Double Jeopardy: Oppression of Ethiopian Jews

...Faitlovitch's tireless efforts did have modest results...

...And even then, no international Jewish organization intervened...

...Black and abandoned...

...Yet there is another distant land where scores of Jews have been killed and thousands made homeless, where some Jews have been enslaved and others starve, where the Jewish tragedy is not a fleeting episode but a continuing saga—and no one cries out...

...Some of the 165, for example, managed to gain entry to Israel only by posing as Christian pilgrims...

...Not the government of Israel, not the Jewish Agency, not the leadership of American Jewry, not even (with rare exception) the Jewish press, usually so eager to report the most trivial slur against the Jews...

...For that silence insures the death of Ethiopian Jewry...

...it was Faitlovitch himself who created Pro-Falasha Committees in both Europe and the United States...

...In particular, several schools and synagogues were established which introduced Hebrew, rabbinic teachings, and information on contemporary Jewry to a community whose culture had traditionally centered exclusively on Biblical texts...

...His latest book, Black Jew in America, was published in 1978...

...In all, some 165 Falashas have entered Israel since 1948—an average of less than half a dozen each year since Israeli independence...

...Until the revolution of 1974, which deposed Emperor Haile Selassie, the Jews lived in some 500 scattered villages, lacking any element of modern communication or transportation...

...Together, these efforts enabled them to live at the average annual Ethiopian income of $70 (U.S...

...to others, they are known as Falashas (literally, "strangers in their own land")- There are 28,000 of them, and they are black...

...The scandal of that statistic is that it reflects not only the extraordinary difficulties facing the Jews who seek to leave Ethiopia...

...DOUBU JEOPARDY: OPPRESSION OF ETHIOPIAN JEWS GRAENUM BERGER A few weeks ago, when two Jews were killed in the course of civil upheavals in Iran, the story was carried on the front page of most Anglo-Jewish newspapers in this country...

...it has been as long since Joseph Halevi, a European Jewish scholar, and Azriel Hilde-sheimer, a distinguished rabbi, proclaimed that they were true Jews...

...Jewish life was sustained by Kohanim (priests) rather than rabbis, a role unknown to the Falashas...

...Graenum Berger is a consultant to Israeli institutions...

...The country is Ethiopia...

...And above all, it is impossible to understand or accept why world Jewish organizations, which do not suffer the constraints that may limit Israel's ability to intervene, remain silent on the matter...

...It is difficult to understand why, during all the years that Israeli planes, both civilian and military, flew regularly to Addis Ababa, no shlichim (emissaries) were dispatched to mobilize the Falashas for aliyah...

...They lived in mud huts on rented farms (land ownership was forbidden them), eking out a livelihood through subsistence agriculture and some artisan-ship in textiles, iron, and clay...

...The Kohanim, who until recent times often lived monasti...

...It has been more than a hundred years since James Bruce, an English adventurer, wrote about them, describing their wretched condition as well as their "moral superiority" to other Ethiopians...

...The Jews there call themselves Beta Israel...

...Jacques Faitlovitch made his adventurous visits to the interior of the country in 1904-5 and again in 1908-9 that the world learned in detail of their deteriorating condition, of the decline in their numbers due to poverty, disease, discrimination, and missionary activity...

...When these men wrote, there were still 150,000 Ethiopian Jews—down from the estimated half million who dominated a good part of Ethiopia until the 17th century and maintained an independent kingdom until they were conquered in 1632...

...But even these few schools, staffed by a handful of Ethiopian Jews who had been educated in Europe and Palestine, and which never reached more than a small fraction of the population, were destroyed by the Italians, who controlled Ethiopia from 1935 to 1943...

...Nor did the establishment of Israel, although it was greeted with joy and enthusiasm in even remote mountain villages of Ethiopian Jewry, bring relief...

...But it was not until Dr...

...Even if there are compelling raisons d'etat—considerations of international relations— which prevent Israel from taking an active role in the exodus of the Falashas, it is hard to justify the effort, over the years, to assert that the Falashas are not "really" Jews (although both of Israel's Chief Rabbis have declared that they are), or that they suffer from loathsome, contagious diseases, or that they are incapable of adjusting to a Western society, or that their unique and exotic culture would be destroyed were they to move en masse from their native land...

...It reflects as well,.and perhaps even in greater measure, the intolerable obstacles placed before those Ethiopian Jews who seek to enter Israel...