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The Beta Israel lived in northern and northwestern Ethiopia, in more than small villages spread over a wide territory, alongside predominantly Christian and Muslim populations.

They practice a non- Talmudic form of Judaism that is similar in some respects to Karaite Judaism. In Israel, this form of Judaism is referred to as Haymanot.

Beta Israel appears to have been isolated from mainstream Jewish communities for at least a millennium. They suffered religious persecution and a significant portion of the community was forced into Christianity during the 19th and 20th centuries; those converted to Christianity came to be known as the Falash Mura.

The larger Beta Abraham Christian community is also considered to have historical links to the Beta Israel. The Beta Israel made contact with other Jewish communities in the late 20th century. Following this, a rabbinic debate ensued over whether or not the Beta Israel were Jews.

After halakhic Jewish law and constitutional discussions, Israeli officials decided, in , that the Israeli Law of Return was to be applied to the Beta Israel. By the end of , there were , people of Ethiopian descent in Israel , including nearly 81, people born in Ethiopia and about 38, native-born Israelis about 32 percent of the community with at least one parent born in Ethiopia or Eritrea formerly part of Ethiopia.

Approximately 87, were born in Ethiopia, and 67, were Israeli-born with fathers born in Ethiopia. Throughout its history, the community has been referred to by numerous names. According to late tradition the Beta Israel literally, 'house of Israel' in Ge'ez had their origins in the 4th century CE, when it is claimed that the community refused to convert to Christianity during the rule of Abreha and Atsbeha identified with Se'azana and Ezana , the monarchs of the Kingdom of Aksum who embraced Christianity.

This name contrasts with Beta Kristiyan literally, 'house of Christianity', meaning 'church' in Ge'ez. Since the s, it has also become the official name used in the scholarly and scientific literature to refer to the community. The name Ayhud ' Jews ' , is rarely used in the community, as the Christians had used it as a derogatory term.

The term Falasha , which means 'landless', 'wanderers', or 'associated with monks', was given to the community in the 15th century by the Emperor Yeshaq I ; its use is now considered offensive. Zagwe , referring to the Agaw people of the Zagwe dynasty , among the original inhabitants of northwest Ethiopia, is considered derogatory, since it associates the community with the largely pagan Agaw.

Haymanot Ge'ez : ሃይማኖት is the colloquial term for "faith" which is also used as a term for the Jewish religion by the Beta Israel community, [21] and Ethiopian Orthodox Christians also use it as a term for their own religion. Mäṣḥafä Kedus Holy Scriptures is the name for their religious literature.

The language of the writings is Geʽez , which also is the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The holiest book is the Orit meaning "law" or Octateuch : the Five Books of Moses plus Joshua , Judges and Ruth.

The rest of the Bible has secondary importance. They possess the Book of Lamentations from the traditional Hebrew canon, as part of the Book of Jeremiah , as in the Orthodox Tewahedo biblical canon. Deuterocanonical books that also make up part of the canon are Sirach , Judith , Esdras 1 and 2 , the Books of Meqabyan , Jubilees , Baruch 1 and 4 , Tobit , Enoch , and the testaments of Abraham , Isaac , and Jacob.

Many of these books differ substantially from the similarly numbered and named texts in Koine Greek and Hebrew such as "Maccabbees" , though some of the Ge'ez works are clearly dependent on those texts. Others appear to have other ancient literary and oral origins.

All of the texts are also used by the Orthodox Christian population as well, though with varying levels of importance between the communities. Important non-Biblical writings include: Mota Aron "Death of Aaron" , Mota Musé "Death of Moses" , Nagara Muse "The Conversation of Moses" , Te'ezaza Sanbat "Commandments of the Sabbath" , Arde'et "Disciples" , Gorgoryos "Apocalypse of Gorgorios" , Ezra "Apocalypse of Ezra" , Barok "Apocalypse of Baruch" , Mäṣḥafä Sa'atat "Book of Hours" , Fālasfā "Philosophers" , Abba Elias "Father Elijah" , Mäṣḥafä Mäla'əkt "Book of Angels" , Dərsanä Abrəham Wäsara Bägabs "Homily on Abraham and Sarah in Egypt" , Gadla Sosna "The Story of Susanna" , and Baqadāmi Gabra Egzi'abḥēr "In the Beginning God Created".

The synagogue is called the masgid place of worship , it is also called the bet maqdas Holy house or the ṣalot bet Prayer house. Beta Israel kashrut law is based mainly on the books of Leviticus , Deuteronomy , and Jubilees.

Permitted and forbidden animals and their signs appear in Leviticus —8 and Deuteronomy —8. Forbidden birds are listed in Leviticus —23 and Deuteronomy — Signs of permitted fish are written on Leviticus —12 and Deuteronomy — Insects and larvae are forbidden according to Leviticus — Gid hanasheh is forbidden per Genesis Mixtures of milk and meat are not prepared or eaten, but benefiting from them are not banned either: Haymanot interpreted the verses Exodus , Exodus , and Deuteronomy "shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk" literally, as in Karaite Judaism ; whereas, under Rabbinic Judaism , any benefit from mixing dairy products with meat is banned.

Ethiopian Jews were forbidden to eat the food of non-Jews. A Kahen eats only meat he has slaughtered himself, which his hosts prepare both for him and themselves. Beta Israel who broke these taboos were ostracized, and had to undergo a purification process. Purification included fasting for one or more days, eating only uncooked chickpeas provided by the Kahen, and ritual purification before entering the village.

Unlike other Ethiopians, the Beta Israel do not eat raw meat dishes such as kitfo or gored gored. The Beta Israel calendar is a lunar calendar of 12 months, each 29 or 30 days alternately. Every four years, there is a leap year which adds a full month 30 days.

The calendar is a combination of the ancient calendar of Alexandrian Jewry , Book of Jubilees, Book of Enoch, Abu Shaker, and the Ge'ez calendar. Holidays in the Haymanot religion [27] are divided into daily, monthly, and annually.

The annual holidays by month are:. Monthly holidays are mainly memorial days to the annual holiday; these are yačaraqā ba'āl "new moon festival" [29] on the first day of every month, asärt "ten" on the tenth day to commemorate Yom Kippur, asrã hulat "twelve" on the twelfth day to commemorate Shavuot, asrã ammest "fifteen" on the fifteenth day to commemorate Passover and Sukkot, and ṣomä mälěya a fast on the last day of every month.

The Beta Israel once spoke Qwara and Kayla , both of which are Agaw languages. Now, they speak Tigrinya and Amharic , both Semitic languages. Their liturgical language is Geʽez , also Semitic.

Those Beta Israel residing in the State of Israel now use Modern Hebrew as a daily language. Contemporary scholars believe that the Beta Israel emerged comparatively recently and formed a distinct ethnonational group in the context of historical pressures that came to a head from the 14th to the 16th centuries.

Alternative timelines include the later crises in Judea, e. Though all the available traditions [36] correspond to recent interpretations, they reflect ancient convictions.

According to Jon Abbink, three different versions are to be distinguished among the traditions which were recorded by the priests of the community.

According to one account, the Beta Israel originated in the kingdom of Israel and they were the contemporaries rather than the descendants of King Solomon and Menelik. According to another account, the forefathers of the Beta Israel are supposed to have arrived in Ethiopia by coming from the North, independently from Menelik and his company:.

The Falashas [ sic ] migrated like many of the other sons of Israel to exile in Egypt after the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians in BCE the time of the Babylonian exile. This group of people was led by the great priest On. They remained in exile in Egypt for a few hundred years until the reign of Cleopatra.

When she was engaged in a war against Augustus Caesar, the Jews supported her. When she was defeated, it became dangerous for the small minorities to remain in Egypt so there was another migration between approximately 39—31 BCE. Some of the migrants went to South Arabia and settled in Yemen.

Some of them went to Sudan and continued to migrate until they reached Ethiopia , where they were helped by Egyptian traders who guided them through the desert. Some of them entered Ethiopia through Quara near the Sudanese border , and some of them came via Eritrea.

Later in time, there was an Abyssinian king named Kaleb , who wished to enlarge his kingdom, so he declared war on the Yemen and conquered it. And as a result, another group of Jews, led by Azonos and Phinhas , arrived in Ethiopia during his reign. The Ethiopian history described in the Kebra Nagast relates that Ethiopians are descendants of Israelite tribes who came to Ethiopia with Menelik I , alleged to be the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba or Makeda, in the legend see 1 Kings —13 and 2 Chronicles — The legend relates that Menelik, as an adult, returned to his father in Jerusalem, and later resettled in Ethiopia.

He took with him the Ark of the Covenant. In the Bible , there is no mention that the Queen of Sheba either married or had any sexual relations with King Solomon although some identify her with the "black and beautiful" in Song of Songs However, the "royal gifts" are interpreted by some as sexual contact.

The loss of the Ark is not mentioned in the Bible. Hezekiah later makes reference to the Ark in 2 Kings The Kebra Negast asserts that the Beta Israel are descended from a battalion of men of Judah who fled southward down the Arabian coastal lands from Judea after the breakup of the Kingdom of Israel into two kingdoms in the 10th century BCE while King Rehoboam reigned over Judah.

Although the Kebra Nagast and some traditional Ethiopian histories have stated that Gudit or "Yudit", Judith; another name given her was "Esato", Esther , a 10th-century usurping queen, was Jewish, some scholars consider that it is unlikely that this was the case.

It is more likely, they say, that she was a pagan southerner [43] or a usurping Christian Aksumite Queen. According to the Kebra Nagast , Jewish, Christian and pagan kings ruled in harmony at that time. Furthermore, the Zagwe dynasty claimed legitimacy according to the Kebra Nagast by saying it was descended from Moses and his Ethiopian wife.

Most of the Beta Israel consider the Kebra Negast to be legend. As its name expresses, "Glory of Kings" meaning the Christian Aksumite kings , it was written in the 14th century in large part to delegitimize the Zagwe dynasty, to promote instead a rival "Solomonic" claim to authentic Jewish Ethiopian antecedents, and to justify the Christian overthrow of the Zagwe by the "Solomonic" Aksumite dynasty, whose rulers are glorified.

The writing of this polemic shows that criticisms of the Aksumite claims of authenticity were current in the 14th century, two centuries after they came to power. Many Beta Israel believe that they are descended from the tribe of Dan. To prove the antiquity and authenticity of their claims, the Beta Israel cite the 9th-century CE testimony of Eldad ha-Dani the Danite , from a time before the Zagwean dynasty was established.

Eldad was a Jewish man who appeared in Egypt and created a stir in that Jewish community and elsewhere in the Mediterranean Jewish communities he visited with claims that he had come from a Jewish kingdom of pastoralists far to the south.

The only language Eldad spoke was a hitherto unknown dialect of Hebrew. Although he strictly followed the Mosaic commandments, his observance differed in some details from Rabbinic halakhah.

Some observers thought that he might be a Karaite, although his practice also differed from theirs. He carried Hebrew books that supported his explanations of halakhah. He cited ancient authorities in the scholarly traditions of his own people.

Eldad said that the Jews of his own kingdom descended from the tribe of Dan which included the Biblical war-hero Samson who had fled the civil war in the Kingdom of Israel between Solomon's son Rehoboam and Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and resettled in Egypt.

From there, they moved southwards up the Nile into Ethiopia. The Beta Israel say this confirms that they are descended from these Danites. Eldad the Danite speaks of at least three waves of Jewish immigration into his region, creating other Jewish tribes and kingdoms.

The earliest wave settled in a remote kingdom of the "tribe of Moses": this was the strongest and most secure Jewish kingdom of all, with farming villages, cities and great wealth. Other sources tell of many Jews who were brought as prisoners of war from ancient Israel by Ptolemy I and settled on the border of his kingdom with Nubia Sudan.

Another tradition asserts that the Jews arrived either via the old district of Qwara in northwestern Ethiopia, or via the Atbara River , where the Nile tributaries flow into Sudan. Some accounts specify the route taken by their forefathers on their way upriver to the south from Egypt.

As mentioned above, the 9th-century Jewish traveler Eldad ha-Dani claimed he descended from the tribe of Dan. He also reported other Jewish kingdoms around his own or in East Africa during this time. His writings probably represent the first mention of the Beta Israel in Rabbinic literature.

Despite some skeptical critics, his authenticity has been generally accepted in current scholarship. His descriptions were consistent and even the originally doubtful rabbis of his time were finally persuaded.

Eldad's was not the only medieval testimony about Jewish communities living far to the south of Egypt, which strengthens the credibility of his account.

Obadiah ben Abraham Bartenura wrote in a letter from Jerusalem in I myself saw two of them in Egypt. They are dark-skinned and one could not tell whether they keep the teaching of the Karaites, or of the Rabbis, for some of their practices resemble the Karaite teaching but in other things, they appear to follow the instruction of the Rabbis; and they say they are related to the tribe of Dan.

Rabbi David ibn Zimra of Egypt — , writing similarly, held the Ethiopian Jewish community to be similar in many ways to the Karaites, writing of them on this wise:. the matter is well-known that there are perpetual wars between the kings of Kush , which has three kingdoms; part of which belonging to the Ishmaelites , and part of which to the Christians, and part of which to the Israelites from the tribe of Dan.

In all likelihood, they are from the sect of Sadok and Boethus , who are [now] called Karaites , since they know only a few of the biblical commandments , but are unfamiliar with the Oral Law , nor do they light the Sabbath candle.

War ceases not from amongst them, and every day they take captives from one another In the same responsum , he concludes that if the Ethiopian Jewish community wished to return to rabbinic Judaism, they would be received and welcomed into the fold, just as the Karaites who returned to the teachings of the Rabbanites in the time of Rabbi Abraham ben Maimonides.

Reflecting the consistent assertions made by Ethiopian Jews they dealt with or knew of, and after due investigation of their claims and their own Jewish behaviour, a number of Jewish legal authorities, in previous centuries and in modern times, have ruled halakhically according to Jewish legal code that the Beta Israel are indeed Jews, the descendants of the tribe of Dan , one of the Ten Lost Tribes.

With the rise of Christianity and later Islam , schisms arose and three kingdoms competed. Eventually, the Christian and Muslim Ethiopian kingdoms reduced the Jewish kingdom to a small impoverished section. The earliest authority to rule this way was the 16th-century scholar David ibn Zimra Radbaz , who explained elsewhere in a responsum concerning the status of a Beta Israel slave:.

But those Jews who come from the land of Cush are without doubt from the tribe of Dan, and since they did not have in their midst sages who were masters of the tradition, they clung to the simple meaning of the Scriptures. If they had been taught, however, they would not be irreverent towards the words of our sages, so their status is comparable to a Jewish infant taken captive by non-Jews… And even if you say that the matter is in doubt, it is a commandment to redeem them.

In , Ovadia Yosef , the Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel ruled, based on the writings of David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra and other accounts, that the Beta Israel were Jews and should be brought to Israel.

Two years later this opinion was confirmed by a number of other authorities who made similar rulings, including the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel Shlomo Goren. Some notable poskim religious law authorities from non-Zionist Ashkenazi circles, placed a safek legal doubt over the Jewish peoplehood of the Beta Israel.

Such dissenting voices include Rabbi Elazar Shach , Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv , Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach , and Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. In the s and early s, the Beta Israel were required to undergo a modified conversion ceremony involving immersion in a mikveh ritual bath , a declaration accepting Rabbinic law, and, for men, a hatafat dam brit symbolic recircumcision.

A number of DNA studies have been done on the Beta Israel. Genealogical DNA testing allows research into paternal meaning only through fathers and maternal meaning only through mothers ancestry. According to Cruciani et al. However, the A branches carried by Ethiopians Jews are principally of the A-Y variety, which formed about 10, years ago and is localized to the Ethiopian highlands and the Arabian peninsula.

The rest of the Beta Israel mainly belong to haplotypes linked with the E-M35 and J-M haplogroups, which are more commonly associated with Cushitic and Semitic-speaking populations in Northeast Africa. Further analysis show that the E-M35 carried by Ethiopian Jews is primarily indigenous to the Horn of Africa rather than being of Levantine origin.

A mitochondrial DNA study focused on maternal ancestry sampling 41 Beta Israel found them to carry The Ethiopian Jews' autosomal DNA has been examined in a comprehensive study by Tishkoff et al.

According to Bayesian clustering analysis, the Beta Israel generally grouped with other Cushitic and Ethiosemitic -speaking populations inhabiting the Horn of Africa. A study by Behar et al. on the genome-wide structure of Jews observed that "Ethiopian Jews Beta Israel and Indian Jews Bene Israel and Cochini cluster with neighbouring autochthonous populations in Ethiopia and western India, respectively, despite a clear paternal link between the Bene Israel and the Levant.

These results cast light on the variegated genetic architecture of the Middle East, and trace the origins of most Jewish Diaspora communities to the Levant. According to the study of Behar et al. Ethiopian Jews are clustered with the Ethio-Semitic speakers Amhara and Tigrayans rather than the Cushitic-speakers.

The Beta Israel are autosomally closer to other populations from the Horn of Africa than to any other Jewish population, including Yemenite Jews. concluded that the Ethiopian Jewish community was founded about 2, years ago probably by only a relatively small number of Jews from elsewhere with local people joining to the community, causing Beta Israel to become genetically distant from other Jewish groups.

According to a study by Agranat-Tamir et al. Early secular scholars considered the Beta Israel to be the direct descendant of Jews who lived in ancient Ethiopia, whether they were the descendants of an Israelite tribe, or converted by Jews living in Yemen , or by the Jewish community in southern Egypt at Elephantine.

The Asmach emigrated or were exiled from Elephantine to Kush in the time of Psamtik I or Psamtik II and settled in Sennar and Abyssinia. In the s, Jones and Monroe argued that the chief Semitic languages of Ethiopia may suggest an antiquity of Judaism in Ethiopia. These words must have been derived directly from a Jewish source, for the Abyssinian Church knows the scriptures only in a Ge'ez version made from the Septuagint.

Richard Pankhurst summarized the various theories offered about their origins as of that the first members of this community were.

Traditional Ethiopian savants, on the one hand, have declared that 'We were Jews before we were Christians', while more recent, well-documented, Ethiopian hypotheses, notably by two Ethiopian scholars, Dr Taddesse Tamrat and Dr Getachew Haile put much greater emphasis on the manner in which Christians over the years converted to the Falasha faith, thus showing that the Falashas were culturally an Ethiopian sect, made up of ethnic Ethiopians.

According to Jacqueline Pirenne , numerous Sabaeans left south Arabia and crossed over the Red Sea to Ethiopia to escape from the Assyrians, who had devastated the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE.

She says that a second major wave of Sabeans crossed over to Ethiopia in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE to escape Nebuchadnezzar II. This wave also included Jews fleeing from the Babylonian takeover of Judah.

In both cases, the Sabeans are assumed to have departed later from Ethiopia to Yemen. According to Menachem Waldman, a major wave of emigration from the Kingdom of Judah to Kush and Abyssinia dates to the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in the beginning of the seventh century BCE.

Rabbinic accounts of the siege assert that only about , Judeans remained in Jerusalem under King Hezekiah 's command, whereas about , Judeans led by Shebna had joined Sennacherib 's campaign against Tirhakah , king of Kush.

Sennacherib's campaign failed and Shebna's army was lost "at the mountains of darkness", suggestively identified with the Simien Mountains. In , Steve Kaplan wrote:. Although we don't have a single fine ethnographic research on Beta Israel, and the recent history of this tribe has received almost no attention by researchers, every one who writes about the Jews of Ethiopia feels obliged to contribute his share to the ongoing debate about their origin.

Politicians and journalists, Rabbis and political activists, not a single one of them withstood the temptation to play the role of the historian and invent a solution for this riddle. Richard Pankhurst summarized the state of knowledge on the subject in as follows: "The early origins of the Falashas are shrouded in mystery, and, for lack of documentation, will probably remain so for ever.

By , modern scholars of Ethiopian history and Ethiopian Jews generally supported one of two conflicting hypotheses for the origin of the Beta Israel, as outlined by Kaplan: [93]. Some Ethiopian Jewish practices disagree with rabbinic practice but do match the practices of late Second Temple sects, suggesting that Ethiopian Jews may possess a tradition from ancient Jewish groups whose beliefs have become extinct elsewhere.

The earliest recorded mention of the Beta Israel comes from the Royal Chronicle of Emperor Amda Seyon which dates to the early 14th century AD. According to this source, the Emperor sent troops to pacify the people "like Jews" in the regions of Semien , Tselemt , Tsegede and Wegara.

Another early reference to the Beta Israel is found in a Christian Ethiopian hagiography known as the Gädl Life of Abba Yafqarana Egzi', a fourteenth-century Ethiopian saint.

This work contains an account of a Christian monk by the name of Qozmos, who, following a dispute with his abbot, renounced Christianity, and joined a group of people who followed "the religion of the Jews". Qozmos then led the Jews of Semien and Tselemt to attack the Christians of Dembiya.

Eventually, this revolt was defeated by Emperor Dawit I who dispatched troops from Tigray to crush the rebellion. The emigration of the Beta Israel community to Israel was officially banned by the Communist Derg government of Ethiopia during the s, although it is now known that General Mengistu collaborated with Israel in order to receive money and arms in exchange for granting the Beta Israel safe passage during Operation Moses.

In , the Israeli authorities announced that the emigration of the Beta Israel to Israel was about to conclude, because almost all of the community had been evacuated. Nevertheless, thousands of other Ethiopians began leaving the northern region to take refuge in the government controlled capital, Addis Ababa, who were Jewish converts to Christianity and asking to immigrate to Israel.

As a result, a new term arose which was used to refer to this group: "Falash Mura". The Falash Mura , who weren't part of the Beta Israel communities in Ethiopia, were not recognized as Jews by the Israeli authorities, and were therefore not initially allowed to immigrate to Israel, making them ineligible for Israeli citizenship under Israel's Law of Return.

As a result, a lively debate has arisen in Israel about the Falash Mura, mainly between the Beta Israel community in Israel and their supporters and those opposed to a potential massive emigration of the Falash Mura people.

The government's position on the matter remained quite restrictive, but it has been subject to numerous criticisms, including criticisms by some clerics who want to encourage these people's return to Judaism.

During the s, the Israeli government finally allowed most of those who fled to Addis Ababa to immigrate to Israel. Others were allowed to immigrate to Israel as part of a humanitarian effort.

The Israeli government hoped that admitting these Falash Mura would finally bring emigration from Ethiopia to a close, but instead prompted a new wave of Falash Mura refugees fleeing to Addis Ababa and wishing to immigrate to Israel.

This led the Israeli government to harden its position on the matter in the late s. In February , the Israeli government decided to accept Orthodox religious conversions in Ethiopia of Falash Mura by Israeli Rabbis, after which they can then immigrate to Israel as Jews.

Although the new position is more open, and although the Israeli governmental authorities and religious authorities should in theory allow immigration to Israel of most of the Falash Mura wishing to do so who are now acknowledged to be descendants of the Beta Israel community , in practice, however, that immigration remains slow, and the Israeli government continued to limit, from to , immigration of Falash Mura to about per month.

In April , The Jerusalem Post stated that it had conducted a survey in Ethiopia, after which it was concluded that tens of thousands of Falash Mura still lived in rural northern Ethiopia. On 14 November , the Israeli cabinet approved a plan to allow an additional 8, Falash Mura to immigrate to Israel.

On November 16, , the Israeli cabinet unanimously voted in favor of allowing the last group of Falash Mura to immigrate over the next five years, but their acceptance will be conditional on a successful Jewish conversion process, according to the Interior Ministry.

The Ethiopian Beta Israel community in Israel today comprises more than , people. The rescues were within the context of Israel's national mission to gather diaspora Jews and bring them to the Jewish homeland. Some immigration has continued up until the present day.

Over time, the Ethiopian Jews in Israel moved out of the government owned mobile home camps which they initially lived in and settled in various cities and towns throughout Israel, with the encouragement of the Israeli authorities who grant new immigrants generous government loans or low-interest mortgages.

Similarly to other groups of immigrant Jews who made aliyah to Israel, the Ethiopian Jews have had to overcome obstacles to integrate into Israeli society. Over the years, there has been significant progress in the integration of young Beta Israels into Israeli society, primarily resulting from serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, alongside other Israelis their age.

This has led to an increase in opportunities for Ethiopian Jews after they are discharged from the army. Despite progress, Ethiopian Jews are still not well assimilated into Israeli-Jewish society. They remain, on average, on a lower economic and educational level than average Israelis.

The rate of Ethiopians who have dropped out of school has increased dramatically as well as the rate of juvenile delinquency, and there are high incidences of suicide and depression among this community. Barriers to intermarriage have been attributed to sentiments in both the Ethiopian community and Israeli society generally.

In , an event called the "blood bank affair" took place that demonstrated the discrimination and racism against Ethiopians in Israeli society. Blood banks would not use Ethiopian blood out of the fear of HIV being generated from their blood.

In May , Israeli Ethiopians demonstrated in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem against racism, after a video was released, showing an Israeli soldier of Ethiopian descent that was brutally beaten up by the Israeli police. Interviewed students of Ethiopian origin affirm that they do not feel accepted in Israeli society, due to a very strong discrimination towards them.

They say this because many of the new generation have been reclaiming their traditional Ethiopian names, Ethiopian language, Ethiopian culture, and Ethiopian music.

Falash Mura is the name given to those of the Beta Israel community in Ethiopia who converted to Christianity under pressure from Christian missionaries during the 19th century and the 20th century. Many Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity have been returning to the practice of Judaism.

The Israeli government can thus set quotas on their immigration and make citizenship dependent on their conversion to Orthodox Judaism. Slavery was practiced in Ethiopia as in much of Africa until it was formally abolished in After the slave was bought by a Jew, he went through conversion giyur , and became property of his master.

National memorials to the Ethiopian Jews who died on their way to Israel are located in Kiryat Gat , and at the National Civil Cemetery of the State of Israel in Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. In , plans to establish an Ethiopian Heritage Museum dedicated to the heritage and culture of the Ethiopian Jewish community were unveiled in Rehovot.

The museum will include a model of an Ethiopian village, an artificial stream, a garden, classrooms, an amphitheater, and a memorial to Ethiopian Zionist activists and Ethiopian Jews who died en route to Israel. Strong Black Coffee " Café Shahor Hazak "; קפה שחור חזק is an Ethiopian-Israeli hip hop duo.

The original term that the Beta Israel gave to the converts was "Faras Muqra" "horse of the raven" in which the word "horse" refers to the converts and the word "raven" refers to the missionary Martin Flad who used to wear black clothes.

In Hebrew the term "Falash Mura" or "Falashmura" is probably a result of confusion over the use of the term "Faras Muqra" and its derivatives and on the basis of false cognate it was given the Hebrew meaning Falashim Mumarim "converted Falashas".

The actual term "Falash Mura" has no clear origin. It is believed that the term may come from the Agaw and means "someone who changes their faith. In , Henry Aaron Stern , a Jewish convert to Christianity, traveled to Ethiopia in an attempt to convert the Beta Israel community to Christianity. For years, Ethiopian Jews were unable to own land and were often persecuted by the Christian majority of Ethiopia.

Ethiopian Jews were afraid to touch non-Jews because they believed non-Jews were not pure. They were also ostracized by their Christian neighbors. For this reason, many Ethiopian Jews converted to Christianity to seek a better life in Ethiopia. The Jewish Agency's Ethiopia emissary, Asher Seyum, says the Falash Mura "converted in the 19th and 20th century, when Jewish relations with Christian rulers soured.