Jewish, Ethiopian (Israel)

Ethiopian Jews, the Beta Israel, kept a distinctive biblical Judaism for centuries in the highlands of northern Ethiopia, cut off from the rest of the Jewish world, and were brought to Israel in dramatic airlifts in 1984 and 1991 and in a long stream of later immigration. About 177,600 people of Ethiopian origin now live in Israel, almost half of them born there, mostly in coastal and southern towns such as Netanya, Rehovot, Beersheba and Kiryat Malakhi. They are Israel's only large African Jewish community and still face racism, police violence and poverty, even as their young people reach university at higher rates than the national average. Each autumn thousands gather on a Jerusalem hillside for Sigd, their own festival of fasting and prayer led by white-robed priests called kessim.