Ethiopian Jews End Sit-in as Peres and Israeli Rabbis Reach Accord

JERUSALEM — Ethiopian immigrants Thursday rolled up their tents after ending a four-week sit-in to protest the stance of Israeli rabbis who had cast doubt on their Jewishness.

The immigrants declared an end to their protest late Wednesday after Prime Minister Shimon Peres intervened to work out a compromise between them and Israel’s chief rabbis.

Many of the Ethiopians were rescued from famine in their native land by a secret Israeli airlift last year. They were protesting demands from the rabbis that couples wishing to marry immerse themselves in a ritual bath to reaffirm their Jewishness.

The Israeli rabbis contend that the Ethiopians, who date their ancestry back to Bible times, were isolated in Africa at the time that mainstream Judaism compiled many of its laws, and that as a result some of them may not actually be Jews.

The rabbis said that some of the Ethiopians might have intermarried. To be considered a Jew, one’s mother must be Jewish.

Racial Motives Charged

The Ethiopians, whose community in Israel is estimated at 12,000, regarded the rabbis’ demands as an insult and accused the religious establishment of prejudice against them because they are black. They staged a sit-in outside the chief rabbinate’s office along a busy Jerusalem street.

Under the compromise, only couples whose Judaism is cast into doubt by a rabbinical court will be required to immerse themselves in the mikve, or ritual bath. If the local registrar, who is a rabbi, is satisfied with their credentials, then the couple will not have to undergo the immersion ritual.

Peres has intervened several times in the dispute, under pressure from both anti-clerical groups and supporters of the immigrants.

Ethiopian Jews say they are descendants from the Tribe of Dan or from the Queen of Sheba and contend that they have maintained their religion through strict adherence to biblical law during thousands of years of isolation.