The Hyena People: Ethiopian Jews in Christian Europe (review)

Hagar Salamon provides a fascinating study of the creation of identity through what might be appropriately called an "ethnography of memory." Salamon sets out to study the life of Ethiopian Jews in Ethiopia, but her study encompasses the lives of Ethiopian Jews in Israel as well. Drawing a distinction between the two emphases of the book becomes difficult because Salamon's study of the Beta Israel, Ethiopian Jews who immigrated to Israel between 1977 and 1991, is not rooted in the direct observation of Ethiopian Jews in Ethiopia but is instead focused on the recollections and memories that she collected through intensive fieldwork with the Beta Israel in Israel. Her research was sponsored by the Ministry of Absorption and was conducted in state-run absorption centers in Israel. The government was interested in evaluating the integration of Ethiopian immigrants in Israel, and Salamon had a personal interest in answering the question, "Who was a Jew in Ethiopia?" (p. 4). However, her study extends much further than her initial plans.

Rather than identifying with a larger Jewish culture and society, Beta Israel, Salamon posits, builds its identity in relationship to the "othered" identity of Ethiopian Christianity. In chapter 1, she explores the act of naming among and between Ethiopian Jews and Christians in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Jews and Christians are physically and linguistically indistinguishable from each other, but they denigrate each other nonetheless. According to Salamon, "a combination of attraction and repulsion characterized the complex relations between Jews and their neighbors in Ethiopia. Evident in everyday interactions, this dialectic was reflected in a wide-ranging and complex order of naming" (p. 24). The dialectical nature of this relationship informs much of Salamon's work.

Chapter 2 explores the daily interactions between Jews and Christians in Ethiopia. Both groups rely on each other for their success. The Jews lease land from the Christians in return for crafts and percentages of the harvest. The Christians rely on the Jews for their metalwork. However, the metalworking causes the Christians to be suspicious of the Jews because the work is believed to require strong magic. In chapter 3, Salamon asserts that because of the metalworking skills of the Beta Israel, Ethiopian Christians suspect their Jewish neighbors of being "hyenas," or of assuming hyena form at night. The hyena is a dangerous, supernatural entity, and the Jews' ability to work with fire is tied to supernatural abilities. At the same time, as Salamon explores in chapter 5, Ethiopian Jews do not respect their Christian neighbors in Ethiopia. In one example, Ethiopian Christians are compared to cows because they willingly handle the bodies of the dead and do not undergo ritual cleansing afterwards (pp. 48-49).

The dialectical relationship between Ethiopian Jew and Christian becomes further evident in chapter 6 where Salamon explores the Ethiopian religious calendar, the ways in which dates for the calendar are set, and the interactions between Ethiopian Christians and Jews on their holidays and ritual celebrations. Chapter 7 explores the confused identities of Jews who converted to Christianity in Ethiopia. Christian converts are distrusted in both communities. Christians seem to fear the converts even more than the Jews because, as Salamon interprets the recollections, "the conversion doesn't change the innate ethnic essence. . . . His Christian identity is merely a better disguise for his nocturnal operations [as a hyena]" (p. 71). Thus, converts enter a permanent liminal space.

In chapter 8, Salamon learns of distinctions in Beta Israel society between barya (slave) and chewa (free man, possessor of barya, and civilized, educated person). She is shocked when she learns that the barya are slaves. While not literally slaves-slavery is illegal in both Ethiopia and Israel-they are part of the slave caste and continue to work as servants to the Beta Israel. The Beta Israel accept the barya as Jews as a matter of religious convenience so they can interact with them without having to engage in the complex ritual purification normally...