BP000004

chapter 2
Protestant Missions in Ethiopia: From Jewish

Falashas (Beta Israel) to Christian Falashas and
Falas Mura, and Back: A Blurred Status (1858–1960)
Emanuela Trevisan Semi
Introduction
Nothing written was passed on to us by Beta Israel to tell their story.1 There are
conflicting opinions on their origins. The Beta Israel claim to be descendants
of Solomon, of the lost tribe of Dan, of a colony in Upper Egypt, of Jews from
Yemen. Steven Kaplan wrote that there is “little question that the Beta Israel
must be understood as the product of processes that took place in Ethiopia
between the fourteenth and the sixteenth century”.2 The emergence as a dis-
tinct people was therefore, according to several scholars, the result of several
factors, political and social. Geographically they are found mainly in the north-
ern regions of Ethiopia where they settled down when they were deprived of
possession of land, starting from the early nineteenth century. They were con-
centrated in Gondar area (see maps, Fig. 2.1. and 2.2). The Beta Israel population
was estimated at between 80,000 and 200,000 at the most in the mid-19th cen-
tury.3
The aim of this chapter is to show how a history of conversion that began
in Ethiopia was translated into one of reconversion. For the Beta Israel (Fala-
shas),4 the history of missions and conversions began with a Church Mission
1 Sophia Dege-Muller, “Between Heretics and Jews: Inventing Jewish Identies,” in Entangled
Religions, 6 (2018): 247–308.
2 Steve Kaplan, “The invention of Ethiopian Jews, three models,” in Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines,
132 (1993): 645–655, 647.
3 James Quirin, The Evolution of the Ethiopian Jews A History of the Beta Israel (Falasha) to 1920
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 182–183. See map 2 of the area showing
the concentration of Beta Israel settlements.
4 According to Steve Kaplan, in The Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia, from Earliest Times to
the Twentieth Century (New York, London: New York University Press, 1992), 65, there is no
evidence for the existence of the term Falasha prior to the fifteenth century. It may be trans-
lated as “removed from his land”, “exiled”, “wanderer”. This term was in common use, together
with that of Beta Israel, by those belonging to the group, until their emigration to Israel.
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68 trevisan semi
Society, and the sending of Samuel Gobat and Christian Kluger to Ethiopia
(under Tewodros ii) in 1830. While Kugler stayed in the Tigray region, Gobat
headed to Gondar, where he met the Beta Israel and began to think about a
mission dedicated to this group. Reconversion was the goal of a Jewish counter-
mission led first by Jacques Faitlovitch (1881–1955), who tried to stop the Chris-
tian missionary activities but also introduced important changes in the prac-
tices of the Beta Israel with the aim of bringing them back to “conventional”
Judaism.
Drawing on missionary sources (among others 86 forms filled in by the
missionaries of the Dabat mission), this chapter offers an analysis of the sim-
ilarities in the discourse and practices of Christian missions and the Jewish
counter-mission. Both shared the idea of reforming and eradicating what they
considered as superstitions. In particular, the Jewish counter-mission tried to
reform practices that were considered the results of the influence of African
customs and traditions, and also of the “torpor” and “doze” that, in the Jewish
missionaries’ view, characterised Africa. Education was the cornerstone of con-
version and reconversion projects: the aim was to find appropriate educational
strategies and ideas of social mobility to be offered to the candidates for con-
version. In this sense, I will show how the offer to bring young people to study
in Europe and so to restore the loss of contact with Jews from Western world
was one of the main attractions of the counter-mission’s educational strategies.
1 Paving the Way to a Formal Mission: the London Society

for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews
When Samuel Gobat became the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem in 1846,5 he had
the opportunity to re-establish contact with Ethiopian pilgrims in the Holy City
and conceived plans to organise a mission in Ethiopia.6 Eventually he organ-
Some of them signed letters to Jacques Faitlovitch adding “the Falasha” to their names. From
their emigration on it began to be considered as an extremely pejorative expression and was
replaced by that of “Jews of Ethiopia”. The term Beta Israel does not carry this negative con-
notation and is the one prevalent in scholarly writings. Here the term Falasha will be used
together with Beta Israel when referring to the group before their emigration to Israel.
5 On Samuel Gobat and his missions, see Charlotte van der Leest, Conversion and Conflict
in Palestine: the missions of the Church Missionary Society and the protestant bishop Samuel
Gobat (PhD diss., Leiden University, 2008), https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden
.nl/handle/1887/12957.
6 Donald Crummey, Priests and Politicians. Protestant and Catholic Missions in Orthodox Ethio-
pia 1830–1986 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).
Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

protestant missions in ethiopia 69
ised two missions: the Pilgrim mission in 1856, employing men trained at the
St Chrischona Pilgrim Mission in Basel, and the Falasha mission headed by
the London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews in 1860.7 The
Church of Scotland also organised a mission that opened in 1862.8
In a visit to Basel, Gobat engaged graduates from the St Chrischona Mission-
ary Institute who could be presented to the Ethiopian Emperor as skilled artis-
ans, with a view to gaining access to an Ethiopia that was considered in need
of craftsmen, but which refused entry to missionaries. The missionaries at St
Chrischona were trained in carpentry, weaving and masonry, in addition to con-
ducting Bible classes. As a result, a delegation consisting of two missionaries,
Johann Ludwig Kraft and Johann Martin Flad, met Emperor Tewodros in 1855,
offering him artisans: he selected a gun maker, an architect and a printer. The
emissaries renounced permission to establish a free mission to propagate the
principles of the Gospel and promised only workers without any guarantee that
they could preach.9 In this way, Flad and three other missionaries arrived in
Ethiopia in May 1856, carrying New Testaments translated into Amharic, which
the Emperor appreciated, and remained there for twelve years. Flad became
involved with the Falashas near Gondar and a school was opened for them in
1858.
At this time, the Beta Israel could be considered to have been a caste that had
been formed and consolidated during the early nineteenth century when they
no longer received land grants or prestigious titles.10 They didn’t possess land
(except in some areas around Gondar),11 and were specialised in some crafts
and occupations such as smithing, weaving, pottery, building and soldiering.
The Beta Israel were victims of prejudice and superstition on the part of
Christians who connected them with despised professions such as smiths and
potters and with the idea of magical transformation through the use of fire.12
They were also called buda (evil eye), meaning someone who can transform
himself into a hyena or other animal, or kayla, a pejorative term whose liter-
7 The London Society for Promoting Christianity among Jews was created as a separate mis-
sionary enterprise in 1809 and was the oldest and largest among the nineteenth-century
British “Jewish missions.” It sent missionaries not only to the Jewish communities in Brit-
ish colonial spaces, but also far beyond; see Agnieszka Jagodzinska, ““For Zion’s Sake I
Will Not Rest”: The London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews and its
Nineteenth-Century Missionary Periodicals”, Church History, vol. 82, no. 2 (2013): 381–387.
8 James Quirin, The Evolution of the Ethiopian Jews, 179.
9 Ibid.
10 James Quirin, The Evolution of the Ethiopian Jews, 126–145.
11 Steve Kaplan, The Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia, 102.
12 Ibid.

70 trevisan semi
ary meaning is unclear. The Beta Israel lived together because of their beliefs
and practices, which they considered purer than those of Christian Orthodox,
and of their occupations. Christians would not enter their homes or eat with
them.13 According to James Quirin, Beta Israel used “their religion to provide
the ideological justification for caste separation”.14
With the strategy of offering skilled artisans to the Emperor, the missionar-
ies paved the way for the formal mission opened by Stern.15 The presence of
the missions and the conversions marked the beginning of a new history of the
Beta Israel and had a strong impact on their community.
In 1860, the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews
decided to open a full mission under the direction of Henry Aaron Stern, a
converted German Jew ordained in Anglican orders. Shortly after his arrival in
Ethiopia, Stern obtained the Emperor’s approval to convert the Falashas but
under the condition that he was to baptise them into the Orthodox Church. It
was the policy of the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the
Jews to send previously converted Jews to convert others. Michael Solomon
Alexander, Gobat’s predecessor in Jerusalem, was also a converted Jew and
he was the one who ordained Stern as a deacon in 1844. According to See-
man, members of the London Society had hoped that “Alexander would make
inroads among the Jews of the Holy Land” by virtue of his “affinity” to other
Jews, and this was very probably the reason that they chose a converted Jew
such as Henri Aaron Stern to lead the mission to the Beta Israel.16
According to various sources, Stern had a contemptuous attitude towards
Ethiopian people and society.17 He has been described as exhibiting imperious
behaviour which offended many Ethiopians, and as having referred derogator-
ily to Tewodros as “His Black Majesty”.18 When in 1868 Tewodros ordered the
imprisonment of European missionaries,19 Stern was the first.20
13 See Hagar Salomon, The Hyena People. Ethiopian Jews in Christian Ethiopia (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1999).
14 James Quirin, The Evolution of the Ethiopian Jews, 145.
15 Ibid. 122.
16 Don Seeman, One people, one blood: Ethiopian Israelis and the return to Judaism (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 47.
17 Crummey, Priests and Politicians, 128.
18 Robert Hess, Introduction to Stern, Wanderings among the Falashas in Abyssinia (ii ed.
1968) xxiii.
19 Stern was imprisoned with other missionaries, the British consul and other Europeans
following various slights by the British Foreign Office. Stern was also accused of giving a
negative depiction of Tewodros in his book.
20 Stern spent six months in prison with other missionaries and was liberated by Robert
Napier’s military expedition (1867–1868) which defeated Tewodros’s army at Magdala.

Flad, who belonged to the mission of St Chrischona in Basel, was in a diffi-

cult position because he had no skills to offer to the Emperor (the men arriving
from St Chrischona were supposed to be artisans) so he was engaged to join the
Falasha project headed by Stern. Jenda, the seat of the Gondar bishopric with a
large concentration of Falashas,21 was chosen as the mission station. A school
was opened, attended by fifty boys while the first converts also numbered
fifty.22 The three missions created during Tewodros’ reign (1855–1868) were in
Gafat (near Debra Tabor), in Jenda and in Darna (the Scottish mission), the lat-
ter two in the Dembia region (Fig. 2.1 and 2.2).23
The Protestant missions continued for a century, until 1978, with various
highs and lows. Although the religious policies of later Ethiopian emperors,
Yohanes iv (1871–1889) and Menelik ii (1889–1913) were different, their policies
were similar concerning the Beta Israel in that they allowed foreign missionar-
ies to convert them only to Coptic Christianity and without allowing European
missionaries to remain in Ethiopia, as they did not want to introduce other
Christian denomination to rival the Ethiopian Orthodox Church which is the
largest of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Churches.
Stern baptised the first 22 Falashas two years into the mission, in 1862. But as
a consequence of the Ethiopian state’s hostility, from 1868 to 1926 the Falasha
mission was carried out by local converts (Falasha converts educated in St
Chrischona),24 while the missionaries themselves often remained in Sudan, at
the border. That the mission managed to survive at all was thus due to Ethiopian
converts and to the monetary and spiritual support of Flad, the London Soci-
ety and the British and Foreign Bible Society, which provided thousands of
tracts and Bibles.25 Under Italian colonialism (1936–1941) the ten Protestant
missions which operated in Ethiopia, which included the Falasha mission in
Jenda, were shut down and the missionaries expelled, in order to exclude all for-
eign influences on the Ethiopian people. Only Catholic missions were allowed
to operate, and non-Italian Catholic missions were replaced by Italian mission-
ary orders. However, these missions were not interested in the conversion of the
21 See Quirin, Evolution of the Ethiopian Jews, 182–183. See map 2 of the area with the concen-
tration of Beta Israel settlements.
22 Crummey, Priests and Politicians, 130.
23 Quirin, Evolution of the Ethiopian Jews, 154.
24 Ibid. 180. In a report from the mission itself it is highlighted that the year 1927 “will be
marked by the arrival of the first European missionary at the old Mission Station, Djenda,
after an interval of sixty years during which no European missionaries were allowed to
reside in that part of Abyssinia”, African Missions. London Society Reports (1926–1928),
Bodleian Library, cmj, box 13.
25 Ibid.

72 trevisan semi
figure 2.1 Map of missions in Ethiopia, from Eric Payne, Ethiopian Jews. The
Story of a Mission (London: The Olive Press: 1972)

figure 2.2 Map of Falasha Settlements from David Kessler, The Falashas. A short
History of the Ethiopian Jews (London: Frank Cass, 1996) (1 ed. 1982), 92
Falashas.26 Despite this, there was a steady growth in converts: in 1894 there
were 1,450 baptised inhabitants out of a Beta Israel population numbering
between 50,000 and 100,000, according to Steve Kaplan.27 By the 1960s, there
may have been 50,000 former Beta Israel who considered themselves Christi-
ans.28
26 Ingeborg Lass-Westphal, “Protestant Missions During and After the Italo-Ethiopian War,
1935–1937,” Journal of Ethiopian Studies vol. 10, no. 1 (1972): 89–101.
27 Kaplan, The Beta Israel (Falasha), 128.
28 Quirin, The Evolution of the Ethiopian Jews, 188.

74 trevisan semi
2 Conversion Practices
The view of the Protestant missionaries was that through the conversion of the
Falashas the Ethiopian church could also be reformed, and that they would be
“the means of truly Christianising and civilising all of Ethiopia”.29 However, the
Falasha converts held a marginal position in society even after conversion and
were in no position to bring about the changes the missionaries wished for.
Stern had presented himself to the Falashas as a Jew, a “white Falasha”:30 “We
then informed them that we were also Falashas, who, moved by compassion for
their hopeless and deplorable condition had crossed seas and deserts … to com-
municate to them those tidings of mercy, which alone can secure peace to the
troubled conscience”.31 The first question that Stern posed the Falashas he met
was if they had the sacred books, to which he was told: “We have Moses and
David”. To this he claimed to have replied:
Do you also believe in the prophets, and in Christ, of whom all the inspired
writers unitedly testify? They hesitated a little, and then said, in a timid
tone of voice … ‘We keep the law’. We reminded them that they could
neither keep the law, and that the law was not able, even if they possessed
the ability to perform all its rites and conform to all its ordinances, to pro-
cure for them pardon of sins.32
The interaction quoted above illustrates the basis of Stern and other mission-
aries’ teachings; the rituals and observance of Biblical law were not to be the
pivots of belief but rather penitence and individual conversion, with religion
experienced more intimately.
Stern’s preaching was also based on the denunciation of certain Falasha
practices such as animal sacrifice, monasticism, and the laws on purity. Accord-
ing to his and other missionaries’ preaching, these practices, understood as
expiation of sin, could not purify the Falashas nor guarantee their salvation,
since these rites only affected the body but not sinners’ hearts. Only “Christ …
by His vicarious suffering, atoned for our guilt, and provided for our justifica-
tion”.33 A systematic denigration of Falasha priests (qes/qessotch/qessim) and
monks during theological debates, organised by Stern according to a format
29 R. Hess, Introduction to Stern, Wanderings, xxii.

30 Ibid.
31 Henri Stern, Wanderings among the Falashas in Abyssinia (London: Wertheim, 1862), 200.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.

of citations, argument and counterargument, totally foreign to the Falashas,

served to strip people, often illiterate, of the confidence they had in their lead-
ers and to erode their beliefs.
The fact that Bibles translated into Amharic were distributed among those
Falashas able to read (particularly among the Debteras, deacons and priests)
made for a very attractive prospect, because the possession of a written text was
considered to confer great prestige. The Bible had been translated into Amharic
by missionaries in 1840 and, as mentioned earlier, Tewodros approved of this as
the language of the Bible in Ethiopia was Geʾez and this was only understood
by the elites. The Beta Israel covered long distances to listen to Stern’s preach-
ing and to obtain the sacred book. Many were keen to attend the missionary
schools in order to learn the sacred text.
Trainee priests, or Debtera, made up a large proportion of the converted.
They were considered by the Beta Israel to be great healers and writers of magic
incantations; once converted they exercised their acknowledged power to con-
vert others.34 The converted Debteras exploited traditional meeting places such
as pilgrimage sites or springs reputed to have healing powers to read the bible,
preach and proselytise.
An Austrian traveller, Hermann Norden, visited the Jenda mission in 1929,
then led by the missionary Theophilus Baur and left this description:
We were surrounded by Falashas, and whilst most in Jenda itself had

become Christianised, those in the outlying villages were yet faithful to
their own creed. The cook at the mission compound was a converted
Falasha, and the houseboy was her son … the dwellers in one hut were
at work on pottery when we approached but hurried it out of sight before
we entered.35
Baur, however, was pessimistic about the impact of the missionary endeavour,
commenting that:
Pottery means Falasha, and Falasha means disgrace … one of the things
we have to combat is the pretense of conversion for the purpose of escap-
ing the hardships that go with being a Falasha, especially the hardships of
being drafted into labour. Outwardly they are Christians. Inwardly they
34 Seeman, One People, One Blood, 51.

35 Hermann Norden, Africa’s Last Empire. Through Abyssinia to Lake Tana and the Country of
the Falasha (London: H.F. and G. Witherby, 1930), 195.

76 trevisan semi
remain Jewish. The older ones have no understanding of us or our work.

It is on the young that we base our hopes.36
In this passage are emphasised the main areas of discrimination suffered by the
Falasha, accused on the one hand of witchcraft, in particular due to their skills
as blacksmiths, on the other, appreciated for their skills as craftspeople, and
often taken into forced labour at the court of the Emperors in Gondar, or Addis
Ababa. Conversion became a way of escaping from stigma and forced labour,
and the missionaries realised that conversions were often expedient and Chris-
tian identity was displayed to the outside world and in the public sphere, in
order to enjoy better educational and living conditions, but that a Jewish iden-
tity was retained in private life.
3 Practices of Resistance
There were several strategies employed by those Falasha who wanted to resist
missionary practices. The Beta Israel used their strict purification norms to pre-
vent the missionaries, considered to be impure, from entering their villages and
houses. This was a first strategy, simple but effective, to limit their influence.
They also turned to Emperor Tewodros (1855–1968) and asked him to prevent
missionary action and to oppose the ban on making sacrifices. The law prohibit-
ing sacrifice had been issued by the same Emperor, who had been influenced by
the missionaries. The Beta Israel addressed themselves to the courts and even
appeared before the Emperor Tewodros in 1862 in a well-known event, docu-
mented by a historical text written by the Beta Israel themselves which shows
that the court verdict was not clear: “The Beta Israel were not, as they feared,
forced to convert; nevertheless, it appears likely that their right to sacrifice was
suspended or at least limited”.37 According to the testimonies of the mission-
aries, the Beta Israel continued to sacrifice on various occasions. In a report of
1933 by the missionary Willy Heintze, a sacrifice was described in detail:
When on the following morning we went to the mesgied (sic) (synagogue)

in order to speak to those assembled, we saw the slaughtering of a cow,
which had been given by a woman in order that “Sanbatitu” (the Queen
of Shabbat) might intercede for her with God for her sins … a pupil of the
36 Ibid., 196.
37 Kaplan, The Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia, 131.

priests stood at the side of the cow with a coloured large parasol “Debeb”.
Another was beating an iron plate as a drum … the priest slaughtered the
cow whilst reciting the blessing among the Falashas, ‘in the name of the
God of Israel, the God of all spirits and of all flesh’.38
The missionary had been told that this woman performed such a sacrifice every
year. The Beta Israel continued in their sacrifices even if only once a year for
Pesah, noted Chaim Shoshkes, a Jew from Brazil who, when visiting the Beta
Israel villages near Gondar in 1953, tried to refuse to attend a bloody sacrifice
made in his honour and recounted that, “sacrifices were sometimes burned
according to the wealth of the community but at least on the 14th of the month
of Nissan for Pesah”.39
Among the attempts at resistance to the missionaries, the Beta Israel also
tried to distance themselves physically from the missionaries’ influence by
moving home, or by travel to Jerusalem. In 1862, a large group of Beta Israel
attempted to reach Jerusalem, headed by a very famous monk, Abba Mahari.40
They reached the Tigray region but they failed to proceed any further toward
the Promised Land and many died of hunger and disease.41 The Beta Israel
also tried to exclude local converts from having contact with other Beta Israel;
the priests excommunicated these converts, while their families rejected any
relatives who had converted.42 Information about the Christian successes in
converting a group of Jews in Ethiopia, very little known to the Jews of Europe,
began to circulate, but it took time for a Jewish counter-mission to be organised.
4 The Jewish “Counter Mission”: Practices of Reconversion
Reports on the Christian missionary activity drew the attention of rabbis in

Europe and in 1864, Rabbi Hildesheimer (Hungary) published a letter in the
Jewish Chronicle stating that the Beta Israel were real Jews and asking for the
intervention of Western Jews to help them. The first Jewish “mission” in answer
38 News Sheets, 14 Kobela, 13 October 1933, Bodleian Library, cmj box 13.
39 Sigrid Sohn, “A ‘Yiddish’ journey to Ethiopia: Chaim Shoshkes book Durkh Umbekante
Lender,” Materia Giudaica, vol. 10, no. 2 (2005): 365–373, 370.
40 Abba Mahari was a monk and a religious leader of the Beta Israel who opposed the preach-
ing of the protestants and wanted to lead the Beta Israel to the Red Sea and cross it in order
to continue to Jerusalem but the journey failed.
41 Kaplan, The Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia, 135–138.
42 Ibid., 132–133.

78 trevisan semi
to Hildesheimer’s appeal was launched in 1867. Yoseph Halévy, a Jew from Adri-
anople and an expert in Semitic languages, including Amharic, asked the Alli-
ance Israélite Universelle to support his mission to the Falashas. The Alliance
was very ambivalent towards the Jews of Ethiopia. The French Jewish organ-
isation was deeply committed to the project of “regenerating” Jews from Arab
countries and to its networks of schools and teachers but was not convinced
that the Beta Israel were really Jews and they did not believe that an African
tribe could benefit from the education provided by their organisation.43
Despite this, in 1867 Halévy reached Massawa as an envoy of the Alliance.
After several months spent in the Beta Israel villages of the Walqait region
(not the Gondar area due to unrest there, see figure 2.3), Halévy returned to
Paris with a young Falasha, Daniel, whom he wished to educate in the Alliance
schools (this practice echoed that of Flad, who had sent five converts to the
Swiss mission at St Chrischona). However, the aiu doubted that Halévy had
really gone to Ethiopia and believed Daniel to be a slave bought in the slave
market and not a Jew. The young Beta Israel was therefore sent back to Egypt,
where he died a short time later. It is to be noted that the more the missionaries
considered the Falashas as Jews, the less they were recognised as such in certain
Jewish circles, including that of the Alliance which had always been sceptical
about the origins of this group. For Protestants, the existence of black Jews was
clearly not a problem, but the same could not be said for European Jews. While
the Alliance shared a sense of solidarity with Jews experiencing suffering, it had
also a sense of shame with respect to Jews from the Arab countries who were
perceived as rough, superstitious and ignorant. Given this attitude towards Ori-
ental Jews, no wonder the members of Alliance44 were so reluctant to interact
with a group of African people claiming to be Jews. Colour and race prejudice
no doubt played a part.45
Jacques Faitlovitch, a Polish Jew from Lodz, brought up in Paris as a pupil
of Joseph Halévy and who then became a professor of Semitic languages and
Amharic at the École pratique des Hautes Études, followed his teacher’s ex-
ample and created a Jewish “counter-mission” to Ethiopia, working in educa-
tion to counter the Christian missionaries’ influence. With his numerous jour-
43 Regarding the conflict of Halévy and Faitlovitch with the Alliance and the decision to leave
it for the Hilfsverein des Deutschen Juden, the Charitable Society of German Jews, see
Emanuela Trevisan Semi Jacques Faitlovitch and the Jews of Ethiopia (London, Portland:
Vallentine Mitchell, 2007), 14–25.
44 Emanuela Trevisan Semi, Jacques Faitlovitch, 26–37.
45 On the complex racialisation of the Falashas, see Tudor Parfitt, Hybrid Hate. Conflations
of Antisemitism and Anti-Black Racism from the Renaissance to the Third Reich (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2020).

figure 2.3 Map of Beta Israel settlements, some of them visited by the Jew-
ish “counter-mission”, from Hagar Salomon, The Hyena People.
Ethiopian Jews in Christian Ethiopia (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1999)

80 trevisan semi
neys to Ethiopia, the founding of a school in 1923 for the Falashas in Addis
Ababa, his fundraising efforts and the sending of young Beta Israel to study in
Jewish communities in Europe, Faitlovitch helped the Beta Israel to be better
known to Jews in Europe and the United States, as well as introducing changes
to their religious practice. He tried to introduce a new calendar, to abolish the
practice of sacrifice, to change the strict rules of purification, to abolish the
practice of becoming monks, and to change the Falasha way of celebrating
shabbat.46
Faitlovitch’s eight missions to Ethiopia (from 1904–1905 to 1942) and the
opening of a school in Addis Ababa succeeded in partially counteracting the
work of the Christian missionaries but the missionaries’ presence in the re-
motest parts of the country with their network of schools and medical dispens-
aries limited the impacts of the Jewish “counter-mission”.47
From the reactions of the Protestant missionaries, we learn that during his
first mission to Ethiopia, Faitlovitch did not simply contact Christians Falashas
but was determinedly trying to get them to convert back to Judaism. He did so
by offering them money and education, and by refuting the arguments spread
by the missionaries, including one that had led them to believe that all Jews in
Europe had already converted to Christianity. As the missionaries in the region
of Walqayt wrote:
The same French Jew … scolded them for having become Christians,
tempting them to come back to the Falashas. To the Falashas he gave
plenty of money to rebuild their Mesgid (synagogue; in the village of
Abora). Our converts were surprised to hear that there are in Europe
unconverted Jews.48
In another report, according to a former Falasha priest,
the disciples of Jacob Faitlowitsch (sic) (are) spreading wholesale a

pamphlet called “Tomar nases”, i.e., Words of Comfort, which tell the pros-
elytes to return again to Judaism and that the time of fulfilment of the
hope of Israel is about to be fulfilled and so they are sowing much evil
seed into the hearts of the proselytes.49
46 See Emanuela Trevisan Semi, Jacques Faitlovitch and Daniel Summerfeld, From Falashas
to Ethiopian Jews. The External Influences for Change c. 1860–1960 (London: Routledge
Curzon, 2003).
47 Daniel Summerfield, From Falashas to Ethiopian Jews, 80.
48 London Society Reports (1906–1908), 109, cited in Trevisan, Jacques Faitlovitch, 17.
49 London Society Reports (1922–1924), 94.

All Faitlovitch’s missions were marked by his struggles against conversion.

His trips were announced in advance in missionary circles as they were con-
sidered troublesome and interfered with the work done by missionaries.
In an event recounted by one of Faitlovitch’s pupils, Gete Yirmiahu, a young
man who had already been baptised by the Ethiopian Coptic priests asked for
forgiveness and to return to Judaism:
In Qounzela some brothers told us that there was a Falasha who in a few
days’ time was going to convert to Christianity together with his whole
family. But his old father, faithful to the Torah, visited us (Gete and Fait-
lovitch) and cried bitter tears for his lost son … Then Faitlovitch brought
that man as well as his wife to the village … the old father cried for joy and
blessed Faitlovitch forever.50
Faitlovitch describes an atmosphere of great general excitement during which

the young man threw himself at his father’s feet to ask for forgiveness:
wearing the stone at his neck (a mark of humiliation and craving forgive-
ness), begging to be excused his shame … this poor man, lying on the
ground … dragged himself along towards all the community dignitaries,
asking to be pardoned and praying to be forgiven his past and to be con-
sidered once again of their own.51
The baptism was cancelled and the young man was once again admitted to the
village as a Falasha. Before Faitlovitch’s third trip to Ethiopia (1913), missionar-
ies reported that:
In some places the Falashas have become very difficult to reach through
the visits of Dr. Failovitch, who distributed much money amongst them.
In some places the Falashas said: ‘We expect Dr Faitlovitch to come back
and bring money. He will build a synagogue and help us to strengthen the
religion of the Falashas’.52
50 From a letter by Gete Yirmiahu to Margulies (in Hebrew), in Carlo Guandalini, “Gete Yirmi-
ahu and Beta Israel’s regeneration. A difficult path,” in Jews of Ethiopia. The Birth of an Elite,
ed. Tudor Parfitt and Emanuela Trevisan Semi (London and New York: Routledge, 2005),
118.
51 Emanuela Trevisan Semi, “La solidarietà ebraica e i Beta Israele nella corrispondenza
Faitlovitch-Margulies,” in Hebraica Miscellanea di studi in onore di Sergio J. Sierra per il suo
75 compleanno, ed. F. Israele et al. (Torino: Istituto di studi ebraici, 1998), 566.
52 London Society Report (1912), 88, cit. in Trevisan, Jacques Faitlovitch, 60.

82 trevisan semi
The counter-mission drew the attention of Beta Israel families to opportun-

ities for their children to study in Palestine or in Europe. At the Swedish mission
in Asmara, during his first mission to Ethiopia (1904), Faitlovitch came across a
young Falasha from Jenda, Taamrat Emmanuel. Taamrat was the son of a Coptic
noblewoman and a Falasha father who had converted to Christianity. Following
the example of Halévy, who had brought with him the young Daniel, Faitlovitch
took with him two young men, Taamrat Emmanuel and Gete Yirmiahu, with
the intention of having them study in France. Taamrat, reconverted to Juda-
ism, studied first in Paris (with the Alliance) and later in Italy (in Florence at
the Rabbinical College), becoming finally the head of the school for Falashas
in Addis Ababa in 1923.53 Faitlovitch also brought to Europe a letter written in
Amharic and signed by 28 Debtera and priests of the Beta Israel, among them
the father of Gete Yirmiahu, asking for help and warning about the dangers of
the missionaries: “… the disciples of Flad are travelling all over Abyssinia, and
are pressing us to be baptised. They say that whoever is not baptised will be
condemned to perdition. He who is baptised will be saved. But we are fighting
for the law of Moses”.54
It is not clear how Faitlovitch proceeded with the conversion of the young
men whom he brought to study in Jewish families and communities in Europe.
It is an issue on which Faitlovitch never dwelt and we find no references to
it,55 yet it is certain that Taamrat was not the only case of a boy with a Chris-
tian mother and converted Falasha father to be reconverted to Judaism. What
is more, Taamrat always considered himself Jewish. Taamrat’s cousin, Tadesse
Yacov, the son of the sister of Taamrat’s mother and of a converted Falasha
father, who was educated in a Jewish school in Cairo in Egypt, thought of him-
self at times as Jewish and at others Christian.56 The boys taken to study in
Palestine, Europe and Egypt numbered 25; several were relatives and some
53 See Emanuela Trevisan Semi, Taamrat Emmanuel, an Ethiopian Jewish Intellectual, between
Colonized and Colonizers (New York: cpl editions, 2018).
54 A copy of the letter was added by Faitlovitch to his book Quer durch Abessinien. Meine
Zweite Reise zu den Falachas (Berlin: Poppelauer, 1910), 185–188 with a German transla-
tion. An English translation can be found in David Kessler, The Falashas. A Short Story of
the Ethiopian Jews (London-Portland: Frank Cass, 1982), 134.
55 If we make an exception of the mention of the tefillin, the phylacteries used by boys from
age 13 after their bar mitzvah. The tefillin were sent by Rabbi Margulies to Ethiopia for the
young men whom Faitlovitch had taken with him. Delivering and ensuring the tefillin were
used by the boys may mean that Faitlovitch had already proceeded to their reconversion
in Ethiopia.
56 Shalva Weil, “Tadesse Yacov of Cairo and Addis Ababa,” International Journal of Ethiopian
Studies, vol. 2, no. 1–2 (Fall 2005/6): 233–243.

belonged to converted families or to families where a branch had converted,

but all were accepted as Jews and brought up as such by their families, rab-
bis and the Jewish institutions taking care of them. This indicates that the
issue of conversions or welcoming converts in Orthodox Jewish circles at the
time was seen as a viable option to be favourably considered, unlike today in
Israel.
Faitlovitch presented himself as doing “missionary” work among the Beta
Israel and the word “mission” was also used by other representatives of Jewish
organisations or rabbis such as Rabbi Zvi Margulies in Florence.57 In 1912 Mar-
gulies asked Rav Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), who would later become
Chief Rabbi of British Mandate-ruled Palestine, to try to establish a small “mis-
sionary post” to be run by Faitlovitch assisted by a young rabbi,58 and he wrote
that “the missionaries would produce a Jewish calendar and the most basic
books such as a catechism and history of the Bible in Amharic which would
be distributed among the Falashas”.59 The Beta Israel had a different calendar
and the idea of the introduction of a Jewish calendar was considered a high
priority by the Jewish “mission”.
5 The Dabat Mission by E. Payne: “Half Christian, Half Falasha”,

a Liminal Condition
In 1948 a new Protestant mission, directed by the English missionary Eric Payne,
was opened in Dabat, not far from Jenda. Under Haile Selassie (ruled 1930–
1974) the missionaries’ work continued to find favour with the Emperor. One
of his daughters, Princess Tsahay Tafari, was educated by missionaries at St
Chrischona. A teacher-training college to educate local teachers was opened
in Dabat in 1963 and a new Bible school for the Orthodox was opened in Jenda,
which improved relations with the Coptic Church. In these same years, Fait-
lovitch’s pupils did not miss the opportunity to report to the representatives
of international Jewish organisations the ceaseless activity carried out by the
57 Menachem Waldman, Beyond the Rivers of Ethiopia, 216 cit. in Trevisan, Jacques Faitlovitch,
59.
58 Abraham Isaac Kook in 1921 launched an appeal to the Jews of the world “To save our
Falasha brethren from extinction and to rescue 50,000 souls of the House of Israel from
oblivion. A holy obligation rests upon our entire nation to raise funds with a generous
hand to improve the lot of the Falashas in Ethiopia and to bring their young children to
Jewish centres in Palestine and the Diaspora,” quoted by David Kessler, The Falashas, 144–
145.
59 Ibid.

84 trevisan semi
missionaries and the success of such action. In 1953, five years after the open-
ing of Payne’s mission in Dabat, there were 400 converted and 400 unconverted
Falashas.60
Payne’s mission, like the preceding ones, would have a bearing on the future
of the converted, which in most cases would involve the descendants of the
converted, who today are known as Falas Mura. This future would lead to Israel
or to the compounds of Ethiopia in the long wait to emigrate to Israel.61
From the research that I conducted on the basis of 86 forms filled in by these
missionaries at Dabat,62 it is clear that the educational opportunities offered
by the mission to the Falashas played an important role in their conversion.63
Thus, we cannot claim that the move to Christianity was a matter of forced
conversions. The records confirm the effectiveness of the mediatory role car-
ried out by the conversion practitioners; in the vast majority of cases, it was
precisely because of the relationship between the early converts and their ori-
ginal group that new followers decided to turn to the mission. This is further
confirmation of the fact that the converted Falashas continued to have access
to and relations with their original village, with the only ban being access to
the mesgid. The prospect of an education, a job in the mission and health care
at the clinic all contributed to the attractiveness of conversion. New clans of
converts were created through extended families and inter-family contacts. As
Kaplan has pointed out, the achievement of the missionaries rested on their
“ability to convert entire family groups rather than single individuals”,64 giving
rise to a phenomenon that we could define as “contagious” conversion because
it spread within a village through family group networks.
Conversion was a gendered process, something which has been generally
underestimated. Many files65 that I analysed show that there was great pres-
sure, verging on coercion, brought to bear on women opposed to conversion.
60 Eric Payne, Ethiopian Jews. The story of a mission (London: The Olive Press, 1972).
61 On the issues concerning “waiting” in the Gondar compound, see Ravit Cohen, “The Eth-
nography of the Gondar compound ‘waiting’ and what it means,” in Beta Israel. The Jews
of Ethiopia and Beyond, History, Identity and Borders, eds. Emanuela Trevisan Semi and
Shalva Weil (Venezia: Cafoscarina, 2011), 159–179.
62 Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts/cmj (box 13).
63 Emanuela Trevisan Semi, “The Conversion of the Beta Israel in Ethiopia: a Reversible ‘Rite
of Passage,’ ” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, vol. 1, no. 1 (April 2002): 90–103.
64 Kaplan, The Beta Israel, 129.
65 In the Department of Western Manuscripts of the Bodleian Library I found the Payne Cor-
respondence 1946–1955, the files compiled by the Missionaries of Dabat, Annual Reports
of the Church Mission to the Jews, the London Society Reports and the bulletins of the
Jewish Missionary Intelligence.

Women who refused were usually repudiated by their husbands. Wives were
often opposed to conversion, but they were unable to exert any power over
their menfolk. Quirin notes the importance of missionaries’ wives, such as Mrs
Flad, who played an important role by inviting women to visit her and accept-
ing their daughters for teaching.66 In the research I undertook on the Dabat
records, the profiles of women subjugated by husbands or parents are strik-
ing. Payne himself had also written that women attended the schools only
when they had been forced to do so by their husbands. The strategy generally
used by the missionaries was to wait to convert the first member of the family
and again wait until their spouse was ready, to avoid breaking up families, but
many cases from the Dabat mission demonstrate that this strategy was not the
rule.
It is to note that Faitlovitch’s work produced the opposite effect to that inten-
ded, in that promoting transformation within the group set in motion a tide of
change which once initiated could hardly be stemmed. Kaplan wrote:
Although the activities of Faitlovitch … were intended to prevent conver-

sion and assimilation, in some cases it had precisely the opposite effect.
Faitlovitch’s message to the Beta Israel—to abandon their monks, sacri-
fices, and purity laws and accept a religion that is the true continuation
of the Bible—was essentially the same as that of the missionaries.67
In the records I found cases like those mentioned by Kaplan, such as students in
the Jewish schools that Faitlovitch helped to create who addressed themselves
later on to the Christian mission.68 One of them was, recounts Payne:
a Falasha schoolmaster at the government school at Dabat (who) came

to see me to ask if he might be taken on when we opened our school. He
was trained years back by the counter-mission, partly in Europe but he
seems now to have lost that spirit … he thinks that he would be pleased if
all Falashas became Christians so long they gained a good education and
equal rights thereby.69
66 James Quirin, “Beta Israel Converts Biographies, 1837–1931,” Journal of Ethiopian Religious
Studies, 1 (2017): 1–23.
67 Ibid. 20.
68 There were 35 Jewish schools in the 1950s which often failed or survived with great diffi-
culty.
69 Letter of E. Payne to Curtis, Secretary of cmj, 15 November 1940. Bodleian Library, cmj box
13.

86 trevisan semi
Twenty years later, a former teacher from the Jewish school of Asmara (Men-
gistu Degu) abandoned teaching there because he was no long being paid; he
went to the mission and was baptised.70
Between 1955 and 1960, the Swiss and German missionaries left Dabat as
a result of disagreements with Payne, who was performing baptisms on chil-
dren of all ages along with their parents, a practice considered illegitimate by
the other missionaries (because it was without the children’s consent), and
also because of Payne’s decision not to set up a secondary school to follow the
primary (for fear that the young would leave their villages for the city, and so
cease to practice). Just as in the case of reconversions to Judaism carried out
by Faitlovitch, we also find in the Dabat files that Falasha conversion could be
temporary.
It was possible to revert to the previous state and become a Falasha Jew,
thanks to the rites of penitence and purification (a week of fasting), a con-
dition we frequently find among the converted, according to the missionary
files. Consequently, there were social dynamics and feelings of belonging to
the group which could rapidly change, for example in terms of age, when the
elderly chose to return to their former faith. In one report, during a missionary
tour in the region of Seqelt made by the missionary Heintze, he met Falasha
monks who told him that, “They knew that our work had begun in the days
of King Theodore under Martin Flad. At that time, we accepted this faith and
were baptised. As for them, they had grown old and preferred to abide with
their old faith,” while other Falashas he met in Amba Gualit also explained
that, “they also decided that they had become old and would die in their faith”.71
Reversion practices were always possible, even for the monks, as these accounts
show.
In the records, I found that the missionaries had added to some files com-
ments such as: “Falasha again”, “apostatised”, “living next to reconverted relat-
ives”, “half Christian, half Falasha”, “weak”, “not sure she is converted”.72 The
missionaries tried to oppose these trends, keeping in touch with converts and
trying to convince them to live far from their non-converted families. Steven
Kaplan underlines a distinction between conversion and “affiliation” or “adhe-
sion”, and explains that if conversion means “dramatic, radical transformations
in people’s beliefs and practices”, “affiliation” or “adhesion” may imply simply
adding ideas and practices to the old faith. “Adhesion” should take into consi-
70 Trevisan Semi, “The Conversion of the Beta Israel in Ethiopia,” 95.

71 Jewish Missionary Intelligence, vol. 23 (1933) 40, 41.
72 Trevisan Semi, “The Conversion of the Beta Israel in Ethiopia,” 95.

deration the motives behind a change of faith or community, such as the search
to improve lives through education.73
In the case of the Beta Israel, I argue that even if there were certainly
examples that demonstrated a deep spiritual and radical change, such as the
case of the native actors, such as Berru Webe, the first convert,74 or Mikael
Aragawi (a Christian Amhara),75 a large part of the population seems to belong
more to the category of “affiliation” or “adhesion” than to that of conversion.
Precise figures for converts are not available, and many may have only super-
ficially “adhered” to the Christian religion, but the fact that the missionaries
denounced hybrid identities (half Christian/half Falasha), the capacity of the
converts to partially maintain certain traditions (such as the observance of
Shabbat), as the American anthropologist Simon Messing observed during his
trips in 1953–1954 and in 1962, and the keeping of group boundaries which for-
bade marriages with other groups, may suggest important figures belonging to
the category of “adhesion”. Messing wrote that:
While the exact number of Falasha “Marranos” in Ethiopia can only be

guessed at by the territory they appear to occupy, the estimates of con-
verts made by Faitlovitch and the Protestant missionaries at the begin-
ning of the 20th century, and natural increase since then. A conservative
guess would be at least 50,000 persons … Except for the Marrano-like,
superficial acceptance of Christianity in mass conversion that were more
like changes of religious allegiance than individual changes of faith, they
appear to practice, still, the old Falasha version of Judaism.76
This suggests that many adhered to a version of Judaism not affected by the
Rabbinic Judaism that Faitlovitch attempted to introduce. While Simon Mess-
ing mentioned a sort of religious allegiance more than a change of faith, and
Steve Kaplan introduced the notion of “adhesion”, the converts apparently con-
tinued to entertain the possibility of returning to Judaism whenever the condi-
tions permitted it.
73 Steven Kaplan, “Themes and methods in the study of conversion in Ethiopia,” in Ethiopia
and the Missions, Historical and Anthropological Insights, ed. Verena Boll et al. (Munster:
Lit Verlag, 2005), 107–122.
74 James Quirin, “Beta Israel Converts Biographies, 1837–1931”.
75 On Mikael Aragawi, see James Quirin, “Beta Israel Converts Biographies, 1937–1931” and
Shalva Weil, “Mikael Aragawi: Christian Missionary among the Beta Israel,” in Beta Israel:
The Jews of Ethiopia and Beyond, 147–158.
76 Simon Messing, The Story of the Falashas “Black Jews” of Ethiopia (Brooklyn: Balshon Print-
ing, 1982), 99.

88 trevisan semi
The phenomenon of reconversions had also been highlighted by Hagar

Salomon during her research based on in-depth interviews conducted in Israel
with Ethiopian immigrants.77 Salomon stressed the features of the liminal con-
dition that distinguished the status of these converts who, after conversion,
found themselves in the situation of not being recognised by, or being part of,
either the Amhara Christians or the Jewish Falashas.78 The only marriage pro-
spects available to those of this status were within the new groups formed by
people in the same condition and therefore they had strictly endogamous mar-
riages. This was a condition considered important for them to be accepted as
Jews after their immigration to Israel. As Quirin has pointed out, “The new con-
verts were neither assimilated completely into Amhara Orthodox society nor
did they totally lose their Beta Israel identity”.79
Conclusion
The history of Falasha conversion has become a history of reversal. This history
began with the activity of converted Jews, as in the case of Stern, and ended
with the reconversion to Judaism of the descendants of the converted. This
reversal was always possible and took place according to the religious and cul-
tural codes of the Beta Israel. Enabling a reconversion to Judaism can be seen
therefore as a token of continuity. The missionaries’ actions aimed at denig-
rating and abolishing the practices of the Beta Israel (sacrifices, monks, purity
laws and attachment to the qessotch), followed by the Jewish “counter-mission”
(opposition to sacrifices, laws on purity and monks) demonstrate a certain con-
sistency of “missionary” action, that can also be seen as another token of con-
tinuity. To the violence exercised by those who wield ‘missionary’ power, the
answer was to invent practices of resistance in Ethiopia in the forms described
above.
The claim by the Falas Mura to have remained Jewish “in their bones”, and
thus to have a genetic filiation (through the mother), is a concept rooted in
the Halakhic tradition (the interpretation of the Laws of the Scriptures, a legal
77 Hagar Salomon, “Between Ethnicity and Religiosity. Internal Group Aspects of Conversion
Among the Beta Israel in Ethiopia,” Peamim, 58 (1994): 104–119 (Hebrew).
78 In a report of 1932, C.F.W. Flad (the son of Martin Flad) had already noted this phe-
nomenon: “Baptized Falashas find no friendly recognition among the Abyssinian Chris-
tians, and if they seek it among the Falashas it is only on condition that they fall back into
the ways and customs of the Falashas,” News Sheets, 3, March 1932, Bodleian Library, cmj,
Box 13.
79 Quirin, The Evolution of the Ethiopian Jews, 179.

part of Talmudic literature), and while on the one hand it is still a mark of con-
tinuity, on the other it retains all the ambiguity inherent in the issue of Jewish
identity, being at the same time a religious and national or ethnic identity.80
There has therefore been continuity in the practices of reconversion of Chris-
tian Falashas but it has been within a context of great fractures affecting all the
Jews of Ethiopia, whether converted or not.81
The missionary activity of the Protestants as well as by the counter-mission
tried to convince the Beta Israel to change their old practices and ways of life
through the strategy of offering modern education and perspectives of social
mobility. This provoked a dynamic that favoured the creation of hybrid iden-
tities thanks to the Beta Israel’s capacity to maintain old traditions and beliefs
alongside new ones. These strategies question the relevance and appropriate-
ness of the term “affiliation” or “adhesion” more than that of conversion to
describe this phenomenon, as proposed by Steve Kaplan. The capacity to keep
group boundaries which forbade marriages with other groups, along with the
invention of hybrid identities, may suggest that new categories of belonging
characterised by more flexibility were created by this group in order to resist
the pressures of missionary activity.
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81 For an updated overview of the condition of the Ethiopians in Israel see Lisa Anteby-
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chapter 2

Protestant Missions in Ethiopia: From Jewish

© emanuela trevisan semi, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004449633_005 Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

1 Paving the Way to a Formal Mission: the London Society

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

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Flad, who belonged to the mission of St Chrischona in Basel, was in a diffi-

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

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29 R. Hess, Introduction to Stern, Wanderings, xxii.

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

of citations, argument and counterargument, totally foreign to the Falashas,

We were surrounded by Falashas, and whilst most in Jenda itself had

34 Seeman, One People, One Blood, 51.

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

remain Jewish. The older ones have no understanding of us or our work.

When on the following morning we went to the mesgied (sic) (synagogue)

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

4 The Jewish “Counter Mission”: Practices of Reconversion

Reports on the Christian missionary activity drew the attention of rabbis in

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

In another report, according to a former Falasha priest,

the disciples of Jacob Faitlowitsch (sic) (are) spreading wholesale a

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

All Faitlovitch’s missions were marked by his struggles against conversion.

Faitlovitch describes an atmosphere of great general excitement during which

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

The counter-mission drew the attention of Beta Israel families to opportun-

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

belonged to converted families or to families where a branch had converted,

5 The Dabat Mission by E. Payne: “Half Christian, Half Falasha”,

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

Although the activities of Faitlovitch … were intended to prevent conver-

a Falasha schoolmaster at the government school at Dabat (who) came

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

70 Trevisan Semi, “The Conversion of the Beta Israel in Ethiopia,” 95.

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

While the exact number of Falasha “Marranos” in Ethiopia can only be

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

The phenomenon of reconversions had also been highlighted by Hagar

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

80 Seeman, One people, one blood.

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

Emanuela Trevisan Semi - 9789004449633

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