Israel Seeks To Exterminate Ancient African Jewish Tradition

Undergroundraplegend
Undergroundraplegend Members Posts: 2,247 ✭✭✭✭✭
africanglobe.net/africa/israel-seeks-exterminate-ancient-african-jewish-tradition/

AFRICANGLOBE – Israel is closing the books on a rare millennia-old Jewish tradition.

Nearly three decades after Israel began airlifting Ethiopia’s ancient Jewish community out of the Horn of Africa, Israel’s rabbis are now working to phase out the community’s white-turbaned clergy, the kessoch, whose unusual religious practices are at odds with the White rabbinate’s Orthodox Judaism.

The effort has added to the sense of discrimination felt by Israel’s 120,000 Ethiopian citizens. These sentiments boiled over this month after a group of landlords in the southern town of Kiryat Malachi refused to accept Ethiopian Jews as tenants.The move has prompted large protests, including a gathering outside parliament on Wednesday that drew more than 1,000 young immigrants and other supporters.

Kess Semai Elias, 42, said the recent reports of discrimination add to his and other Ethiopian Jewish spiritual leaders’ dismay and feelings that they are not welcome.

“We are just like all the other Jews. We don’t have any other religion,” he said.

Descendants of the lost Israelite tribe of Dan, according to Jewish lore, Ethiopian Jews spent millennia isolated from the rest of the Jewish world. In most Jewish communities, the priesthood of the Bible was replaced by rabbis who emphasized text study and prayer. Ethiopia’s Jewish kessoch continued the traditions of Biblical-era priests, sacrificing animals and collecting the first fruits of the harvest.

The two traditions diverged so much that the first trickle of Ethiopian Jewish immigrants to Israel were asked to undergo a quickened conversion ceremony to appease European rabbis who were dubious about their religious pedigree.

When Israeli clandestine operations rescued large groups of Ethiopian Jews from war and famine in the 1980s and early 1990s, a rabbinic consensus was reached and the newcomers did not have to convert — except for a group known as the Falash Mura, whose ancestors were forcibly converted to Christianity generations before.

The 58 kessoch who arrived in Israel in those early days maintained their leadership role in the Ethiopian Jewish community, and in 1992 successfully lobbied the Israeli government to grant them salaries and status similar to those of government rabbis. But as the aging clergy began ordaining a new generation of kessoch over the past decade, and those new leaders also wanted recognition, Israel’s rabbinate objected.

After public demonstrations and a brief hunger strike, the newly ordained kessoch struck a bittersweet deal last month with Israel’s ministry of religious services.

The ministry would finally implement a 2010 government resolution to recognize 13 of them and give them state salaries. But Israel’s state rabbis made it very clear to the new kessoch: They would be the last.

“It’s for the best,” said Rabbi Yosef Hadana, 63, of the Israeli rabbinate.

Himself the son of a respected kess, Hadana long ago traded the shash, the white turban of his father’s tradition, for the black suit and fedora of ultra-Orthodox Jews.

“After 2,500 years of isolation from the nation of Israel, we have returned. Now we need to find a way to be one people,” Rabbi Hadana said.

Hadana says he holds great respect for the kessoch. They were the ones who once spun tales of Jerusalem’s splendor at evening storytelling sessions, keeping alive the Ethiopian Jews’ religious tradition. But anyone in Israel who wants to continue that tradition, he said, must get rabbinic training. Streamlining their religious practice can help integrate Ethiopian immigrants into Israeli society, he said.

Ethiopian-Israelis have long struggled in Israel, with literacy rates relatively low, the culture gap wide and rates of poverty well above the national average.

Many of the older generation work menial jobs, men as security guards and women as cleaners. Their children, most of whom grew up in Israel’s Orthodox Jewish religious schools, speak fluent Hebrew, serve in the army alongside European Israelis and are increasingly studying engineering and sciences in Israel’s universities. Despite these gains, the younger generation is still struggling compared to other Israelis.

The immigrants have also long complained of discrimination. In the late 90s it was discovered that Israel’s health services were throwing out Ethiopian-Israelis’ blood donations over alleged fears of diseases contracted in Africa.

This is not the first time in history that Ethiopian Jews have been asked to reform. Jacques Faitlovitch, one of the first Jewish outsiders to meet the community, told the kessoch in 1904 they would have to stop antiquated paschal sacrifices if they wanted acceptance in the wider Jewish world.

Polish-born Faitlovitch also pushed them to stop Judaism’s last existing monastic tradition. Ethiopia’s last Jewish monk spent his final days in Israel, secluded in a synagogue annex and preparing his own food for reasons of purity. He died about 10 years ago.

Other traditions, like priestly tithes and huts for menstruating women, were also given up upon moving to Israel.

Still, the kessoch, easily recognized by their ceremonial fly-swatting tassels and rainbow-colored sunbrellas, are not ready to be relegated to history. First-generation Ethiopian immigrants still call on them to adjudicate family conflicts, lead funeral prayers, and slaughter meat according to tradition.

Ethiopian Jews photo
Ethiopian Jews are stripped of their identity, then forced to practice White Jewish traditions
Israel only recently allowed kessoch into butcheries to slaughter their own animals — even though it is not considered kosher by European rabbinic standards.

But the rabbis still put their foot down when it comes to marriage. To be legal, weddings must be presided by state-recognized rabbis and include European Jewish practices, like exchanging rings and stomping on a glass.

Despite the country’s secular majority, its Orthodox rabbis strictly govern Jewish weddings. Israel does not recognize civil marriages, intermarriages or marriages performed by rabbis from the more liberal Reform and Conservative branches of Judaism — unless they took place abroad.

Israeli rabbis have now agreed to train the 13 new kessoch to perform marriages the European Jewish way. Nevertheless, for most of the kessoch, the prohibition on marrying is such a slap in the face that they cannot bear to show up at the weddings of their own community members.

Instead, they perform their own pirate wedding ceremonies for the newlyweds a few days later — a modest reenactment of the weeklong marriage celebrations they used to hold back in Africa.

At one nighttime ceremony in seaside Ashkelon, women in embroidered cotton robes bounced their shoulders to

Comments

  • Undergroundraplegend
    Undergroundraplegend Members Posts: 2,247 ✭✭✭✭✭
    African beats. Family and friends greeted the couple with the toot of a golden horn. Honey beer flowed from a steel kettle, and an army of men scooped curried lamb — slaughtered by the presiding kess — onto flat injera bread.

    Newly ordained Kess Abiyu Azariya, 44, pushed his way to the head of the dance floor. Wearing a white turban and shawl, he recited wedding blessings in the ancient Ethiopian tongue, Geez. “I am singing these prayers to remind the young people what a wedding was like in Ethiopia,” he told the crowd in spoken Amharic.

    But the young people were nowhere in sight. Most of the 300 revelers in the room were of the older generation. The dozen young Ethiopian-Israelis who showed up that evening were outside drinking cheap Israeli beer and fiddling with their smartphones. When asked about the practice, they were ambivalent.

    “I hope it continues, but it probably won’t,” said David Nadou, 24, shrugging.

    The newly ordained kessoch are trying to work against that tide. Kess Semai says they’re close to ordaining yet another group of 30 kessoch — even though Israel vows not to recognize any more.

    “We kept this tradition for more than 2,500 years,” Kess Semai said. “Our community won’t allow in the span of 30 years for this tradition to be erased completely.”
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2014
    Is anyone surprised by this? Israel cares only about the European descended Ashkenazi Jews and a little for the Sephardic Jews who are there. Otherwise, White Jews run Israel and will always run it. Judaism is a ? ass religion anyway lol, smh at any Black person trying to cozy up to Israel, enjoy the discrimination SUCKERS
  • Undergroundraplegend
    Undergroundraplegend Members Posts: 2,247 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Is anyone surprised by this? Israel cares only about the European descended Ashkenazi Jews and a little for the Sephardic Jews who are there. Otherwise, White Jews run Israel and will always run it. Judaism is a ? ass religion anyway lol, smh at any Black person trying to cozy up to Israel, enjoy the discrimination SUCKERS

    @kingblaze84

    yep this is just another case of whites coming into a piece of land and then treating like it was theres all along and discriminate that arent of there race.
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Is anyone surprised by this? Israel cares only about the European descended Ashkenazi Jews and a little for the Sephardic Jews who are there. Otherwise, White Jews run Israel and will always run it. Judaism is a ? ass religion anyway lol, smh at any Black person trying to cozy up to Israel, enjoy the discrimination SUCKERS

    @kingblaze84

    yep this is just another case of whites coming into a piece of land and then treating like it was theres all along and discriminate that arent of there race.

    Exactly. Why cozy up to a bunch of crackas that don't even welcome your presence? Israel treats outsiders (and the natives of the land) like trash, Black people already have homelands in Africa, why go to Israel out of all places?
  • gns
    gns Members Posts: 21,285 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Craccas r evil af no matter the religion they cloak themselves in.
  • Melqart
    Melqart Guests, Members Posts: 3,679 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2014
    Is anyone surprised by this? Israel cares only about the European descended Ashkenazi Jews and a little for the Sephardic Jews who are there. Otherwise, White Jews run Israel and will always run it. Judaism is a ? ass religion anyway lol, smh at any Black person trying to cozy up to Israel, enjoy the discrimination SUCKERS

    @kingblaze84

    yep this is just another case of whites coming into a piece of land and then treating like it was theres all along and discriminate that arent of there race.

    Exactly. Why cozy up to a bunch of crackas that don't even welcome your presence? Israel treats outsiders (and the natives of the land) like trash, Black people already have homelands in Africa, why go to Israel out of all places?

    unfortunately the khazars zionists are trying their best to extinguish the traditions of the proven jews... but i dont blame them too much necessarily considering most of them moved during a widespread famine that was occuring during that time frame... they perceived themselves to be moving into what they consider the holy land and a better life... its hard to say id choose otherwise if i didnt know the extent of white bigotry, despite some cutural similarity
  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0 Regulator
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2014
    gns wrote: »
    Craccas r evil af no matter the religion they cloak themselves in.

    Sad but historically a basic truth of life. Some are cool and I dare say many are cool but the history of White people sickens and disgusts me. It's a disgraceful history.
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Meroe wrote: »
    Is anyone surprised by this? Israel cares only about the European descended Ashkenazi Jews and a little for the Sephardic Jews who are there. Otherwise, White Jews run Israel and will always run it. Judaism is a ? ass religion anyway lol, smh at any Black person trying to cozy up to Israel, enjoy the discrimination SUCKERS

    @kingblaze84

    yep this is just another case of whites coming into a piece of land and then treating like it was theres all along and discriminate that arent of there race.

    Exactly. Why cozy up to a bunch of crackas that don't even welcome your presence? Israel treats outsiders (and the natives of the land) like trash, Black people already have homelands in Africa, why go to Israel out of all places?

    unfortunately the khazars zionists are trying their best to extinguish the traditions of the proven jews... but i dont blame them too much necessarily considering most of them moved during a widespread famine that was occuring during that time frame... they perceived themselves to be moving into what they consider the holy land and a better life... its hard to say id choose otherwise if i didnt know the extent of white bigotry, despite some cutural similarity

    What the Khazar Zionists have done has not only ruined the reputation of Judaism worldwide, but ruined the reputation of ANYTHING associated with Israel. I've spoken with Black Israelites before and even though I'm sympathetic to much of their messages, what the Khazar/European Zionists have done in Israel has made it hard for me and most people to want to even associate with biblical books, because they constantly use the biblical books to justify horrible and outrageous behavior to outsiders and natives. But yeah, perhaps there are historical reasons for why those type of Jews act the way they do...
  • Plutarch
    Plutarch Members Posts: 3,239 ✭✭✭✭✭
    So the Israeli government is white now? Ok. I've just never identified them as such. Nor have I seen others. But if the government is dominated by the Ashkenazic, and the Ashkenazic are "European," then I guess that makes sense? But aren't the Sephardi from the Middle East not Africa? Are Middle Easterns "black"? Are North Africans, for that matter?
    gns wrote: »
    Craccas *Humans* r evil af no matter the religion they cloak themselves in.
    gns wrote: »
    Craccas r evil af no matter the religion they cloak themselves in.

    Sad but historically a basic truth of life. Some are cool and I dare say many are cool but the history of White people sickens and disgusts me. It's a disgraceful history.

    I agree with both original statements here, but it almost seems that you guys seem to think that this only applies to white people.
    Is anyone surprised by this? Israel cares only about the European descended Ashkenazi Jews and a little for the Sephardic Jews who are there. Otherwise, White Jews run Israel and will always run it. Judaism is a ? ass religion anyway lol, smh at any Black person trying to cozy up to Israel, enjoy the discrimination SUCKERS

    @kingblaze84

    yep this is just another case of whites coming into a piece of land and then treating like it was theres all along and discriminate that arent of there race.

    Exactly. Why cozy up to a bunch of crackas that don't even welcome your presence? Israel treats outsiders (and the natives of the land) like trash, Black people already have homelands in Africa, why go to Israel out of all places?

    You both seem to suggest that this issue is about race, and I think that it is, but according to the article (which already seems pretty biased), the bigger issue seems to be about religion, i.e., the difference between their practices of Judaism seems to be the root of the discrimination not necessarily their racial differences.
  • janklow
    janklow Members, Moderators Posts: 8,613 Regulator
    Some are cool and I dare say many are cool but the history of people sickens and disgusts me. It's a disgraceful history.
    fixed that for you
    Plutarch wrote: »
    So the Israeli government is white now?
    as always, let me save time and make a ruling on this. yes, they're white people.

  • The Lonious Monk
    The Lonious Monk Members Posts: 26,258 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Gotta love Israelis. They are given a country because of the ? pulled by the Nazis and in response they become more and more like the Nazis.
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2014
    Gotta love Israelis. They are given a country because of the ? pulled by the Nazis and in response they become more and more like the Nazis.

    Amazing isn't it? And they'll continue to get away with it, with American taxpayer and political support for everything they do. To American politicians, Israel never does anything wrong LOL....and people wonder why the world is the way it is
  • janklow
    janklow Members, Moderators Posts: 8,613 Regulator
    Gotta love Israelis. They are given a country because of the ? pulled by the Nazis and in response they become more and more like the Nazis.
    you know how when something really traumatic happens to a kid, it can result in them doing crazy stuff when they grow up? and sometimes they realize it and sometimes they don't, but either way that's kind of just how they are?
    that's Israel.

  • waterproof
    waterproof Members Posts: 9,412 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Prophecy just being fulfilled that's all it is.
  • Undergroundraplegend
    Undergroundraplegend Members Posts: 2,247 ✭✭✭✭✭
    @waterproof‌ sometimes I forget ur still on here
  • waterproof
    waterproof Members Posts: 9,412 ✭✭✭✭✭
    @waterproof‌ sometimes I forget ur still on here

    Ha, I forget sometimes also...but I'm still here brethren. After years of R&R being a graveyard when it start getting traffic they want to shut it down. So I'm back in the lounge