The Promise of Exodus; Critics charge a U.S.-based group is 'manufacturing' Ethiopian Jews to bolster Israel's Orthodox population.(North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry)

Byline: Joshua Hammer

Ashagray Zeleke is on the front lines of a war over Israel's future. The local representative of the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry (NACOEJ), Zeleke administers a compound in Addis Ababa where thousands of Falash Mura--Ethiopian Christians who claim Jewish ancestry--learn the rites of the faith while awaiting emigration to Israel. Leading a visitor through the iron gates, Zeleke proudly shows off Hebrew lessons in progress and a makeshift synagogue where 300 men wearing yarmulkes and prayer shawls bow fervently before an ark inscribed in Amharic. "Some have been waiting a decade to leave for Israel," he says. "They really feel Jewish inside." There's just one problem: according to many Israeli officials, barely 40 percent of the Ethiopians languishing in this compound have Jewish roots.

NACOEJ's ambitions have ignited an angry debate in Israel that cuts to the heart of the Jewish state's identity. Critics charge that the U.S.-based group, in an effort to spread Orthodox Judaism and beef up Israel's Jewish population, is "manufacturing Jews"--luring Ethiopian Christians out of their villages, inflating the numbers of those it claims have Jewish ancestry and trading food and the promise of exodus for religious conversion. NACOEJ, which insists that all the Ethiopians in its compounds are Jews, has found an alliance with some powerful sectors of Israeli society. The Palestinian intifada has drastically reduced the number of diaspora Jews interested in emigrating to Israel: the number dropped from 61,000 in 2000 to 21,000 last year. Amid fears that Muslims may soon outnumber Jews in Israel and the occupied territories, some Likud Party leaders and religious right wingers see resettling the Falash Mura as one way of guaranteeing the strength of the Jewish population.

Early this month, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom announced that he would speed up the resettlement of 24,000 Falash Mura living in NACOEJ compounds in Addis Ababa and Gondar in northern Ethiopia. That followed a statement last year by Israel's chief Sephardic rabbi that the Falash Mura were "complete Jews without any doubt," and a decision by the Interior Ministry--then run by a leader of the Shas ...