Knowing What We Know About Assimilation Rates of Reform Jews It is A Scandal That the Israel Chief Rabbinate Recognizes The Beta-Israel Falasha Community as Jewish Without Conversion
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/274895 reports: ”
Israel’s Chief Rabbinate has officially recognized the Beta Israel Jewish community from Ethiopia as Jewish.
The ruling issued in November, but first reported Sunday by the Kan national broadcaster, accepts the position of the late Sephardic chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who ruled in 1973 that the Beta Israel were Jewish, the first step in allowing for their immigration to Israel.
Since the late 1970s and into the 1980s, the Chief Rabbinate required the Beta Israel to undergo a symbolic conversion to remove all doubt, which included involving immersion in a mikvah, or ritual bath, and a declaration accepting Rabbinic law, which was not part of the isolated Ethiopian Jewish tradition. The requirement was insulting to Ethiopian Jewry, however, and eventually was dropped for Beta Israel…
The ruling comes as some in the haredi Orthodox community continue to reject the Jewishness of the Ethiopian community in Israel.
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True Judaism Recognizes That Jewish Status is Determined By the Mother. Heretical Jewish Sects like Reform Judaism and also Falasha-Beta Israel Judaism Hold that the Father Can Convey Jewish Status Without Having a Jewish Mother
Heretical Reform Judaism allows a person to be classified as a Jew if he has either a Jewish father or a Jewish mother in an intermarriage, although you occasionally might find a Reform cleric who has his own independent ideas. Heretical Falasha-Beta Israel Judaism also held that a person with only a Jewish father can be considered Jewish.
In general I do not like to send people to sites that present the viewpoints of heretics, but just in case someone suspects me of saying something untrue, here is a link to a site that confirms what I am saying.
In an article entitled Will Your Grandchildren be Jews: Updated (printed in Dec. 12, 2016 = 12th of Kislev, 5777) Rabbi Antony Gordon and Richard M. Horowitz show that if you start with a typical sample of 100 Jews who adhere to Reform Judaism, in generation 1, you will end up in generation 4, with just 13 Jews due to a 79% intermarriage rate and low birth rate.
Radbaz about 5 centuries ago said there was a particular group of black people from the Habash area that he believed to be descended from the Biblical Tribe of Dan and because of that have Israelite (Jewish) status. In another article, bli neder, I hope to point out that it is not entirely clear that Radbaz had the Falasha-Beta Israel group in mind, because, for example there is a place in Yemen and a place in Afghanistan and perhaps an additional place called Habash.
But even if Radbaz did have the Falasha-Beta Israel group in mind, he didn’t seem to be aware that the Falasha-Beta Israel group accepted Patrilineal descent to determine Jewish status. And even if Radbaz somehow solved that problem for the group that lived in his days, about 5 centuries have gone by since then and based on the comparison to Reform Judaism very little of the Danites, should be around in our times.
It should also be pointed out that even Rabbi Ovadia Yosef originally said the Chief Rabbinate should perform a conversion, for those wishing to be accepted as Jews and only under pressure did he change his ruling.
Now the Chief Rabbinate is trying to impose their very lax standards on the mainstream.
For more background about this problem, see on this site:
- Rabbi Jonathan Ziring’s Surprising Revelations About the Karaites and the Ethiopian-Falasha Community
- According to Current DNA Analysis It Is Unlikely That The Beta Israel (Falasha) Community from Ethiopia is From the Tribe of Dan
- The Status of the Descendants of the Ten Tribes That Were Exiled by Assyria as Described in II Kings (Melachim) Chapters 17 and 18
- Who were Rabbi Ovadia of Bartenura (BERTINORO) and Radbaz?
One final note. Radbaz, who claims there is a dark skinned group in Habash, who are from the Tribe of Dan, is the only real justification of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef for giving the Falasha-Beta Israel community Jewish status. Radbaz however, adds another point in Vol 7, siman 5 of his responsa that is often overlooked. He states that he is only in favor of helping this so-called “Tribe of Dan”, community if they don’t reject the words of the Rabbis once we teach them.