No doubt this unequivocal declaration of support and involvement helped Faitlovitch to establish a string of pro-Falasha committees in Europe and America and to spread knowledge of the black Jews. Nevertheless, a degree of scepticism remained and not least in the circles of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, which not only controlled large sums of money but was very effective in founding and maintaining many excellent schools for Jewish communities, especially in Muslim countries. This powerful organisation was almost ideally suited to bring educational aid to a backward Jewish community but the plight of their Ethiopian co-religionists failed to excite the worthy French Jews who presided over its destinies. It has been suggested that a touch of colour prejudice may perhaps have played a part. Be that as it may, under pressure from growing public concern the Alliance was eventually persuaded once more to examine the problem.

This time they decided that their representative would be Rabbi Haim Nahum, a teacher in the rabbinical seminary at Constantinople, who was soon to be nominated Chief Rabbi of Turkey and, in 1925, became Chief Rabbi of Egypt. He was to be accompanied by a young doctor of Russian origin called Eberlin. The two-man mission arrived in the new capital, Addis Ababa, in February 1908, forty years after Joseph Halevy, representing the same organisation, had entered the north-west area of the country from the Sudan. Forty years which had seen big changes, though the wretched condition of the Falashas, like that of the majority of the inhabitants of the empire, had scarcely altered. Those four decades had seen - besides the foundation of Addis Ababa and the consolidation of the imperial government - the establishment of

(1) A translation in German is included as an appendix in Quer durch Abessinien.