Ethiopian Jews

Abstract This chapter offers a brief overview of the history of Ethiopian Jews and their migration to Israel. It discusses different theories of the origins of this group, which calls itself “Beta Israel,” and shows the evolution in their self-definition as Jews, through encounters with Protestant missionaries and Western Jewry since the nineteenth century. However, doubts about the Jewishness of the Beta Israel and fears that they would not integrate delayed their immigration to Israel after 1948. Only in the 1980s and 1990s did two major operations airlift the quasi-totality of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Their integration process in Israeli society is still fraught with difficulties (e.g., religious status, discrimination, low skills, police brutality, poverty), but there are also spectacular accomplishments, for example in politics, the army, and the visual arts, leading to the emergence of an Ethiopian Israeli middle class that combines a hybrid Jewish, Israeli, Ethiopian, and Black identity.