SELF-SEGREGATION AND INCORPORATION AS A MEANS OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: THE CASE OF THE ETHIOPIAN BETä ƎSRA’EL

Восток. Афро-азиатские общества: история и современность. 2025. Vol. 5. P. 191–200.

Gusarova E.

Ethiopia is one of the most ethnically heterogeneous countries of the African continent. The overwhelming majority of its peoples have no literary tradition of their own. As a result, their lifestyle, manners and customs can be examined through field researches with only few exceptions. In this connection the Amhara and the Təgräy ethnic groups, who traditionally constitute the ruling class of the Christian state of Ethiopia, and at least one more people, viz. the Betä Ǝsra’el (the so-called ‘Ethiopian Jews’, or Falasha), are of particular interest, since all of them are more or less well represented in traditional Ethiopian historiography and have more or less well conserved their proper generational memory. The self-consciousness of the Betä Ǝsra’el revealed through the lens of written and oral tradition exerts its influence on patterns of their behavior in the changing world. Archaic backgrounds of their existence, especially their origin myths, were often left on the surface throughout different recorded periods of their existence and they remained aliens in Ethiopian society. The process of the alternate self-segregation and incorporation of the Betä Ǝsra’el within the Ethiopian state and the resulting social changes in the life of the people (both positive and negative) that occurred are demonstrated in the frame of the present research. The struggle for self-identity and recognition of the Betä Ǝsra’el as the descendants of King Solomon’s noblemen is still in progress, even in Israel where they managed to move almost entirely in the last quarter of the 20th century.

Keywords: culture, Israel, traditions, incorporation, Ethiopia, socio-cultural anthropology, the Falasha, the Betä Ǝsra’el, self-segregation