Jews of Ethiopia and Beyond. History, Identity and Borders edited by Emanuela Trevisan Semi and Shalva Weil Beta Israel: the Jews of Ethiopia and Beyond. History, Identity and Borders Edited by Emanuela Trevisan Semi and Shalva Weil Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia Dipartimento di Studi sull’Asia e sull’Africa Mediterranea © 2011 Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia ISBN: 978-88-7543-286-7 Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina srl Dorsoduro 3259, 30123 Venezia www.cafoscarina.it Tutti i diritti riservati. Prima edizione febbraio 2011 CONTENTS Introduction 7 JAMES QUIRIN Personal Reflections on Researching Beta Israel History 11 HAIM ADMOR The Question about the Beta Israel’s Jewish Identity, at the Crossroads of History and Argumentation 25 EMANUELA TREVISAN SEMI East and West through the Conversations between Jacques Faitlovitch and Farid Kassab 45 ALICE JANKOWSKI “An Obligation of Honour”: Glimpses of the Forgotten Story of the Pro-Falasha Committee in Germany 57 JOSEPH (GIUSEPPE ) LEVI Taamerat Emmanuel and Giuseppe Levi. A Friendship between an Ethiopian Jewish Maskil and a Florentine Jewish Rabbi 75 ANITA NUDELMAN AND MELKAMU YAACOV Aleka Yaacov: Undisputed Healer and Leader among Ethiopian Jews 101 SHARON SHALOM The Time of Circumcision in the Beta Israel Community 117 RON ATAR The Performance Practice in Beta Israel Prayers – a Service for the New Moon (ya-Caraqâ Ba’âl): a Case Study 133 SHALVA WEIL Mikael Aragawi: Christian Missionary among the Beta Israel 147 RAVIT COHEN The Ethnography of the Gondar Compound: “Waiting” and what it means 159 EDITH BRUDER The Beit Avraham of Kechene: The Emergence of a New Jewish Community in Ethiopia 181 INTRODUCTION This volume focuses around the issues of history, identity and borders concerning the Beta Israel (Jews of Ethiopia). The Beta Israel practised ancient Jewish rites, as Sharon Shalom describes in this volume, which were quite different from Rabbinic lore. Their performance of liturgy was characterized by distinct, unique musical phenomena, which Ron Atar documents. This volume brings together a selection of papers that were presented in two international conferences hosted by SOSTEJE (Society for the Study of Ethiopian Jewry) held in Florence in October 2007 and in Gondar, Ethiopia in November 2009. James Quirin was the keynote speaker at the Gondar conference, where he traced in a retrospective the oral history and fieldwork he had carried out in Ethiopia and among the Beta Israel in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Florence is strongly connected with the beginning of the Western part of Beta Israel contemporary history. In fact, it was in this city that the first Pro-Falasha Committee was established in 1907 by Jacques Faitlovitch, the Polish Jew who studied Semitic languages in Paris and spent all his life in travelling to and fro between Ethiopia, Europe, United States and Palestine. He was concerned with the Jews of Ethiopia, at time known as “Falashas”, a term that today is considered derogatory. His Jewish identity model was at odds with that of Rabbi Haim Nahoum, who was sent by the French Alliance Israélite Universelle to report on the Jewish identity of the Beta Israel: Haim Admor analyses in this volume the argumentative analysis of the reports of both personalities who visited the Beta Israel in Ethiopia 8 BETA ISRAEL: THE JEWS OF ETHIOPIA AND BEYOND during the same period. In Faitlovitch’s mind, the Beta Israel had to be integrated into mainstream Judaism, that is to say into Western Judaism, and had to be educated in Europe in order to be prepared as future “native” teachers to be sent back to Ethiopia in order to further his educational ideals. The unusual correspondence between Jacques Faitlovitch and Farid Kassab is the subject of Emanuela Trevisan Semi’s chapter in this volume. At that time, Zvi Margulies, an Ashkenazi rabbi from East Europe, was the Rabbi of the Florentine community, who shared Faitlovitch’s project to “save” the Beta Israel. The first Pro-Falasha Committee was soon followed by a German Pro-Falasha Committee set up Frankfurt on Main in 1914 and documented in detail by Alice Jankowski. In Florence there were already two young Beta Israel coming from Ethiopia, the first to be educated in Europe. One of these was Taamerat Emmanuel, a brilliant and cultivated youth, who would become a close friend of the grandfather of the present day’s Florentine Rabbi Giuseppe Levi, one of the contributors to this volume. The Beta Israel have lived in Gondar and its surrounding areas, including the Simien, for centuries, where they engaged in specific occupations, as smiths and landless agriculturalists. Nudelman and Yaacov relate the unique memoirs of Aleka Yaacov, a healer, who lived in the area for most of his life prior to his aliyah (emigration). Other Beta Israel resided in Tigray and other provinces. The vast majority of the Beta Israel left Gondar in the 1980’s and 1990’s and live today in the State of Israel, although some people called Felesmura are today awaiting emigration, as Ravit Cohen describes, in a compound in Gondar. Many of these people converted to Christianity from the middle of the nineteenth century on. The greatest of the “native” missionaries was Mikael Aragawi, many of whose descendants immigrated to Israel, as Shalva Weil demonstrates. The authors in this volume come from a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, literature, ethno-musicology and Jewish studies. They work in different European countries, including France, Israel, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and more. Some are of native Ethiopian origin, while most are researchers of Ethiopian Jewry. Some are doctoral students, while others are well-established professors in their fields. INTRODUCTION 9 The volume is organized into three sections. The largest section begins off with so far undocumented modern history of the Beta Israel, by tracing the identity of the Beta Israel in Ethiopia at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the role of Dr. Jacques Faitlovitch and the work of his students in aligning Beta Israel with world Jewry. This section incorporates original articles on the correspondence between Dr. Faitlovitch and an Arab intellectual, the establishment of the Pro-Falasha committee in Germany, and unpublished material on one of Dr. Faitlovitch’s outstanding pupils who studied in Europe, and developed a special friendship with an Italian Jew. The second section will describe unique Beta Israel religious practices, such as the service for the new moon, and the circumcision ceremony as practised by the Beta Israel, which are at times compared with normative Judaic customs. The third section moves from the history of the Beta Israel in Ethiopia to contemporary trends within and without the community. A chapter documents nineteenth and twentieth century missionary activity among the Beta Israel, and then move to describing the contemporary group called Felesmura or Zera Beta Israel still waiting to immigrate to Israel. Finally, a chapter by Edith Bruder examines the identities of the Beit Avraham of Kechene, Ethiopia, who identify with the Beta Israel and their successful emigration to Israel. This collection provides a novel view of different and evolving identities of the Beta Israel from the early twentieth century till today, fanning out from a Hebraic-type of Judaism, to a loosely-defined view of Judaism, as expressed by other groups who regard the Beta Israel as their role model. The volume brings into focus the question of borders: between the Beta Israel and other normative Jews, between the Beta Israel in Ethiopia and the Beta Israel in Israel, between the Beta Israel and other Israelis, and between the Beta Israel and non-Beta Israel groups aspiring to the same status as the Beta Israel. Emanuela Trevisan Semi, Venice Shalva Weil, Jerusalem ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Emanuela Trevisan Semi is most thankful to Piera Rossetto, who have helped prepare the manuscript for publication. PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON RESEARCHING BETA ISRAEL HISTORY1 James Quirin, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA Motives for studying on the Beta Israel As I began researching Beta Israel history, and especially later when I began speaking about and publishing the results of my research, I was often asked how I got interested in the subject originally. It is certainly a legitimate question to ask “where one is coming from,” as my students at Fisk University like to phrase it. In this case, it was perhaps particularly pertinent since most of the interest, advocacy and research on this group had been carried out since the mid-19th century by foreign Jews and related to the issue of the extent to which they were similar or different from world Jewish standards and practices. This strain was begun by Joseph Halevy and Jacques Faitlovitch who 1 When I was invited by Shalva Weil, the President of the Society for the Study of Ethiopian Jewry (SOSTEJE), to present the Keynote Address at the SOSTEJE Gondar conference in November 2009, I was both gratified and hesitant. SOSTEJE’s scholars have been the leading edge of new research on the Ethiopian Jews for the past few decades, and I appreciated the opportunity to share some personal thoughts on the development of my own interest and research on the Beta Israel. My hesitancy revolved around the fact that I had not completed any new research or publications on the Beta Israel for some time. But when Shalva Weil explained that I could give a “retrospective” personal view at the SOSTEJE conference, I accepted her invitation. This written version
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