The Beta Israel in Ethiopia and Israel : Studies on the Ethiopian Jews

For decade the Falashas - the Black Jews of Ethiopia - have fascinated scholars.

Are they really Jews and in what sense? How can their origins be explained? Since the Falashas' transfer to Israel in the much publicised Israeli air lifts - Operation Moses and Operation Solomon - this fascination has continued and now other factors are being discussed: the social integration of an Ethiopian tribal people in the Middle East's most advanced state has provoked a good deal of remarkable scholarship; some recent historical work has focused on the process by which the Agau speaking Falasha became Jews in the first place and how this identity was buttressed both by Jewish missionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and by first the Italian occupation of Ethiopia and their contacts between the Falashas and the State of Israel.

This collection of papers on the history, music, art, anthropology and current situation of the Ethiopian Jews has been written by the leading scholars in the field.