Passover's antiquity preserved
in age-old Ethiopian tradition
Lerner Skyline - by Leah A Zeldes

''At sunset Monday, April 5, Jews worldwide will begin the observance of Passover, a celebration that dates to the time of Mosses. Mosses according to the Bible, married an Ethiopian woman.

The Jews of Ethiopia call themselves Beta Israel , "House of Israel". Their community is ancient - tradition holds that they're descended from Jews who traveled from Jerusalem to Ethiopia with Menelik, the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

Today, most of the Beta Israel live in Israel, Zenash Beyene, 46 owner of Edgewater's Ras Dashen restaurant, 5846 N. Broadway, believes she and her family may be the only Ethiopian Jews in Chicago, an isolation not unlike that of her people's from the rest of the world's Jews, from whom they were separated for millennia.

Until about 25 years ago, the Beta Israel lived a harsh, primitive and beleaguered existence in the area around Gondar , Ethiopia , in North Africa . Then, as civil war tore their country apart and famine gripped the region, a series of historic Israeli airlifts - labeled Moses (1984), Joshua (1985) and Solomon (1991) - rescued almost 42,000 members of the community and took them to relative safety in Israel, a fantastic dream to a people for whom Jerusalem was a fabled place, an echo of the exodus that Passover commemorates.

As their community had become isolated from the rest of the world's Jews, the Ethiopians continued to follow Judaism as it was practiced before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem . They practiced the Judaism of Moses, without the rabbinic rules that codified Jewish life elsewhere, and they added their own celebrations to the feasts and fasts prescribed by the Torah. Their version of the holy scroll was written in Ge'ez, a historic language, and they spoke the Amharic of other Ethiopian communities.

Passover remained an important holiday to the Beta Israel, Historically, on Passover, Ethiopian Jews would sacrifice a goat, according to the ancient tradition of the Hebrews, though after their rediscovery by world Jewry in the early 20 th century, they largely gave up the practice for the more symbolic one used by Jews elsewhere.

Beyene referred to the Passover celebration as "Fasika" a world meaning "feast" in Amharic. Ethiopian Orthodox Christians use the same word for Easter.

Like Jews everywhere, Ethiopian Jews avoid leavened, grain-based foods during the week of Passover, and use special Passover dishes untouched by such foods. Historically, some Beta Israel communities broke their plates and threw them away at Passover, creating new ones for the holiday.

"Everybody makes their own dish" says Beyene. "We make our pottery," she says, pointing to examples of Ethiopian ceramics in her restaurant. However, she says, in her village, like in other Jewish communities today, the everyday dishes were merely stored away till after Passover.

However the dishes serve merely as a backdrop to the food spread out on them. Most Ethiopian meals are based on injera, spongy, crepe-like bread with a sourdough flavor made from a wheat relative called teff. Other foods, typically stews, are placed on top of large sheets the bread, which is shared communally, signifying the bonds of loyalty and friendship. Traditionally, Ethiopians eat with their fingers, tearing off bite-sized pieces of injera to pick up mouthfuls of different dishes. During Passover, Ethiopian Jews eat shimbera, a firmer, crispier matzo-like cracker made from chickpeas.

Beyene holds up to pieces of round, unleavened flat breads. One is small - about 8 inches across. The other is twice the diameter. "This is the one we hide," she says of the smaller one, referring to a segment of the Seder ritual in which a portion of the matzo is set aside, out of sight, to be eaten after the main meal.

Like that of the Sephardic Jews (those descended from Jews evicted from Spain in 1492), Beta Israel custom does not forbid kitniot, or legumes, during Passover. That prohibition extends only to Ashkenazim (Jews of Eastern- and Middle European descent, who make up the bulk of American Jewry), so chickpeas are allowed for Ethiopians.

However, Ethiopian Jews abstain from eating fermented milk products, such as yogurt, butter or cheese, during Passover. Beta Israel kashrut does not include the separation of meat and milk, a rule adopted by other Jews after their community became separated.

Main courses during Passover might be fish or meat stews, lamb or roasted seeds, according to Beyene, not greatly different from foods eaten the rest of the year.

But she shrugs when asked for more specifics about her childhood Passovers. "Many things I forgot".

Beyene left Ethiopia in the 1970's as a young teenager, though she'd already married and had a child, as was customary among the villages. Her husband had been conscripted into the Ethiopian military. "We never heard from him again," she says. She left her infant daughter to be brought up by her mother and went to Sudan .

"I was lucky," she recalls. After just two weeks in a refugee camp, she found somebody who knew her family and found her a job. Eventually, she spent a year working in Saudi Arabia , and she went back to Sudan and opened a restaurant there.

"Then, I decided to come back to Unites States with my young brother." The youngest of her three brothers was in danger of military conscription, and she spirited him out of Ethiopia .

She arrived in Chicago in 1981 at age 23, speaking almost no English and very homesick, she says. "It was difficult for me here," she remembers.

Before leaving Ethiopia , "I'd never seen a car, or electricity. Once, a car was supposed to come to my village and everybody got excited - the whole village."

But she adapted, she says. " America is a beautiful country, very very rich".

She remains glad she came here, and though she visits Israel , where much of her family lives now, she's glad to come home to Chicago . Her Israeli-reared daughter and her grandchildren have joined her here.

She laughs when she describes a visit from one of her brothers, who lives in Israel and is very religious. He didn't believe that food in Chicago could be properly kosher, and insisted on ritually slaughtering his meat himself. "He killed his own lamb".

"I had to make him all special meals" she says. He didn't trust meat she'd bought from a kosher butcher on Devon Avenue . At the same time, she says "The butcher told me, 'You can't be Jewish, you're black".