Ethiopia’s Jews
Falasha Anthology.
Translations from Ethiopic sources, with an Introduction, by Wolf Leslau.
Yale Judaica Series, Vol. 6. Yale University Press. 222 pp. $4.00.

The Falashas are a small community, formerly of an extremely warlike character, who live in the very heart of Ethiopia and profess a peculiar sort of Judaism. Whether they are Jews who in very remote times emigrated to North Eastern Africa, or—as I believe—mainly Ethiopians who adopted the tenets, practices, and literature of a now extinct Jewish sect, they rightly arrest the attention of anybody interested in Jewish things, for their strange religious life has some significant bearing on the general problem of the basic character of the Jewish community at large.

It was therefore an excellent idea to include an anthology of Falasha literature in the highly valuable Yale Judaica series edited by Professor Obermann, although this series is mainly devoted to annotated translations of the classics of Judaism such as Maimonides or Sa’adya. The task could not have been given to a better qualified scholar. Professor Wolf Leslau of Brandeis University is an expert on the languages of Ethiopia and has visited the country twice; in addition, he possesses a thorough Jewish erudition. The present volume gives to the English-reading public for the first time an extensive and intimate view of the life and literature of an extremely interesting branch of the Jewish religious community.

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The falashas are called thus by their Christian neighbors. The word means “immigrants,” which would indicate that they have come to their present habitat from another part of Ethiopia, a surmise corroborated by linguistic evidence. They call themselves “betha-Israel” —“House of Israel”—and claim to be descendants of the ancient Jewish people. Their religion shows clear connections with Jewish sectarian life during the Second Commonwealth. They have, for example, a strong religious concern with bodily cleanliness, and frequent ablutions in rivers play a most important role in their religious life. Their Christian neighbors, in fact, pretend to recognize a Falasha by “the smell of water” adhering to him. Women are completely separated from their families during their monthly periods and while in childbed, living in special huts outside the village; the practice is so common and seems so natural to everybody concerned, that—as Dr. Leslau assures us—the women thus secluded did not exhibit the slightest embarrassment while talking to him from their huts. It should be emphasized, however, that in old Arabic sources this custom is attributed to the Abyssinians in general, and it is of course widely practiced by primitive peoples elsewhere, including, in ancient times, some Jewish communities.

The Sabbath is the very pivot of the Falashas’ religious life, but bears a strange, ascetic character, comparable in certain respects to the Sabbath of the Karaites. Sexual intercourse on this holy day is punished, at least in theory, with death, no light is kept burning on that day, and no drums or gongs are sounded. With the exception of the last item, all this is of course in complete contrast to the ways of the main branch of Judaism: all over the Jewish world Friday night used to be set aside for the fulfillment of the matrimonial duties, while the lighting of the candles on the eve of the Sabbath has become one of the most characteristic elements of a Jewish home. It would seem, however, that the earlier conception of the Sabbath was the ascetic one, and that the emphasis on the Sabbath as the day of family life—according to the rabbis the kindling of the candles symbolizes the “Peace of the House”—was the result of a popular, and as such even more significant, reaction.

The extreme veneration of the Sabbath among the Falashas is expressed also most vividly in the creation of a female hypostasis, called Sanbat (Sabbath), who is a celestial being higher than the angels, crowned and praised by them, and who intercedes with God for all those who keep the Sabbath properly. The Falashas seem to attach to the personified Sabbath many of the emotions which their Christian countrymen would entertain towards the Virgin.

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The sabbath hypostasis has also given rise to the most original piece of Falasha religious literature, the Book of the Sabbath, a translation of which opens Dr. Leslau’s anthology. Like most Falasha literature, it has not been handed on to the present generation in its original form, and even a century ago only a rather confused text could be found in the country. The Falashas had been a freedom-loving, warlike people, who for many centuries had to undergo terrible trials in their fight for independence against the kings of Ethiopia; as a result, they were reduced to a comparatively small, economically weak, and spiritually not very much developed community (although Dr. Leslau praises their zeal for the education of their children). Nevertheless, despite its rather confused arrangement, the Book of the Sabbath displays a genuine and most original religious attitude.

The other books presented in translation in this anthology are mostly adaptations from the so-called apocryphal literature created towards the end of the Second Commonwealth, with its revelations about life after death, about the Heavens, and about Hell and Paradise, as well as recasts from Christian Ethiopic or Arabic sources, which in their turn were strongly influenced by later Jewish lore and fiction. Some of these pieces, for example the book of “The Death of Moses,” are not without a particular charm and even humor. All the translated selections are preceded by useful short introductions and synopses.

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It is instructive to compare the Falashas with another Jewish group, the Yemenites, who lived on the hills overlooking the opposite, eastern, shore of the Red Sea, which divides Africa from Arabia. The Yemenites have participated in each and every phase of the development of Judaism; they are Jews in the fullest sense, although they show some strange traits owing to their long geographical segregation from the rest of the Jewish people. They represent the case of a portion of the Jewish people separated from the rest only by outward conditions and therefore able to “come back” and to amalgamate with the main body without serious difficulties.

The Falashas offer the contrary example of a foreign population converted to Judaism by the missionary efforts of an ancient Jewish sect and developing completely on its own line. From the religious point of view the Falashas display many original and most significant aspects. In particular in these days, when the discovery and the decipherment of the Dead Sea scrolls is bringing us so much fresh material about the life of the ancient Jewish sects, the study of the Falashas should be given new momentum. It is to be hoped that Dr. Leslau will be enabled to make a third expedition to Ethiopia, in order to carry out, inter alia, a final examination of that most interesting community.

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