wkp@lanl.ARPA (01/27/85)
The Ethiopian Jews are being settled and absorbed in Israel better than I could have imagined. The Israeli newspapers are carrying articles with titles "Shalom to you, Jews of Ethiopia." There is proud talk of how, even in such terrible economic times, the Jewish people have not deserted their brothers in Ethiopia. Even the government has enforced strict measures so as to ensure that the mistakes of the past (i.e., the treatment accorded the Sephardim in general and the Yemenites in particular) will not be repeated. From what I have read in "Yisrael Shelanu", an American Hebrew-language weekly, these Jews are very knowing and proud of their heritage. They have rejected the racist Ultra-Orthodox suggestion that they re-imerse themselves in a mikvah "just to make sure." One Jew responded, "Why should I? I am 100% Jewish! Christians have to get immersed in order to become Jewish. On the eighth day of our lives, we already know who we are. When we are seven years old, we already fast on Yom Kippur." This same person was also asked if he has felt any prejudice because of his color. He responded: "I have been here for a short while and I have felt no such thing. But people do tell us that we are...a pretty people. And this is true." My mother is doing volunteer work in Jerusalem to help absorb these people into Israeli society. She reports substantially the same thing. One interesting religious problem is that the women feel it necessary to leave their settlement during the time of "family purity" in accordance with the torah. They have not yet been exposed to the rabbinical interpretation of this mitzvah which now allows the woman to stay with her husband, but to be separated physically from him. --------------------- bill peter {ihnp4,seismo}!cmcl2!lanl!wkp
jrkesselman@watrose.UUCP (jrkesselman) (02/20/85)
As Jews, why are we so concerned with Halacha when we discuss the Ethiopian Jews? Clearly the "Jewish thing to do " is to accept them openly from the society in which they were persecuted. Ultra religious Jews who are making an issue of "strict halacha" are forgetting the basic values of Judaism. Our Ethiopian brothers should be accepted as Jews into Israeli society without question. We as Jews should know what persecution is and should be fighting for the rights of Ethiopian Jewry. We should not be focusing our energy on the "authenticity" of their Jewishness. Instead we should show our "jewishness" by accepting them as Jews without making them go through halachic conversion. Jack Kesselman Univercity of Waterloo