Jun 29, 2017

On June 7, another group of about 70 Falash Mura (people of Jewish origin) immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia. Their arrival revived discussions of the preservation of Ethiopian Jewry's ancient traditions, particularly their language, Ge'ez.

Ge'ez is an ancient Semitic language with its own unique alphabet. It served as the national language of the Ethiopian Empire until about one thousand years ago. It is survived by its close relatives, the contemporary Semitic languages of Ethiopia: Tigre, Tigrinya and Amharic. With the penetration and growth of Amharic, Ge'ez was increasingly marginalized. Now, it is only used as the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Church, the Eritrean Church and the Ethiopian Jewish community.

Samai Elias, the rabbi or "kes" of the Ethiopian community of Rishon LeTzion and chairman of the Spiritual Council of Kessim (Rabbis), told Al-Monitor, "Ge'ez is not a spoken language at all today. It is the language of our prayers and our Torah scrolls. Kessim learn the language, but as a spoken tongue, it is in danger of immediate extinction. What gives it a longer shelf life is that our prayers are still recited in it. These prayers preserve the language, if only on a low flame."

"You could say that the relative survival of the Ge'ez language could be credited mainly to the Jews of Ethiopia," added Abeje Medhani, the documentation coordinator at the Israeli State Center for Ethiopian Jewish Heritage. He is responsible for various projects working on the preservation, documentation and recognition of the culture and heritage of Ethiopian Jewry. "Although it is a sacred language for the church as well, only we have continued to use it in our prayers for the past thousand years. Knowing Ge'ez is, in effect, the threshold that anyone who wants to become a kes must pass. A kes must know the prayers and the Torah in the Ge'ez language. Modern researchers make frequent use of Jewish materials to study the Ge'ez language. Jewish monks in the 15th century composed the prayers and religious law books of the Jewish community in Ge'ez."

While Ge'ez is being preserved in some way, the Qwara language, which originated in the Qwara province of Ethiopia, has almost completely disappeared, though it was once considered the "Yiddish" (a colloquial and colorful language mix of Hebrew and German) of the Ethiopian Jewish community. "Until a few years ago, elders of the community who arrived from the Qwara region still knew the language, which was once in general use among the Jews of Ethiopia. Missionaries and researchers who visited the region in the 18th and 19th centuries testified that it was used by most Ethiopian Jews," said Medhani. "Today, however, you could say that the language is completely extinct."