Reply To: Black Ethiopian Jews

I owe benignuman some responses to points he raised. If I missed any, please point it out.

Ashkenazi Jews are lighter-skinned than Jews from Sepharad, who are lighter-skinned than Jews from Morroco, who are lighter-skinned than Jews from Yemen.

Jews started out with one race/skin color. Black children aren’t born to white parents and white children aren’t born to black parents. Whatever race/color Jews started out with, how did a small minority have a completely different one? If a group of whites moved to Africa, after hundreds of years they don’t turn black. Look at the “Afrikaners” in South Africa, who moved there hundreds of years ago from the Netherlands, for example. They are still very white.

Unless you’re arguing that the Ethiopians under discussion historically descend primarily from a group of converts. But no one has advanced that claim.

Furthermore, it is known that in the last 150 years this group, while claiming to be Jewish, intermarried with the local surrounding clearly gentile population, weren’t understanding halacha – such as gittin/mamzeirus, etc., with the obvious implications.

When did the moniker/identification under the term “Beta Israel” enter the historical record? (That name, specifically.)

The Old Testament is a translation of Tanach.

I beg to differ. The so-called Old Testament is a corruption full of errors, both intentional and unintentional. If you ever come into possession of a copy, you’d not only be permitted to discard it but you’d be obligated to do so.

At what point is it known and conclusively documented, if ever, that the Beta Israel had the original Torah in Loshon Kodesh; and at what year in history did they switch over to the Ethiopian Church’s “Old Testament” written in the local language.

Do you concede that the Beta Israel do have a strong claim of being Jewish and they are at least a safek (such that we have a chiyuv to save them, love them, etc.)

I’d say the “Crypto-Jews” from the Iberian Peninsula and their former overseas colonies (such as in Latin America) that claim to descent from the Marranos. have a better case. And that is quite a weak case and one that has been virtually universally rejected.

I don’t see your comparison to the historical record of Chasidim as valid. We have a continuous and unbroken documented record of the Chasidim. We have few and far between, and even then vague, records of references of the Ethiopian Jews over the last 2,000 years.

How do you respond to the myriad of groups all over the world, both historically from ancient times up to and including many in modern times, a small portion of whom I listed above, that claim to be Jews, as well?