Former Jews to emigrate

last updated 8 January 2015

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Israel has agreed to accept some 20,000 Ethiopians of Jewish descent as immigrants, even though their ancestors converted to Christianity. The Israeli military secretly airlifted tens of thousands of Jews from Ethiopia to Israel in 1984, when a famine was devastating the country, and a second group arrived seven years later. But the Falash Mura tribe was not included, because its members became Christians hundreds of years ago. Orthodox rabbis ruled recently that the Falash Mura, like Spanish Jews during the Inquisition, had been forced to convert to avoid persecution and had not forfeited their Jewishness.