Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site lanl.ARPA
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxb!mhuxn!mhuxm!mhuxj!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!sdcrdcf!sdcsvax!dcdwest!ittvax!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!cmcl2!lanl!wkp
From: wkp@lanl.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Ethiopian Jews in Israel
Message-ID: <20353@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 26-Jan-85 18:47:12 EST
Article-I.D.: lanl.20353
Posted: Sat Jan 26 18:47:12 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Feb-85 11:43:20 EST
Sender: newsreader@lanl.ARPA
Distribution: net
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 35


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