The Traces of Early Halakhot in the “Hava Amina” of the Sages in Second Temple Literature and the Ethiopian Halakhah

This essay seeks to add a further layer to the discussion of associations between ancient Halakhah and that of Beta Israel by examining correlations between halakhic traditions that were preserved among Ethiopian Jewish communities and the Hava Amina mentioned by the Sages. It demonstrates that opinions espoused by the sages’ opponents can be identified within the Hava Amina of the Talmudic discussion. The discussion presents three examples: The use of fire on Shabbat, Kosher slaughtering by someone other than a priest, and the status of an unborn child. The article concludes that the sages were familiar with ancient halakhic traditions parallel to those of the Ethiopian Halakhah, rejected these traditions from the accepted Halakhah, yet preserved traces of them in the Hava Amina of the Talmudic give and take.

Songs That Travel: A Review Article of the CD box The Liturgy of Beta Israel

In 1986, a Franco-Israeli team of scholars set out to document the liturgy of the Beta ʾƎsrāʾel, a group of Ethiopian Jews which at the time was in the process of making aliyah under dramatic circumstances. The scholars gathered a group of priests in Israel and produced an impressive corpus of recordings, covering important parts of the liturgical tradition. Over the past decades, the team has been publishing their results in a number of articles and monographs, and in 2019 presented a selection of recordings in the form of a CD box. The box contains three CDs plus a bilingual booklet with information about the liturgical tradition of the Beta ʾƎsrāʾel: their music, prayers, and ritual practices. In this review article, the research results presented in the booklet are evaluated, with special attention paid to the effects that migration has had on the Beta ʾƎsrāʾel liturgical tradition.

Levirate Marriage in Beta Israel

The halakhah observed by the Beta Israel community is decisive and extremely detailed. This halakhic system, which was preserved and transmitted from one generation to the next as an oral tradition, can shed light on previously hidden aspects of the early halakhah. This article the examines Beta Israel practice regarding the levirate marriage (yibum), including its rationale and sources. Beta Israel refrained from performing levirate marriage. This abstention is surprising, since Beta Israel possessed the written Torah, and the Beta Israel halakhah generally follows the simple meaning of Scripture. Why, then, did this community not observe levirate marriage as set forth in the Torah? The article provides a detailed explanation of the reasons and seeks intimations in Jewish literature throughout the generations of the Beta Israel practice.