News and Updates

Ono Beit Midrash Studies the Rise and Fall of Beta Israel in Ethiopia and the Codification of the Beta Israel Bible

The 5th meeting of the Beit Midrash for the Study of Ethiopian Jewish Religious Texts at Ono Academic College, took place in person, on Ono’s new Savyon Junction campus. Booms of incoming rockets interrupted but didn’t stop the learning. The focus of the meeting was a presentation by Rabbi Reuven  Yasu on the subject of “The Weakening of the Beit Israel Community and the Growth of the Amharic-Christian Nation of Shua.” He explored the history of the Bible’s codification and found that the 8-book corpus of the Ethiopian Jewish Torah (Orit), represented the original unit of the Torah. In the second part of the meeting, he presented the history of Ethiopia since the common era alongside the history of Beit Israel, showing how the Jews fared in different periods.