Beta Israel (Ethiopia) ביתא ישראל
A community cut off from the rabbinic world so long ago that it knew neither Mishnah nor Talmud. Its Jewishness was affirmed by the Radbaz in the sixteenth century and by Rav Ovadia Yosef in 1973.
There are several traditions of origin. One says Jews came to Ethiopia in waves, up the Nile and its tributaries. Another links them to Menelik, son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba—that is the Ethiopian royal epic Kebra Nagast. Maimonides assigned them to the tribe of Dan, and that would later be relied on.
What is known besides tradition: Judaism was present in the kingdom of Aksum before it adopted Christianity in the fourth century; after that the communities withdrew into the highlands north of Lake Tana.
Their isolation was complete, and that is the main thing. They had the Orit—the Torah—but neither Mishnah nor Talmud: they separated before the Oral Torah was written down, or before it reached them. Hence their whole practice: priests, the kessim, instead of rabbis; monasticism—which exists nowhere else in Judaism and which arose among them as a way of standing against forced Christianisation; and Ge'ez as the language of worship instead of Hebrew by the seventeenth century.
The question of their Jewishness was decided twice, and both times in the affirmative. The Radbaz, head of Egyptian Jewry, ruled in the sixteenth century that they are Jews like all others. In 1973, when danger hung over them, Rav Ovadia Yosef relied on Maimonides' words about the tribe of Dan and ruled that they are Jews in the full sense and require no conversion at all.
They were brought out in 1984 by Operation Moses and in 1991 by Operation Solomon.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The responsa of the Radbaz — the sixteenth-century ruling: they are Jews like all others
- Rav Ovadia Yosef's ruling, 1973 — reliance on Maimonides on the tribe of Dan; no conversion required
Scholarship
- Museum of the Jewish People, "Beta Israel" — the traditions of origin, the kessim and the monasticism, the shift to Ge'ez
Basis: documents and evidence.