The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, by David Kessler
Today's date is: 8/1/2025
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The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, by David Kessler
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| to a diaspora in Cush: 'From beyond the rivers of Cush my suppliants, my dispersed community shall bring my offering.' If Cush is understood to be Meroe the reference to the rivers is apt, since much of the country was virtually enclosed by the great waters of the Nile and the Atbara, thus almost forming an inland island, or Gezireh, like the similar area between the Blue and White Niles. Zephaniah was a contemporary of Josiah (c. 640-609 Be), the King of Judah who unwisely fought against the Egyptian pharaoh, Necho, and was killed at Megiddo (2 Kings 23:29). And it was Necho who, as related by Herodotus, built a canal which connected the Nile with the Red Sea, though in fact there had been a canal even before his time. Necho also gave great encouragement to navigation and it was during his reign that his ships, manned by Phoenician sailors setting out from the Red Sea, achieved the remarkable feat of circumnavigating Africa. Not less relevant is the oft-quoted eleventh chapter of the Book of lsaiah in which the Prophet forecast the day (verse 6) when ... the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid and the calf and the young lion and the fading together and a little child shall lead them ... And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people which shall be left from Assyria and from Egypt and from Pathros [Upper Egypt] and from Cush [Ethiopia] and from Elam [east of Babylonia] and from Shinnar [Babylonia] and from Hamath [central Syria] and from the islands of the sea [the Mediterranean]. And he shall . . . assemble the outcasts of Israel and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.(1) Clearly, the diaspora had already reached much of the known world, including the country known in Greek as Ethiopia. The Prophet Jeremiah, (2) too, refers to 'all the Jews which dwelt in the land of Egypt ... and in the country of Pathros', where, on its southern frontier, at Elephantine, near the modern Aswan, a military outpost manned by foreign mercenaries, including Jews, had been established to defend 'the gateway of Africa' especially against marauding Ethiopians. Jeremiah could have had this distant community in mind when he mentioned the Jews of Pathros. (1) Verses 11, 12 and Peake431g. |
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