 The Beta Israel, also known as Ethiopian Jews, are a Jewish community that lived for centuries in the area of the Kingdom of Aksum and the Ethiopian Empire, which is currently divided between the modern-day Amhara and Tigray regions of Ethiopia. Most of the Beta Israel community immigrated to Israel in the late 20th century. The Beta Israel lived in northern and northwestern Ethiopia in more than 500 small villages which were spread over a wide territory, alongside populations that were predominantly Christian and Muslim. Most of them were concentrated mainly on what are today North Gondar zone, Shire Indecelesi. They practice a non-talmudic form of Judaism that is similar in some respects to Karate Judaism. In Israel, this form of Judaism is referred to as Hamanot. Beta Israel appeared to have been isolated from mainstream Jewish communities for at least a millennium. They suffered religious persecution, and a significant portion of the community were forced into Christianity during the 19th and 20th centuries. Those converted to Christianity came to be known as the Falash Mura. Many of the Beta Israel's accounts of their own origins state that they stem from the very ancient migration of some portion of the tribe of Dan to Ethiopia, were led by the sons of Moses, perhaps at the time of the Exodus. Alternative timelines include the later crises in Judea, that is the split of the northern kingdom of Israel from the southern kingdom of Judah after the death of King Solomon or the Babylonian exile. According to one account, the Beta Israel originated in the kingdom of Israel and they were the contemporaries rather than the descendants of King Solomon and Menelik. According to another account, the forefathers of the Beta Israel are supposed to have arrived in Ethiopia by coming from the north, independently from Menelik and his company. The Falashas migrated, like many of the other sons of Israel, to exile in Egypt after the destruction of the first temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, the time of the Babylonian exile. They remained in exile in Egypt for a few hundred years until the reign of Cleopatra. When she was engaged in a war against Augustus Caesar, the Jews supported her. When she was defeated, it became dangerous for the small minorities to remain in Egypt so there was another migration, between approximately 39 to 31 BCE. Some of the migrants went to South Arabia and settled in Yemen. Some of them went to Sudan and continued to migrate until they reached Ethiopia, where they were helped by Egyptian traders who guided them through the desert. Some of them entered Ethiopia through Quara, near the Sudanese border, and some of them came via Eritrea. Later in time there was an Abyssinian king named Caleb who wished to enlarge his kingdom so he declared war on the Yemen and conquered it. And as a result, another group of Jews, led by Azonos and Finhos, arrived in Ethiopia during his reign. The Ethiopian history described in the Kebra Nagest relates that Ethiopians are descendants of Israelite tribes who came to Ethiopia with Menelik the Fur, alleged to be the son of King Solomon and the queen of Sheba, or Makita in the legend. The legend relates that Menelik, as an adult, returned to his father in Jerusalem and later resettled in Ethiopia. He took with him the Ark of the Covenant. The Kebra Nagest asserts that the Beta Israel are descended from a battalion of men of Judah who fled southward down the Arabian coastal lands from Judea after the breakup of the Kingdom of Israel into two kingdoms in the 10th century BCE, while King Rehoboam reigned over Judah. Many Beta Israel believe that they are descended from the tribe of Dan. To prove the antiquity and authenticity of their claims, the Beta Israel cite the 9th century CE testimony of Elded Hadani, the Danit, from a time before the Zagween dynasty was established. Elded was a Jewish man who appeared in Egypt and created a stir in that Jewish community and elsewhere in the Mediterranean Jewish communities he visited, with claims that he had come from a Jewish kingdom of pastoralists far to the south. The only language Elded spoke was a hitherto unknown dialect of Hebrew. Although he strictly followed the Mosaic commandments, his observance differed in some details from Rabbinic Halakha. Some observers thought that he might be a Karaite, although his practice also differed from theirs. He carried Hebrew books that supported his explanations of Halakha. He cited ancient authorities in the scholarly traditions of his own people. Elded said that the Jews of his own kingdom descended from the tribe of Dan, which included the biblical war hero Samson, who had fled the civil war in the Kingdom of Israel between Solomon's son, Rehoboam, and Jeroboam the son of Nabot, and resettled in Egypt. From there, they moved southwards up the Nile into Ethiopia. The Beta Israel say this confirms that they are descended from these Danites. Some Beta Israel, however, assert that their Danite origins go back to the time of Moses, and some Danites parted from other Jews right after the Exodus and moved south to Ethiopia. Elded the Danite speaks of at least three waves of Jewish immigration into his region, creating other Jewish tribes and kingdoms. The earliest wave settled in a remote kingdom of the tribe of Moses. This was the strongest and most secure Jewish kingdom of all, with farming villages, cities, and great wealth. Other Ethiopian Jews, who appeared in the Mediterranean world over the succeeding centuries and persuaded rabbinic authorities there that they were of Jewish descent, and so could, if slaves be ransomed by Jewish communities, join synagogues, marry other Jews, etc., also referred to the Mosaic and Danite origins of Ethiopian Jewry. The Mosaic claims of the Beta Israel in any case, like those of the Zagway dynasty, are ancient, according to a 2020 study by Agrinat Tamir et al. The DNA of the Ethiopian Jews is mostly of East African origin, but about 20% of their genetic makeup is of Middle Eastern Semitic people origin, and shows similarity to modern Jewish and Arab populations and Bronze Age Canaanites. The Beta Israel are autosomally closer to other populations from the Horn of Africa than to any other Jewish population, including Yemenite Jews. A 2012 study by Austria et al. concluded that the Ethiopian Jewish community was founded about 2,000 years ago, probably by only a relatively small number of Jews from elsewhere, with local people joining to the community, causing Beta Israel to become genetically distant from other Jewish groups. The Beta Israel made contact with other Jewish communities in the later 20th century. Following this, a rabbinic debate ensued over whether or not the Beta Israel were Jews. After halakik, Jewish law, and constitutional discussions, Israeli officials decided, in 1977, that the Israeli law of return was to be applied to the better Israel. The Israeli and American governments mounted aliyah, immigration to Israel, transport operations. By the end of 2008, there were 119,300 people of Ethiopian descent in Israel, including nearly 81,000 people born in Ethiopia and about 30,8500 native-born Israelis, about 32% of the community, with at least one parent born in Ethiopia or Eritrea, formerly part of Ethiopia. At the end of 2019, there were 155,300 people of Ethiopian descent in Israel, approximately 87,500 were born in Ethiopia and 67,800 were Israeli-born with fathers born in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel is mostly composed of Beta Israel, practicing both Hamanot and rabbinic Judaism, and to a smaller extent of Phalaash Moura, who converted from Christianity to rabbinic Judaism upon their arrival to Israel. El-Dad Hadani, the Danite, writings probably represent the first mention of the Beta Israel in rabbinic literature. Despite some skeptical critics, his authenticity has been generally accepted in current scholarship. His descriptions were consistent and even the originality doubtful rabbis of his time were finally persuaded. El-Dad's was not, the only medieval testimony about Jewish communities living far to the south of Egypt, which strengthens the credibility of his account. Obadiah Ben-Abraham Bartanura wrote in a letter from Jerusalem in 1488. I myself saw two of them in Egypt. They are dark-skinned, and one could not tell whether they keep the teaching of the Karaites or of the rabbis. For some of their practices resemble the Karaite teaching, but in other things, they appear to follow the instruction of the rabbis, and they say they are related to the tribe of Dan, Rabbi David ibn Zimra of Egypt, 1479-1573, writing similarly held the Ethiopian Jewish community to be similar in many ways to the Karaites, writing of them on this wise, Lo. The matter is well known that there are perpetual wars between the kings of Kush, which has three kingdoms, part of which belonging to the Ishmaelites, and part of which to the Christians, and part of which to the Israelites from the tribe of Dan. In all likelihood, they are from the sect of Sadak and Boethas, who are called Karaites, since they know only a few of the biblical commandments, but are unfamiliar with the oral law, nor do they light the Sabbath candle. War ceases not from amongst them, and every day they take captives from one another. In the same response, he concludes that if the Ethiopian Jewish community wished to return to rabbinic Judaism, they would be received and welcomed into the fold, just as the Karaites, who returned to the teachings of the rabbinites in the time of Rabbi Abraham Ben Maimonides, reflecting the consistent assertions made by Ethiopian Jews they dealt with or knew of, and after due investigation of their claims and their own Jewish behavior, a number of Jewish legal authorities in previous centuries and in modern times have ruled holocically, according to Jewish legal code, that the Beta Israel are indeed Jews, the descendants of the tribe of Dan, one of the ten lost tribes. They believe that these people established a Jewish kingdom that lasted for hundreds of years. With the rise of Christianity and later Islam, schisms arose and three kingdoms competed. Eventually, the Christian and Muslim Ethiopian kingdoms reduced the Jewish kingdom to a small impoverished section. The earliest authority to rule this way was the 16th century scholar David Ibn Zimra, Radbaz, who explained elsewhere in a response concerning the status of a Beta Israel slave. But those Jews who come from the land of Kush are without doubt from the tribe of Dan, and since they did not have in their midst sages who were masters of the tradition, they clung to the simple meaning of the scriptures. If they had been taught, however, they would not be irreverent towards the words of our sages, so their status is comparable to a Jewish infant taken captive by non-Jews. And even if you say that the matter is in doubt, it is a commandment to redeem them. In 1973, Ovadia Yosef, the Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel, ruled, based on the writings of David Ben Solomon, Ibn Abizimra, and other accounts, that the Beta Israel were Jews and should be brought to Israel. Two years later, this opinion was confirmed by a number of other authorities who made similar rulings, including the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel Shlomo Goren. In 1977, the law was passed granting the right of return. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the Beta Israel were required to undergo a modified conversion ceremony involving immersion in a mikveh, ritual bath, a declaration accepting rabbinic law, and, for men, a hodafat-dam-brit, symbolic recircumcision. Avraham Shapira later waived the hodafat-dam-brit stipulation, which is only a requirement when the halakic doubt is significant. More recently, Shlomo Amar has ruled that descendants of Ethiopian Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity are unquestionably Jews in every respect. With the consent of Ovadia Yosef, Amar ruled that it is forbidden to question the Jewishness of this community, pejoratively called Phalashmura, in reference to their having converted.