Grandma Death
Reconfiguring & Reconstructing
rachamim18 said:Panda/Nino: "Beta Israel made to submit to tests and treated as scum." Here is where failure to research is most evident. What kind of tests? Their liturgy does not match any known Jewish liturgy. They had never even heard of the Oral Law. As all Jews do, they clearly resembled the population among who they lived.
All these things come into play. Ethiopia is in Israel's geographical region so that it represents, at least among unsubsidised Arab populations [Saudis, UAE, etc] the highest standard of living for the entire region. It also has a higher standard than almost all Eastern European nations but I will get to that in a second. The point of course, is that the Israeli Immigration and Absorption Ministers were faced with a unified group claiming the Jewish "Right of Return."
No nation on the planet just throws open its doors and lays a welcome mat to any group seeking it. Said groups must pass standards administered by each individual nation. Here in Israel, it is matrilineal descent, plus any close family members.
The whole thing with the Beta Yisroel is that there was nothing to prove their Jewishness, not even the Chromosomal Modalities as they later turned out to have no relation [gentically] to most other Jews.
It was sorted out by historians and religious authorities [the Chief Rabbinates] who declared them to be directly descended from the Tribe of Dan. In the Biblical Era our people fought as mercanaries among surrounding nations. A garrison of Danim was sent to an island in the Nile, south of both Egypt and Nubia where they intermarried with locals. This was recorded in non-Jewish histories. It is clear that they lost contact and did a good job of increasing their number through natural ways and through local conversions so that they were able during the so called Middle Ages to establish one of four independant Jewish nations to exist outside our homeland.
Once this was verfefied by historians the Chief Rabbinate was able to make sense of many of the liturgical differences and they were finally officialy considered Jews.
There has been one very big problem since then. After the Jewish Kingdom there fell, they were treated VERY harshly by non-Jews, especially by the predominant Christains who enslaved them and often tatooed crosses on their foreheads. As with Sephardim and some other crypto-Jews, a portion among them still secretly held onto some of their ancient rituals so that they still considered themselves Jews although they had married into no-Jews for centuries [in some cases only decades].
The Beta Yisroel themselves petitioned for these later applicants for Aliyah to be disqualified. In many cases, people with no connection to the Jewish people merely sought the economic advantages that would come with an Israeli passport. As we speak, some are qualified, some are disqualified but it remains to be sorted.
Among former-Soviet Jews... There is a similar problem of economic immigrants, with a famous case involving a woman and her son who came here when he was 12. He was inducted into the IDF at 18 and it soon came out that he was in fact a neo-Nazi. The irony horrified a good many here and brought this issue to the forefront of manys' minds.
Since then, former-Soviets applying under the "Right" are scrutinised much more stringently. They did not have the same hurdles as the Beta. Not because of skin color [we already have many darker skinned Jews in Israel, including relatives of mine] but rather because they could avail themselves to modern technology and memorise and/or learn Jewish religious and cultural practices.
Truly ironically, former -Soviets now generally have a harder time than people from Ethiopia in proving their roots. I know because a second cousin from Trans-Diniester just made Aliyah and even with our family connection and very good documentation it was long, drawnout process.
This is a long post but it must be because as usual, people here try to portray Israel as a racist state, etc. without even knowing the first thing of which they talk about.
How come you have time to post such long posts and not time to back up the facts you spout?
Run along now.....Im still waiting.