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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks marshmallow. |
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Posted on 01/18/2012 9:35:37 AM PST by marshmallow
ASHKELON, Israel -- Israel is closing the books on a rare millennia-old Jewish tradition.
Nearly three decades after Israel began airlifting Ethiopia's ancient Jewish community out of the Horn of Africa, Israel's rabbis are now working to phase out the community's white-turbaned clergy, the kessoch, whose unusual religious practices are at odds with the rabbinate's Orthodox Judaism.
The effort has added to the sense of discrimination felt by Israel's 120,000 Ethiopian citizens. These sentiments boiled over this month after a group of landlords in the southern town of Kiryat Malachi refused to accept Ethiopians as tenants.The move has prompted large protests, including a gathering outside parliament on Wednesday that drew more than 1,000 young immigrants and other supporters.
Kess Semai Elias, 42, said the recent reports of discrimination add to his and other Ethiopian Jewish spiritual leaders' dismay and feelings that they are not welcome.
"We are just like all the other Jews. We don't have any other religion," he said.
Descendants of the lost Israelite tribe of Dan, according to Jewish lore, Ethiopian Jews spent millennia isolated from the rest of the Jewish world. In most Jewish communities, the priesthood of the Bible was replaced by rabbis who emphasized text study and prayer. Ethiopia's Jewish kessoch continued the traditions of Biblical-era priests, sacrificing animals and collecting the first fruits of the harvest.
The two traditions diverged so much that the first trickle of Ethiopian Jewish immigrants to Israel were asked to undergo a quickened conversion ceremony to appease rabbis who were dubious about their religious pedigree.
When Israeli clandestine operations rescued large groups of Ethiopian Jews from war and famine in the 1980s and early 1990s, a rabbinic consensus was reached and the newcomers did not have to convert - except for a group known as the Falash Mura.........
(Excerpt) Read more at sunherald.com ...
I don’t buy that at all.
In the US the liberal Jews have been most inhospitable to Yemenites, for instance. Whereas the Satmar community has welcomed them with open arms.
Why is that? For the same reason it is true in Israel. the anti-religious left is secular and despise religion and ancient customs.
I consider the Ethoipian, Indian and other Jewish migrations to Israel, a part of the in-gathering promised in the Torah.
Rabbis are in no way, shape or form comparable to Cohanim (or “priests,” as the author refers to them). The latter are hereditary ministrators in Solomon’s Temple, as are the Leviim. They still perform some ritual functions even now, although with the Temple in ruins and under occupation, they can’t perform their main functions. Rabbis are merely teachers, and do not offer animal sacrifices or accept first fruits and such, which can only be done when the Temple is rebuilt.
But the Tribe of Dan is a lost tribe. Another such tribe is the Benei Menashe, who also used to make sacrifices on Passover on Bamot when they lived in rural India. Members of both tribes are my neighbors and friends in Kiryat Arba. They were exiled during the period of the First Temple, when making animal and other sacrifices on small, makeshift altars called Bamot was still commonplace. It would not surprise me if these Kesachs are really hereditary Cohanim, continuing the practices of the First Temple era, despite the changes in Jewish law from which they’ve been isolated for too long. But I’d have to learn more about them. This is the first I’ve ever heard of them.
I do think that the Ethiopians should demand their own Rabbinic authorities under their own customs.
Ethiopa is right across the Red Sea from Yemen. It is a short boat ride along an old trade rout. Getting to Libya is much harder because of the Sahara. And you seem to have forgotton the existence of Sudan and Egypt. The route to Libya is down the Nile and then across the coastal plain.
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks marshmallow. |
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“DNA each one of them. Period.”
At least one male and female of every larger family group living in Israel has submitted to DNA testing.
The males are definitively semetic, the females’ mitochondria not so much.
Been sutdies ongoing for last decade, many news stories posted on FR, SunkenCiv and Blam posted and added to pinglists many of the stories.
” It would not surprise me if these Kesachs are really hereditary Cohanim, continuing the practices of the First Temple era, despite the changes in Jewish law from which they’ve been isolated for too long. “
But - if the Cohanim exist, rabbinic authority is chalanged ...
EG, one would assume, according to the Cohanim, there were no changes is Jewish law since the first temple.
There are Cohanim in all Jewish societies, but they do not get first fruits because they are not in a state of purity sufficient to eat first fruits and truma, etc.
I didn’t know that. I thought they got wiped out with the Temple.
What a paranoid and misanthropic statement.
You sound exactly like Gollum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Moses
Israel did not bow to world pressure; Israel initiated this airlift and subsequent airlifts of Ethiopian Jews.
I remember reading about this at that time.
http://www.biblemysteries.com/lectures/dan.htm
http://www.biblemysteries.com/library/tribesjapan.htm
http://www.biblemysteries.com/library/dna.htm
Interesting stuff, for what it’s worth.
I found the article on Japan fascinating.
They’re everyplace that there are Jews, as are the Levites. And all the priestly gifts practiced during the time of the Temple still hold, including redeeming our first born, and priestly blessings. But the first fruits and truma offerings are only obligatory in Israel. Levites, however, can receive their tithes, which don’t require ritual purity to eat.
What the Ethiopians did was continue them as a custom in Ethiopia, which was fine in Ethiopia. The problem is that they’re giving first fruits and such to their Cohanim in Israel, which is more than a custom, it is sacred, and no Cohen is presently in a fit state to eat sacred foods at present.
We’d need the ashes of the Red Heiffer for that, and pure red heiffers are few and far between. There’ve only been a few throughout history. Nearly was one a few years ago, but it had a couple of black hairs or something, so it was disqualified. So either we find a pure Red Heiffer, sacrifice it and incinerate it and use its ashes, or we find stored up Red Heiffer ashes at an archaeological dig and use them for the purifications (would have to be in a sealed, specially marked container).
In the interim, no Cohanim should be eating sacred foods, and according to some opinions, the visits to the Temple Mount might even be forbidden, although there are more lenient opinions that people rely on nowadays for that.
What a crazy ideology you have.
Yes. There is holy craziness that transcends intellectual calculation, and the Red Heiffer is the very essence of that. It’s weird, alright. But G-d’s Word must transcend reason at some point, while dealing in reason in other respects, such as Jewish laws of civil damage and marriage and such. Reason itself dictates that that must be. G-d created Reason, just as He created Time, Space, Matter, etc. He can’t be completely bound by these creations of His, but conversely He can’t be completely outside them, because that itself would be a limitation on the Infinite One (in Hebrew Ein Sof).
Are the kessoch really Jews? Or are the Mormonophobes reacting harshly to protect their own narrowly held views?
Thank you - that is interesting stuff.
As I recall, the cow had a white eyelash. (It was on FR)
Are the members of the FUNDAMENTALIST church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints really MORMONs; or are the SPINELESS weasels inhabiting Salt Lake City just very controlling?
This was PROBABLY a story about LAMANITES...
True and Faith: Words that need to be defined first.
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