Introducing the Beta Yisrael

During the past two weekday sessions and again yesterday, I introduced the Edot students to the first edah whose history and culture we'll be exploring this year - the Ethiopian edah or, as they call themselves, the Beta Yisrael (House of Israel). This edah was so isolated from other Jewish communities for so many centuries, that its members believed they were the last Jews left on Earth. What a shock it was for them to learn that there were other Jewish communities in the world, and they were white!

There are various theories as to how a Jewish community first established itself in the northern Ethiopian Gondar Province, bordering the Semien mountains (they may have originally been Yemenite Jews trading across the Red Sea with Ethiopians; they may have been refugees from the Babylonian Conquest of the Kingdom of Judah in 586 B.C.E., who made their way by boat along the coast of the Red Sea from Egypt to Ethiopia; or perhaps they were members of the exiled Judean community in Babylon, who became traders and made their way from Mesopotamia by land and sea to Ethiopia). The Beta Yisrael have their own origin myth, which goes back to the days of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba some 3,000 years ago.

During the weekday sessions, I reviewed the discussion we had at the start of the school year about what it means to be Jewish. I asked the students to share once again how you can tell if someone is Jewish, and I wrote everything they shared on the whiteboard. The list included going to synagogue, speaking Hebrew, wearing a Star of David, having a mezuzah on the door, wearing a keepa (yarmulke), a prayer shawl (tallit), t'fillin (phylacteries), never mixing milk with meat, observing all the Jewish holidays, etc. After 5 minutes, I crossed out almost everything on the list, and asked the students, "If a group of people didn't go to synagogue, didn't pray in Hebrew, didn't recognize the word "Torah" and didn't know what a tallit or keepa or t'fillin or mezuzah were, mixed milk with meat, and didn't know about the holiday of Hanuka, are they Jewish?" Most of the students immediately and emphatically said, "NO!"

This was my introduction to the Beta Yisrael, who separated from the larger Jewish community before Rabbinic Judaism fully developed. They did have a holy text similar to the Torah - the "Orit." The Orit is written in Ge'ez, an ancient Semitic language used by the Beta Yisrael only for ritual purposes. The Orit includes books which the Rabbis did not include in the Hebrew Bible - the Book of Enoch, for example. And they follow Jewish law exactly as it was written down in the Books of the Torah before the commandments were interpreted by Rabbis. It's no wonder that when they began arriving in Israel in large numbers, especially during the 1984 Operation Moses and 1991 Operation Solomon, Rabbinic authorities in Israel refused to acknowledge them as Jews, and insisted they undergo conversion.

Yesterday, I shared a segment of a video called "Falasha! The Saga of Ethiopian Jewry" with the students (the first 7:48 minutes), to briefly share their history and some of their culture with the students. The video was actually a bit of a review already, since at the start of Sunday's sessions, I introduced the students to the historical novel I'll be reading to them during our first semester - "The Storyteller's Beads" by Jane Kurtz. The novel shares the history and culture of the Beta Yisrael through the eyes of two girls in the year 1984 - the year of Operation Moses.

As I read, I let the students doodle on scrap paper. On Sunday's they eat their snack as I read.

 Once the students were made aware of the difficulties the Beta Yisrael encountered during their history in that country, I shared with them the difficult journey many of them were forced to make to reach Israeli planes waiting for them in Sudan in 1984 and again in 1991. These Jews, like Jews in other edot all over the world, had always dreamed of returning to Zion. When the chance came, they risked their lives to reach the planes. Many died along the way. The second video I shared yesterday, "Ha'Masa l'Eretz Yisra'el" ("The Journey to the Land of Israel") is a re-enactment of such a journey presented by a 6th grade class of new immigrants in the Yeshurun School of Cholon (a suburb of Tel Aviv). The video begins with the students showing the difficulties Beta Yisrael members had to face upon their arrival in Israel - looking different, not being recognized as Jews, resentment from other Jews who believed too many resources were being used to help integrate the Beta Yisrael into Israeli culture, and finally, the re-enactment itself based on the song of the same title written by an Israeli composer, Shlomo Gronich, who created an Ethiopian children's choir in Israel back in the 1980's called the Sheba Choir, which sings the song in the video. Click here for the English translation of the song.

Even as we were watching this last video, Maya - our music director - came to our classroom, and as soon as the video was over, she taught us to sing the song. There's a special reason I'd like the students to feel familiar with the song - I'll be revealing that reason in a future post, so stay tuned! Here's Maya teaching us the song's chorus:

  

Aside from our Edot studies, we still leave time for other important activities. Our weekday community-building activity for the Shira, Y'tzira and Edot 5th and 6th graders this past week was another success. This time we played a simple form of "Pictionary," during which volunteers were assigned a Jewish ritual, and using only the marker on the whiteboard - no words, no gestures - they had to draw a picture in only one minute as a clue to allow the rest of the students to figure out which ritual they were assigned.

Can you guess the ritual? Almost all the students guessed it with only this picture on the board! (Unscrolling the Torah during Simchat Torah celebrations!)

Even with only a minute, some students created elaborate drawings - any guesses which ritual this is? (Lighting Shabbat candles!)

And while we're playing, everyone is enjoying a snack - fuel for the session to follow!

Immediately following the games, we returned to our Edot classroom and had more fun with our Hebrew Through Movement activities. Now that the month of Tishrei holidays are over, I began to introduce Shabbat vocabulary to the students.

We reviewed vocabulary we've been using since the start of school, but this time, I introduced a flashcard with the Hebrew word "La'koom" ("Stand up") on it. Even before the 6th graders begin to work with volunteers on learning to decode Hebrew, we're slowly introducing the Hebrew letters - one letter each week - and words beginning with those letters, as well as whole words which the students already recognize from the commands.

Morah Charna, l'hareem ner shel Shabbat (Teacher Charna, lift up a Shabbat candle)

Joey, la'seem ner shel Shabbat al ha'rosh shel Ari (Joey, put a Shabbat candle on Ari's head)

Brahm, l'hareem ner shel Shabbat ba'pamot shel Shabbat (Brahm, lift up a Shabbat candle in a Shabbat candlestick)

This year, for the first time, our 5th and 6th graders will be having music lessons with Maya during the weekday sessions, every other week, during which time she will teach us new melodies for prayer chants (this week we learned a new way to sing the Barechu prayer), as well as holiday songs and songs of Israel. Maya, as noted above, will also be coming into our Edot classroom to teach us songs of the Edot we are learning about. Here she is teaching Shira, Y'tzira and Edot students the new Barechu melody: