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| Photo courtesy of VisitEthiopia.et. |
Rabbi Capers Funnye died Monday. I can't recall how he got on my radar, but in 1991 I attended a service at his South Side synagogue and wrote about him and other Black Jews. What I remember most about the story are peripherals — editors at the paper were reluctant to run it, since it wasn't "news" ("It's news," I recall saying, "if people don't know about it.") And the complaints from angry Ethiopian Jews in Chicago who felt the divinity of their origins were being questioned. Anyway, I've posted the story previously, but not the little sidebar that went with it. In the years that followed, almost the entirety of the Ethiopian Jewish population were also air-lifted to Israel, that pariah of the western world. I guess those Falashas are colonizers too, moving from one part of Africa to a spot just north of the continent.
When French scholar Joseph Halevy made contact with the Jews of Ethiopia in 1867, he found they were skeptical about his claims to being Jewish.
Halevy was a white man and, as the Ethiopians knew, all Jews were black.
The question of how tens of thousands of black Jews came to be planted in a remote, impoverished region of Africa is one of the great riddles of anthropology.
They often are called Falashas, a term they consider pejorative because the word means "stranger" or "outsider" or "no roots" and signifies a lowly place in society. They prefer to be called "Beta-Israel" or "House of Israel."
The Ethiopian Jews claim to be descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Anthropologists guess they were converted, en masse, thousands of years ago.
They do not practice Judaism as found in Skokie. But there is no question they follow Judaism of a sort. They follow certain kosher dietary laws, observe Jewish festivals, are circumcised, keep the Sabbath on Saturday and read the Torah translated into Ge'ez, an ancient Ethiopian tongue. Their priests are called kohanim.
They lived in obscurity as blacksmiths and potters until the ouster of Haile Selassie in September, 1974, when they became swept up in the civil war that devastated the country.
In 1975, Israel's orthodox Jewish establishment declared that the Ethiopian Jews were true Jews, descendants of the lost tribe of Dan, and therefore had the right of return and to settle in the land of Israel. At the time, only several hundred Ethiopian Jews lived in Israel.
Over the next decade, the Israeli government conducted a rescue, dubbed Operation Moses, that secretly airlifted as many as 20,000 out of the Sudanese capital of Khartoum and resettled them in Israel.
Fewer than 20,000 were left in Ethiopia.
The airlift was kept under wraps until 1985, when news of it broke, embarrassing the various African governments who collaborated in the airlift and bringing it to a halt.
Since then Ethiopian Jews have continued to trickle out, depending on the politics of the moment. Only a handful live in Chicago.
The relocation to the Middle East was a jarring adjustment for both sides. The Israelis sometimes reacted with racist fear and an air of religious superiority to the Ethiopians, who had to cope with racial biases of their own.
Halevy was a white man and, as the Ethiopians knew, all Jews were black.
The question of how tens of thousands of black Jews came to be planted in a remote, impoverished region of Africa is one of the great riddles of anthropology.
They often are called Falashas, a term they consider pejorative because the word means "stranger" or "outsider" or "no roots" and signifies a lowly place in society. They prefer to be called "Beta-Israel" or "House of Israel."
The Ethiopian Jews claim to be descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Anthropologists guess they were converted, en masse, thousands of years ago.
They do not practice Judaism as found in Skokie. But there is no question they follow Judaism of a sort. They follow certain kosher dietary laws, observe Jewish festivals, are circumcised, keep the Sabbath on Saturday and read the Torah translated into Ge'ez, an ancient Ethiopian tongue. Their priests are called kohanim.
They lived in obscurity as blacksmiths and potters until the ouster of Haile Selassie in September, 1974, when they became swept up in the civil war that devastated the country.
In 1975, Israel's orthodox Jewish establishment declared that the Ethiopian Jews were true Jews, descendants of the lost tribe of Dan, and therefore had the right of return and to settle in the land of Israel. At the time, only several hundred Ethiopian Jews lived in Israel.
Over the next decade, the Israeli government conducted a rescue, dubbed Operation Moses, that secretly airlifted as many as 20,000 out of the Sudanese capital of Khartoum and resettled them in Israel.
Fewer than 20,000 were left in Ethiopia.
The airlift was kept under wraps until 1985, when news of it broke, embarrassing the various African governments who collaborated in the airlift and bringing it to a halt.
Since then Ethiopian Jews have continued to trickle out, depending on the politics of the moment. Only a handful live in Chicago.
The relocation to the Middle East was a jarring adjustment for both sides. The Israelis sometimes reacted with racist fear and an air of religious superiority to the Ethiopians, who had to cope with racial biases of their own.
— Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 31, 1991
I was surprised to find out recently tht Jeh. Witnesses don't eat pork or shellfish either.
ReplyDeleteWhat lovely eyes that lady has.
ReplyDeleteBonkers interesting column. Thank you for pulling it out of the archive! Hoping someday for a book compiling all of these gems. I would actually love an audiobook version.
ReplyDeleteAn audiobook of Neil Steinberg reading selected EGD columns -- brilliant idea. I would love this!
Deletei knew of Rabbi Funnye only because he was related to Michele Obama and referred to as "Obama's rabbi". I did not any of the history presented here, and I thank you for the lesson, Mr S.
ReplyDeleteWhy do I remember seeing this very recently? Maybe I was browsing in the archives.
ReplyDeleteI do that quite often. Fascinating to see where we were at in previous years.
Thanks, Neil, for your reposting of a most interesting column . As mentioned in previous comment sections, I really enjoy the breadth and depth of your interests and inquistiveness that prompt such interesting columns.
ReplyDeleteColumns such as this prompt me to explore further and today not only did I learn of the existence of Ethiopian Jews, but also upon further exploration learned that the city of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, is at the confluence of the Nile River's two major tributaries, the White and Blue Nile rivers, with the White Nile flowing out of Lake Victoria, one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world, second only in surface area to Lake Superior, and the Blue Nile, which outflows from Lake Tana in Ethiopia.
Prior to this article, my knowledge of Khartoum was limited to a British movie epic (probably little known but to a few movie geeks such as myself) from 1966 called Khartoum, starring Charlton Heston, about the Siege of Khartoum, 1884-1885, when the Sudan and parts of North Aftrica had been colonized by the UK. As all might surmise, it's one of his much lesser known films.
Question for you: When you eventually retire (assuming that's the plan), will you still be able to access and reprint within the space of EGD your Sun-Times columns of the past, as the S-T is now a non-profit site and presumably would permit public access to its archive, or will the S-T own your work and dictate terms of access, if at all?
Thanks, Neil. I really dig these column reprints, especially on the weekends, when i can separate from politics. local and national, and local news programs reports of continuous if-it-bleeds-it-leads and smash-and-grab thefts on the North side. Such a nice oasis that EGD is for me.
In the Christian Bible, in the book of Acts, written sometime between 60 and 90 AD, disciple Philip encounters an Ethiopian who is reading the book of Isaiah from the Jewish Bible. Philip goes on to proselytize him, but my point is that an Ethiopian is reading from a Jewish prophet 2,000 years ago, so weren't there already Jews in Ethiopia? Also, in the Jewish Bible, Moses has an Ethiopian wife, a fact which causes some family discord, many centuries before that.
ReplyDeleteThe impressive thing is that, despite reservations about it being "news," the Sun-Times did print the story and the sidebar. The range of topics that you write about that would not be considered "news" by many, yet are interesting examinations of various topics, is one of the things that makes your column such a distinguished and surprising addition to a daily newspaper.
ReplyDelete"The Ethiopian Jews claim to be descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba."
"And the complaints from angry Ethiopian Jews in Chicago who felt the divinity of their origins were being questioned."
How is their claim any more questionable, or eligible to be evaluated, than the belief by loads of folks that every human alive descended from Noah, his wife and their 3 sons and daughters-in-law?
When will we learn how much religious, racial, and cultural differences generally, all provide gems of information
ReplyDelete