Search - Falasha: Exile of the Black Jews on DVD

Fascinating, if dated, look at Beta Israel, the black Jews o

Jason Mierek | Urbana, IL | 07/24/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"There is something uncanny about seeing a black man in traditional Ethiopian clothing wearing a tefilla on his forehead and praying at the Western Wall of the Temple in Jerusalem. There is something uncanny in hearing that an isolated Jewish community in Ethiopia---which has been there for over two millennia, possibly since the destruction of the first temple---believed for the longest time that it was the sole surviving remnant of the Jewish people. Uncanniness haunts this film precisely because the very existence of the protaganists, the falasha or "exiles"---the black Jews of Ethiopia---violates many of the viewer's unconscious conceptual categories. As one speaker in the film notes, the falasha are "Jewish, black, Zionist, and third-world," which does not make them too many easy friends in the polarized global climate of the late Cold War.



Alas, the film is saturated in dated Cold War imagery and geopolitics. That said, the main thrust of the film, asking why the world Jewish community seemed to ignore their plight as exiles in Ethiopia and refugees in the Sudan, is still fascinating and challenging. In the twenty-plus years since the film was made, and in some part due to the impact of this film, most of the falasha have left Ethiopia for Israel. How they fit in there would be the subject of a fascinating follow-up documentary.



This film is definitely worth seeing, if only because of its effects on our over-simplified concepts and its sparking of interest in learning more about Ethiopian Jewry."

Falasha: Exile of the Black Jews

Yaakov N. Miles | Vancouver, BC, Canada | 10/31/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I rented this DVD and liked it so much that I bought it from Amazon. It goes into the recent history of the Beta Israel in Ethiopia, and unmasks a "conspiracy of silence" which was ostensibly to protect rescue operations in progress. I am happy to say that since this DVD was made, more than 100,000 Beta Israel have been airlifted to Israel "On the Wings of Eagles" is how such airlifts to Israel were termed."