There
are overwhelming historic and linguistic evidences which suggest that a
greater number of the dominant majority Jews mostly white skinned, who
currently occupy a piece of land in the Middle East called Israel and
those scattered in Europe and America, directly descended from an
ancient Khazar empire in Eastern Europe which flourished from 7th
to 11th Century A.D. It was around 740 A.D. when Judaism
became the state religion of the Khazar Empire which prior to that had
been polytheistic.
“The
large majority of surviving Jews in the world is of Eastern European-and
thus perhaps mainly of Khazar-origin…This would mean that their
ancestors came not from Canaan but from Caucasus; and that genetically
they are more closely related to the Hun, Uigur and Magyar tribes than
to the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”[A., Koestler (1976), The
Thirteenth Tribe, page 17].
When
the once mighty khazar Empire was moving towards its nadir, some of the
Khazarian communities and tribes migrated into Poland, Hungary,
Lithuania, Russia, the Balkans and later to America where most of them
found themselves at the dawn of the 1st World War.
However
as Bro. C. Luwani points out in the Weekend
Nation Newspaper of 26th-27th
April 2003 on the ‘Religion Column’, unfortunately very little has been
covered in the mass media about the fate of communities of non-white
Jews, some of whose ancestry can directly be traced to the biblical
twelve tribes of Israel. For instance, in Ethiopia there are communities
of black Jews mostly referred to as the ‘Falashas’ in the academic
discourse though in Ethiopia this term is considered to be derogatory
and it literally means ‘strangers’ or ‘outsiders.’ But from time
immemorial, these black Jews have been calling themselves ‘Beta
Israel’ meaning ‘House of Israel.’ In Ethiopia a majority of
‘Falashas’ live in Gondar, a place that is situated in the
north-west of Lake Tana.
“Their
preservation of and adherence to Old Testament Jewish traditions are
undeniable. For they observe the sabbath, practice circumcision, have
synagogue services, follow dietary laws of Judaism…Offer sacrifices on
Nisan 14 in the Jewish religious year.” [M.F. Brooks., trans. (1995), Kebra Negast., page 175].
For
centuries the existence of ‘Falashas’ had been unknown to the entire
western world until the 17th Century when western
missionaries and anthropologists came across them. Since then, the
‘Falashas’ have been subjected to numerous multi-disciplinary
studies by various explorers and academics mostly from the west.
Nevertheless, baffling mysteries about them still remain.
About
their origin, scholars of history assert that the ‘Falashas’
originated from the Cushitic group of Agau people who embraced Judaism
as a religion when it first arrived in ancient Ethiopia in the 5th
Century B.C.
While
according to their own traditions, the ‘Falashas’ trace their
lineage further beyond the 5th Century BC to the days of
biblical King Solomon. They hold that they happen to be direct
descendants of the nobles of Jerusalem who accompanied Abna Hakim [son
of King Solomon and Queen of Sheba who is recorded to be the 1st
Emperor of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) from the Solomonic dynasty] on his way
back to Abyssinia from Jerusalem. It can therefore be concluded that
when one Jewish couple of Mary and Joseph set their foot in ancient
Egypt about 2000 years ago to hide their child Jesus Christ from sheer
wanton infanticide in Bethlehem (Matthew 2 vs. 14-15), the
‘Falashas’ or rather black Jews had lived in Africa for at least 500
years.
However,
throughout the centuries some families and individuals within the
‘Falasha’ communities in Ethiopia have been converting to orthodox
Christianity while others to Islam.
What
is also intriguing about the ‘Falashas’ who to a greater extent have
been denied the utmost veneration they deserve is the astonishing
revelation by Dr. Ahmed Karadawi (1991), the former UNHCR-Assistant
Commissioner for Refugees in Khartoum in his academic paper ‘The
Smuggling of The Ethiopian Falashas To Israel Through Sudan’
in which he testifies that starting from 1979-1985, the US’s Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), Israel’s intelligence agency called Mossad
and the Sudan’s state security in collaboration with the American
Jewry, a number of American and Israeli N.G.O.s masterminded and carried
out operations in a clandestine manner to smuggle the ‘Falashas’ out
of Ethiopia to Israel through Sudan. He further bears witness that after
the Operation Sheba in March 1985, about 17000 ‘Falashas’ had been
taken to Israel from Ethiopia. Besides as one periodical called the New African of November
2003 reports, by 2003 there were about 60,000 black Jews or
‘Falashas’ living in Israel. This then follows that approximately on
average, the total population of ‘Falashas’ in Israel annually grew
by 14.1% from 1985 to 2003 largely due to migration. Going by United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP) standards, an annual population
growth rate of this magnitude is considered exceedingly alarming.
Further to this the Observer
Newspaper of 21st
January 1985 reports that the cost of smuggling one ‘Falasha’ from
Ethiopia was estimated to be 10,000 US$ and resettlement of one
‘Falasha’ in Israel cost a further 25,000 US$.
In
his article entitled ‘Jewish Roots In Africa’,
George E. Lichtblau who once served as an Israeli Foreign Service
Officer in the 1960s suggests that long before 8th century
B.C., Jews had already settled as traders and warriors in Yemen, the
horn of Africa, Cush, Nubia and Mauritania. He also goes further to
elucidate that the early Jewish presence in Africa started to spread
widely in the 2nd and 3rd Centuries A.D. extending
into the Sahara desert and further along the West African coast and
possibly to some Bantu people in southern Africa. In this regard not
only does Lichtblau single out as an example the 40,000 Lemba people who
still trace their ancestry to Jewish roots but also the
‘Beni-Israel’ of Wolof and Mandinge communities in Senegal that
claimed to have directly descended from the tribe of Dan, one of the
twelve tribes of Israel.
In
support of Lichtblau`s splendiferous work, amongst the three traditions
regarding the origin of Agikuyu which is the largest ethnic group in
Kenya, is that they are of Jewish ancestry.
“According
to S. Ruhwa, the Agikuyu came from the Abacii in Abbysinia (Ethiopia)
who belonged to the tribe of Judah and migrated passing through Meru,
thereby settling and multiplying at Mukurwe WA Gathanga from where they
further dispersed.”[Reverend Dr. P.N.Wachege (1992), Jesus
Christ Our Muthamaki (Ideal Elder), page 9].
According
to Lichtblau, the archives of the Jewish synagogue in Egypt keeps
historic documents which contain names of ancient Jewish communities in
the Sub Saharan Africa, many of which still existed in the 15th
and 16th centuries A.D. thus prior to the advents of the
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the famous scramble for Africa by
European nations.
