Ethiopian Jewish Traditions: An Ancient Faith That Followed Its Own Path

A Judaism No One Expected

When the first large groups of Ethiopian Jews arrived in Israel in the 1980s and 1990s — airlifted in dramatic operations called Operation Moses and Operation Solomon — the Jewish world was stunned. Not by their existence (scholars had known about Ethiopian Jews for centuries) but by their practice.

These Jews had no Talmud. They had never heard of Hanukkah. They did not celebrate Purim. They had no rabbis. Their religious leaders were called Kesim (singular: Kes). Their Torah was not in Hebrew but in Ge’ez, an ancient Ethiopian liturgical language. They practiced forms of ritual purity that the rest of the Jewish world had abandoned centuries ago. They observed holidays that no other Jewish community celebrated.

The Beta Israel — “House of Israel,” as they call themselves — practiced a form of Judaism that had developed in isolation for well over a thousand years, preserving traditions that predated rabbinic Judaism and offering a window into how Jewish life may have looked in the biblical and Second Temple periods.

Their story is one of the most remarkable chapters in Jewish diversity — and one of the most challenging, as their integration into modern Israel has been marked by both triumph and heartbreak.

Origins: Debated and Mysterious

The origins of Ethiopian Jewry are genuinely uncertain. Several theories exist:

The Queen of Sheba tradition: Ethiopian Jews traditionally trace their ancestry to the biblical encounter between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10). According to the Ethiopian national epic, the Kebra Nagast, Sheba (identified with Ethiopia) bore Solomon a son, Menelik I, who brought the Ark of the Covenant to Ethiopia.

The Tribe of Dan: Another tradition identifies the Beta Israel as descendants of the lost tribe of Dan. This view was endorsed by the sixteenth-century Egyptian rabbi David ibn Zimra (Radbaz) and influenced the modern Israeli decision to recognize Ethiopian Jews.

Jewish settlers in antiquity: Some scholars suggest that Jewish communities were established in Ethiopia during the Second Temple period, possibly through trade routes connecting the Land of Israel to the Horn of Africa.

Local conversion: Others argue that the Beta Israel are descendants of Ethiopian converts to Judaism who adopted Jewish practices from Jewish merchants or settlers.

Whatever their origins, the Beta Israel developed a vibrant and distinctive Jewish community that persisted for centuries in the highlands of Ethiopia — often in isolation, often under persecution, always faithful.

The Orit: Torah in Ge’ez

The sacred text of Ethiopian Jews is the Orit — the Torah, translated into Ge’ez, the classical liturgical language of Ethiopia. The Orit includes not only the Five Books of Moses but also additional texts considered canonical by the Beta Israel, including the Book of Jubilees, the Book of Enoch, and other works that are part of the broader Ethiopian biblical canon but not the standard Jewish or Christian canons.

The Orit was handwritten on parchment by Kesim and preserved with great care. Services were conducted in Ge’ez, not Hebrew — a language the Beta Israel did not know until their arrival in Israel.

The absence of the Talmud meant that Ethiopian Jewish law developed differently from rabbinic Judaism. Without the Mishnah’s detailed elaborations and the Gemara’s extensive debates, Ethiopian Jews relied on the written Torah and their own oral traditions, transmitted through the Kesim. Their practice was, in many ways, closer to biblical Judaism than to the rabbinic Judaism practiced by Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews.

The Kesim: Priests, Not Rabbis

The religious leaders of the Beta Israel were the Kesim — priests who served as spiritual guides, judges, teachers, and ritual slaughterers. The Kes was not a rabbi in the rabbinic sense — he did not study Talmud, issue legal rulings (responsa), or engage in the kind of legal argumentation that characterizes rabbinic Judaism.

Instead, the Kes was a hereditary priestly figure, more analogous to the ancient Israelite priest (kohen) than to the post-Temple rabbi. Kesim conducted services, presided over lifecycle events, maintained ritual purity, and preserved the community’s traditions.

The transition to Israeli life has been particularly difficult for the Kesim. In Israel, the Chief Rabbinate initially refused to recognize their authority, requiring Ethiopian Jews to undergo symbolic conversion and insisting that only ordained rabbis could perform marriages and other legal functions. This was deeply offensive to the Beta Israel community, which had maintained its Judaism for centuries without rabbinic oversight.

Unique Practices

Ethiopian Jewish practice differed from mainstream Judaism in several striking ways:

No Hanukkah or Purim: These holidays commemorate events that occurred after the Beta Israel’s separation from the main body of world Jewry. Hanukkah celebrates the Maccabean revolt (164 BCE), and Purim the events of the Book of Esther — events that the Beta Israel knew nothing about.

Sigd: The Beta Israel observe Sigd, a holiday unknown to other Jewish communities. Celebrated 50 days after Yom Kippur, Sigd involves fasting, wearing white, ascending a high place, and reading from the Orit. It commemorates the covenant between God and Israel and expresses the longing for Zion. In 2008, the Israeli Knesset recognized Sigd as an official state holiday.

Strict ritual purity: Ethiopian Jews maintained rigorous purity laws — including the isolation of menstruating women in a separate hut (yegojjo bet, the “hut of blood”) and elaborate purification rituals after contact with non-Jews or with the dead. These practices echo biblical purity laws that rabbinic Judaism modified or abandoned.

Prayer houses, not synagogues: The Beta Israel worshiped in structures called mesgid (the Ge’ez word for “place of prostration”), which served the same function as synagogues but followed different architectural and liturgical traditions.

Animal sacrifice: Until relatively recently, Ethiopian Jews practiced animal sacrifice on Passover — a practice directly rooted in the biblical commandment (Exodus 12) but abandoned by other Jewish communities after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.

Aliyah: Operations Moses and Solomon

The Beta Israel’s journey to Israel is one of the most dramatic stories of the twentieth century.

Operation Moses (1984): A covert airlift that brought approximately 8,000 Ethiopian Jews from Sudanese refugee camps to Israel. Many had walked hundreds of miles through the desert to reach Sudan, and thousands died en route from starvation, disease, and banditry. The operation was conducted secretly, with the cooperation of the CIA and the Sudanese government.

Operation Solomon (1991): In a single 36-hour period, 34 Israeli aircraft — including El Al jumbo jets with their seats removed — flew 14,325 Ethiopian Jews from Addis Ababa to Israel. It was the largest single-day immigration operation in history. A baby was born on one of the flights.

These operations were celebrated as heroic acts of Jewish solidarity — a modern Exodus. But the reality of integration in Israel has been far more complicated.

Integration and Inequality

Ethiopian Jews in Israel — numbering approximately 160,000 — face significant challenges:

• Discrimination: Ethiopian Israelis experience both overt and structural racism. In 1996, it was revealed that Israeli blood banks had been secretly discarding blood donations from Ethiopian immigrants — a revelation that provoked massive protests.
• Police violence: The killing of Solomon Tekah, a young Ethiopian Israeli, by a police officer in 2019, and the beating of Damas Pakada, an Ethiopian-Israeli soldier, in 2015, ignited major protests and drew national attention to racism.
• Poverty: Ethiopian Israelis are disproportionately represented among Israel’s poor, with lower educational achievement and higher unemployment.
• Religious tensions: The Chief Rabbinate’s initial refusal to recognize Ethiopian Jewish marriages and conversions was deeply wounding.

At the same time, Ethiopian Israelis have made significant strides. They serve in elite military units, hold political office (including Knesset members), and have produced acclaimed artists, musicians, and athletes. The community’s resilience mirrors its centuries-long survival in Ethiopia.

What the Beta Israel Teach Us

The Ethiopian Jewish experience teaches the broader Jewish world something important: that Judaism is not monolithic. There is not one way to be Jewish, not one set of texts, not one set of practices, not one color of skin. The Beta Israel maintained their faith for over a thousand years — without the Talmud, without rabbis, without contact with other Jewish communities — and their Judaism is no less authentic for being different.

Their traditions offer a precious window into pre-rabbinic Judaism, their survival is a testament to the power of faith, and their ongoing struggle for equality in Israel is a reminder that the Jewish commitment to justice must apply within the Jewish community as well as outside it.