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The Beta Israel: Falasha in Ethiopia: From Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century

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The study of this book proved to be a distinct pleasure. It was exciting to see Kaplan clear away the accretions of ignorance and superstition about Ethiopian Jews, one piece after another, relentlessly. That is the polemical aspect of the book, important now, but not necessarily as important in time to come, as the main outline of the history of Ethiopian Jews becomes better understood.

Briefly put, Kaplan shows that Ethiopian Jews are unlikely to have come to Ethiopia from some other place. They are not likely to be some lost tribe of the original children of Israel, for example. He shows the deep Ethiopian roots of these "Beta Israel," which they share with Ethiopian Christians. The latter are more Jewish, and the former more Christian, than the Jews and Christians of Europe. Furthermore, it seems most likely that these Ethiopian Jews, though in some sense continuing earlier Ethiopian Judaism, arose as a group, more or less gradually, only between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The sources that Kaplan describes are early reports by travelers on the one hand, and the Ethiopian writings in the Ge'ez (and later Amharic) languages on the other. He also utilizes the oral traditions of today's Beta Israel. In the main, other scholars have confirmed Kaplan's main conclusions, particularly James Quirin and Kay Kaufman Shelemay.

Kaplan's last three chapters, including the concluding one, are particularly fascinating. They tell the story of the Beta Israel's growing Jewish self-identification and indeed Zionism during the last two hundred years of their history, much of it in response to both European Christian and European Jewish contacts. The earlier five chapters, covering a period of about a millennium, is more hurried and, to this reader, sometimes confusing in its plethora of names and dates.

Kaplan is not interested in a history of ideas, not even religious ideas. Certain groups are introduced as "Judaized" or even Jews, but it is not always clear how their religious ideas differed from those whom he calls Christian. We can suspect, but often it is only a suspicion, that the Jews did not accept Jesus as god while the Christians did. Rarely does this become explicit in the book. Moreover, we are told that the Beta Israel's Torah is called orit, and that, like other Beta Israel literature, it seems to have come from Ethiopian Christian sources after some changes were made. We are not told quite what these changes were. It would have helped to define Jewish-Christian differences, in the realm of religious ideas, more sharply.

Notwithstanding these reservations, I see this book as of very fundamental importance. It is one of those works that have changed the thinking of a generation. We owe the author a very profound gratitude.

What on earth is the point of inventing Jewish roots concerning these deceptive Ethiopians when everybody knows too well why they became Jews: only because it was the only possibility for them to immigrate to Israel only for economic reasons (to flee their undescribable poverty).

Were these Ethiopians Jews in Ethiopia? NO! NEVER EVER!! They were Christians! A significant number of them in Israel returned to their Christian faith even though most of them decided to keep being Jew because they felt it was safer for them to do so in Israel (despite the fact that there is freedom of faith for Christians and Muslims)!!

In the history of the Jewish people, there has never ever been members of the Jewish people who were black. Never! Blacks can become Jews today through conversion if they convert without inventing false stories but there is not a group of Jews in the history of the Jewish people who were black Jews! NEVER!
I already hear some people reading my comments who might be tempted to say that I am racist but I am telling these people that I am fine accepting blacks who convert to Judaism without inventing false stories in order to convert. To invent false stories in order to convert renders the conversion process completely invalid!!

To have converted Jewish Orthodox these Ethiopians do not make them Jews in any way simply because they used deception to convert to Judaism with the goal of immigrating to Israel ONLY FOR ECONOMIC REASONS. They converted only to flee their awful poverty that they were suffering in Ethiopia where they were living in mud huts and nearly all of them, except their leaders, were completely illiterate (they could not read nor write and they did not have access to the simplest books or writing items!!). Later on, these American Jews who have pushed them to convert gave them books, taught them how to read, and more.

Why did they become Jews? American Jews who did not want to move to Israel felt guilty by their lack of willingness to move to Israel. They were working on outreach projects in Ethiopia and saw that these people were potentially ready to convert in order to move to Israel with the only goal of fleeing their poverty. They made them Jews by teaching them Judaism, giving their leaders Old Testament books to read and so on. Worse, they invented for them Jewish roots, telling the Jewish world that these Ethiopians were Jews!!! What a shame!!
Then, they showed movies of them with Jewish items and praying and they told the viewers of these movies that they have kept Jewish traditions for centuries!! What an awful deception!

All these books on the so-called Ethiopian Jews and the movies about them, they are all completely invented stories where these Ethiopian are given completely invented Jewish roots!

This book deserves a zero because it is based on pure lies!! That is as simple as that!!