Through oppression. drought. and warfare. their numbers have been decimated until now fewer than 20.000 remain in Ethiopia. Today their greatest needs are food and medicine but the means to transport these supplies to the remote areas where they subsist is a difficult problem. Most of them would like to emigrate to Israel where thousands have settled in recent years. While Israel stands ready to receive them. their emigration is an operation fraught with difficulty. No discussion of the Ethiopian Jews could be complete without mention of the various theories on their origin. Many Ethiopian Jews claim that during the exodus. the waters of the Red Sea closed before all the Jews could cross. Those left behind wandered south and settled in Ethiopia. The Israeli rabbinate believes that the Ethiopian Jews are the remnants of the lost Tribe of Dan that escaped or was abducted by the Assyrians and traveled as migrants and blacksmiths via Egypt to Ethiopia. Secular scholars. on the other hand. claim that the Ethiopian Jews are descendants of Africans who intermarried with Jews and converted to their faith. For many centuries. they were cut off from all other Jews.
Keywords matched
emigrate emigration migrants