ABYSSINIAN JEWS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 132, 15 December 1928, Page 20

ABYSSINIAN JEWS

STRANGE MOUNTAIN TRIBE. It would be interesting to know how the coronation festivities, which are just now placing the still mysterious empire of Abyssinia in the limelight, are affecting a certain strange tribe of mountaineers in what was once part of the Kingdom of Shoah, in the north of the Negus's country, says a correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph." These tribesmen, Falashas, as they call themselves, are, according to their own profession, Jews —the only Jewish mountaineers known on earth. They have tho typical Jewish appearance physically, but none of the conventional habits or attributes. Neither they nor their ancestors have ever engaged in trade, being hunters and trappers who rarely mingle with tho Abyssinians proper in the towns and villages of the low-land. They practise the rite of circumcision and perform a rude imitation of the ancient Palestinian Passover ceremonies, otherwise they have neither priest nor temple. In the fastnesses of their mountains, however, they preserve in a quaint teak-wood casket a venerable parchment copy of the Pentateuch, which their headmen allege came down to them direct from King Solomon through the Queon of Sheba. Probably these people's ancestors at one time intermarried with Palestinian Jews and have handed down certain Semitic attributes to their modern representatives. . . - -