Black Lives Matter Abroad, Too: Proposed Solutions to the Racialized Policing of Ethiopian Jews in Israel

This Note will first discuss the presence of Ethiopian Jews in Israel, and then compare their stature and rights (or lack thereof) to another insular group in Israel—Arab Palestinians. Finally, this Note will discuss possible solutions and remedies to these fatal police shootings. Considering that the possibility of criminal liability for officers is low, this Note will argue that both civil remedies and additional training for police are necessary to avert future shootings of Ethiopian Jews

Operation Solomon: The Daring Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews (Review)

This is a book review of Stephen Spector\u27s book, Operation Solomon: The Daring Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews. (2005). New York: Oxford University Press

An Ethiopian-Headed Serpent in theCantigas de Santa María: Sin, Sex, and Color in Late Medieval Castile

An unconventional portrayal of the serpent of the Temptation in the Florence codex of the Cantigas de Santa María (Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, MS B.R. 20) manifests significant developments in the visual and epistemic norms of late medieval Castile. The satanic serpent’s black face and stereotyped African features link to cultural traditions well beyond Iberia, most notably the topos of the “Ethiopian,” which blended the actual and fantastical in deeply symbolic ways. Most crucial to the reading of the motif in the cantiga were the Ethiopian’s long-standing associations with sin and diabolism, rooted in early monastic Christianity but preserved in later medieval monastic and romance literature as well as in visual images found in Iberian contexts. Yet the otherwise conventional femininity of the serpent’s head must have connected still more specifically to medieval stereotypes of black women as hypersexual, distasteful, and dangerous. Iberian awareness of these stereotypes, attested by the caricatured black women of medieval Castilian exempla, poetry, and historical texts, surely facilitated recognition of the complementary binaries central to this cantiga, in that Satan’s blackness and sensuality invert Eve’s whiteness and erstwhile purity, foreshadowing her capitulation to the darkness of sin and sex as an antitype of the faultless Virgin. The innovative image thus reveals both its artist’s sensitivity to broad European cultural trends and the resonance of skin color in a region where both color and race would soon become inescapably concrete concerns

"Infiltrators" or refugees? An analysis of Israel's policy towards African asylum seekers

This article adopts a genealogical approach in examining Israeli immigration policy by focusing on the situation confronting African asylum seekers who have been forced back into Egypt, detained and deported but who have not had their asylum claims properly assessed. Based on immigration policies formulated at the time of Israeli independence, whose principle objective was to secure a Jewish majority state, we argue that Israel’s treatment of African asylum seekers as ‘infiltrators’/economic migrants stems from an insistence on maintaining immigration as a sovereign issue formally isolated from other policy domains. Such an approach is not only in violation of Israel’s commitment to the Refugee Convention, it directly contributes to policies which are ineffective and unduly harsh

Guardians of Ink and Vellum: Ethiopian Magical Scrolls

Ethiopian magical scrolls are powerful tools to combat sickness and demons in Ethiopian folk belief. As works of art, they display influences from Muslim, Jewish, and Christian sources. The scroll showcased in the “Wonders of Nature and Artifice” Exhibition was graciously donated by Mike Hobor, Gettysburg College Class of 1969. A prolific traveler, Mike purchased this piece in an art shop in Rome along with two other scrolls. 1 The scroll is believed to come from the city of Gondar, and is believed to date to the eighteenth-century. [excerpt

Giving Voices to the Voiceless: Language Barriers & Health Access Issues of Black Immigrants of African Descent

Takes an initial step toward identifying language and cultural issues that impede access to health care among immigrants of African descent in California

Expanding Philanthropy to the Israeli Arab Community

ACBP commissioned the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Firm to poll a diverse cross-section of American Jews who contribute to pro-Israel and/or Jewish organizations on the various reasons why they donate to Israel, their perceptions of the current realities in Israel and their knowledge of Israel's Arab minority

Understanding Muhammad\u27s Interaction with the Church

My research focuses on understanding Muhammad’s (the Islamic prophet) interaction with what he perceived to be the Christian church to find out why his understanding of Biblical narratives and theology is incorrect. With this information, Christians should reintroduce Christian scripture and theology to Muslims since Muhammad’s rejection of Christian doctrine is based on associating wrong texts as authoritative Christian teaching. The following questions that shape this research are: What possible sources did Muhammad use to learn about biblical narratives and themes? What did the first Muslims think about the canonical gospels of Jesus? How did early Muslims view the teachings of the Christian church? What constitutes orthodox Christian belief? Using the Qur’an, the Síra, and the Hadith, I will examine Muhammad’s interaction with the King of Abyssinia, Bahira the Monk, the town of Najran, the Nestorians, Jacobites, Melkites, Manichaeism, and those from the “Byzantine rite.” I examine likely sources of the Qur’an such as the Diatessaron, the Protoevangelium of James, the Arab Infancy Gospel, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The key results of this research are (1) Muhammad used apocryphal literature as reliable history and consequently had a misunderstanding of orthodox Christian doctrine; (2) Muhammad had a positive outlook on Christianity while in Mecca, however, at the end of his ministry in Medina where there existed so called Christians his outlook became negative; and, (3) despite the Qur’anic command to read the Gospel of Jesus (referring to it as divine scripture), early Islamic scholars, two centuries after Muhammad, said either the Bible or Christian interpretation of the Bible was corrupted. The results of this research imply that since Muhammad’s various confessions on the Christian church contradict one another, there is a lot of room to doubt the authority and truthfulness of much of his (or Allah’s) statements on the biblical narrative and theology of the Christian church. Thus this work poses several theological, philosophical, and historical problems towards the credibility of the Qur’an and its source(s). Overall, Muhammad is inadequate to be an authority or a direct refuter of orthodox Christianity because he was misinformed. This research implies that early Muslims could have been more open to the Chalcedonian Creed than the false Christian creeds they originally encountered. To explain why the 7th century Arabian church was largely cultic, I suggest a theory that Christian cults from the Byzantine, Syrian, and Persian empires in pre-Islamic times, fleeing persecution, migrated to the Arabian Peninsula. Future work connected with my findings would be to better understand who possessed the pre-Qur’anic sources. Exactly what texts were Arab Christians using? There is an underpinning that this research leans on: the answer to the question, what is the authentic gospel message of Jesus Christ? The answer would help us understand the context of surah 5:46-47, and to test the hypothesis that the Qur’an is divine revelation from God with various philosophical, historical, and theological proofs

Menorah Review (No. 35, Fall, 1995)

Jewish Path, Buddhist Path: Do They Meet? -- Sparks of Light -- Jewish-Americans and American Sports: Memory, Identity and Assimilation -- How to Develop the Moral Personality -- Political and the Nationalist Judaism -- Litigation -- Book Briefing