Ethiopian ruling endorsed after 40 years
V ISRAEL’S CHIEF Rabbinate has finally voted to approve a decades-old ruling recognising an Ethiopian community as Jewish, it has emerged.
The rabbinate council voted last year in favour of the decision, made over 40 years ago Ovadya Yosef, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi at the time, to recognise the Beita Yisrael community as part of the Jewish people.
His landmark ruling meant that Beita Yisrael Ethiopians did not need to undergo conversion to have their status recognised, but it was not supported by many of Ovadya Yosef’s fellow rabbis at the time.
Rabbinical endorsement finally took place last October in a special meeting of the council at Rabbi Yosef’s home in Jerusalem, on the sixth anniversary of his death.
However, it is unclear how it will be implemented in local rabbinates and religious councils, some of which still do not automatically recognise Ethiopian Jews as being halachically Jewish.
Rabbi Yosef, who died in 2013, issued his ruling on the Jewish status of Beita Yisrael in a letter to Menachem Begin’s government in the late 1970s. One of the most renowned Strictly Orthodox rabbis of his generation, he was also famed for his Kocha d’heteira, the inclination in his rulings towards permission. Other Charedi rabbis often criticised him for it.
His Beita Yisrael ruling was a major reason why the Israeli government invested major resources over the next decade to airlift Jews out of Ethiopia.
The first was Operation Moses, a series of clandestine flights from airstrips in the Sudanese desert. That was followed by Operation Solomon, a 36-hour airlift from Addis Ababa in which 14,300 Ethiopian Jews were brought to Israel.
But despite the fact that Rabbi Yosef was the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel at the time he issued the ruling, the council at the time, which included rabbis with a more conservative view than his, did not endorse it.
Over subsequent decades, many Ethiopian Israelis were forced by the rabbinate to prove their Judaism or pass various conversion requirements.
Even today, Israel’s Chief Rabbinate does not appear eager to implement the ruling. The meeting three months ago was not publicised until this month, and no guidelines have so far been issued to the local religious councils and batei din (rabbinical courts) which register marriages and verify that individuals are considered Jewish according to Orthodox rabbinical law.
Rabbi Yehuda Deri, the chief rabbi of Beer Sheva and the council member who proposed endorsing Rabbi Yosef’s ruling said at last October’s meeting, said that “sadly, even the last decision is still being opposed by some [local] rabbinates.”