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Ethiopian Jews

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NeverMore:
does someone here knows what does the Halacha or other Jewish sources say about whether whe Jews of Ethiopia are really regarded as Jewish, by the traditional Judaism? i mean Jewish in blood, not just feel like a Jew or other similarities to that. i personally know many Ethiopians and they are mostly great people, most of their youth volunteer to elite army units, and they very like the country (Israel, in case someone doesn't figure out why my English is so poor), altough sometimes they meet racism. the Haredim (that is the Orthodox Jews, especially the Sefards and their "Shas" party), as far as i know, dont accept them as fully Jewish, and make them have a Giur or something in that direction. does skin color and other physical features mean something in determining ones Judaism?

Shlomo:
http://www.sdss.jhu.edu/~ethan/jFAQ.html

`The Differences Among Jewish Communities - Maternal and Paternal Contributions' Ritte, U., Neufeld, E., Broit, M., Shavit, D., and Motra, U., Journal of Molecular Evolution, 37, 435, 1993

This paper discusses Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA affinities between various Jewish communities. The data presented here are for the Y-Chromosome. The mtDNA data comes from the following paper on the list. The sample was divided into six Jewish populations: Yemenite, Ashkenazic, Near Eastern, North African, Asia Minor and the Balkans, and Ethiopian. The first five showed a strong affinity, with the Ashkenazic and Yemenite populations coming out the closest. The Ethiopian community was a distant outlier, suggesting that that community is primarily descended from local converts. The Yemenite community had the smallest number of significant differences with the other communities in pair-wise comparisons using the Y-chromosome data. The Moroccan community had the smallest mtDNA differences. There were no direct comparisons with neighboring populations, so it was not possible to come up with an exact estimate of the genetic contribution from intermarriage, but the close affinity of the various Jewish communities can be taken as showing that any such contribution must be modest.

NeverMore:
Hmm... interesting... very interesting. but i believe that without this type of comparison of Jews and other peoples, say different kinds of muslims, this research will only show the spirit of this issue.

kahaneloyalist:
The Baale Tosfos accepted the Ethiopians as Jews as did the Ramchal. Rav Kahane was very involved in getting the Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

NeverMore:
but how can you explain the Sefardic discriminatory approach to them? numbers of times i heard Eli Ishay (formal leader of shas party) expresses unequality of the Judaism level of the Ethiopians and say his own. by the way, Ethiopians still keep a Jewish holiday that has been lost since the bible era, and i dont remember what it is (i can find out if you want). shouldnt it be like "bonus points"?

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