Edot: Beta Yisrael

This past week, our Edot students began studying the history and culture of the Ethiopian Jewish community - the Beta Yisrael (the House of Israel), as they call themselves. Most people have come to refer to this community as "The Falasha," but as we learned this past week, this was a name given to the Jews by the Ethiopian Christians. It literally means, "the outcasts" in Amharic, the language of Ethiopia.

The Beta Yisrael are unlike other Edot, in that they separated from the main body of Jews before the development of Rabbinic Judaism. Until their integration over the past few decades into Israeli and mainstream Jewish society, they followed the commandments of the Torah literally. For example, they mixed meat with milk because they literally followed the Biblical commandment "not to boil the kid in its mother's milk." They sacrificed according to the laws of sacrifice on major holidays, and had no knowledge of the post-Torah holidays of Purim and Hanuka, or of rituals such as wearing tzitzit or t'filin (phylacteries). They did not even remember Hebrew, reading the Torah (the "Orit," as they refer to it) in the ancient Semitic Ge'ez language. Their religious leaders are called "Kessim" (sing., Kes). Because of this, the rabbinic authorities in Israel refused to initially accept them as Jews.

We began this unit of study with my introduction last Sunday to the novel which I'll be reading every Sunday to the class this semester: "The Storyteller's Beads" by Jane Kurtz. This is a wonderful story of unlikely friendships and courage in the face of adversity. It's told in two voices, Sahay and Rahel, a Christian and a Jew, respectively, living in Ethiopia in the 1980's. Each is forced to leave her home for different reasons, but ultimately they end up together, learning to look past ethnic differences and preconceived notions, and learning to depend upon each other. The novel culminates in an emotional air-lift out of Ethiopia in a fictionalized account of Operation Moses (1984). The descriptions in this story of the Beta Yisrael - their beliefs and culture - are perfect for our unit of study.

During the week day sessions, and again yesterday, I shared 3 YouTube videos with the students, the first of which shared the Beta Yisrael's own version of how they came to Ethiopia, as well as how they contributed to Ethiopian society. Falasha! The Saga of Ethiopian Jewry
(I shared just the first 8 minutes of this video in class.)

The next video described the 1984 and 1991 Operations Moses and Solomon, respectively, using a Shlomo Gronich song sung by the Sheba Choir (composed of Beta Yisrael children) as backdrop to sharing the hardships of the two mass exoduses of the Beta Yisrael from Ethiopia to Israel, carried out by the Israeli government: Memories of Africa

Finally, I shared HaMasah (The Journey) which again shares a song by Shlomo Gronich. Here, the dangerous trek through the desert of Sudan is acted out in Israel's Negev Desert by a 6th grade class in the "House of the Immigrant" Ulpan, which specializes in helping the children of new immigrants learn Hebrew and Jewish history, allowing them after one or two years to be mainstreamed into the public school system. It also shares this community's efforts to be acknowledged as Jews by other Jews in Israel.Soon after we viewed this video, Joel Siegel came in and taught us to sing the song ourselves. He also taught us "Al Tir'uni," taken from King Solomon's "Song of Songs" in the Bible. Traditionally, Solomon wrote this as a love song to the Queen of Sheba (whom the Beta Yisrael consider their founding matriarch). The English translation of the song is, "Do not stare at me because I am black, I have been bronzed by the sun. I am black and beautiful amongst the daughters of Jerusalem."

On a totally different note, the 5th and 6th graders met for the first time this past week in their assigned Hebrew elective classes - Games, Hebrew Conversation (Ulpan), and Cooking. I am leading the Hebrew Cooking elective. Even though Rosh Ha'Shana has come and gone, I thought it would be nice to start the elective by having the students prepare a round challah, symbolic of the cyclical nature of the year. Below are a few photos which tell the story of our first meeting, along with captions containing Hebrew vocabulary I taught as we prepared the dough.